The iPhone battery issue
When it was revealed that Apple was slowing older iPhones, a storm erupted. What went wrong?
Apple is the most successful company on the planet, but it’s no stranger to controversy.
Cast your mind back to the removal of the iPhone’s headphone jack or the floppy drive from the original iMac for just two examples of righteous anger on an epic scale. That other companies invariably follow suit does not seem to calm the commentariat or clip the column inches.
It’s a rare day indeed that sees Apple moved to issue a public apology. Yet that’s exactly what happened after it was revealed the company had been slowing older iPhones – iPhone 6 to 7 Plus, including the SE – in order to prevent unexpected shutdowns, without informing users.
A walled garden
The critics pounced. USAToday said Apple’s apology didn’t go far enough. Wired argued that Apple had “way better options than slowing down your iPhone”. Lawsuits were filed, including one seeking $5 million in compensation for customers who apparently felt compelled to upgrade their iPhones due to their reduced performance. Rivals Samsung, Motorola, LG and HTC all denied that they slow their own phones.
Apple has always sought to take difficult decisions away from its customers and present them with a fully functioning, all-in-one package. It’s why the whole Apple ecosystem is locked down – it’s hard to get a virus on your iPhone if you can’t download apps from anywhere but Apple’s approved App Store, after all. Part of making systems ‘just work’ involves taking away choices that could lead to it breaking. This approach has served Apple well in the past.
Fuelling the rumour mill
That way of thinking is so ingrained in the philosophy of Apple that it extends beyond its physical products to things like its release notes. The notes for iOS 10.2.1 – the version that first introduced the slowdown fix to address battery issues – simply explained that it “improves power management during peak workloads to avoid unexpected shutdowns on iPhone”. There was no mention of the way it achieved this or that it involved slowing down affected devices. From Apple’s standpoint, it was simply enough to tell its users that the problem had been addressed.
When technology website TechCrunch sought further comment from Apple when iOS 10.2.1 was
released in January 2017, Apple simply said it had “made improvements” to cut the number of unexpected shutdowns experienced by users of older iPhones. TechCrunch’s writer speculated that the shutdowns were a result of older batteries experiencing power spikes, but no mention was made of Apple slowing down iPhones as part of its fix.
While we can see Apple’s reasoning – don’t worry users with things they may not understand – the problem is that it opens the door to rumours and conspiracy theories. There exists an entire cottage industry of writers and pundits who devote their time to bashing Apple for any slight, be it real or perceived, and to them the battery slowdown issue was a gold mine. It was proof, they claimed, not that Apple was trying to extend the lifespan of older devices, but quite the opposite; that Apple was deliberately slowing down older devices in order to force users to upgrade to newer iPhones. This kind of story resonates with a certain audience: there are plenty of people who believe Apple to be the company of wealthy brats, unthinking ‘sheeple’ and, worst of all, hipsters. In their eyes, Apple is already suspect and deserves to be taken down a peg or two.
Of course, if this was a case of planned obsolescence on Apple’s part, then why would it only slow down older phones with degraded batteries, instead of all older iPhones? But by not explaining that its solution for unexpected shutdowns involved slowing older devices in order to reduce the strain on aged batteries, Apple enabled the conspiracy theorists to spin their own narrative. No explanation from Apple meant it must have been trying to conceal a dirty secret, went the claim.
A second issue was that Apple’s secrecy sowed confusion among customers. If Apple had informed them that their iPhone’s battery was performing below par and could be replaced by Apple – perhaps using a pop-up message on iOS – people would have been aware that they could simply get a £79 battery replacement from Apple. Instead, many will have assumed that their phone was past its sell-by date, and may have needlessly bought a new device as a result.
Living in the past?
Part of the problem is that Apple is sticking to a mindset that hasn’t caught up with its new position as a global superpower. Under the leadership of Steve Jobs, when Apple was very successful but not yet all-conquering, taking a brusque approach to transparency served it well. Remember ‘Antennagate’, when the iPhone 4 would drop calls if you held it the wrong way? “Just avoid holding it in that way,” Jobs pithily advised. Apple survived that scandal because, while on an upward trajectory, it wasn’t yet on top of the world, and the scrutiny it faced wasn’t as intense. Furthermore, Steve Jobs was the darling of millions of tech lovers, affording him a large amount of leeway in public opinion.
Today, Apple has neither the underdog status nor leadership of Steve Jobs that it could count on during Antennagate. The increased scrutiny that comes with world domination requires a change of tack; one must be softer and more open in approach
There are plenty of people who believe Apple to be the company of wealthy brats
to communication with users and pundits.
But Apple has been slow to make this change under Tim Cook. While he seems keen to paint Apple as an eco-friendly social warrior of a company, its attitude to secrecy and disclosure remains.
So what should Apple have done? Wired magazine suggests the first option would be to educate users on the problems faced by the lithium-ion batteries used inside iPhones. Apple has belatedly done this by posting a new support article explaining how the performance of iPhone batteries is affected over time – see bit.ly/iphbttry. But it only did this after the scandal erupted.
Wired also recommended that Apple should sell battery replacement kits to its users. But this seems like a highly unlikely step for Apple to take – Apple has historically fought against such moves, arguing it would make its products vulnerable to hackers or counterfeiting. It would also place the burden of fixing the issue on users, and undercut the central philosophy of all its products: that they just work. Maintenance by consumers is not supposed to be part of the equation.
Putting it right
Instead, Apple has announced a few new policies. Firstly, it has dropped the cost of replacing an iPhone’s battery from £79 to £25 for anyone with an iPhone 6 or later. This will be effective until December 2018. If you think your iPhone’s performance is affected by an aged battery, it’s a good idea to book an appointment at an Apple Store to get the device examined.
The second change prompted by the scandal is that the iOS 11.3 update, coming this spring, will “give users more visibility into the health of their iPhone’s battery, so they can see for themselves if its condition is affecting performance”.
Of course, these changes should probably have been made much earlier, perhaps when iOS 10.2.1 was first released. That would have gone a long way to reassure people that Apple wasn’t secretly crippling their devices in order to force them to upgrade.
Apple’s apology to its customers is notable for its contrition. “We have never – and would never – do anything to intentionally shorten the life of any Apple product, or degrade the user experience to drive customer upgrades,” the letter reads. It goes on: “At Apple, our customers’ trust means everything to us. We will never stop working to earn and maintain it. We are able to do the work we love only because of your faith and support – and we will never forget that or take it for granted.”
It is clear that this whole saga has rattled Apple. After all, Apple fans are known for their loyalty and devotion, something that has been severely tested by the iPhone battery scandal. Perhaps worst of all from Apple’s perspective, this entire fiasco came about by its own hand. Not disclosing the implications of the solution introduced in iOS 10.2.1 was a mistake that fed into existing conspiracy theories about the world’s biggest company.
Apple will recover, and it’s possible that in a couple of years this will be a footnote in the long history of the company. But it is also possible it will fundamentally change Apple in a subtle way, forcing it to be a bit more open and honest with customers. The closed kingdom may be opening, if only a little.
It’s possible that in a couple of years this will be a footnote in the long history of Apple