Apple iOS 11.3 adds health records for battery, people too

On Thursday Apple released iOS 11.3, a free update to its mobile operating system that, among other new features and fixes, attempts to ease iPhone battery management. Late last year, the fruit-themed device maker acknowledged that its iOS 11.2.1 update included a undisclosed mechanism for processor throttling. The processors …

[Cynicalmark]

Jobs....

He may have been unhinged or way out there but good ol ‘Steve’ will be spinning in his mausoleum at the piss poor management of the battery debacle. He wouldn’t have allowed it to get to this -what p1ll@ck put a battery in that couldn’t meet the demand? It seems @pple has started to move toward the M$ model and concern itself more about the shareholder rather than the product.

Jobs had a vision of form and functional grace. Products that dont need a manual, just intuition to use. And so they were.....now they have a confused array of features and pricing that puts consumers off.

I will stick with Apple for phone and tablet purely out of good product support(most of the time) & faith that we will get a true revolution of technology again soon. I was tempted by others but support for their products seems to die quickly - a bit like iphone batteries. Anyhow I have run out of memory again. I wish we had a technology for adding more -oh yeah @pple you tw@ts its called a micro SD and we would’ve paid to have that rather than a dancing f…ng emoji for a face or even the remotely p155y AR games or the Notch arrghhhhhhhhh

I really must get my blood pressure checked. Ommmmmmmmmmm

[Lord Elpuss]

Re: Jobs....

"He wouldn’t have allowed it to get to this -what p1ll@ck put a battery in that couldn’t meet the demand?"

The battery could meet the demand. When it was new. Now it's old, it's losing capacity and can't keep up; like every single LiIon or LiPo battery out there. They don't last forever.

Apple throttled the processor performance to match what the battery could provide, which in principle is fine. What they forgot to do, is tell users they were doing it. And then when the 'slow' iPhone was brought into an Apple store, they 'forgot' to mention that a new battery would solve the speed problem; and presumably tried to sell the punters a new iPhone instead.

So it's not a tech problem - it's a miscommunication problem, compounded with an unethical upselling problem.

[WatAWorld]

Re: Jobs....

BS because:

1. Users of all the other rechargeable battery devices do not have the problem you're saying Apple eliminated any more than people who use old iPhones do.

2. In fact friends claim old iPhones have shorter battery life than most competitors. (I'm in Canada, reception tends to be poor here, which means the phones up the power of their transmitters more often. Conditions may well be different where you are.)

3. Many users could circumvent the reduced battery capacity by re-charging more frequently, but Apple chose not to offer them this obvious option, the option every other manufacture implicitly presents its users, and which people accept without complaint.

4. Apple made its money selling new models to fanbois using slightly older models -- not people switching to Apple from other brands.

This is a civil matter and proof beyond reasonable doubt (the level for criminal matters) is not needed. Apple's business plan, profits, and executive stock options depended on its phones making customers dissatisfied after a period of only a year or so's use. I argue that not just the balance of probabilities but also the preponderance of evidence is that Apple's business model is why Apple intentionally slowed down older phones without informing users that they had a choice to replace their batteries.

And now that the cat is out of the bag as far as the slowing down the processor when new models come out trick, they're having difficulty moving iPhone X.

"Apple throttled the processor performance to match what the battery could provide, which in principle is fine. What they forgot to do, is tell users they were doing it. And then when the 'slow' iPhone was brought into an Apple store, they 'forgot' to mention that a new battery would solve the speed problem; and presumably tried to sell the punters a new iPhone instead."

[Lord Elpuss]

Re: Jobs....

@WatAWorld

You can call BS all you like, but what I posted is fact; not conjecture. Devices using LiPo/LiIon batteries must be designed to tolerate both declining storage capacity (mAh) and (more relevantly here), declining peak current capacity (C) as the batteries age. Manufacturers deal with it in different ways, but the physics is the same for all.

