That's my point. The customers shouted, and Apple actually listened this time. And this has been happening more lately. Why?
It's because an exec at "old" Apple would say: "sure, the customers want to be able to repair easily, but won't this hurt our revenue growth and my bonus next year? What if they stop upgrading hardware as often?"
An exec at "new" Apple is now incentivized to think: "well, even if they keep their hardware longer, it doesn't matter. Because the customer will still be in the ecosystem and we can get them to spend more via Apple Pay, iCloud, Apple TV+, News+, Advertising, App Store, etc. etc. and all these new services!"
I don’t really think that this was a direct reaction to customer demands but a forced hand with good spin.
Independent repair shops: Apple won't sell us parts so you have to pay them $69 for a repair we could do for $49 or you could do yourself for $20 because it's really $20 in parts and $29 in labor.
Apple: Okay, here's the part you wanted, you can have it for $59 or have us do it for $69. No need for any new laws.
It's especially safe for Apple because Joe Q Public is not going to even remotely think about DIY'ing this, and they get to charge a price that assures they don't lose money on it. The parts are cheap, the instructions are cheap. It's the labor that is what is expensive.
Also it’s not accurate to say these are things Apple would never do before. I have an Apple MacBook Pro from 2009 and it was quite intentionally designed for users to upgrade and repair. And that was when they were much more purely a hardware company, with little services revenue or goals.
I just don’t see the overarching narrative that you do.
I read this as Jeff is on the supporting side and pushed for it within Apple. ( Which is inline with Post Steve Jobs PR pattern ) And Despite both Jeff and Tim Cook joining at about the same time and both in operation. Jeff and Tim Cook has a very different personality. At least Jeff has a product mind set.
Only for the battery.
Failure rates on the memory and hard drive components were far higher than we have today. And it didn't benefit Apple at that time to be soldering them to the logic board since thinness wasn't a concern i.e. due to the DVD drive dictating size.
I honestly think it was closer to "the customers will screw up the repair, burn down their house and then for two weeks the headlines will be about iPhones torching poodles." Between right-to-repair laws and the proliferation of unlicensed repair shops, however, their hand was forced.
This is the latest example and they have had previous lawsuits before about intentionally throttling devices which leads to people buying the latest devices.
Their earnings reports depend on volume of iPhone sales, so the incentive exists to push for more.
> I've never seen them as a revenue growth chasing business
Apple is always chasing revenue growth. They're notorious for it. Most businesses are..
If this was done out of nefarious reasons, don't you think doing nothing (devices switching off when the battery degrades) would have driven more sales of new devices?
As the battery ages, internal resistance goes up, leading to voltage sags under high CPU usage, which is called "brownout." By lowering the maximum CPU frequency when they detect voltage sagging, Apple prevents the device from crashing or randomly rebooting. The iPhone gets slower, but it keeps working, and replacing the battery restores it to full speed.
It allows you to use an iPhone without replacing the battery significantly longer than you would be able to otherwise. It was customer and environmentally friendly.
Chasing revenue growth, indeed.
Oh, and by the way, this is what I'm typing this reply to you on: https://i.imgur.com/ShDwshe.png
At the time I bought this computer - now eight years ago - one of the reasons I bought it was because the battery was a new type that was rated to have 80% or better capacity after 1500 cycles. It exceeded that, by the way, handily.
About the only laptop that could manage similar battery durability would be a Thinkpad, with its min/max battery charging controls.
This just links to a manifest.json
And then within 2 days I put a deep scratch in the screen.
The reason I think that, is that Apple devices have always been repairable! By Apple. No one needed to “buy a new phone a year early because the battery died” if they were willing to hand their phone and $99 to Apple. I got the battery repaired in 2 different iPhones and it worked great (and was less expensive and wasteful than a whole new phone). I also got the screen repaired on one of those phones.
So look at what is new here. It’s not “an iPhone can be repaired.” What is new is that Apple will help me do the repair myself.