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Which is effectively what they have done. When the battery performance has degraded t the extent that it is unable to support the device at its normal speed, the software underclocks it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Corky34
Performance is a loosely use term though (much like the incorrect use of security for privacy) but should refer to all aspects of a devices specification.
Apple doing shady things to force its customers in to incredibly expensive repairs or upgrades? They build in obsolescence to their hardware, so why is it a surprise when they do it to their software?
Why is this newsworthy?
They've been doing it, and it's been known that they do stuff like this, including building everything they make with subpar or 'at the limit' components, for well more than a decade now.
It seems to me that what Apple have is pushed done the "performance" of the devices beyond the ability of the battery to support that performance for any reasonable definition of the life of a phone.Quote:
Originally Posted by Corky34
Two solutions occur to me :-
1) Design the device with user-replaceable batteries, which are available at reasonable, not rip-off, prices. How hard can it be?
2) Limit the "performance" of the phone to that that will be available at the tail-end of a reasonable device lifetime, so throttling back is no longer necessary.
However, no doubt new phone reviews would suffer, if the performance was throttled to a point it could susttain for the life of the device.
Which means, IMHO, that this entire mess comes about because of a mismatch between effective life of phone and effective life of battery. And this comes from a marketing decision of Apple about user-replaceable phones, and battery pricing.
In any event, it's an Apple mess, and the cheap battery "offer" is an attempt at PR damage limitation.
This could of been dealt with another way originally by warning people that the battery is worn out and giving the choice of limiting performance in order to help the situation. the choice should also be given to keep performance as it is if the user chooses to.One of the problems is people seem to accept and forgive apple in situations like this but would go mental if other companies did.
more and more devices are having internal batteries even ones that do not really need it such as standard laptops which used to have user replacement batteries. it isn't so bad in most laptops are it just requires you to undo some screws from the base. Lots of phones are water resistant and for that reason have an adhesive seal which I feel is a ploy to get rid of user replaceable batteries. people complained for awhile about the newer phones not having removable batteries but then people got used to it and didn't seem to care anymore.
I recently replaced the outer camera lens glass on my LG G4 which was rather easy due to user replaceable back and around 12 screws holding it all together. we are living in a culture where it is easier to replace than repair a device. for example if you damage a Microsoft surface tablet Microsoft will not repair it they will simply replace it for a fixed fee. I would be happier to have a slightly thicker phone with a bigger user replaceable battery.
If you want water resistance you can get a case which is a good idea anyway since the warranties do not cover water damage even if they are water resistant anyway.
that's just what i was referring to in my earlier post. people getting bothered about something without knowing how little real world affect it may have. now if those people don't even have one of the devices affected, they are just moaning pointlesslyQuote:
Originally Posted by Corky34
apple don't advertise the phones to have any measured performance speeds. over time as the IOS will change with upgrades and bug fixes, performance in turn may change regardless of the battery, as i'm sure will be the case with other devices, especially older devices running newer OS's. it's a smartphone, even with the changes it can still perform all it's advertised functions. it just makes me think of louis ck talking about kids slagging off certain models of phones for being crap when he points out the technology is actually amazing to have so much ability in such a small device. some people want so much instantaneous split second satisfaction that they get frustrated if something has a delay of a second
apple have always been tight on offering things to be chosen by the end user, and likewise with upgrades. perhaps the popularity is because things tend to work more out the box, you turn on and it works, you don't have to make decisions on what settings or upgrades you want. if it's faulty you send back to apple and they fix it properly, instead of some dude who's just opened up a shop selling vaping gear and phone covers having a go after watching some youtube tutorials. they could do what other companies do, but as well as redesigning products, there's the additional potential warranty issues that would arise if allowing customers or third parties to do repairs. think about it this way, apple is one of the biggest and most successful companies in the entire world, and the iphone range is one of the most successful mobile phones in history. obviously there are many people running a business and important decisions aren't left to be made by just one person, but if you were high up in running such a successful business, would you want to risk things by making such changes? personally, i don't think the amount of people who would want to change an iphone battery to be a large percentage of customers, and likewise i would doubt they would gain much more business by allowing batteries to be easily changed. sure on technology websites and forums it may seem like everyone would want to change batteries themselves, but in any specialised area of websites you may find certain trends that don't stretch to the wider public
i'm not up on the latest android phones, but i do note the samsung galaxy s8 doesn't have an easily removable battery either, and they are one of the biggest competitors to apple for phones. there's been a number of devices i've bought over the last few years with internal batteries that don't seem to be easily replaced. in practice i tend to find my interest in using the item has declined long before the battery has stopped being useful, and a much more advanced replacement item has been available at an affordable price, so i'm upgrading because it's much faster or bigger capacity etc rather than battery reasons. i see many people using phones with broken screens so that's perhaps another reason for upgrading
we can only wait and see if apple will give end users some battery options to choose from high performance, short battery length, or longer battery whilst taking a performance hit. the apple watch has a low power option, but it's unusual for apple to offer such choices. on the other hand with android you can usually customise so many options but i think that just confuses a large percentage of users who will just end up using the stock options and probably never use half the options on the phone because they don't understand them
And perhaps therein lies the issue.Quote:
Originally Posted by Unique
Sky or Virgin sell you a subscription to a service. Apple are selling you a physical product. With MS, they used to sell an OS that was effectively feature-fixed, until they issued a new version. The "updates" were bug fixes and security patches, issued because users buying a product are entitled, in law, for it to be free from such issues. And, by the way, I could choose if and when to apply such fixes.
