Why Apple is Not the Devil For Slowing Down Older Devices

News broke this week that Apple's recent software updates were deliberately throttling performance on older iPhones, leading consumers the world over to cry foul and demonize Tim Cook and Company for allegedly forcing their customers to buy new products when their old ones were working "just fine."  I won't try to dissuade anyone looking to switch smartphone brands, but hopefully I can shed some light on what's actually going on, rather than what the media and "squeaky wheels" want you to believe.

1.)  Why is Apple Throttling My iPhone?

This is a contentious point, but basically, Apple's stance is that it's throttling your iPhone's performance for its own good.  On the surface, that sounds like a load of bull.  And taken at surface-level, it is.  But dig deeper, and we find that it may not be the hot air you think it is.

As users, we judge our phones largely by how smooth the experience is.  Once we start to notice that a phone is "lagging", freezing, or losing battery life more rapidly, we generally make the mental note that its days are numbered.

The most common case is when a new version of iOS or Android is released, and the increased demands of the new operating system send our aging phone to a screeching halt.

So let's talk tech for a second.  Everything your phone does is driven by it's processor (CPU).  That piece of hardware works harder the more you ask it to do (i.e. play music while browsing the net and taking a phone call).  The more the CPU works, the more battery power is needed to keep the processor running so that you don't notice any dip in performance.  The harder the battery and CPU have to work, the hotter the phone gets.  And if Samsung's Galaxy Note 7 has taught us anything: hot phones are bad.  Very bad.

Fortunately no iPhones have reportedly exploded due to high performance demands.  However, many of them were caught randomly rebooting while users were in the middle of using them.  Why?  Because the battery was getting too hot and rebooting the phone was the quickest way to cool things down.  Terribly inconvenient and sloppy, but at least your phone wasn't exploding in the middle of your YouTube or Netflix binge.

This became a huge issue as thousands of users reported to Apple that their phones were constantly rebooting in the middle of the day.  So what did Apple do?  They released a fix.

What does the fix do?  In short, it limits how fast and hot the CPU can run, thus limiting how much power it consumes, thus limiting how hot the battery could get, thus eliminating up to 80% of the random reboots users were experiencing.

The trade-off?  Users began to see drastic changes in performance.  Since their CPU's can no longer run as fast as they used to, their phones began to struggle to do a multitude of tasks that used to be common and breezy.

2.)  Which Phones are Affected?

This is another piece to the puzzle.  Many people have taken to holding onto their smartphones for years, since we no longer have the obligation of 2-year contracts expiring and telling us it's time to upgrade.  So people are still out there rocking their iPhone 6, 6s, and 7.  And that's great.  Those are great phones.

The 6 and 6s, specifically, are the devices most affected by these updates.  That's no coincidence.

As a brief look at Lithium-Ion Batteries (the kind of batteries inside most smartphones, tablets, and laptops) will tell you, the average battery will lose 2% of it's longevity every month: so after 50 months (or just over 2 years), most batteries cannot be expected to perform as well as they did out of the box.  Even more of those batteries will begin experiencing performance issues long before that.

The rate at which a battery discharges is influenced by many factors, one of which is--you guessed it--temperature.  Another reason to keep things running as cool as possible.  Remember how your dad used to shove batteries in the fridge when he wasn't using them?  That was to keep them from discharging as quickly as they might have if they were left at room temperature.  It's a small difference, but it compounds the hotter things get.

The batteries in the iPhone 6 and 6s are long past the 2 year mark.  In fact, most professionals would recommend paying for a full battery replacement or buying a new phone altogether.  Instead, Apple is doing its best to prolong the life of your phone.  Again, the trade-off is, it won't play as nicely with the newest software as we now have to balance performance with temperature and power consumption.

The good news is, if you have a newer phone (iPhone 7/7 Plus, 8/8Plus, or X), you are unaffected by these updates.

3.)  Is Apple Doing This to Force Me to Buy a New Phone?

