Immigrants who were bought to the u. S. As children. Those are the headlines the news will continue here on aljazeera but first lets turn ever to inside story. Aljazeera where and youre. Investigating apple prosecutors in france want to know why the company slows down its older i phone its claimed it could be a ploy to get users to upgrade lawsuits are also under way in the u. S. So how will all of this impact on Consumers Trust in apple products this is inside story. Our welcome to the program im Adrian Finnegan for many customers apple of its i phones are the best in the business the ultimate in excellence that was until last month when the company admitted to slowing down older models it said that it was done to protect battery life but users have been told some suspect that there was another motive at the u. S. Senate has demanded answers from apple c. E. O. Tim cook a french prosecutor is also now launched an investigation well get to our guests in just a moment but first the tasha butler reports from paris. In france one in five smartphone users owns an i phone each new model causes much excitement but not everyone is happy with the u. S. Manufacturer a french consumer watchdog has filed an legal complaint saying apple deliberately slows down old i phone models to encourage customers to buy new ones were having that they are doing what we call planned. Since two or two in the purpose for paper to buy a new one if its a Marketing Strategy thing care that we have enough proof to make this. Pope says apple uses Software Updates to slow down its phones the watchdog says recent updates come in sided with the release of the i phone eight in france such a practice is illegal under french law it is a crime to deliberately shorten the lifespan of a product in order to try and force consumers to buy new ones but is found guilty can be punished with a prison sentence a large fine and companies can be forced to pay up to five percent of their annual earnings in paris some apple customers welcomed the investigation. In full its important to know whats going on because we are all hostages of multinationals merits and looking once i bought a new find that i have to charge all the time and the updates make it slower i think its done on purpose even though its illegal here after a flurry of similar lawsuits in the u. S. Last year apple admitted to intentionally slowing down its old phones saying it was done to help prolong battery life some analysts say the company should have been more transparent everyone knows that their phone starts to lose power after a certain time and this is actually quite a clever way of dealing with it was interesting is how its been presented in rather a negative light i think thats apples fault for not communicating better that they were doing this to help their use aljazeera contacted apple in france for comment but has not received a reply faced with a criminal investigation though the stakes here for the tech giant are high the tasha butler ill just sirrah paris. Well as the tasha was saying apple says it slows down phones over time to extend battery life this is the companys statement from december twenty eighth. All rechargeable batteries become less effective as they chemically age apple went on to say that i. O. s updates aim to manage older phones to prevent unexpected battery shutdowns but that can also mean longer launch times for apps and other reductions in performance as a result apple says it will soon issue an update that gives users more visibility into the health of their i phones battery so they can see for themselves if its condition is affecting performance lets bring in our guests then for todays discussion from london were joined by good movie who saw in a tashas report a Technology Writer and blogger hes the author of rebel code linux and the open source revolution from shannon china via skype wang boyan a writer for tech know the english language publication that covers chinas Tech Industry and from new york were joined by dean crutchfield a branding expert welcome to you all gentlemen lets start with you then does apples explanation as to why theyve throttled back performance on some i phone models make technical sense does it stand up to scrutiny i think it does and theres an important point to make here which hasnt been drawn up enough people are talking about phones being slowed down and apple has said that it does do that but only in certain circumstances for example when its drawing excessive power from the battery so this is not about slowing down phones all the time its about certain moments as you rightly mention when you launch an up when you scroll through things then you may see some slowing down so its not true that they are slowing down their phones in general they are stopping the peak power causing problems so basically apples introduced a performance slowdown to mask some times some points when youre using the phone youll notice the slowdown to mask a deficiency in Battery Power the Computing Power of the phone hasnt changed it hasnt got any any slowing what are the ethics of this. I mean personally i think as i said in the exit of the show before that apple has communicated this extraordinary badly they could have said and should have said we are trying to help people use their phones for longer actually extending the life instead they made this change without telling people and that was the big mistake i think one brand in. Apple has apologized for its poor handling of the issue its cut the price of a Battery Replacement but if this throttling is is Software Controlled is a new battery going to restore performance to my i phone yes yes just as yours there was a new battery is replaced on z. The old device is the performance will return to its you know the old standard ok this isnt then as far as youre concerned a case of programmed obsolescence as some people have suggested in indeed the. France taking a serious look at that issue apple isnt deliberately slowing