At Apple, our customers’ trust means everything to us.
During the past few days we’ve read everywhere news, articles and forum posts complaining about Apple’s big mistake of slowing-down older iPhones without informing anyone.
Yesterday (December 28th, 2016), Apple posted an apology letter to its official website called: “A Message to Our Customers about iPhone Batteries and Performance“.
In this letter the company constantly apologises starting with
“We know that some of you feel Apple has let you down. We apologize.” – Apple
Apple mentions that they 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.
“Our goal has always been to create products that our customers love, and making iPhones last as long as possible is an important part of that.” – Apple
The letter also contains a synoptic explanation about how batteries age, how they decided to take those actions and what actions they took in order to bypass the problem of unexpected shutdowns.
“It should go without saying that we think sudden, unexpected shutdowns are unacceptable. We don’t want any of our users to lose a call, miss taking a picture or have any other part of their iPhone experience interrupted if we can avoid it.” – Apple
Apple also states that they have been reading the user feedback of the past few days. In order to address their customers’ concerns, to recognize their loyalty and to regain the trust of anyone who may have doubted Apple’s intentions, they’ve decided to take the following actions:
- Apple is reducing the price of an out-of-warranty iPhone battery replacement by $50 — from $79 to $29 — for anyone with an iPhone 6 or later whose battery needs to be replaced, starting in late January and available worldwide through December 2018. Details will be provided soon on apple.com.
- Early in 2018, they will issue an iOS software update with new features that give users more visibility into the health of their iPhone’s battery, so they can see for themselves if its condition is affecting performance.
- The team is working on ways to make the user experience even better, including improving how they manage performance and avoid unexpected shutdowns as batteries age.
“At Apple, our customers’ trust means everything to us. We will never stop working to earn and maintain it. We are able to do the work we love only because of your faith and support — and we will never forget that or take it for granted.” – Apple