I won't speak for Apple, but I will direct you to the words of Matthew Panzarino, Editor-in-Chief at TechCrunch:

It would be beyond stupid and incredibly shortsighted for Apple to do this and, if it was actually true, would likely lead to tangles of a governmental and legal nature that no company like Apple would ever want to happen.

Instead, Apple is focusing attention on smoothing out the very high and quick peaks of power draw that can cause problems with older batteries.

So, no.  Apple is not forcing you to buy a new phone.  It is trying to keep your aging device running.  And that's pretty nice of them, even if it means taking a bit longer to call up your latest playlist.

There's a reason fewer people are using an iPhone 4.  By the time I traded in my iPhone 4 for a 5s (it was 3 years old at the time), it was slow, clunky, and had to be charged multiple times a day.  It's 2017 and very few things have changed as far as the logistics of how a phone operates or how long it's expected to hold a charge.  3 years is an eternity in the smartphone business, even if consumers wish it weren't.

As Panzarino said above, it would be incredibly poor of Apple to openly force its users to buy new devices when they don't want to.  If nothing else, it damages the good faith between Apple and it's customers, and at worse, it drives them to other products.  Apple is smarter than that.  Consumers should be, too.

4.)  How Can I Get Around The Performance Bottleneck?

So far there are only two ways to get around these performance restrictions: pay to have your phone's battery replaced, or buy a new phone.

5.)  Why Doesn't Apple Offer Free Battery Replacements?

Let's pretend it's 2015 and I went a bought a Dell XPS 13.  A fine machine!  But after two years, the battery just doesn't hold a charge.  Do I go to Dell and ask them to replace the battery of my 2 year-old laptop for free?

I could.  But they'll laugh at me.  They'll then tell me it will cost money to have battery installed.  Because that's how business works.

These are not phones that just rolled off the factory line.  These are phones that have been in circulation for 2-3 years.  They are aging, and they will never perform as they did on Day 1.  That doesn't make them worthless.

Think of your car: it requires constant upkeep to keep it running over its lifespan, but after a certain point the cost of maintaining the vehicle outweighs the expected longevity, and you start contemplating buying a new car.

It's the same with technology.

6.)  What Can I Blame Apple For?

You can blame Apple for not being upfront about this issue and explaining it customers before rolling out the updates.  However, as Panzarino puts it:

If you give a user enough rope they will hang themselves, so to speak, by replacing batteries too early or replacing phones that don’t need replacing.

Apple is in a no-win situation.  If it sits back and does nothing, its customers will think Apple doesn't care about their problem and wants them to upgrade to a new phone to solve it.

If Apple releases an update and that fixes the issue by slowing down users' devices, users will say Apple is deliberately throttling them because they want to force their customers to buy new phones.

See how it's a Catch 22?

Whichever side of the fence you lie on is up to you, but please don't abandon Apple based on what you think you know or what the headlines say.  Understand your technology.  You use it every day.  You owe it to yourself.

How 15 Minutes of VR Sold Me On the Future of Video Games

I am not a hardcore gamer.  I enjoy video games, but as the carefree whimsy of childhood gave way to mundane adult responsibility, I've found I have less time to indulge in one of my favorite pastimes.

Due to this constraint, I'm probably pickier about the games I invest my time in than most.  Gone are the days when fancy graphics were enough to capture my $60.  Instead, I tend to gravitate toward something with great characters and compelling stories.  It's also why I've played The Last of Us three times through, but haven't paid full price for a Call of Duty title since Modern Warfare 3.

Gaming in 2017

Big-budget games have few tricks left up their sleeves in 2017.  Tomb Raider was the first title to take my breath away, with huge, seemingly open levels ripe for exploration and relative freedom of movement.  Quake II introduced me to the breakneck intensity of first-person shooters.  The Uncharted series showed me what modern storytelling could look like through a gamer's lens.

