Apparently Apple doesn't agree that this is covered under warranty since they have denied wrongdoing (at least last I saw as of the $500M settlement, can't access the latest one).

Isn’t battery a consumable and thus not covered by warranty by default? (Unless it has a manufacturing defect)

Is it reasonable to consider an element of a device a consumable if it is not user replaceable?

No, exactly. I got a free battery replacement on my Macbook Pro after 3 years of having it because the battery was unusable.

After going into the Apple store, they said that the battery was a "consumable part" and therefore not covered by the warranty. However, when I asked what the part number was and how I could order a replacement myself, they said that the batteries weren't serviceable and even they had to replace the keyboard unit as that contained the battery and it was all glued together.

I pointed out that they've therefore designed this product to fail after a few years as you can't order replacement batteries as a consumer, and they agreed to replace it for free.

That is definitely an issue. I guess apple somehow calculated that an occasional free replacement is more economic than not binding the battery to a non-consumable part?

Yes, of course it is. Most users can’t replace tires, spark plugs, or even oil in their cars. Parts are considered consumable if they are reasonably expected to be consumed during normal operation. No court is going to hold a company liable for basic physics.

> Most users can’t replace tires, spark plugs, or even oil in their cars.

They don't want to, but they could with a 5 minute YouTube video and probably $10 in parts (plus the cost of the new tire, or oil, or whatever). Doing so also does not void the warranty on your car (maybe not true for spark plugs? Tires and oil can certainly be changed)

Umm, every user can replace tires, spark plugs, and oil on their car. If they don't want to do it themselves they can pay a company to do it for them.

No, but they might hold a company liable for intentionally suppressing the ability of any customer to maintain their products.

You mean unless you pay for a special policy? I think it typically comes with its own warranty. The replacement prices differentiate between in-warranty and AppleCare versus "out of warranty" price. Which seems to imply they do provide it by default, until it just expires.

They do state it is a consumable and that it should maintain a certain level for a certain number of recharge cycles. Of course not sure what kind of careful wording they were using pre-controversy. But obviously it should all come down to what they promise to be covering.

The other option Apple had at their disposal was basically to throttle the device literally all the time so that even when the battery was old the phone would never draw enough current to trigger a brown out condition. Instead what they did was make the most power possible available from the battery at all times, and yes that changed over time. This seems like a much better alternative. I really don’t understand the criticism.

The marketing is at issue here. If instead of calling it throttling down when the battery was old they called it boosting up when the battery was new it would have been a best in class feature instead of a $100 million dollar settlement.

And yes, at the point where the throttling was taking place, the battery wasn’t defective. That was a completely expected place along the performance curve of a consumable part. So why replace it when it’s working as designed? In my opinion this is the opposite of planned obsolescence, they took devices that would otherwise have to be replaced due to shut downs and allow them to remain in service.

The other option Apple had here was notifying people their battery was bad, not hiding the throttling, and letting people buy new batteries for a reasonable profit.

It's not bad though, it's normal, and functioning as expected at that part of the age curve. You can avoid this by reducing performance for the entire time you owned the device so nobody noticed, I guess, but that's all.

Let's imagine it's a electric car. The car goes 70mph when you buy it. Suddenly it only runs at 45mph. You want to buy a new battery to fix it but the car company refuses even though you're willing to pay.

Why should you have to put up with a car that only goes 45mph when it went 70mph when you bought it?

What part of this is hard to understand. I don't want a phone that runs slow.

It's different in that the electric car is marketed as capable of achieving 70mph, Apple does not market iOS devices in terms of performance. No promises were made in that regard - at all, IIRC.

> Apple does not market iOS devices in terms of performance.

Come on dude, stop bullshitting. Every Apple device promotion shows how it is faster or better than the previous device or its competitors. Even the new Apple ARM processor touts how it is equal or better than other processors.

This right here is the reason Apple fans irritate me.

