“Apple and Samsung sittin’ in a tree, C-H-E-A-T-I-N-G!”

Here we go again…, with Apple acting unethically…, again.

Please refer my blog of January 4, 2018, where we saw at the time, Apple admitted that, “…we (Apple) sometimes reduced processor speeds on iPhones with aging batteries as a way to balance performance and battery life.”  So, they’re not actually apologizing for what they did, they’re apologizing for, “…not being more transparent with our customers,” regarding, “…how exactly iOS manages battery and performance.”

Apple went on to say, “We 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.”

Now less than a year later, here we are, seeing Apple do exactly that.  Trying to “intentionally shorten the life of Apple products, and degrade the user experience to drive customer upgrades.”

What a bunch of absolute liars.

And not to be outdone, Samsung has learned its sneaky lessons well from Apple.

Both Apple and Samsung have now been fined for “deliberately slowing down older phones.”

Now why on Earth would they want to do that?

According to Rob Waugh of Yahoo News UK, “Many phone users suspected it.  Apple and Samsung are both facing multi-million Euro fines for slowing down old smartphones with software updates.”

“The practice makes old devices less functional, and encourages the purchase of new phones,” the Italian antitrust authority AGM said in a statement.

The Italian antitrust authority fined Apple and Samsung 10 million Euros ($11.3 million) and 5 million Euros ($5.7 million) respectively.

AGM said in a statement, “The two companies have induced consumers to install software updates that are not adequately supported by their devices, without adequately informing them, nor providing them an effective way to recover the full functionality of their devices.”

The antitrust authority said that operating system (OS) updates “caused serious malfunctions and significantly reduced their performance, in this way speeding up their replacement with more recent products.”

The antitrust authority also said that, “users of Samsung’s Galaxy Note 4 received ‘insistent’ suggestions to update to a new version of Android shipped with the Note 7 device.”

“The antitrust authority said that Samsung did this ‘without informing them of the serious malfunctions that the new firmware could cause due to greater stress of device’s hardware and asking a high repair cost for out-of-warranty repairs connected to such malfunctions.’”

Apple users with iPhone 6 devices were likewise urged to update to new software intended for iPhone 7 “without warning consumers that its installation could reduce the speed of execution and functionality of devices.”

Apple and Samsung have yet to comment according to Yahoo News UK.

I’m sure both Apple and Samsung will eventually plead some level of ignorance to their customers and offer some sort of lame semi-apology, then turn around and screw their customers over again somehow next year.

How much do you wanna bet?

I’ll keep you posted.

“If you want to be successful, never lie to yourself.  Lying to everyone else is apparently OK though.” – Mr. Erickson

 

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Thank you, MrEricksonRules.