It’s been recently announced that the tech giant Apple has tentatively agreed to a whole $500 million to be paid as settlement for its hand in slowing down its older devices. The settlement plan envisages small payouts for many iPhone users in the US aggrieved by the company’s actions, as well as better compensation for “named class members and attorneys”, The Verge reports.
As under the submitted deal, Apple will be offering $25 to any current or former user of an iPhone that was affected. However, the named class members will be receiving more, either $1,500 or $3,500 in their payout and a huge chunk of $90 million will be going towards the lawyers. “The settlement has a minimum payout of $310 million, so the payment might increase if few people file claims. Conversely, if payments exceed the $500 million cap, each iPhone owner will receive less money”, The Verge states.
The deal was several months in the making, targeting the dozens of class-action lawsuits filed against the company after it had released in a public statement that Apple did slow down older models of their phones. The lawsuits were only consolidated into a single suit only much later in 2018. In an effort to settle this suit, Apple, after months of working out a deal, has only filed it in a Californian Court this last Friday.
Apple’s decision of slowing down the processing capabilities of its older devices created a huge controversy making viral news after it declared the same in a statement to the public. They stated that this was done so that the processors were in a position to work with the aging batteries because otherwise, this could cause random shutdowns each time the CPU performance peaked.
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However, the problem in this situation is not aimed at having such a mechanism in place, but rather it was the fact that the users of the products remained unaware of this being incorporated into the system. This made product users think that their devices were old and that nothing could be done to speed them up. The result was in the users purchasing newer models when they could have, really, just replaced their batteries. This was the catalyst for the situation today.
Just last month the French and Italian authorities have fined Apple a whopping 25 million euros after adequately criticizing Apple’s move in this situation. The Department of Justice in the USA has also announced an investigation into Apple back in 2018.