I love Apple devices but the quality regressed in recent years, to the point that I left most of the ecosystem.

But you can not have a healthy discussion about that because some people will come out and defend apple with their blood and tears. No matter ridiculous their stance is.

I'm not blanket defending them.

(1) I'm a right-to-repair activist, I believe that batteries should be user-serviceable and preferably end-user-serviceable. The fact that Apple refused to replace batteries in exchange for a fee is nutters to me. Apple's general disdain for third-party repair is indefensible.

(2) I want a system that tries to get as much performance as possible at all times, and that means as a consumable part (the battery) ages, less performance is available because less instantaneous power is available. This aging process begins on the first day and first charge cycle of ownership. That means if the device is always pulling the most power possible out of the battery, the performance characteristics of the device change over time, like balding tires or razor blades. A balding tire or razor blade is not defective, even if I can't take corners as tightly or have to slow down my shave to avoid cutting up my face.

(3) I would prefer a device that ramps down peak performance over time to match the capabilities of a consumable part rather than one that artificially limits peak performance early on to avoid a ramp-down. And I would certainly prefer a device that throttles at 20% capacity to one that takes a dirt nap at 20%. I had one of those, and it was awful. I couldn't rely on it to get home, for instance. The patch at issue here resolved that completely. I'd also prefer a device that is on at 20% to one that shuts down before it gets to 20% in some effort to avoid throttling.

(4) I don't think that a battery that is able to supply less instantaneous power over time is defective so long as its reduced capability is in line with expectations for the given age and number of charge cycles, and therefore shouldn't be eligible for a complementary automatic in-warranty battery replacement.

(5) Ok, say you prefer the other. Fine, don't buy an iPhone. It's not a 100 million dollar lawsuit worthy issue. It's at most a good will issue for the few folks who would prefer the other behavior, and having a switch resolved it.

Is that really such a ridiculous stance? Does this really irritate you?

And I dont mind if they have a valid argument. But most of the time it doesn't make any sense, technical, economical, or user perspective.

And most of these fans are post-iPhone Apple Fans as well.

When the first iPhone came out in 2008 Apple's rabid fan base came out just to keep saying "why would anyone ever want MMS and copy/paste?" It really didn't make any sense... I would have been somewhat interested in buying one if I could afford one, so I wasn't a hater.

I don't think you're remembering that right.

The early iPhone adopters, myself included, were focused on all the amazing new stuff the iPhone gave me over my Motorola Pebl, like a giant screen, a full desktop web browser, unlimited (albeit very slow) mobile internet in the middle of absolutely nowhere, and a buttery-smooth UI experience.

Remember the state of the art at the time was the Razr for consumer phones, Rokr for music phones, and the N900 for smartphones. Put them side by side with the original iPhone and you'll understand why copy-paste and MMS was the last thing on our minds.

There was no Android, that came out a year and a bit later. And Android 1.0 was hot garbage.

My first Mac was an SE/30 then an LC475 when I was a kid, and an iMac G4 15" (2002) and iBook G3 Snow (2003) are the machines I learned to write software on.

This right here is the reason Apple haters irritate me.

I love Apple devices and the quality improved in recent years, to the point that I will never leave the ecosystem.

But you can not have a healthy discussion about that because some people will come out and attack apple with their blood and tears. No matter ridiculous their stance is.

It’s a real shame if hate and anger are more socially acceptable than defending something.

I rest my case.

I rest mine. From your history it seems like you only log on that account to post anti-Apple comments.

Don’t customers have a reasonable expectation of roughly consistent performance of their device?

And to your point, car companies don’t market their cars using ‘achieving 70mph’ as a feature. It’s just a reasonable expectation of performance. They might mention the top speed, but that’s more of a specification than a marketing feature in most cases.

Sure, but the performance of your car degrades as the tires bald, does it not? Fuel economy changes, cornering, maximum acceleration off the line.

Yes, and the manufacturers make it trivial to replace vital consumables such as tyres!

