Apple must come clean on ‘slow iPhones’ issue

The “battery excuse”, which Apple offered to explain why it intentionally made old versions of iPhones slower than usual, is being given in a technical manner. Users and critics have questioned it and are looking at the arguably lukewarm success of iPhone X being the main motivation. That is a shocking speculation which Apple needs to  dismiss unequivocally, or the giant tech company will risk losing public trust for good.
“The delay in typing in messages, or the lag in loading my mail on my iPhone, has been explained,” a writer said on a popular website. Whether that is widely off the mark, or has some substance – such a simple suspicion, which flew in the face of Apple’s highly technical explanation – has been rampant. It threatens the company’s standing in the eyes of customers. 
Before this uproar, it had been common for many people to suspect that some of the latest technological advances might have been put on hold for future marketing purposes.
Apple often emphatically dismissed such doubts. The “slow iPhones” issue, however, has renewed criticism of the company’s marketing and consumer-related philosophies. To clarify a very technical issue, Apple had a few days ago confirmed that it was degrading the performance on older iPhones to preserve their battery life. There are better ways to do that without hurting users’ feelings instead of seemingly ambiguous “update” calls or notifications, according to a well-known tech publication.
Actually, what else could Apple say to dispel all the doubts or accusations linking slow old iPhones to iPhone X? It is hard to answer that. What can be said with absolute certainty is that the battery life explanation has not been bought by many iPhone users and the suspicion has been lingering. Their uproar reflects a “trust” issue, which may not be very apparent at the moment, but could grow into a major problem in the future.
Some Los Angeles residents have filed a lawsuit with the US District Court for the Central District of California accusing Apple of slowing down their older iPhone models when new models come out. According to the lawsuit, the accusers said they owned iPhone 7 and several older iPhone models and noticed that their devices slowed down when new models came out. They insisted they did not consent to have Apple slow down their devices, nor were they able to “choose whether they preferred to have their iPhones slower than normal”. More lawsuits are likely.
“Updating” will most likely come into play here. Apple’s possible line of defence was it reserved the right to “update” devices in users’ best interests. The controversy is probably too technical to come to a satisfactory legal conclusion either way, but the entire subject has ramifications more far-reaching than compensation money. At stake is Apple’s standing in the eyes of smartphone users and the owners of its other devices like computer laptops or computer tablets. As we all know, today’s “tech giant” can badly struggle tomorrow in a cut-throat market where trust is highly important.
Some economic analysts have drastically lowered predictions for 2018 shipments of the iPhone X. Taiwan’s Economic Daily has reported that Apple could cut its sales targets in the first quarter from 50 million to 30 million. A lot of factors must have influenced such projections as well as actual iPhone X sales, which have failed to be phenomenal, but it will not hurt Apple to try to find out if the slow iPhone uproar has anything to do with it, even remotely.