[werdsmith]

Re: Jobs....

@Lord Elpuss

Don't come on here with your facts, the scowling public like a reason to attack Apple and will grasp every specious crumb within reach. If you dare to debunk them with facts they get upset and cry. Try to be more considerate of their feelings in future. You naughty person.

[JeffyPoooh]

You forgot to mention another feature...

Most iOS updates also disable the most-recent batch of unlicensed "Lightning" charger cables, thus leading to yet another multimillion dollar blip in overpriced "Genuine" or licensed "Made for..." cables.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: You forgot to mention another feature...

Isn't that a good thing? Unlicensed (cheap and China-made) accessories are the cause of many mishaps in the Android world.

FYI, I still want Apple to fully transition to USB-C across all its products.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: You forgot to mention another feature...

AC offered, "Unlicensed....accessories are the cause of many mishaps in the Android world."

That doesn't actually make sense.

Apple's Lightning-brand charger cables are proprietary design, and are equipped with a DRM chip for the sole purpose of enforcing their so-called "IP". The DRM chip is there for precisely the same thing as the ink cartridges with the DRM chips. You'd be a naive fool to believe it's anything other than a money grab.

The Android charger thing is related to poor design choices by the USB boffins. It's not a licensing war.

And Apple doesn't discriminate against chargers themselves. Which is where the risk of fires and shocks would be located. So you've conflated two separate topics.

[Steve Davies 3]

Re: Lightning Cables

Apple has been sued more times than I can remember because of fires caused by fake chargers and cables.

I guess this is an attempt to stop them in their tracks? There are many examples of people claiming that it is all Apple's fault that their trailer home burned down. Some might be the case but in many cases no one knows for sure but in Litigation Happy USA, it is either Sue or Shoot first and ask questions later.

Lawyers 1, Punters 0.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Lightning Cables

Apple actually did have a dangerous fault with their own chargers. The prongs pulled out. Leaving the energized metal prong hanging out of the wall socket. Then the children might grab it and be electrocuted.

So Apple makes their own mistakes too.

[werdsmith]

Re: Lightning Cables

My Apple lightning cable is a Poundland one from about 2015. I sometimes get a warning about it but it still charges up.

[mark l 2]

Apple refuses to help the FBI unlock a Terrorists phone in the US, but gives the Chinese government all the icloud data on it's Chinese citizens just so they can continue to sell iPhones in China?

So they care about privacy, as long is it doesn't hurt their bottom line.

[Anonymous Coward]

Their users are brain-dead fools that would simply believe anything their declaration of respect told them.

"Apple aren't selling my data, some vague message in the OS told me, so it must be true, after all I paid a £400 surcharge for that feature, so there is no way Apple would also monitize me..."

[Anonymous Coward]

They had no choice about it in China

The alternative would be to stop selling phones in China. How would that help the privacy of the Chinese people?

Apple did the legal minimum to satisfy Chinese law, and they notified everyone in China via a notification on their phone before they did it and told them how to avoid it - which was to stop using iCloud. If iPhone owners in China want to avoid potential spying by their government they can do what I do and don't use iCloud (the reason I don't use it is because you can't control the encryption key used for it like you can with an iTunes backup, because of this it is possible for Apple to hand over iCloud data in the US when presented with a court order...Apple said they were working on a solution for this but if they've introduced it I haven't heard about it)

So long as they aren't using iCloud, Chinese iPhone owners using iMessage still send messages that can't be read by their government (unless they get physical possession of one of the phones and are able to unlock it or compel its owner to unlock it) You can bet that's not the case if they are using WeChat!

[handleoclast]

Bottom line

So they care about privacy, as long is it doesn't hurt their bottom line.

That's partly it. The rest of it is caring about the privacy of their shareholders (many of whom will be rich and have gained their money by not-entirely-ethical means). If they piss on the privacy of those shareholders, the shares are going to get sold, and their value will plummet.