That Apple blocked easy battery replacement, even through their own for-profit stores, is a part of the case against them you seem to be ignoring.

I can't believe how much of an echo-chamber these discussions get. Its like proper politics - once people chose their branch of religion, be it faith in god or in their phone manufacturer, they go to great lengths to twist reality so that their favorite comes always as good guy. Cognitive dissonance anybody?

I have no stake at this topic, never owned an Apple device and I don't feel other manufacturers are significantly better, but its a bit sad to see so much apologism at otherwise great place like HN. Or its just paid comments either from employees or otherwise employed, I mean we're still just on general internet and its still 2020 so its unfortunately pretty normal.

In any case, if you guys try to defend these seemingly amoral actions of Apple, the real effect is exactly opposite.

Performance characteristics aren't exactly "amoral" -- if you want to talk "amoral," I'd suggest focusing on their stance on reparability, to which I'm very sympathetic. Eventually you have to run the car much more gently before replacing the tires to avoid putting yourself at risk.

Consumer expectations matter. People would be rightfully mad if cars changed in performance after you test drove them, after all, even with no explicit promises.

And Apple does advertise benchmarks on their slides.

> You can avoid this by reducing performance for the entire time you owned the device so nobody noticed, I guess, but that's all.

Or you could notify people of the situation, and sell replacement batteries.

That would have been the best solution.

Again, the battery is not defective, it is a certain number of years old. That is how batteries perform at a certain age. Batteries are consumable parts like tires and ink cartridges.

It's like returning an ink cartridge at 50% capacity because it's only got half the ink left. Yes, that's the point, that's what cartridges do.

This feature is designed to always get the most out of a battery. Is that really something to complain about?

I guess this is where it's a perspective issue.

- You're saying that a new battery starts out at "100%" and that after a year or so, Apple throttles is down to "80%" because it can no longer keep up with how it came out of the factory. Apple designed a function that reduces the performance of a system that's defective to hide the defect. That would be strictly negative.

- What I'm saying is that the battery starts out at "120%" out of the factory (which you can confirm, when you buy a new mac check out the Batter mAh vs. design rating in System Report) and eventually drifts towards "100%" over time. Apple designed a system that allows you to get that extra 20% at the start, when it's available. That would be strictly positive.

The battery may not be defective, but the device is. It previously performed acceptably, then started performing poorly, with no indication to the user that there was an action needed to restore acceptable performance. Nobody expects a magic battery fix, but they do expect to be told that their device has been slowed down.

The device is fine, and so's the battery.

What I'm suggesting is that you consider the 100% performance mark to be far side of the performance curve at the end of the expected life of the device, so 80% capacity after 1000 charge cycles or 2 years, give or take.

With that as your baseline ("100%"), if you can make the phone perform better than the that in the first few years you're offering an early-life performance boost over the baseline, not a late performance degradation. Otherwise, the far end of the curve is the performance level you'd have to artificially limit the device to in order to avoid any change in performance over time. The phone was defective before the update was shipped as it didn't appropriately account for this normal battery degradation curve.

Apple was basically giving you more performance than you paid for, for free, early on -- not stealing your performance down the line.

The only time you should be told your battery is defective is if it reaches the 80% mark in less than 2 years or 1000 charge cycles along the defined anticipated performance curve. I do agree, however, that a battery replacement should be available at a fair price to those who want one.

Your definition is not common to the market. Users can’t possibly anticipate whether the phone will provide acceptable performance when it reaches this ‘100%’ state. The devices are reviewed based on as new performance. The device provides adequate performance for some time, subsequently stops providing adequate performance, without notifying the user that there’s a way to restore acceptable performance. This is extremely user hostile behaviour.

I would literally rather my phone started randomly turning itself off at 30% power. At least that way I might take it for repair, have the reason diagnosed, and get it restored to acceptable performance, rather than simply assuming that software has moved on and I have to live with a slow device or purchase a new one.

