Throttling iPhones with older batteries was the right decision, but Apple's lack of transparency undermines customers and fuels conspiracy theories
but says it's for your own good Gordon Kelly / Forbes : Why Every iPhone Contains A Nasty Surprise Marius Nestor / Softpedia News : Apple Is Now Being Sued for Slowing Down Older iPhones Tyler Lee / Ubergizmo : Apple Hit With Second Lawsuit Over Slowed Down iPhones Iyaz Akhtar / CNET : Yep, Apple slows down older iPhones Chris Matyszczyk / CNET : How Apple risks losing its position of trust Tweets: Steven Aquino / @steven_aquino : I agree with @gruber, @panzer and others who say Apple should be more transparent with regards to iPhone battery life. They should. But this story is getting so sensationalized, it's ridiculous. Apple isn't purposely doing anything nefarious. Nicholas Thompson / @nxthompson : Here are some better options Apple had: 1) Educate people on lithium-ion batteries 2) Provided swappable battery packs 3) Make the throttling opt-in http://www.wired.com/... Rene Ritchie / @reneritchie : Apple did in-depth briefings on it almost a year ago explaining how batteries age (including prematurely), what was being done to prevent spikes and shut downs, etc. Tech press knew. In hindsight, the power management is either overly aggreesive or notification overly passive. https://twitter.com/... Jon Passantino / @passantino : 'this $700 to $1,000-plus product, as designed, isn't able to function near its peak after just a year of use. That should be unacceptable." http://www.theverge.com/... Steve Troughton-Smith / @stroughtonsmith : I would always have picked better performance over better battery life, because a portable battery pack is an easy thing to tote — and it would have been obvious that a new battery was needed; you can't work around an artificially strangled CPU — you have to buy a new device Steve Troughton-Smith / @stroughtonsmith : The people who think this week's battery revelations aren't a problem are the ones who can easily afford a new iPhone every year As somebody pushed off a 6 Plus by degraded performance in iOS 11, it really stings to think that it was an artificial issue Joel Teitelbaum / @joelteitelbaum : @Techmeme @benlovejoy They issued a statement when they first implemented this. When Apple first announced this power management feature the reactions were positive http://techcrunch.com/... @stevesi : 1/ Have to admit the Apple battery fix feels right technically but not so right in terms of expectations (like low flow showers or 55MPH governors). But still there is one consideration... Is Apple Slowing Down Old iPhones? Questions and Answers - https://www.nytimes.com/... pic.twitter.com/4V4wN8dRAu
Context & Ripple Effects
The story broke when independent Geekbench benchmarks showed older iPhones running slower, and Apple then [[a:925069|confirmed it had been managing power demands on devices with degraded batteries since the previous year]] to prevent unexpected shutdowns. The engineering rationale was defensible; the secrecy was not, because users experienced the slowdowns as unexplained aging rather than a disclosed trade-off.
This piece is the trust-focused take in that arc: it argues the throttling itself was the right call but that Apple's silence handed ammunition to conspiracy theories about planned obsolescence. Within days that argument hardened into legal exposure, with at least three class-action lawsuits filed over the slowdowns, and Apple eventually apologized and offered $29 battery replacements to contain the damage.
First-order effects
- iPhone owners with aging batteries learned their devices had been deliberately slowed without notification, converting a perceived hardware defect into a disclosed software choice they never consented to.
Second-order effects
- Plaintiffs moved within days to file class-action suits against Apple, turning a communications failure into direct financial and reputational liability, and forcing the $29 battery-replacement program as damage control.
Third-order effects
- If undisclosed performance management keeps triggering litigation, device makers face pressure to disclose software-side trade-offs — battery, thermal, security-related slowdowns — at the point of update rather than after independent benchmarks expose them.
The trend: Consumer-device vendors are being pushed from silent software intervention toward disclosed performance trade-offs, as benchmark transparency and class-action risk make opacity costlier than disclosure.