Linked List: December 21, 2017

Thursday, 21 December 2017

Q&A With New York Times Tech Columnist Brian X. Chen on the iPhone Battery vs. Performance Issue ★

Good piece overall, and a welcome relief from the overwhelmingly sensationalized mainstream news coverage of this story (that largely plays into the “Apple is purposefully making year-old iPhones run slow” narrative), but I thought this answer was a bit off:

I would recommend paying a third-party repair shop to replace the aged battery with a fresh one. This will cost between $20 and $70, depending on where you live and which iPhone you own. Repair shops will probably recommend against installing a battery that has a larger capacity than the original, as there can be risks of damage.

An authorized battery replacement from Apple is $79. I would never recommend a third-party battery replacement.

Update: This answer is a bit clumsy too:

What else could be slowing the older phones down?

Often, a buggy operating system upgrade can cause glitches when running apps. Another common cause is having little available device storage.

Low storage space is a real problem, but “a buggy operating system upgrade” is not really a thing. I think what Chen is trying to say is simply that bugs in iOS can make things so. The throttling feature for declining batteries that has been in the spotlight this week should only kick in when the iPhone is attempting to run at peak performance — that’s why it shows up in benchmarks like Geekbench. If “everything” is slow on your iPhone — like this guy, who claims it took more than 5 seconds just to open the Camera app — something else is wrong with your iPhone.

Vector: iPhone Battery Life vs. Performance Round Table ★

New episode of Rene Ritchie’s Vector podcast:

Apple is sacrificing performance on old, cold iPhone batteries to prevent unexpected shutdowns. The company has been doing it for almost a year but this week it’s making headlines. Geekbench’s John Poole, analyst Ben Bajarin, former analyst Carl Howe, and electrical engineer and Android editor Jerry Hildenbrand discuss what’s happening, why, and what it all means.

Eric Schmidt Stepping Down as Executive Chairman of Alphabet ★

Alphabet press release:

“Since 2001, Eric has provided us with business and engineering expertise and a clear vision about the future of technology,” said Larry Page, CEO of Alphabet. “Continuing his 17 years of service to the company, he’ll now be helping us as a technical advisor on science and technology issues. I’m incredibly excited about the progress our companies are making, and about the strong leaders who are driving that innovation.”

“Larry, Sergey, Sundar and I all believe that the time is right in Alphabet’s evolution for this transition. The Alphabet structure is working well, and Google and the Other Bets are thriving,” said Eric Schmidt. “In recent years, I’ve been spending a lot of my time on science and technology issues, and philanthropy, and I plan to expand that work.”

Seems like this is only making official what had been unofficial for years.