older phones in order to get us all to buy a new i phone. I think this is you know this is a battery problem theres no other processor problem so the promise about the battery runs the batteries on is you know. Chemical ends so at home in order to extend its last friend so apple have to scar you know slow down. That the proforma is a little bit too you know save the battery life is just like you know went with the new used car. We have if you are running windows on a laptop you have for the battery you have a three options like Energy Saving average and was brought up you know you can trust that i think these are the same functions as you know in i phone as you know. I think rush failed in new york. Is apple going to lose sales to use this negative publicity whats the fallout going to be for the company the loss of faith couple i suppose with the realisation that a customer can replace a battery for what thirty dollars and restore performance rather than spend one thousand dollars on a new one. Me im well theyre mean this is not a Technology Issue this is not a product problem this is a this is about apples brand and their consumers love for that brand that their Consumers Trust in that brand so that the big question here is is this a close shave or a deep cut and i believe apple is bleeding and their response so far adds to the momentum of the of the of the chatter thats going out there i think bezos often says a brand is what people say about you when they leave the room and theres a lot of people talking about apple right now so this is a much bigger problem than i think they anticipate it could be i think therefore they have to but they have to behave in a way that recognizes that crisis can be like a bomb for a brand like apple and it can actually create a lot of problems in terms of peoples perception of their brand so its not what you say its what you do and heres the interesting thing if that product strategy was meant to benefit the consumer how come it wasnt communicated or conveyed in any of the collateral any of the information the surrounds the product and theres a lot of information about it so why have consumers been duped into thinking theres something wrong with their phone its the first major hardware issue didnt it the i phone on the c. E. O. Tim cooks watch how much responsibility for the poor handling of the issue does he have to accept you only have one throat to choke on as the c. E. O. Ok. Cannot all. Be criticized for timing major upgrades of its operating system to coincide with the release of new phones is that it is is that ultimately behind this issue well not really in the sense that is the natural time to do it if youre launching new phones you tend to launch new software and therefore people on the older phones want to have some of those benefits and there for you again you could argue that theyre actually doing the users a favor i mean i agree that this is really about batteries i think is a very important point to using i dont see how its a favor i just dont get it. Because you given the new features i mean when you upgrade the software on a new phone the old folks in the slowdown by some of those retailers their phones being slowed down so. They dont know that only because the battle is all or as im just about to say i dont know how to say point is you know you should be able to change your battery more easily but the issue is how easily you can change or bashing i think apple and other money factors have been up fault in not make it clear that by changing your battery more more accurately you can actually boost the performance of your phone and they should make that easier and they should right that cheaper and so thats the really big issue here and it affects all manufacturers didnt i mean you know apple has sort of other men have never promoted the initiative to other manufacturers a just as apple do make phones that have no user upgradeable parts unlike the old days where when batteries could be removed i mean to some extent this is a problem of their own making isnt it absolutely i think that they got themselves in this trouble and they need to get themselves out of the way theyre reacting right now is slow its very corporate its very self interested theyre taking a fifty thousand foot view and theyve got to get down to fight for where the consumer is and how frustrated that consumer really is thinking about apple thats a major problem theyve got to get down to the consumer level and understand how theyre feeling dean what would be the implications for a politically lost any of the class action lawsuits currently filed against it on this issue or even if it was found guilty of planned obsolescence it in france where as we were hearing earlier its a legal. They were i think it would have a very detrimental impact on their brand in a very detrimental impact on their wallet but their wallets pretty big here the bigger issue is their Brand Reputation that is as we know worth billions of dollars and that could be impacted by this debacle so really they need to be very mindful of that that the success of apple isnt because of the company its because of their consumer that loves the apple products and here were hearing that the the actual apple products are being slowed down without consumers knowing so i think that makes it rather opaque and i think you know the other the other guest here we are looking at apple to be more transparent what i want to hear is hide nothing tell all whats been going on here and why have you been doing it this way then you want to respond to that but by i absolutely agree im a great fan of transparency and i think if this leads to apple and all manufacturers being more transparent than i would be a tremendous gain for the consumers because they will see whats going on in the devices which they own at the moment apple and other companies are treated almost as if you dont own the device and you just sort of get it by favor of the companies so we need more