Recently, Apple acknowledged that it knowingly slowed down older iPhones which had batteries degraded beyond a certain limit. As expected the whole world went up in arms with many users taking Apple to court for class-action lawsuits.
The company has received a ton of bad press for this, which forced Apple to give a response, apologizing to its users in an open letter published on Apple.com. It said although slowing down of iPhones was good for the phone’s overall health, it could have done better to communicate this fact to its users.
“We’ve been hearing feedback from our customers about the way we handle performance for iPhones with older batteries and how we have communicated that process.
We know that some of you feel Apple has let you down. We apologize. There’s been a lot of misunderstanding about this issue, so we would like to clarify and let you know about some changes we’re making.”
Apple also said that they never intentionally do anything to shorten the lifespan of their products. According to the company when users first reported slowing down of their iPhones after an iOS update, they thought that,
“This was due to a combination of two factors: a normal, temporary performance impact when upgrading the operating system as iPhone installs new software and updates apps, and minor bugs in the initial release which have since been fixed.”
However, now the company believes that aging batteries are the culprit behind the slowdown of iPhones and the company will do better in future iOS updates to manage the situation. Meanwhile, Apple is also offering a peace offering to its users in the form of reduced prices for batteries replacement and a promise for better future updates.
- Apple is reducing the price of an out-of-warranty iPhone battery replacement by $50 and is now selling it for $29 instead of $79 for anyone with an iPhone 6 or later whose battery needs to be replaced. The offer will start in late January and will be available worldwide through December 2018.
- The company also promised to issue an iOS software update early in 2018 which 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.
For all the flak it received, Apple seems to have made a great move here, and could end up earning back some of the lost goodwill here. That said, for many users, this move by Apple might feel like a reactive one and not a proactive one. Do share with us how you feel about Apple’s letter of apology by dropping your thoughts down in the comments below.