And that was fine with me.
If companies are going to claim, even via the legally dubious route of T&C's, that they can do what they want with "their" product long after sale, then they can redefine it's functions to remove the features that were critical to my buying decision in the first place.
This is a major part of why I refused, even for "free", to upgrade to Win10 - because the "new way to monetise Windows" that MS adopted meant we're buying a pig in a poke. We're flying blind. And I know a Trojan horse when I see one.
Totally, however they weren't exactly up front about it, not that I expect Apple or any company to be upfront about these sorts of things.Quote:
Originally Posted by peterb
I'm not a fan of Apple products so don't pay much attention to how they market their devices, if they tout certain performance levels, if they make claims that a new device is X% faster, better, or whatever, or if it's third-parties who are measuring performance and as such setting a certain level of expectation among customers.
I suspect it's the latter and for me that's part of the problem of this recent trend among some tech companies who want to control an ever increasing amount of the user experience, they can in effect change the product quiet drastically over the lifetime of the device or software and that means the product you paid money for on day one may not be the same product further down the line.
i don't see what difference it makes as to whether the service is subscription or otherwise. you see with sky or virgin you get both a physical item plus software and content. the physical items don't usually change, but the firmware/software will change from time to time and similarly may give some customers things they want and at times things they don't want. with the iphone you get a physical item plus the firmware/software/operating system which can similarly change, regardless of whether you buy the phone outright as sim free or pay a monthly fee. with the phone you could choose not to update as apple don't force updates for IOS or any of the apps, but virgin and sky both push updates. so as a customer you have the choice to update or not, and typically the phone doesn't stop working if you don't update, and you again agree to the terms if you choose to update the IOSQuote:
Originally Posted by Saracen
of course they could change functions, but as i said before, probably only a small percentage of customers would care about an issue like this, and they've been rather successful so far with the choices they have made. i imagine the percentage of customers to whom such an issue would be important to them in making a decision to purchase the item would be very small. whilst it may be important to you, you've made it clear you don't have a smartphone and don't seem to have a requirement for one in the short term, so they aren't missing a sale from you, and i doubt if they added that option that you referred to that you would buy one even if you got a reasonable discount on the retail price. apple must spend millions on customer research to know what options to use on phones to gain the most sales, and they probably have people who look on tech sites and forums to see feedback and discussions like this and know that overall few people care about such things that may be potential customers. i imagine most people who are complaining about what apple have done, don't even have the product in question. usually when i read things like this, i see someone slating them for doing it and adding "that's the reason i have xyz phone instead of an iphone". for some reason, people who don't have iphones seem to spend a lot of time posting about them
i use windows 10 on a few pc's and it seems fine to me. my main computers using windows that i don't upgrade are on win7 due to lack of drivers for legacy hardware, otherwise i would have upgraded. i could easily revert back to win7 or win8 on any of them, or stick on linux if i wanted too if win10 was going to become a permanent problem, and of course that's not a realistic option for most standard pc users, which is why i think MS will refrain from doing anything that will cause any serious issues or concerns because they want to maintain the market share as most popular OS. similarly i think apple will be the same with their systems. with many minor issues or niggles brought on by software updates, there's often a work around, such as adding the start menu back, or registry changes to tweak things, so i'm not hugely concerned about such things as i can usually tweak myself, or rely on companies to make the right decisions to suit both the shareholders and customers, and i think most people can similarly rely on those businesses. for those people who aren't customers, there's no need for them to worry about products they don't own/use unless it's a matter or safety such as exploding phones which could cause my property to burn down or even blow up in a gas explosion because someone nearby had a phone that created a fire. i think it's better apple do something to avoid battery issues than end up in a situation like samsung did not too far ago
They lost that mantle many moons ago, at a guess Linux is the most popular OS followed by IOS.Quote:
Originally Posted by Unique
You're kidding right?Quote:
Originally Posted by Corky34
Or are you talking all OSes as a whole?
