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In case it wasn't already really clear, Apple is really, really sorry about slowing down old iPhones with creaky batteries, and it's taking steps -- ALL the steps -- to make things right.
Upset iPhone owners can already get a new battery replacement at a reduced $29 cost, and Apple has pledged to release a software update that'll show people the health of their batteries and let them turn any performance optimization on or off.
Said software update will be a great way to pacify the angry mob, but it's also a bad idea.
SEE ALSO:5 easy tricks to help you free up storage space on your iPhoneIn an interview with ABC News, Apple CEO Tim Cook apologized again for the company's poor communication on iOS's built-in power management feature that throttled iPhone performance in order to prevent the phones from unexpectedly shutting down or restarting as the result of an old battery.
The power-management tweak nestled inside of iOS may have been well-intentioned, but as mounting consumer anger and dozens of lawsuits have shown, Apple did it all wrong.
iPhone users aren't just pissed Apple slowed their devices down. They're mad that the company wasn't transparent about it.
"When we did put it out, we did say what it was, but I don't think a lot of people were paying attention and maybe we should have been clearer as well," Cook said. "And so we deeply apologize for anybody that thinks we had some other kind of motivation. Our motivation is always the user. The user is at the center of everything that we do."
More transparency
Seeing as being unclear was what got Apple in this mess in the first place, the company's solution to climb out of this hole and win back consumer trust appears to be extreme clarity.
The upcoming software update will be the delivery mechanism, released first through a developer beta next month.
"We're going to give people the visibility of the health of their battery so it's very, very transparent," Cook said. "This hasn't been done before, but we've thought through this whole thing and learned everything we can learn from it."
Cook also said the update will "tell someone we're reducing your performance by some amount in order to not have an unexpected restart" and "if you don't want it, you can turn it off."
Apple is basically telling customers it no longer knows what's best for your iPhone.
By all accounts, this is a huge win for consumers. For once, Apple's giving users a way to control how a core function of the iPhone works.
I can't stress enough how big a deal this is for the company. It's an unprecedented move and arguably goes against one of Apple's core philosophies: Things should just work.
In fact, adding the setting makes the iPhone Android-like -- you get choice andflexibility!On many Android phones, like Samsung's Galaxy devices, adjusting settings for features like display resolution will impact performance and battery life.
And this is where I think Apple might be backing itself into a corner. By caving into consumer demand to add this performance switch, it's ceding partial control of the hardware and software to users.
This is a bridge Apple should think twice about crossing. Apple is basically telling customers it no longer knows what's best for your iPhone. It's going to be up to iPhone owners to decide what they value more: a phone that's slower and still works reliably as its battery ages over time, or a faster phone that'll poop out from time to time.
Cook even made this point to ABC News:
Imagine if you're making an emergency call or you're making an important call that's important to you, or a message that you're waiting for, or you want to capture that moment that's fleeting with your camera. We always focus on the user experience. So at the heart of any decision that we make is the user. We felt it would be better to take something off of the performance to prevent that from happening.
With the upcoming update, instead of iPhones automatically adjusting performance (when necessary) to meet the power draw of their batteries (everyone's battery health is going to be different), it'll be up to users to manage their settings.
One of the reasons I'm a longtime iPhone user is because I don'twant to manage this kind of setting. If I wanted to spend my day fretting about stuff like this I would have switched to Android years ago as my main phone. But I don't, because why should I have to? I just need my phone to work and not crash.
Entrusting users to manage this setting isn't going to fix anything, and Cook even cautions on doing so: "We don't recommend it, because we think people's iPhones are really important to them, and you never can tell when something is so urgent."
It's going to be interesting to seehowApple implements this performance switch. Is it going to be something users can turn on and off at any time within the Settings app, just like, say, Wi-Fi? When it's introduced, will there be a dialogue box announcing its existence? Or will it deliver a prompt only before -- or after -- a shutdown? Will there be a timer that lets you set how long your device is slowed down? Until you manually change the setting back? Most important of all, what will the default be? See how this is already becoming maddening?
And if it's a simple on/off switch, the same people who are complaining about not having such a power management option are going to be whining about how their iPhones keep randomly shutting down when they enable it and inevitably forget that they did. How do we know? Because they were pissed with the random shutdowns beforeApple added the "optimizations" that slowed their devices down (but kept them running at least).
There's really no pleasing iPhone users by giving them control over their battery and performance. Apple's damned no matter what it does.
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