France Opens Investigation Into Apple Over 'Planned Obsolescence' For iPhones (france24.com) 47
According to Agence France-Presse, France has opened an investigation into planned obsolescence of Apple products. From the report: The probe into purported misleading commercial practices and planned obsolescence has been under way since December, the Paris prosecutor's office said. It follows a complaint filed by the Halt Planned Obsolescence (HOP) association.
HOP said it hoped the investigation would demonstrate the iPhone maker was "associating the serial numbers of spare parts to those of a smartphone, including via microchips, giving the manufacturer the possibility of restricting repairs by non-approved repairers or to remotely degrade a smartphone repaired with generic parts." The association called on Apple "to guarantee the right to repair devices under the logic of real circular economy."
HOP said it hoped the investigation would demonstrate the iPhone maker was "associating the serial numbers of spare parts to those of a smartphone, including via microchips, giving the manufacturer the possibility of restricting repairs by non-approved repairers or to remotely degrade a smartphone repaired with generic parts." The association called on Apple "to guarantee the right to repair devices under the logic of real circular economy."
Nice. (Score:3)
Maybe this will happen in other places too.
See... I have sympathy for Apple users.
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Android snowflakes are a lot more worried about the phone in my pocket than I am.
In general, the people throwing the word "snowflakes" around should spend more time looking in the mirror. Just sayin'.
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You're right, I apologize to the Android snowflakes that I have offended.
Like Apple fans aren't touchy about things at all... :-)
Re: Nice. (Score:1)
My remark got a troll mod. ;)
Re: Nice. (Score:2)
Yes, they got touchy about it and 'disagreed' with my opinion. Heh.
Re: Nice. (Score:4, Interesting)
On the other hand, I accept his sympathies as an a old victim of Apple's planned obsolenscence (of my original iPad and I think my 2x IPhone 3 GS also).
The hardware still works - even now. But it operates in slow-mo, compared to how I remember it originally being.
I do recall giving Apple the benefit of the doubt - "Maybe it's just a Safari problem due to websites turning bandwidth-heavy and Javascript-heavy websites". But then I realised it wasn't that - it was almost as if the general device was programmed to slow down as updates kept getting added.
Anyway, that made me an Android user.
Re: Nice. (Score:2)
Yep, I had the 3g and got burned by that, too. Subsequent phones weren't as bad but it does start getting obvious Apple's turning features on to slow your shit down.
It is a lot harder for me to leave Apple, though, because I ain't trusting my smartphone data to Google. I really wish we had at least one more major phone OS. Apple behaves better when there is actual competition.
IPhone XS Max seems ok (Score:2)
I had multiple iPhone models over the years and last time I upgraded from a 7 to a XS Max around the time it came out. I have no reason to upgrade it as it seems fast enough, and the original battery still lasts long enough for my needs. The 7 is now the road trip phone for my son and it works fine to stream YouTube and Netflix on the go.
I do tend to pay extra for the higher end model mostly so that it gets the longest support window which in the longer run pays off for itself. If you tend to break your pho
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Nowadays the faster deprecation of crypto protocols is a good way to force obsolescence of older devices
That and the deprecation of air interfaces. Everything before the iPhone 5 (or was it the 4S?) no longer gets a signal now that carriers have shut down UMTS and CDMA2000 towers to free up spectrum for 5G NR. We get a new air interface every 10 years, and carriers keep only two running at once.
Re: Nice. (Score:2)
Re: Nice. (Score:2)
Thanks for the confirmation :).
Yes - I think you're right that Apple lifted their game later on. My wife stayed with apple and is very satisfied with her 5+ year old XS.
I wish apple offered a way to downgrade old hardware so it could be useful as (say) a music player, touch controller for home automation or dashcam with collision detection and SMS functionality
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It's down to both Apple's software bloating up to take advantage of newer iPhones with faster CPUs and more RAM, and the batteries being old.
When batteries age they can't deliver as much current as when they were new. Well, they kind of can, but the voltage drops a lot more. That's what happened with the iPhone 6 - the voltage would drop and the battery % display would go instantly from 50% to 2%, or the phone would just shut down entirely.
The "fix" Apple came up with was to limit performance when the batte
Re: Nice. (Score:2)
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Apple did in fact offer battery replacement at a discounted price for a while. They obviously wanted to try the no-cost option of crippling everyone's devices first though.
Good for Them! (Score:4, Funny)
My 1960's model GE washer and dryer work just fine today. There are parts available for both with most costing less than $10.
There was a time when things were built to last. One would have hoped the "free market" would have continued to create a system where things lasted as long as possible, with parts available.
What happened was the financial geniuses at Harvard, Wharton etc... learned they could create crap, because people use and have come to depend on these tools. Their processes to increase profits by planned obsolescence have been ingrained in every companies financials either by choice, or by proxy when someone invested. These processes have become ingrained in how everything is manufactured.
Today, you can hardly buy a shirt that will last more than 6 month or socks that wear out after exactly 25 wears.
These youngins who scream "boomer" at every corner should be thanking the few of us dying old people that are left for reminding them that the world didn't use to be a giant pile of plastic rubbish. Stuff used to last, and there didn't use to be incentives built into the prices you pay to rip everyone off.
