MplsP

M68000 said:

Is it time to start putting a code on the connectors of these cables to show what specs they have?  We now seem to have many flavors of TB, USB-C and HDMI.   It’s a complete circus.  One looks at these various cables and wonders what they have.

AppleZulu said:

MplsP said:

robin huber said:

No good deed goes unpunished. 

AppleZulu said:

For those who have forgotten, the "throttling" in question was iOS software that -for phones with an old, degraded battery- would slow down intensive, peak energy demand operations, in order to spread out that energy demand over additional seconds, so that the weakened battery's output could still power the complete operation. The alternative without this adaption would be a system crash, freezing up the app or even shutting down the phone. Old batteries lose capacity. It's physics. 

The claim that this was planned obsolescence, intended to push iPhone customers to buy a new phone, is erroneous. Which would more quickly force a decision on replacement: a phone that slows down, or a phone that crashes? Slow is annoying. Crashing is non-functional. Throttling would actually delay customers' decisions to go buy a new phone, yet this is the thing Apple is forced to pay out for. 

And to refresh your memory, Apple said NOTHING about the fact that they were throttling the phones. Had they simply been transparent there would have been no issue. Their lack of transparency created a very valid question - did they do it out of altruism or did they use the potential for crashing as an excuse to secretly throttle phones so people would upgrade? The point can be argued either way which has cost Apple millions. 

Most iOS patches and fixes happen with minimal explanation. You seem to have missed the point that a crashing phone will cause people to upgrade much more quickly than would a slowed phone. A phone that stops working requires more immediate attention than does a phone that’s more sluggish but still completes all tasks. If Apple did nothing to address the issue, they would get that result. As such, it makes no sense to suggest that they used “the potential for crashing as an excuse to secretly throttle phones so people would upgrade.” 

They issued a fix to improve results for suboptimal performance. Phones that previously would cease functioning would now continue to function, albeit more slowly. 

If the issue were about transparency, it would have gone away, because Apple explained the fix as soon as people started asking about it. But then, just as you did right here, the explanation was ignored and the nonsensical alternate theory repeated ad nauseam, like Nigel Tufnel repeating “these go to eleven.” (https://youtu.be/4xgx4k83zzc?si=C3YXN5AQTpP8o9VH)

This settlement with no admission of wrongdoing is what finally results from that. A few users will be able to get a few dollars, but more importantly, the lawyers will all get paid to go away. Throttling is now a commonly known component of battery management, so new lawsuits won’t re-emerge on this issue at least. 

darren mccoy said:

Why does this site hate X so much?

robin huber said:

No good deed goes unpunished. 

AppleZulu said:

For those who have forgotten, the "throttling" in question was iOS software that -for phones with an old, degraded battery- would slow down intensive, peak energy demand operations, in order to spread out that energy demand over additional seconds, so that the weakened battery's output could still power the complete operation. The alternative without this adaption would be a system crash, freezing up the app or even shutting down the phone. Old batteries lose capacity. It's physics. 

The claim that this was planned obsolescence, intended to push iPhone customers to buy a new phone, is erroneous. Which would more quickly force a decision on replacement: a phone that slows down, or a phone that crashes? Slow is annoying. Crashing is non-functional. Throttling would actually delay customers' decisions to go buy a new phone, yet this is the thing Apple is forced to pay out for. 

Mike Wuerthele said:

MplsP said:

Mike Wuerthele said:

MplsP said:

So...apple spent $10b on a car but it wasn't wasted money because they can still use the tech in other areas. That's like saying the $100k I spent on a machine shop wasn't wasted because I can still use the drill press and have the rest of the space for storage. They're cutting their losses which is good but they still have losses to cut which it the main issue.

Now, all of this is based on rumors. It is possible that Apple never intended to build a car and was simply using it as a technology development platform because that was the best method for their use. If that's the case then they spent $10b on R&D. That's not really consistent with what we've been hearing, though.

How a car works on a fundamental level, including electric ones, is a solved problem. It doesn't require a pile of R&D.

Making it self-driving is very clearly not a solved problem.

More properly, repurposing your own analogy, the $100K you spent on a machine shop to make metal yo-yos isn't wasted when the yo-yo shop closes down, because you can still make gears, or other components from the tools, skills, and materials you got.

that's exactly my point - if they were using the car as a vehicle (no pun intended) for their research it's one thing. If the research was made necessary by their desire to build a car then it's different. The yo-yo shop closed down and they are repurposing the equipment but they still wasted far more money than they would have had they built what they needed in the first place and skipped the yo-yo shop.

You moved the goalposts on your original analogy but okay.

Using the drill press and none of the rest of the tools and using the shop for passive storage != using nearly all of the tools to keep manufacturing.

The latter is what Apple is doing, the former is what you said initially.

Is there some wasted money here? Sure, there always is with research and development, no matter who's doing it.

What it isn't, is a $10 billion pile of money lit on fire or a colossal waste and injurious to Apple like folks want to claim it is. And it isn't certainly just repurposing just the drill press from the shop full of tools and using the rest of the shop for storage.