transparency and we need something theres a movement called right to repair you should have a right to repair the things that you buy and that means putting in new batteries putting in new screens at the moment are poor and other Companies Make that very hard and i think thats got to change and i would avoid a lot of these kind of problems were. You very patient sir no i know you want to comment on this did you want to respond to what youve heard. Yeah speaking of transparency i think you know i just think starting from two thousand and eight i would you know begin to i begin to use the. Back book running like a macro s. Theres a beauty editor inside the mac book you know in the head that users if their batteries how is our house e always need to be replaced i think they were asked its just lack of its function is this is it it is nice the transparency you know there is indicator inside i. I. S. To tell people if your battery is you know a factor in your whole performance on your phone and your battery maybe you need to be replaced yeah i think thats what transparency on this device on is Consumer Product least samsung has a two Year Warranty on all of its smart phone batteries and it is two years what youd expect a smart phone battery to last. You know it if the battery can be replaced but you know no matter from you know yourself are from the consumer you know the Consumer Services i think you have two years is. Is that good less than normal battery yes when it should people who spend a thousand dollars on a new i phone x expect to experience similar performance issues in two years from now is the battery in their devices ages. I think you probably can because its in the nature of this technology if you think about it its pretty crazy to go to a lump of metal that Stores Electricity inside your phone its a miracle it works at all so i dont think theres any way to guarantee that it wont happen for however advance a technology but one thing i would say is that i think people need to start asking do they really need to upgrade because theyve got these amazingly powerful pieces of technology in their pockets or effectively supercomputers in their pocket why do they keep needing to upgrade and its obviously part is to the kind of apple magic but maybe Society Needs to start asking do we need to have this upgrade cycle dean its obvious that consumers are pretty angry about this issue however we dont expect our cars to go on forever without seeing some sort of drop in in performance so why should we expect we expect our phones to do so yes i mean you know with a car you get it you get a warranty you get a fill you get a twenty thousand mile one hundred thousand mala hundred fifty thousand Mile Warranty its proactively offered to you to have your car as it were upgraded or checked to make sure its still working and all the back lights are working so it offers it to sampson offers you a two Year Warranty what we have here is apple offering nothing and including no information about the very fact that it exists so thats the issue its opaque they need to become transparent this issue will force transparency because customers are going to be clamoring for them to be more open and to be more transparent and the fact is all of this litigation thats going to be coming against them is going to force them also to be more transparent what is their next step what are they going to offer beyond a cheaper Battery Replacement wheres the warranties wheres all that information and wheres that offer there in one thousand dollars is a major investment for most people but are consumers naive to expect. Their phones to last more than twenty four months to still feel brand new after two years. Well as you say its a lot of money but the technology is amazing but i think they do need to think whether they need to upgrade it or whether its good enough i mean personally i dont upgrade my phone for five or six years because it does everything i need and why do people upgrade i mean if they need it and its good money is worth spending but if they dont then as you say its a lot of money and one of the going to get for dean is apple a victim of its own marketing here me consumers are buying into apples premium quality and brand states is therefore they expect the exceptional and here we have apple facing a crisis that it appears not to know how to deal with exactly i think thats you know this is this is theyre taking a very corporate stance that showing lots of self interest in terms of protecting themselves and protecting their Business Strategy and thats the accusation is this a deliberate Business Strategy with obsolescence in these phones that will make people perceive the need to buy a new phone because they dont know whats actually happening with it caused by apple so to me its a Crisis Management situation theyre not handling it very well the top line of any crisis is hide nothing tell all and guess what theyve been hiding this for ages and they havent been telling us about so its a really massive floor in their response that theyve been caught short and the very fact that theyre doing these reactionary issues like cheaper back to a place once in a sense is except in seville to silence and those that will be picked on by those people who are looking to take him to court or its a lets imagine you are speaking to him cook right now that we had him on the program what would you say to him. I would say to him that youve got to youve got i like to call it a prep strategy you know whats the purpose of the you know of why you were doing the she said that what was the reason was it for you was it for the consumer or was it for the phone let me understand give me some examples you know whether its i phone four i phone six what are we talking about here and then get back to the purpose of apple wanting to satisfy its consumers and to do everything it can to make that satisfaction to deliver it so i think thats what they need to do but clearly hide nothing