--
The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been. - Madeleine L'Engle
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Greedy people - Boomer and non-Boomer - did this to the world
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isnt' jobs the whole point of the economy, after all? ya know, keeping people busy?
what? you care about the utility of the actual work being done? what are you, a fascist???
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Re: Good for Them! (Score:2)
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There was a time when things were built to last.
In the 60s, a washer and a drier cost maybe 5 times more than today, inflation adjusted. Today's appliances don't last as long, but they are much cheaper, that's because buyers prefer cheap over long lasting, and the industry has adjusted. And it is not always a bad thing. These appliances from the 60s are noisy, inefficient and lack features by modern standards, and sometimes, changing them is just better. For example, changing your old drier for a modern heat pump model may save you money and be better fo
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The reason those goods last is because the cost was externalized. Low efficiency/high pollution, the use of damaging chemicals, cheap steel subsidised by the cold war and national security. The lower use of plastics wasn't because they wanted to build things more robustly, it was because suitable plastic parts could not be manufactured at the time. If they could have, they would have.
People had the same complaints in the 60s, by the way. Those fancy new printed circuit boards couldn't be easily replaced, li
Limited life by design - planned obsolescence (Score:5, Insightful)
They would do well to examine how many other sorts of product are designed to have a short life - so that a new one needs to be bought. These days it is not just the physical object but as so many things have a software component the very short times that security updates are produced.
What goods am I talking about ? Obvious ones like 'phones & televisions. Things like: kitchen white goods that only last a few years; home security & automation gizmos; lawn movers that break after a couple of seasons; fashion (especially girl's) shoes that fall to bits quickly; ... I could go on as there is so much planned obsolescence [wikipedia.org]. It is not just bad for the consumer's wallet but causes much waste that is bad for the planet.
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The EU is in fact dealing with that. There are rules coming in about how long spare parts must be available for, and that things must be designed to be reasonably repairable.
Hopefully we will see screws return to phones, instead of them being glued together. Unfortunately I think that because repair shops have got used to dealing with the glue, it's not considered acceptable.
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Apple has spare parts for a long time. In fact, they have a policy where devices get put on "vintage" and "obsolete" lists.
https://sup [apple.com]
Apple produces some of the most (Score:2, Informative)
They’ve stumbled, for sure (hello butterfly keyboards) but accusing apple of planned obscelescence is like accusing Toyota of deliberately building unreliable cars. I’m not sure which planet these people are from, but this one is known as “Earth
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I’m not sure which planet these people are from, but this one is known as “Earth”.
And that one is known as "France"
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With regards to operating systems, that much is definitely turning out to be true. Apple released a security update for the iPhone 5s as recently as earlier as this year, over 9 years after that phone was first introduced. The earlier iPhone 5 didn't get quite as much love - things got hinky for their 32-bit phones - but the OS support window has been getting longer and longer over the years.
But French regulators seem to be more concerned over hardware than software. I don't buy the "planned obsolescence" a
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And then Apple puts in effort to make it as hard as possible to repair the devices that do fail (either because of a design/manufacturing defect or because the user broke it). The latest is serialization. A lot of parts (for example, the battery or sleep sensor) have their unique serial numbers and even if you replace it with an identical part (say, taken from another genuine Apple device) it will not work, unless you use special software to bind the new part to the OS. Obviously, the software is not availa
Minimum required OS version is killing my phone (Score:5, Interesting)
My mate has an app that runs perfectly fine on an iPhone5.
I am not allowed to install it on my iPhone5.
If I would have installed it last year, it would run perfectly fine on my iPhone5 as well.
It's so obvious that Apple is doing this on purpose.
Apple far from the worst (Score:5, Interesting)
Come on. Why target apple? They could target every phone maker. Android phones have a planned obsolescence of 2 years at best (no more updates of any kind). iPhones last way longer than that and are provided with upgrades for a way longer time.
They are just attacking one of the best in that field.
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Why target apple? They could target every phone maker.
Because Apple is the most reluctant to let people repair their phones. It's more about hardware here. The same non-profit targeted Microsoft, and Sonos for when they stopped to support some products recently. They don't target only Apple, but when it's Apple it reaches /.
Android phones have a planned obsolescence of 2 years at best
Note that 2 years is the mandated EU minimum warranty for consumer products. Actions like these ones are important to keep a public debate, in the context of possible regulatory changes (the Right To Repair EU directive in discussion), such
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Note that 2 years is the mandated EU minimum warranty for consumer products.
Each nation in the EU sets its own standards but with the EU ones as a minimum, and 2 years or more only applies to products that should be expected to last at least 2 years. That includes phones, though.
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Android phones have a planned obsolescence of 2 years at best (no more updates of any kind).
Liar.
"Planned Obsolescence" doesn't exist (Score:1)
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Apple devices are usually more expensive compared to others and are harder to repair than others. I can also understand that making something smaller can make it harder to repair. Fair enough.
However, what does making sure that nobody can replace the battery do? I mean, not just using some weird shape battery, but having to authenticate it to the OS so even if you take a genuine battery from another phone, it won't work unless you use special software to bind the new battery. Of course, you cannot get the s
Only since December??? (Score:1)
They think this just started in December. That's really cute.