Brazilian courts take Apple's side in iPhone slowdown lawsuits, buck international consens...
Apple is under fire globally for implementing an iPhone power management feature that throttled performance on devices with degraded batteries, but courts in Brazil appear to be taking the tech giant's side on the matter.
In February, the French government fined Apple $27 million for a 2017 software update containing a battery management that throttled processor performance. And in March, Apple agreed to pay $500 million in the U.S. to settle iPhone slowdown lawsuits.
Courts in Brazil, however, seem to think that Apple did nothing wrong, as local media outlet Tilt reports.
A 2018 suit leveled by the Brazilian Institute of Computer Science and Law (IBDI) requested compensation to the tune of 986.7 million Brazilian reals (about $212 million), but was dismissed by a federal court without considering the evidence. The judge in that case decided that the institute should have held an assembly of its members before taking action.
An appeal by the Federal District Public Ministry (MPDFT) was likewise defeated. In that case, Brazilian Judge Joo Egmon explicitly stated that there was no obvious planned obsolescence on Apple's part, adding that he believed Apple implemented performance throttling to mitigate random shutdowns and preserve usability.
Egmon added that he believed Apple did enough to comply with local consumer protection laws by offering discounted battery replacements in Brazil, as it did in other countries.
Two more appeals were filed by the IBDI in 2020, but based on the past court decisions, it doesn't look like they will gain any traction. The case could end up in Brazil's Supreme Federal Court, where plaintiffs will likely lean on recent international rulings in a bid to overturn lower court decisions.
The IBDI is not the only group in Brazil to scrutinize Apple's iPhone policies. Brazil's Institute for Consumer Protection (IDEC) considered taking action on about 350 reports from consumers who experienced slowdowns, but decided not to take the issue to court, citing the concurrent IBDI lawsuit. The Ministry of Justice's National Consumer Secretariat and public prosecutors in Rio and Paran opened independent investigations into Apple's practices, but those inquiries were closed after Apple introduced its battery replacement program.
On Friday, Procon-SP, a group linked to the So Paulo state government notified Apple that it is mulling action against the company in light of its U.S. settlement.
"Proconsp will ask Apple to inform if it also intends to pay the same indemnity to Brazilian consumers as it paid to North Americans; since the product is the same, the damage and injury are identical," said Fernando Capez, executive director at Procon-SP.
Apple devices accounted for about 12.38% of Brazil's smartphone market in January 2020. The Cupertino tech giant also manufactures some products at Foxconn facilities in the country.
In February, the French government fined Apple $27 million for a 2017 software update containing a battery management that throttled processor performance. And in March, Apple agreed to pay $500 million in the U.S. to settle iPhone slowdown lawsuits.
Courts in Brazil, however, seem to think that Apple did nothing wrong, as local media outlet Tilt reports.
A 2018 suit leveled by the Brazilian Institute of Computer Science and Law (IBDI) requested compensation to the tune of 986.7 million Brazilian reals (about $212 million), but was dismissed by a federal court without considering the evidence. The judge in that case decided that the institute should have held an assembly of its members before taking action.
An appeal by the Federal District Public Ministry (MPDFT) was likewise defeated. In that case, Brazilian Judge Joo Egmon explicitly stated that there was no obvious planned obsolescence on Apple's part, adding that he believed Apple implemented performance throttling to mitigate random shutdowns and preserve usability.
Egmon added that he believed Apple did enough to comply with local consumer protection laws by offering discounted battery replacements in Brazil, as it did in other countries.
Two more appeals were filed by the IBDI in 2020, but based on the past court decisions, it doesn't look like they will gain any traction. The case could end up in Brazil's Supreme Federal Court, where plaintiffs will likely lean on recent international rulings in a bid to overturn lower court decisions.
The IBDI is not the only group in Brazil to scrutinize Apple's iPhone policies. Brazil's Institute for Consumer Protection (IDEC) considered taking action on about 350 reports from consumers who experienced slowdowns, but decided not to take the issue to court, citing the concurrent IBDI lawsuit. The Ministry of Justice's National Consumer Secretariat and public prosecutors in Rio and Paran opened independent investigations into Apple's practices, but those inquiries were closed after Apple introduced its battery replacement program.