In the last console cycle, the Playstation 3 was my go-to entertainment box.  Yet it took me three years from the launch of the Playstation 4 to finally adopt the successive console (in rabid anticipation of Uncharted 4's release).  There was simply no compelling experience that demanded my attention.  Sure, the console was powerful and well-received by gamers and critics, but it boasted little in the way of originality.  In this age where the old is new again, developers continue to churn out "remasters" of old titles, but few are brave enough to explore any wholly new territory.  My PS4, therefore, has seen less and less use as I wait patiently for the next big gaming breakthrough.

Which brings me to this newfangled "VR" everyone's been talking about.

Breaking the VR Wall

In 2015, I built my first gaming rig in almost a decade.  It cost north of $1,000 at the time and it still only barely crests the hardware requirements for Steam's VR Performance Test.  Again, I'm not a "hardcore" gamer, so investing in more capable components doesn't serve any purpose right now.  Had I chosen to go that route, I'd then have to pony up around $500 on a headset and accompanying controllers, at which point I have to decide on which ecosystem (the HTC Vive or the Oculus Rift) I'd be pledging allegiance to.

This is where home consoles have a leg up on PC gamers.  No, they won't blow your mind with resolution or frame rates, but they present a much more affordable entry into VR.  As it stands, Sony is the only mainstream console maker with a first-party VR solution.  Unfortunately, that hardware costs more than the console itself.  Even if you opt for the PS4 Pro at a relatively cheap $300, the PS VR bundle still costs anywhere from $350 to $500.  Granted, this is still cheaper than a VR-ready PC and headset, but it's still not cheap enough that someone who is mildly curious about VR can just decide to "try it out."


Then there's the hardware itself, which often involves a clunky, silly-looking headset and cables dangling from your personage.  Even with the (alleged) convenience of battery-equipped backpacks to carry your hardware, you're essentially tethered to your devices, or at the very least, bearing the weight of them on your back the entire time.

But assuming all these hurdles could be overcome, it's hard for me to picture how VR in and of itself provides a better experience than a standard video game.  With experiences like Doom and Skyrim being remastered for VR, I have to wonder if these "remastered" games really know how to take advantage of the immersion virtual reality provides.

The Experience

All this is to say that when I was offered the chance to experience virtual reality for myself, I approached it with the sort of sardonic smirk that might characterize a person going to watch a magician perform: you know what you're supposed to see, but you'll be looking for the holes in the trick the whole time.

In hindsight, I should've known better.  I love video games, and I love Star Wars.  So getting the chance to fly an X-Wing in the Star Wars Battlefront: Rogue One X-Wing VR Mission is the probably the best chance the platform has of cinching in an irresistible grip.

I won't go into the setup process too much, mainly because everything was set up when I got there.  For those who may not be in the know, the PS VR system requires the eponymous headset, a standard DualShock 4 controller, and the Playstation 4 Camera.  The headset itself was comfortable, though adjusting it could be cumbersome.  Once I was able to focus the lenses, it rested fairly snug on my head.  There was a bit of light coming through the top, but it turned out to be less distracting than I thought it would be.

Sound was provided by a set of earbuds, which I found a little disappointing, but I'm pleased to read that standard stereo headphones can be used with the PS VR headset.

As mentioned, I was handed a DualShock to control the game.  My first reaction was that this would break the suspension of disbelief, since at least part of the VR experience is navigating with sight.  Much to my delight, the folks at DICE took this into account.  I was able to highlight areas on the screen and then press the X button to interact with said object.

This showed me the potential of VR for something beyond flight simulators.  Imagine being on the ground for the Resistance, firing away at uncoordinated stormtroopers.  You battle your way through a vast hangar of assorted starships and decide to hop into an A-Wing and blast into open space.  This is an exciting proposition for future games (looking at you, Battlefront II), but I get ahead of myself.

The initial boarding of the X-Wing happens against a white background with little else going on.  This is probably the best for someone like me, as it helps to acclimate the player to the navigation mechanics.

