realistic

CloudTalkin said:

bsimpsen said:

I think Apple's approach is reasonable. Thirty years ago, I designed battery powered medical instrumentation (including defibrillators) containing rudimentary "gas gauge" hardware/firmware in the battery packs that allowed cell life and capacity to be monitored far more accurately than in previous systems. A couple years after introduction, we started getting field failure reports of batteries going dead unexpectedly while the gas gauge was indicating half a tank, or of warnings from our software that recently refurbished battery packs were worn out.

Customers were replacing the cells in our packs with generic cells of about half the capacity,  because they were far less expensive. On the first charge cycle, those new cells were delivering half the energy expected by our battery monitoring system and our firmware wasn't able to cope with such a large (and out of spec) change in component behavior. A large system customer asked us to disable or modify our firmware to allow use of those lower capacity aftermarket replacement cells. We refused. It was our contention that the end customer for our products was the patient who's care was affected by our product's performance. Were we not about to let unskilled health care providers dictate to us the parameters for safe and effective operation of our products.

Your anecdote, although interesting, is only a single data point.  The viewpoint it represents is not indicative of the current state of battery tech in iPhones.  You haven't presented any evidence that current 3rd party batteries for iPhone are any more likely to be substandard to OEM or Authorized batteries. You've provided info about an issue 30 years ago.  Again, it's interesting, but doesn't seem really relevant here.  Afaik, there haven't been wide scale complaints about 3rd party iPhone batteries.  No shortened life span, nothing about lesser capacity.  Those details, relative to your devices' issues, serve to highlight troubles you experienced 30 years ago.  Those details, relative to this iPhone issue, paint an inaccurate picture unsupported by any evidence.  If 3rd party batteries were that much of a menace, Apple wouldn't be willing to service iPhones with them inside.  Yet they do. 

Also, the software flakes when confronted with an OEM battery that wasn't installed by Apple or an Authorized repair shop.  So it's not just a 3rd party issue.  Essentially, Apple is saying you can use batteries that weren't installed by us or our partners.  We know they work just like ours, but we won't monitor them with our software.  Which is fine, since they weren't monitoring the batteries via that software before last year anyway... and people were none the worse for wear.  Remember, this software only exists because Apple mishandled informing users of the software throttling they instituted to deal with their own substandard batteries.  Users that concerned can probably get an app like Coconut Battery to monitor their non-OEM/authorized battery if it's a real concern.

StrangeDays said:

So the New York Post, a tabloid, had anonymous sources claim one thing. Here we have a top Apple executive, named, say another. I think I know which is more trustworthy. 

Will we see all those quick to treat anonymous rumors as facts now retract their judgment and scorn? Nahhh.

jungmark said:

rcfa said:

About time!
Can’t mix walled garden with selective access, or else it turns into regulating speech and commerce in a time where things increasingly happen on the smartphone.
No single company can be allowed to be gatekeeper to an entire market.

The iPhone isn’t the entire market. Just like BMW isn’t an entire market.  Remember Android is “winning”.