Someone at Apple Needs to Be Thrown in the Slammer

When the new version of the iPhone operating system came out, many users thought that their phones were significantly slower. They believed that Apple intentionally slowed down the older phones to force users to buy new phones. 

Because, face it: at this point in the iPhone's product cycle, new phones aren't that much better than the old ones, so who needs to buy a new one every year?

But Apple's business model depends on customers buying new phones every year -- phones that cost $500 to $1,000. Without repeat customers, Apple's gigantic profits would evaporate very quickly.

So Apple told the customers they were imagining things. But the customers were right! Apple is intentionally slowing down older phones:

The difference was highlighted in a recent Reddit post — and it was quantified in a blog post at Geekbench, the processor bench-marking company.

Older phones operate more quickly if they're using older versions of Apple's iOS operating system, Geekbench found.

Faced with the evidence, Apple has now admitted what they are doing. They claim, however, that they're doing it to reduce strain on the battery to prevent the phone from shutting down.

Now, users could simply buy a new $80 battery and solve the problem completely. But Apple doesn't make much profit on batteries; they'd rather sell a new phone for ten times more.

Devoted Apple customers have long been accused of being saps and suckers for putting up with Apple's high prices and atrocious business practices. The company does have nice products, but they're not that much better than the competition. It's the Apple cachet that they're selling.

Apple is is a particularly rapacious corporation. They have reassigned the Apple IPs to subsidiaries in foreign countries to avoid paying state and federal taxes. They build their phones in factories in Asia where workers are essentially slaves. California has subsidized Apple with billions of dollars of infrastructure and college educations for their engineers. But because of the tax shenanigans, Apple pays California basically nothing in taxes.

Apple has parked hundreds of billions of dollars in profits in overseas banks, repeatedly borrowing billions of dollars to repurchase stock and give shareholders dividends. (Why borrow? Because they can deduct the interest and reduce their tax liability!) The Republican tax bill will be a huge windfall for Apple, and its wealthy shareholders, and will lower Apple's tax burden even further.

And because Trump's tax cut taxes overseas profits at half the rate, it will encourage Apple to move even more design and production overseas. Americans will lose more jobs to foreigners so Apple's CEO can rake in more cash.

What can we learn from this? Corporations have no loyalty to this country or its customers. They overcharge customers for overhyped products, they pay no taxes, and then they screw over the customers with all kinds of rotten gimmicks, like slowing down their phone CPUs.

These people don't deserve a tax cut. They deserve a ten-year jail term for fraud.