Apple deserves big smack
SOPHIE ELSWORTH
TECH giant Apple has been caught red-handed deliberately slowing down older iPhone devices without, of course, informing its customers. Keeping up with the fanciest and latest mobile phones is expensive – the top of the range Apple 11 Pro with 512GB retails for a hefty $2499 sum.
So when a ginormous company does something like this, which ultimately pushes customers to buy a new device, it’s just not on. But they haven’t gotten away with it. France’s competition and fraud watchdog, the DGCCRF, smacked Apple hard this month, fining them a massive 25 million euros (the equivalent of $A40.6 million) for their actions. Consumers with slow phones are put between a rock and a hard place: they either get their battery replaced in their device or, as many probably do, shell out a packet for a new device.
In 2017, Apple conceded it did slow down some models as they became older, but said it wasn’t to encourage people to upgrade.
Instead it was designed to “prolong the life” of the devices.
Sorry, but I’m not buying it.
I purchased my trusty iPhone 6S about five years ago. My battery was slowly dying so I last year shelled out about $70 to replace it instead of spending more than $1000 on the latest handset.
I don’t see the need to upgrade just yet and I’m lucky enough to be borrowing an iPhone 11 at the moment.
But when it comes to spending my own money on a new device, I’ll resist paying what could be the equivalent of a return overseas flight for a small handheld device.
The French watchdog said iPhone owners were affected by Apple’s conduct.
Customers who had an iPhone 6, iPhone 6S and iPhone SE were hit hard when they did a software update, which Apple said “smoothed out” battery performance.
But the French watchdog said what Apple conveniently failed to mention to consumers was “that installing iOS updates (10.2.1 and 11.2) could slow down their devices”. Funny that.
A pretty important thing to overlook telling phone users. If we are all going to try and be environmentally friendly, a tech giant like Apple should encourage customers to get a good lifespan out of their devices and not replace them.
On Apple’s website it says:
“We want to one day manufacture products without mining any new materials from Earth. To reach this bold goal, Apple is constantly inventing more efficient ways to recycle materials back into our devices.”
Well, a very good place to start would be to stop making it a challenge for customers to hang on to their existing device for longer.
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