Apple decided to underclock CPUs when the battery had aged to the point where consistent voltage couldn't be applied at maximum power. They did this so users wouldn't complain about their phone randomly crashing. Really, they were damned if they did and damned if they didn't.
What you can criticize is that they did it without informing users or allowing an option — the lawsuit and backlash reversed that course and they now have a setting for it. You can argue they should have had that all along. You can argue they were doing it purposely for planned obsolescence, but the evidence isn't really there to support it.
Apple provides major software upgrades for years longer than most Android devices do. There are some exceptions for Android, but the rule is that you're lucky to get more than two years of software updates for your phone. Apple, on the other hand, supports for 4-6 years. That should earn them kudos compared to most Android manufacturers.
>You can argue they were doing it purposely for planned obsolescence, but evidence isn't really there to support it.
This is not a court of law and I am quite comfortable believing this was planned obsolescence for the simple that behaving in this way was advantageous to their profits. Otherwise it would not have taken lies (they initially denied the existence of the throttling!), outrage and lawsuits to do the right thing.
The alternative explanation is mass ignorance and/or incompetence on a level that would be hard to accept coming from Apple. Am I expected to seriously believe that nobody at Apple tested this throttle down behavior and saw (and likely measured) the impact on day-to-day performance?
"Apple is still definitely slowing down Macs with every single little release."
This was true for Intel Macs 2014-2020. I bought a 14' M1 Macbook Pro with 32GB of memory / 1TB storage and it absolutely flies. Best machine I've owned in almost a decade (2014 15' MBP).
I think it was true of Intel Macs largely from their underpowered GPUs. I remember Yosemite being rough on a late 2013 MacBook Pro because the Intel iGPU was awful. Likewise going to Big Sur on a late 2019 MacBook Pro when not plugged into power (and thus not using the dGPU).
Really looking forward to a M series chip built on N3E with dedicated raytracing cores (probably the AR/VR headset, followed shortly thereafter by the Macbook Pro line)
I think it's simpler: there's general arrogance that Apple knows what's best for their customers. Their entire philosophy isn't about giving customers what they want, it's giving customers what Apple thinks they need. So, when you uncover phones crashing because batteries age and folks don't get their batteries serviced, you throttle the CPU in software to avoid the issue. It's pure arrogance.
We also know that Apple is stubborn (see the removal of the headphone jack), so of course it's going to take a lawsuit for them to reverse course on something like this.
That explains everything but the lying about the existence of the throttling. There are no ways I can square that circle other than Apple knowing what they were doing and wanting to hide it in a way that ever so coincidentally makes them more money.
Apple decided to underclock CPUs when the battery had aged to the point where consistent voltage couldn't be applied at maximum power. They did this so users wouldn't complain about their phone randomly crashing. Really, they were damned if they did and damned if they didn't.
What you can criticize is that they did it without informing users or allowing an option — the lawsuit and backlash reversed that course and they now have a setting for it. You can argue they should have had that all along. You can argue they were doing it purposely for planned obsolescence, but the evidence isn't really there to support it.
Apple provides major software upgrades for years longer than most Android devices do. There are some exceptions for Android, but the rule is that you're lucky to get more than two years of software updates for your phone. Apple, on the other hand, supports for 4-6 years. That should earn them kudos compared to most Android manufacturers.