If you go back to the days of Tomb Raider on the original Playstation, Lara's movement was controlled by the D-Pad.  The dawn of the analog stick should've seemed obvious, considering joysticks were some the earliest arcade input devices players remember, but they are largely absent from early console software titles.  Nowadays, it'd be difficult for players to imagine controlling an avatar exclusively from the D-Pad.

It may sound rudimentary when talking about VR, but being able to turn my head to see something rather than press a button was a nothing short of magical.  This extends beyond simple navigation.  Once I took off in the X-Wing, I was moved along on proverbial "rails" while my squadmates chatted with the obligatory dialogue to set up our mission.  Again, this gave me a chance to lay off the stick and simply take in what was happening.

Being able to lean over and look over the side of the cockpit to see the walls of the ship and the great unknown of space stretching out around me is what made me sit up a little straighter and think, "There might be something to this."  If that wasn't enough, the real fun started when my squad engaged an enemy band of TIE fighters.

The controls for this worked much the same as they do for non-VR skirmishes, but being able to look to my left without turning my ship meant I could lock onto a target, begin firing, and begin thinking about my second target before the first had been extinguished.  This sounds subtle, but it makes a huge difference as to the perceived freedom you have as a player.  No longer am I controlling an avatar flying an X-Wing: I am the avatar.  Little touches like this are what completes the immersion, and I was fully, euphorically invested.

That's to say nothing of the jaw-dropping awe inspired by the arrival of a full-fledged Star Destroyer.  Aside from the sheer scale, I began the fight beneath the massive war machine, but had to circle up top to find the real action.  Creeping around the side of this iconic juggernaut to see the ship at large with my squad heavily engaged with enemy fighters finally gave me the thrill I'd been looking for since my first X-Wing Alliance battle: I was in a Star Wars movie.

I've played plenty of Star Wars games, from flight simulators to first-person shooters and third-person action games.  They were fun, but few could provide the genuine thrill of feeling like I was part of the action.  Say what you want about Battlefront's dubious lack of content; when I fired up the beta for the first time, I felt like finally somebody had gotten it right.  To see this authenticity carried over into virtual reality affirms my hope that this experience--and others like it--are not just fleeting fads in a hyperactive culture.  There's polish here.

The entire mission lasted about 15 minutes, and it is, perhaps, one of the lasting experiences of my life as a gamer.  In the same way that Tomb Raider opened the gateway to fully-realized 3D worlds, Battlefront's (albeit brief) demonstration of VR is a promise of things to come.

Should I Invest in VR?

Feeding off the high of my time as a rebel pilot, thoughts immediately turned to how I could get this experience in my own home.  It wasn't until a few hours later that the (non-virtual) reality brought me back down from the stars.

Firstly, VR isn't going anywhere.  If nothing else, it is becoming only more present in our entertainment.  Phones from Samsung and Google are packaged with VR headsets that supply a trimmed-down experience for those who are curious and budget-conscious.  Other phones are looking for ways to integrate Augmented Reality (AR) into their camera systems, as with Apple's rumored specs for the upcoming iPhone.

But for the average person, VR is still a few years away from being readily accessible.  Perhaps in another year, the hardware will be less prohibitively priced.  There's something to be said for accessories that cost more than the hardware they're designed to run on.

But even if I were to invest in the peripherals, there's the question of software.  As with any gaming platform, it's on worth the software available.  The X-Wing mission makes for a tremendous demo, but I imagine after messing with it for a few hours, I would grow tired of it and want something more.

Granted, I've not kept up with VR games as much as standard console titles, but I'm still waiting on that one experience: the one game that demands that I go out and get a VR headset ASAP.  Selfishly, I'm hoping Battlefront II steps in to fill that gap.  Realistically, we might have to wait a couple more years before developers have enough of a handle on the platform to start creating truly unique experiences that players can't ignore.

Which is fine, as I'll be saving up for that $500 PS VR bundle while we're waiting.