I'd guess Apple have a lot more US shareholders than Chinese ones. Anyone in China rich enough to have a lot of Apple shares is probably also one of the corrupt gang who wants to spy on Apple users in China anyway.

Which means it's possible, if the Trump maladministration continues long enough, Apple privacy in the US will go the same way. Gotta be alert for them paedoterraists who want to damage US democracy by voting for Democratic candidates instead of good ol' racist Republicans. Gerrymandering voting districts and hacking voting machines can only get you so far, after all, and the right for everyone to vote for Republicans must be protected.

[mnemonicCloud]

And Service Worker!

The probably most glorious of Apple's achievements is to enable PWA's (Progressive Web Apps) by finally introducing Service Workers. Good Bye Apps!

[WatAWorld]

Apple secretly slowed its processors in older model iPhones to boost sales of new phones

BS.

"A mismatch in power demand and supply can prompt an iPhone to shut down, so to guard against that, Apple secretly slowed its processors in older model iPhones to accommodate enfeebled batteries."

That they did this secretly without informing the user is all the proof I need to say that that Apple slowed down old phones to increase the sale of new phones.

If Apple had been worried about the batteries being weak, they'd have simply informed the user that the batteries were weak and that they had the option to replace them, or to slow down the processor, or to carry on as before but with more frequent re-charging.

[James O'Shea]

IPhone only

The new battery thingy is prominently labeled a beta. It is also NOT available on iPads, or at least it’s missing in action on my iPad. There is a Battery item in Settings, just as there always has been, but it doesn’t have any of the new juicey goodness on my iPad.

My iPhones (a 6 and a SE) show 96% and 95% maximum capacity respectively and are, allegedly, capable of ‘peak performance’, whatever that means.

I have noticed that my iPad eats battery much faster than either iPhone. Hmmm.

Apple has a battery replacement for $30 thingy going on right now. It expires in December this year. One wonders what the new juicey goodness will say about the iPhone batteries at this time next year. And the battery replacement thingy is only for iPhones, iPads are specifically excluded. Hmmm.

On the other hand, my iPad is now ancient, and I was thinking of replacing it anyway. I was looking at a 10.5” iPad Pro, but the 64 GB version was too small (my iPad is 64 GB, and running low on available space; if only there was a way to increase storage on an iPad, some kind of removable card...) and the 256 GB version too expensive. The 128 GB version of the new iPad seems just right.

Memo to Microsoft: you could have got a sale of a Surface Pro if only the price were less insane and if only I could have run an OS other than Win 10 on it. Just saying.

[Shane Sturrock]

Re: IPhone only

Coconut Battery on a Mac will read the battery state of a connected iOS device. That's how I found out my 6+ battery is fine (98% capacity) and my wife's 6 wasn't (67% capacity and slow as hell so I replaced the battery.) When I plug in my old iPad mini 1st gen it shows 76% capacity. Generally I've been impressed with the batteries in my Apple gear although my rMacBook battery failed early and Apple replaced it out of warranty for free because it should have held 80% capacity after 1000 cycles and it was down to 70% after less than 300.

[Mayday]

Re: IPhone only

I've been looking forward to this update (which is a contrast from pretty much every other software update from any vendor).

I have been holding off on updating my battery because I want to see how shagged it is and why my phone is the way it is before I replace it.

[Chairman of the Bored]

Steve Jobs handling battery issue?

You're olding it wrong!

[Androgynous Cupboard]

Re: Steve Jobs handling battery issue?

That joke just never gets old does it? Someone else is going to post it again shortly so I can laugh all over again.

[Lord Elpuss]

Re: Steve Jobs handling battery issue?

I’m not so sure - he did write olding, not holding, after all. Maybe it’s some fiendishly clever play on battery age.

[ThomH]

Re: Steve Jobs handling battery issue?

Ummm, something something about having courage, like a li-on?

I'm not a funny person.

[Anonymous Coward]

I love Apple.