On Friday, Procon-SP, a group linked to the So Paulo state government notified Apple that it is mulling action against the company in light of its U.S. settlement.
"Proconsp will ask Apple to inform if it also intends to pay the same indemnity to Brazilian consumers as it paid to North Americans; since the product is the same, the damage and injury are identical," said Fernando Capez, executive director at Procon-SP.
Apple devices accounted for about 12.38% of Brazil's smartphone market in January 2020. The Cupertino tech giant also manufactures some products at Foxconn facilities in the country.
Comments
And anyone who actually believes it was an evil act of planned obsolescence by Apple to promote sales of more iPhones needs their head examined because they probably believe the Earth is flat too.
They’re just saying that no Brazilian laws were broken.
I'd say that the facts are that if somebody's phone was subject to the slowdown, then their phone was not a perfectly functioning phone, since their battery was no longer optimal. Throttling happens on all sorts of devices, and I can definitely understand Apple's decision to implement some sort of throttling to deal with devices that have sub-optimal batteries. If somebody has a phone or device with an old, no longer functioning at full capacity battery, well, then I guess it's time to replace it, or just deal with using a device that has a bad battery. This applies to everything that uses batteries, not just Apple devices.
I'm currently vaping on some vanilla custard using a mod that uses batteries of course, and guess what's going to eventually happen when the battery is no longer capable of holding a full charge? It's not going to vape as well of course, and I will have to either replace the batteries or buy a new device.
This is simple physics. Anybody who believes that Apple deals in planned obsolescence should be declared mentally unfit for owning any Apple devices. Low IQ people should buy Android phones instead, that would suit them much better. I still have Apple devices that are many decades old, and they fire up and function perfectly well to this day. Planned obsolescence my ass.
However well intended Apple may have been, they went about it the wrong way. It was definitely not better to ask for forgiveness instead of permission. Forgiveness might cost up to half a billion dollars. Permission could have potentially cost them nothing, AND garnered good will at the same time.
Do me a favor. Re-read your comment. It makes no sense at all. An EV in that nonsensical scenario, would throw up a warning about the power system and if there was a chance of catastrophic failure (that's what a shutdown would be). It would go into limp mode or shut down completely. If an issue was found in the battery pack, it would be replaced. It wouldn't be secretly programmed to temporarily degrade performance. Like I said. There's not automotive equivalent to the iPhone battery situation here.
As I also said, if Apple had done the battery replacements as a first remedy, we wouldn't be in this thread. Had they explained the software "fix" to customers before the stealth implementation, we wouldn't be in this thread. We're in this thread because of the bassackwards way they went about their business in this situation. Notice, I didn't say they were doing anything nefarious. They just did what they did badly and will have to pay the price for bad execution. Permission would have cost a helluva lot less than forgiveness.
As unrealistic as your scenario is, it's pretty easy to answer. An automotive company would be sued to hell and back. It wouldn't be okay for an automotive company to do it because it could be life threatening. Engine overheating - secret software overrides notification, keep rollin'. Batter pack punctured by pothole - beep bop boop system silent override, go on abut ya bidness. There are hundreds of scenarios that highlight how monumentally bad that idea would be in an automotive setting. Can we please move beyond trying to make car analogies work in this situation?
Replacing batteries or disclosure before implementation would have made this never exist imo.
The courts? Tell me more. You mean the filing fee, which is probably a couple hundred dollars?
They completely ignore or discount WHY it was done: As somebody who was experiencing those random shut downs I was quite concerned: A major use for my phone is for safety -- to be able to call for help if I need it. But, if the phone would shut down at random, unpredictable times and not be able to be restarted without being attached to wall a charger (my car's 12volt outlet couldn't do it) it was not reliable enough for that purpose.
Apple's slow-down solution solved that problem. Yes, they should have communicated it better -- and that was probably the fault of Apple's long practice of keeping things simple and not overburdoning casual users with detail -- they instead just stressed products that "just work". And, by slowing down the phone, they returned my phone to a product that "just worked" (although it did become a serious pain to use because of that slowness).