Apple checks under the couch for $500m in spare change, offers it to make power-throttling gripes disappear Apple – which banked $55bn profit in its 2019 fiscal year – is willing to pay up to $500m to settle US claims that the company secretly slowed certain iPhone models to preserve battery life, according to a proposed class action settlement. That's about 18x more than the i-thing maker agreed to pay a month ago to settle a …
This is a class action suit, so there is incentive on both sides to negotiate and come to a fast resolution. Apple, because it wants to put this behind them. The lawyers in charge of the class action, because fighting for a few years for a bit more money isn't worth it to them versus buying that bigger yacht NOW. The "clients" in the class action are going to get a pittance either way, like they always do.
Apparently this is the figure that the lawyers are seeking from the kitty in this settlement. I’d really love to see more detail in terms of what work went into the case from the attorneys’ perspective. I’m sure it was a lot of work, but how can it NOT equate to some insane hourly rate up in the tens of thousands of dollars per hour? I’m not naïve enough to think that Joe Public could have taken on this case against Apple and won, but there must come a point where the attorney fees are capped at a sensible figure that corresponds to the amount of work done?
>So making an engineering decision to make the product more reliable and last longer is now sue-able. So do people prefer the sudden shutdowns and loosing their work? Oh wait, no, that's another lawsuit isn't it. Can't win with lawyers can you?<
But it doesn't do that, does it? It deliberately slows down a perfectly usable phone in order to make you consider upgrading to a newer model. If they were really worried about battery life on older phones they'd either have made this OS version an optional upgrade, with a warning about battery life, or they'd have put in a simple software switch to let you slow things down to preserve the battery if you wanted to.
Well, the opening paragraph of the article does say:-
"that the company secretly slowed certain iPhone models to preserve battery life"
and I haven't seen anything about encouraging people to upgrade their phones, if anything, it appears to be discouraging that as the phone will last longer. The article then says:-
"offered a discounted battery replacement program"
which, again, seems to be the opposite of the idea of making people upgrade.
If anything, Apple should have been more open about it from the start that the throttling was being used to extend device life - but that's a UI issue more than anything (and good UI is hard!).
Have I missed a bit in the article?
One of the clauses of this 'agreement' is that Apple don't have to actually admit they intentionally slowed down i-devices, which runs the risk of tarnishing their shiny brand image. Apple say they did it to protect batteries and extend life - but one of the side effects of not telling users this, is that many went out and bought a new iPhone. Perfect solution.... for Apple!
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