For the sake of argument, let's go with your framing: the device starts out at "120%" performance, then degrades to "100%".

The argument others have raised still applies. If Apple had informed users about the transition from 120% to 100%, some portion of users would have enjoyed the 120% experience so much that they would have replaced their batteries in order to get back to 120%. Apple concealed that option by not informing users about the change.

The problem is a battery engineer can't seem to explain this to people here who are ostensibly smart people, though that does somewhat go out of the window when apple is the subject it seems. How on earth could they be expected to explain this to everyone?

Everyone here understands the behaviour of the battery. At issue is the way the customer experience is handled on top of that behaviour. Pretending otherwise is simple condescension.

Apple has already fixed the problem in a satisfactory way, so presumably it wasn’t impossible after all.

The initial state is what the devices are reviewed on, and bought based on. And that's really the only reasonable approach, you can't really delay the reviews until the model is already dead and buried.

> That is how batteries perform at a certain age.

Ok, and customers should still be informed of whatever it is that you think the situation is, and they should be allowed to purchase a replacement.

> This feature is designed to always get the most out of a battery. Is that really something to complain about?

They should have still told the customer and allowed people to buy a replacement.

> I guess this is where it's a perspective issue.

No. My perspective is not that. Instead my perspective is that the consumer should have been told about that, and offered the ability to buy a replacement.

This issue impacts literally every phone ever sold.

Manufactures can hide it any number of ways, but a new battery is always better even if your phone is exactly 1 day old. That’s what continuous degradation means.

> This issue impacts literally every phone ever sold.

No, actually, most phones did not release an update like this, deny the situation, and then also refused to let people purchase replacement batteries.

The issue is that Apple did this update, did not tell people about the whole thing, however you want to describe it, and then also did not allow people to buy replacement batteries.

All that tells me is that other phones aren't getting the most out of new batteries, and are instead limiting themselves to the performance of an old battery. But yes, I agree, they should have permitted replacements - in fact replacements should have been permitted at home. Batteries deserve to be user serviceable.

> All that tells me is that other phones aren't getting the most out of new batteries, and are instead limiting themselves to the performance of an old battery.

That's only one possible explanation.

Imagine two phones that can both draw 5 watts max. Phone A has a battery that can supply 5 watts brand new, and phone B has a battery that can supply 10 watts brand new.

It's true that phone A is "getting the most out of new batteries", and phone B isn't. But phone B isn't "limiting itself to the performance of an old battery". The 5 watt limit is there for efficiency and heat reasons, and it just so happens that the battery is never the limiting factor.

Is there some reason to think that's the case? Batteries are pretty consistent technology, roughly equivalent across manufacturers and all sourced from a pretty small pool of OEMs. If that's the case I'd love to know more!

Lithium ion chemistry can vary things significantly, but I was picturing simply putting in a larger battery for the hypothetical. The motivation is more hours of runtime, but as a side effect you have more peak watts available.

Now you’re paying to change voltage, which adds cost and heat. Sure, users don’t really notice that something’s wrong, but they get a worse device that costs more money and needs to heat throttle anyway.

Not a higher voltage battery. A physically larger battery. More watt-hours and more watts.

Voltage drop is minimally impacted by battery size, it only helps in that the battery would have less usage, but it still ages for time passing.

> Voltage drop is minimally impacted by battery size

That makes the job easier! Just cut the battery in half. Let's say the original battery could handle 5 amps before the voltage drop got too bad. If a half-size battery can handle 4 amps, and you put in two of them, now you can handle 8 amps.

Most phones aren't redlining the battery when brand new. There's degradation but it only affects battery life. By the time you have performance impacts you're typically in "replace the battery" territory.

> Batteries are consumable parts like tires and ink cartridges

Then let users replace them like other consumables.

I don't disagree with you at all. I'm a hardcore right to repair advocate, and frequently criticize Apple's lack of reparability.

An ink cartridge at 50% still performs about the same as at 100%, it's just got less life in it.