Because Windows is still the Market leader both in corporate and commercial.
I suspect he means anything that runs an OS at all. In which case with all the server, embedded and desktop Linux builds plus assuming he's counting android in the mobile market he may well be correct.
It doesn't change the argument about the desktop though as Windows is dominant with OS X a distant second and the likes of Linux & BSD a rounding error.
Indeed i did, I'm not sure if Microsoft have ever held the mantle of most popular OS TBH, Windows is most defiantly the most popular OS on the desktop and has been for many years but it seems even Microsoft have come to the realisation that desktop computers aren't the only game in town anymore.
And Both OS X and IOS are unix based.
Windows is used in some embedded systems as well though - the self service ticket machines at railway stations for example (used to be XP, which is why so many just had a blank blue screen :) )
My point was that buying an MS OS is NOT subscribing to a service - it's buying a product. I then install that OS on hardware I bought, note not MS bought, and I use it to run MY choice of software for MY purposes. MS do NOT have any right to subsequently mess around with it, even resulting in things that I rely on and that used to work no longer doing so.Quote:
Originally Posted by Unique
VM and Sky are different. You are supplied hardware as part of a subscription to a service. Hardware cost is built-in to the cost which is why you have a minimum contract period.
Phones are a hybrid, but even where a phone is supplied with the service, that being the provision of the airtime service, you'll usually vind two contracts, one for the hardware, and one for airtime.
In either the case of VM/Sky, or phone, outside of very limited situations you are committed to monthly payments, for that minimum term. For MS OS's, and in my case for Application software too, I pay a one-off charge, up-front, whether I use the software for 10 years, or 10 minutes. Of course, MS are clearly moving OS supply in the direction of a service, just as they already have with some application supply routes (365) and, IMHO, it's now only a matter of time before they want a monthly payment for Windows, too, just like Adobe for Photoshop, etc.
As for me not using a smartphone, this is part of why I don't. And until/unless things change, won't. It's tied in to privacy. The attitude that companies that supply this stuff have the right go treat data on how their users use the product, what they do with it, as theirs. Hell, no.
It's not that I don't want a smartphone, or wouldn't find one useful. It's that I don't want one badly enough to put up with the implications, and it's not so useful that I need it rather than finding it useful. Essentially, for me, the downside FAR outweighs the upside, because of these sorts of issues and the corporate mindset behind them.
if you have a google you will see a number of sites showing stats, and windows is by far the most popular OS, with more users of windows than all other OS's combined for desktopsQuote:
Originally Posted by Corky34
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_...rating_systems
regardless of whether it's subscription or you buy it outright, get it free or steal it or whatever, the T&C's of most modern tech products that have an ability to upgrade the software/firmware will give the creators the right to amend products if you agree to install it and/or update itQuote:
Originally Posted by Saracen
back in the 80s and before then you may have bought a product and it couldn't be upgraded without buying physical parts, but now people regularly buy products than can be upgraded by connecting online, and the T&C's allow the creators to make changes. usually however the consumer can opt out of upgrading and keep the item the same as it was when they first bought it, so you could install windows from the cd/dvd and just never update it. in the current world, few people are going to want to buy a new tech product and never ever updated it. most people want the latest upgrades, whether it's good bad or indifferent to them, and unless it's a hassle or they don't know how to do it, they will usually upgrade as long as they don't need to pay more money for it
looking at the bigger picture of the market, i can't see MS surviving indefinitely in the OS market anywhere near as successfully as they do if they move to a fully subscribed market. they may offer a particular version that is, but as the majority of users will be regular home consumers rather than businesses, i can't see many people going for this, especially in poorer countries. it's certainly not something that's going to happen in the short term, and it definitely isn't the norm at the moment. they aren't going to stop any current versions of consumer windows from working unless people pay a sub
regarding phone contracts, in the uk at least you typically just get one contract and one price for both phone and airtime/service btw