Apple to pay $14.4 million to settle ‘Batterygate’ lawsuit in Canada
A Canadian court in British Columbia has given its approval for a settlement to end a class-action lawsuit over alleged iPhone throttling. Apple pay out up to $14.4 million.
Malcolm Owen for AppleInsider:
The class-action lawsuit alleged that Apple’s software updates slowed down the iPhone 6 and iPhone 7 models, allegations that Apple firmly denies. However, to deal with the lawsuit, Apple agreed to make payments to the class, totaling between $11.1 million and $14.4 million.
The defined class consists of Apple customers who bought an iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6s, 6s Plus, or iPhone SE running iOS 10.2.1 or later, or an iPhone 7 or 7 Plus running iOS 11.2 or later, before December 21, 2017. It applies to all residents in all provinces in British Columbia, except for Quebec, and that a serial number must be supplied…
[C]onsumers can expect a payment between $17.50 and $150 if accepted in the class…
MacDailyNews Take: There won’t be another iPhone Batterygate because Apple wants, and needs, previously-owned iPhones to known for reliability as the secondary market is key for Apple to grow their iPhone users base, which in turn feeds Apple’s Services business and provides a halo for other products such as iPads, Apple Watches, Macs, Apple TVs, HomePods, etc.
You can see why some think that Apple wanted to keep what they were doing a secret. If people knew that a $79 battery replacement would give them an iPhone that performed like it did on day one, a meaningful percentage would take that option versus buying a new iPhone. Now that it’s just $29 this year, that percentage will naturally increase.
Then again, as Hanlon’s razor states: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
Apple’s made up of people. People are imperfect. We’ll take Apple’s word for it that they “always wanted… customers to be able to use their iPhones as long as possible” and that they “have never — and would never — do anything to intentionally shorten the life of any Apple product, or degrade the user experience to drive customer upgrades.” — MacDailyNews, January 3, 2018
Again, it’s Apple’s lack of communication that is the problem here. If Apple had clearly explained what was going on in the software, we’d know to recommend a battery replacement when users complained their older iPhones were getting “slow.” As it was, we were pretty much left to assume that the processor/RAM wasn’t up to par with demands of newer iOS releases and we’d naturally recommend getting a new iPhone.
Just yesterday, we had a friend complain that his iPhone 6 was acting “slow” and we knew to recommend a battery replacement (even though he instead opted to get himself an iPhone X on our strong recommendation). — MacDailyNews, December 29, 2017
As has almost always been the case with Apple, unfortunately, transparency comes later, not sooner, and usually as a reaction to negative publicity. A simple Knowledge Base article would have preempted all of this Reddit sleuthing and the attendant handwringing and erroneous presumptions. — MacDailyNews, December 20, 2017
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