Microsoft Hits the Mark, But Misses the Target

Microsoft recently announced its brand new Surface Laptop, and it is beautiful.  Taking cues from the rest of the Surface line, as well as some of its rivals, the devices looks premium.  Aluminum finish, Alcantara cloth on its keyboard, and an invisible hinge to support that shiny Windows logo on the back, there's no doubt a lot of care was taken in the design.  But while the laptop does a lot right, it's probably not the device to shake up the education market.

Let's start with the obvious: Microsoft has two main competitors when it comes to this market--Apple and Google.  The latter in particular is winning the "edutech" sector by a landslide with devices that may feel compromised to techies but hit the sweet spot of performance and price for large institutions struggling to get computers into students' hands.

Apple on the other hand, hasn't been as successful when it comes to pushing iPads as learning tools en masse.  Lack of a physical keyboard, the limitations of iOS, and the fact that even the cheapest model iPad introduced earlier this year is still more expensive than the average Chromebook are all barriers Cuptertino has struggled with.  Where Apple has succeeded is with the higher education crowd: MacBooks are one of the most popular brands of laptop among college students, even as they face increasing competition from Dell, HP, and yes, Microsoft.

So is the Surface Laptop the device that finally gets Microsoft into an already fierce market?

We'll begin with what the Surface Laptop does right (and it does a lot right).

As mentioned before, there's the design.  For a device geared toward those most likely to abuse their machines while lugging them from class to class (and dorm to dorm), it's the first thing that hits you about these computers.  "Sleek", "sexy", and "shiny" are three words that spring to mind.  I'm not sure I've ever been a fan of the cloth keyboard (I'd much rather have a sturdy aluminum bezel), but that's a small point on an otherwise elegant look.

The attention to detail extends even beyond the exterior, as Microsoft has found a way to place the speakers under the keyboard proper, eliminating the need for speaker grills (something that maximizes the limited space of such a small PC), and allowing the sound to flow through the cloth to the user's ears.  It's not the lightest laptop on the market at 2.7 pounds, but it shouldn't put too much stress on what is likely an already full school bag.

Second in the win column is hardware.  Unlike Apple's ultra-thin MacBook--which uses the lower-powered mobile Intel processors (albeit with the added benefit of a fan-less design)--Microsoft's offerings come with the "latest" Core i5 and i7 CPUs.  It's safe to say they will offer a solid power boost as they are already touted to be up to 50% faster than the current model MacBook Air.  The devices are configurable with up to 1TB of SSD storage and 16GB RAM, though you'll have to step up to the significantly more expensive Surface Book if you want the extra horsepower of a dedicated GPU.

The screen is also similar to others in the Surface lineup, with the folks from Redmond claiming the pixel density equates this smaller machine to a 14" laptop as far as virtual workspace goes.

This is an all-around solid machine.  So what could possibly go wrong?

For starters, there's no USB-C port.  That may sound like a godsend to those who have thus far resisted the forward-momentum of the standard.  It's certainly a stark contrast to Apple's all-in stance on the port.  But for those who have already begun to use USB-C as their day-to-day port, its exclusion here only ensures that we have several years of awkward dongle-switching ahead, especially as more and more smartphones have adopted it as their charging port of choice.

In it's place are a standard-sized USB 3.0 port and mini DisplayPort.  I'm sure these were included in the interest of convenience, and not to please the bleeding-edge tech crowd.

Then there's Windows 10 S: the natural successor to the ill-fated Windows RT platform of the early Surface days--with one important change.  Much like its ancestor, Windows 10 S is designed to run only the apps available from the Windows Store.  This has the advantage of ensuring everything that's running on your PC has passed through Microsoft's (presumably) stringent seal of approval for maximum performance and security, but also nixes the ability to download programs from various websites; even the legitimate ones.

Unlike with Windows RT, where many users were incredulous at finding out the OS's restrictions only after they'd invested in the device, Microsoft is doing its best to make those limitations clear from the get-go.  It's also probably safe to assume that the applications students use most are not only available via the store, but in the case of the Office suite, are included in the price tag: a one-year subscription to Office 365 comes with every Surface Laptop.

