April 2020 • Macworld 5upgrade to newer versions; Apple countered by
saying that it was throttling processor performance
to preserve battery life, although it did not originally
disclose that it was doing so. (In fairness, the
company is far more transparent about this now,
and allows you to turn off the euphemistically
named ‘performance management’ feature.)
How will this affect you?
If you’re from the US and have an affected iPhone,
you stand to gain a small amount of money, even
if you haven’t previously participated or even
expressed any interest in the lawsuits.
Affected models are the iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6s, 6s
Plus, and SE devices (assuming they are running
iOS 10.2.1 or later) and the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus
(running iOS 11.2 or later). In all cases, you need to
have run those iOS versions before 21 December
2017 to qualify.
The payout is estimated to be $25 per device. It
may be a little more or less, depending on how many
people put their hands up - there’s a maximum of
$500m, remember. You can’t apply for the payout
yet, however, because the settlement hasn’t been
approved. But contacting the two legal firms
representing the plaintiffs in the lawsuits – Kaplan
Fox & Kilsheimer and Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy
– is probably the best starting point.
If you’re an iPhone owner in any other part of
the world, you’re unfortunately not eligible for the
payout, although you may benefit indirectly from the
way this influences Apple’s behaviour in the future.