Apple faces another class action lawsuit over the iPhone throttling fiasco starting in January 17 (via Macrumors).
Throttling
In 2017, it came to light that Apple was slowing down iPhones with batteries that weren’t considered “healthy” anymore. Apple maintains this was to help the battery last as long as possible, because the CPU wasn’t allowed to run at full throttle.
Separately, for years a conspiracy theory floated around that Apple purposely slowed down older iPhones in an attempt to make people upgrade to newer iPhones, called “planned obsolescence.” There wasn’t hard evidence of this, only peoples’ anecdotes.
While Plaintiffs and the class need not attribute any motive behind Apple’s intentional degradation of the Devices, it is evident that Apple continued to do so for the simple reason most frauds are committed: money. Although technically complex in part, the scheme was logical and simple: The Devices were designed defectively, and Apple released software updates to conceal the Defects, all the while exacerbating the effects of the Defects principally decreased performance so that Device users had no choice but to purchase new batteries or upgrade their Devices, resulting in additional payments to Apple and a sustained (albeit forced) customer base.
But when the battery throttling was discovered, people linked the two, and accused Apple of malicious intentions. This was compounded by the fact that Apple didn’t tell anyone that their iPhone was being slowed down. Apple currently faces 60 class action lawsuits around the world, and this newest one is on behalf of 18 individuals and will probably be consolidated with others.
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