tell all is going to be very awkward for them because of the situation legally where they dont want to be accepting too much because of the implications that has for the court of the court of Public Opinion likely coming back with a guilty verdict would you would you agree with that i mean what would your advice to tim cook be well i certainly do agree that transparency has to be the way forward and i would also urge him to be proactive in letting people do what they want with their own equipment this idea that they have a right to a pair of apple could as spouse that and say look were on your side we believe that you do have the right to repair things as you wish then i think that that would help to forge stronger bonds with its customers and i think other manufacturers need to do the same hopefully we could see a very competitive situation whereby more and more manufacturers would bend over backwards to make it easy for their customers to do this kind of thing because that way they have a far better handle on whats happening with their equipment and also that have the options to repair things. Apple is a very wealthy company is it too focused on profit do you think. Well i think that you know its an amazingly oiled machine it does extraordinarily well it has analysts and shareholders to answer to and therefore most corporations are tied to their shareholder returns but apples always been positioned to be loved by its consumer so i think we have a question here with that could be challenge that basic idea of trust the idea of this excellence product excellence and marketing excellence and brand excellence suddenly were seeing the veneer crack and people are able to peer behind that and theres some stuff down there the were not we dont like looking at and it doesnt look that good and this is exactly that so to glens point the idea of transparency and more flexibility in people maintaining their product i think already here that ship already left theyre just going to have to catch up with it and get on board because theres no way were going back weve got theyre just going to have to catch up with it and get on board because theres no way were going back were Going Forward now and the customer is going to demand that transparency and theyre going to be demanding clear product strategies when they buy their next phone in terms of the warranty Battery Replacement except for they want to be honest and transparent and apple has not been one boy would you agree with this is this a Pivotal Moment for apple i mean it is the number one brand most phone users in the world turn to the most expensive expensive brand to buy. People would like to assume that theyre buying say for the largest quality and a long jetty design need to change you know from history are sure. You know apples quick to progress has. Lost you know their internally or from at all since. The very apple products have is was you know. A folder full of battery gate so come back to a gate they have a conversation like you know quite a burden Battery Price i think that is there you know. If there are corelli gas. Many of us or our i phone uses a lot of us a bugged by the fact that i phones arent running as quickly as as they as they used to what are we to do what would your advice be i mean its one thing about getting the battery replaced there are five people in my household thats going to cost us a lot of money to get our batteries upgraded or replaced do we do we wait do we do we buy new phones what we do whats your advice i would advise yes of trading the battery i think its the simplest and most effective way of Getting Better performance as another reason why apple and the other manufacturers should be offering batteries as cheaply as possible because it is the easiest way to get better performance from your products the fact that they try and turn into a Profit Center i think is unacceptable because they shouldnt be price gouging people for something that should be a basics of necessity for upgrading our product did i asked you earlier about your advice for apple what about your advice to apple consumers then what what what what would people who perhaps have hell i mean honestly take a stand i think. Your trust has been look trust is clearly being eroded here you know when theres a problem with the toyota car you know as weve seen and the kill function and bolts wagons cars you took your car in and you got a free upgrade you didnt have to spend any money on that correction that they made a problem with that they admitted they fixed it heres a situation where deliberately apples been slowing down peoples phones theyve been perceiving they not being right to me is a is it enough to reduce the cost of the Battery Replacement or should you be obliged just to replace it if the customer so wishes i think its going to get to that point where theres an expectation i shouldnt be paying you for a Battery Replacement because youve never made it clear in your collateral that thats something i would need to do so now that i am aware of that and its been a deliberate strategy on your part you need to be responsible for that and i dont think i should pay for that replacement all right gentlemen there im afraid were going to have to leave it thank you all for being with us skin moody. And dean crossfield as always thank you for watching dont forget you can see the program again at any site just by going to the website at aljazeera dot com for further discussion on this join us at our Facebook Page thats at facebook dot com forward slash a. J. Inside story and you can also join the conversation on twitter our handle at a j inside story for me adrian figure the whole team here though thanks for watching ill see you. Coveted beyond wealth thank you very much taken without hesitation. And died. Our defines our. People in power investigate exposes and question the use and abuse of power around the globe at this time on aljazeera. 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