And for those that still feel cheated by a "stripped-down" version of Windows, Microsoft will allow customers to upgrade to full-fledged Windows 10 Pro for an extra $50.  That's a pretty good deal if you absolutely need the flexibility of pure Windows, and it takes the Surface out of the niche category of being "for students" and throws it right into the crosshairs of the competition like Dell's XPS 13, HP's Spectre x360, and Apple's MacBook and MacBook Air line.

Yet even if you were to jump through all those hoops, there's still one more hurdle: price.

By the time I'd reached this point in writing the first draft of this post, Microsoft had launched its pre-order site for the Surface Laptop.  Given the specs and premium design, the results shouldn't be too surprising.  The base Core i5 model with a measly 4GB RAM and 128GB SSD storage starts at $999.  Prices continue to rise as you graduate all the way up to the i7 model with 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD.  That last configuration clocks in at $2,199.  At that point you're entering the range of the Surface Book or even the MacBook Pro.  It's unfair to compare this machine to the MacBook Air (whose maximum configuration--Core i7, 8GB RAM, 512GB SSD--is just $1,549) as that model is still running Intel's 2015 chipset.

Whether it's due to our expectations or Microsoft's uncompromising design, it's clear this device will not serve as competition to the influx of Chromebooks in schools today.  During his presentation, Microsoft VP Panos Panay said many times that these devices were meant to last students from their first day of orientation to their graduation.  That's all well and good, but it leaves gradeschool students with Chromebooks as the substitute.

In that sense, Microsoft and Apple have jumped into the same boat.  College students already have plenty of options when it comes to laptops, and some are already using Chromebooks as their main devices.  Whether it's researching via Google, creating documents in Docs, or saving files to Google Drive, Chrome OS is a platform that feels more and more complete as wifi access becomes increasingly ubiquitous.

That being said, there's simply no compelling reason to buy from Microsoft unless you absolutely can't live without the Office suite or insist on owning the sexiest laptop money can buy.

Let's take Apple out of the equation and just look at other Windows laptops.  Sure, they may not look as pretty, but they run native Windows.  $50 is not a lot of money when you're spending thousands already, but it's yet another fee to use something that comes standard with other, less expensive laptops.

It's clear that the Surface line is meant to represent the "flagship" of Windows devices the way Google's Pixel line is mean to represent the very best of Chrome OS-based hardware.  The real star of the show is Windows 10 S, which is meant to inspire manufacturers to produce cheaper devices for Microsoft's "walled garden."  The Surface Laptop is not that device.

What's puzzling, however, is that the system requirements for Windows 10 S and full Windows 10 Pro are almost identical.  That's not to say Windows 10 is a demanding OS, but the Windows brand is not something casual users will associate with a Chrome OS caveat.  Until third-party manufacturers start churning out competitively priced machines to stand side-by-side with Chromebooks, it's going to be difficult to convince less educated Windows users to shell out a premium for a device running an operating system that handcuffs you out of the box.

The real danger, though, is that Microsoft is continuing to allow students at younger ages to grow up in a world that doesn't need Windows.  Even if the hardware is priced to match those of even the cheapest Chromebooks, it's going to become more and more difficult to convince people to shell out a $50 premium for a device that doesn't appear to do anything their Chromebooks don't.  You could argue that Microsoft has the ever-reassuring edge of compatibility on its side with most of the world still clinging to the Office suite, but you could also argue that the generation coming after us will do most of its work in a browser and we'll eventually become less and less reliable on file types and more dependent on simply having wifi access.

I'm sure Microsoft's got plenty of money to play with, so this isn't a make-or-break product launch.  This is simply growing the Surface brand, and it's an enticing entry for someone who is in the market for a solid, slinky laptop.

Unfortunately, Microsoft may too late to the party to fundamentally change the vibe.