A better comparison would be an unevenly worn toner cartridge, where someone keeps going "I don't see the problem, it prints just fine on the sides!".

Or apple could make the device a few mm thicker and put in a larger battery that’s able to produce enough current for a reasonable product life.

Same problem would have occurred, just a few % later.

> I really don’t understand the criticism.

Then you are being deliberately obtuse as many here have already explained that this case was never about the throttling. Quoting another user (Karunamon):

> Again, it's not that Apple didn't violate the laws of physics on their "magical" device, it's that they:

> 1. Applied the throttling fix silently 2. Denied warranty replacements 3. Wouldn't even replace the battery with cash in hand until after the suit was filed 4. ..leaving people with no good way to have a working device.

Basically they were slowing down people's device, without informing them, and forcing them to buy new devices as they refused to replace the battery even when customers were willing to pay for a new battery!

Ok that's fine but...

> 1. Applied the throttling fix silently

I would maintain that the device that didn't throttle, taking into account the real capabilities of the battery, and instead shut down unexpectedly at 20% was broken. It was fixed by this patch.

> 2. Denied warranty replacements.

There's as much reason to replace a battery under warranty that has maintained 80% charge capacity after 1000 cycles or 2 years, as there is an ink cartridge starting to run low. Batteries start getting worse after each charge cycle, and my understanding is that they followed the prescribed policy.

> 3. Wouldn't even replace the battery with cash in hand until after the suit was filed.

I'm very much against this policy, as a right-to-repair advocate I believe battery replacements should be simple and end-user achievable. Short of that I agree that the replacement should have been carried out on a cost-plus basis on request.

> 4. ..leaving people with no good way to have a working device.

This is where we disagree except as I replied in (3).

Your point was that throttling is better than not working.

But that's a false dichotomy.

Rather than throttle. You can show less charge. It's what other phones do.

All MacBooks throttle performance when heat gets too high. It prevents unnecessary damage to the chip and battery.

We can all hear the fans spin up and usually we know why. We also know the machine is going to slow down.

The difference on iPhone is there was no precedent and user expectation for this behavior. Apple did not offer a setting for this, though I imagine if they did almost everyone would have turned it on.

Should Apple have explained this up front? Yes. Should they have replaced people’s batteries? Yes.

Was this a 100 million dollar set of mistakes? Probably not. Probably much more in the loss of good will.

I agree w the poster elsewhere this is a marketing and customer support problem.

Sometimes apple makes mistakes and lose in court to great humiliation, like when they tried to force Apple Store employees not get paid to follow their security requirements.

I think it’s good to keep the company on its toes, but this particular case seems pretty mild to me.

Why would I want the phone to turn off sooner?

Why would I want phone with worse performance?

Presumably, you had a phone before your current one. If so, you evidently have a preference between slower phone and no phone at all.

Actually I had a desktop computer before my current phone. So my preference is faster, even if it spends more time on the cord.

So get a laptop.

Why though? I find the format annoying.

I use it extensively as a work computer.

It's still better than being slow while being on.

How is a black screen better than a device that's slower, but on?

When my phone battery is low I often can charge it. Most of the time I have opportunity to charge multiple times a day if needed. If I need long life I can switch to battery saver mode; in normal operations I prefer better performance.

> And yes, at the point where the throttling was taking place, the battery wasn’t defective.

Sure, but if I decide I really need a top-shape battery, and I go into an Apple Store and offer to pay full retail price for a new one, shouldn't they give it to me? GP says they were refusing if the battery was above a certain threshold (but low enough that performance adjustments were kicking in.)

Yep, that I completely agree with. That should not only have been offered, but it should be a user serviceable part.

I had two iPhones with the “balloon battery” problem, after they tested them for speed performance - they reluctantly replaced them even though they were 1 and 2 point Over their threshold even though the batteries were clearly pushing the screen out of the body...

Would this count in this case although this was san francisco