Summary:
Apple recently admitted to throttling some of the older phone’s performance when the battery has degraded with time. Company representatives claim that they are trying to decrease the chances of the phone shutting down randomly to protect its electronic parts. However, they previously had not told anyone that they were throttling the performance of their older phone models. Because of this at least five different lawsuits have recently been filed stating that people believed their phones had naturally degraded and purchased newer and more expensive models. Those suing Apple believe that the company was purposefully throttling the older models not to save the phone due to battery degradation, but instead to convince users to purchase new phones, which are much more expensive than buying new batteries.
The reason this article was chosen:
I found this article interesting as the issue that arose, whether it is necessary for Apple to inform its customers of its throttling of older products or how to fix it, brings up an interesting ethical dilemma.
Credibility of sources:
The verge is a relatively new multimedia site for news and information. Their interview with Apple is what initially broke this story and this particular article is a follow up to the backlash it created.
Ethical implications:
Is it ok for companies to purposefully throttle the performance of their older models without telling their customers? While controlling the phone’s performance in order to make the product last longer seems admirable, not informing the customer of the diminishing performance, or the solution, installing a new battery, seems unethical.
No comments:
Post a Comment