In 2011, I received a third-generation Apple TV as a holiday present. I appreciated the gesture, since I was anxious to try Netflix streaming, and perhaps consider renting a movie from iTunes on occasion.

Unlike the original Apple TV, released in 2007, which provided a hard disk drive for storage of media content, the second and third generations had a mere 8GB flash storage, sufficient to manage streaming content. You couldn’t even store your purchased movies on them. For that, you had to rely on your Mac or iOS gadget.

The OS was essentially derived from iOS, as was the A-series CPU. The main difference between these two generations was improved HD support, from 720p to 1080p. Having used both, I can tell you that the difference in picture quality wasn’t all that significant.

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Now that the U.S. Congress wants to meddle into Apple’s affairs in the wake of the iPhone throttling and battery scandal, you can bet the usual fear mongering from certain alleged tech pundits is in full force. Some of this comes from people who proclaim themselves Apple fans; only they have been betrayed because of this, that, or the other thing. Their lives are turned upside down and it’s time to fight back.

Well, perhaps it’s better than opening the nearest window, and screaming at the top of your lungs about your frustrations.

Regardless, I have to wonder: Does the fact that Apple failed to tell you that its 10.2.1 update not only fixed a sudden shutdown problem but lowered performance make you feel betrayed? Are you ready to open that window and throw your iPhone out as a result? Well, perhaps.

So one particular article from this faux Apple fan has it that the company foolishly played into the common conspiracy theory that it deliberately slows down older hardware to fool you into buying the new model. But I wonder why PC makers aren’t being accused of such things. Isn’t it actually true that older Windows computers do slow down over time? But that isn’t necessarily a conspiracy from Dell, HP or the others either. There are troubleshooting steps to speed up worn PCs.

In any case, I’d rather think that Apple’s decision to slow down older iPhones was done with good intentions, but somewhere along the line they failed to properly communicate this fact to users. It’s a classic case of supposedly good intentions having gone bad.

The blogger in question says, “I also find it hard to believe that a step as drastic as inserting code into the iOS platform wouldn’t need to get a green light from those at the highest echelons of Apple, which raises questions about the executive’s fitness to lead the company into the future.”

I wouldn’t suggest that someone be fired over this. Maybe a good dressing down would be sufficient to convey the message, if it isn’t already obvious.

The article goes further, way off into never land, “Then there’s the ‘solution’ that Apple proposed to the problem: the $29 battery replacement. Not only did Apple not consider how users might determine whether they needed to spend the money on having their iPhone’s battery replaced, but no consideration was given to those who had become frustrated by their iPhones and consigned it back to Mother Earth Gaia for recycling.”

Well, actually, Apple’s techs can run a diagnostic test on an affected iPhone to see if the battery is healthy, but it appears that they are replacing them anyway. What more do you want? Well, maybe shorter waits to get your battery replaced. Apple is back-ordered.

One thing that makes sense is to issue refunds to people who already paid full price for the battery replacement, even if it was done by a third-party dealer. All right, the customer should be responsible if the unit was damaged somehow in the replacement process, but otherwise this shouldn’t present a problem. Maybe set a 30-60 day period prior to the announcement? As I said before, though, I don’t see what could be done for people who went ahead and bought new iPhones under the belief the old models were kaput.

However, most people aren’t clinging to every single word on a tech blog, so I suspect the number of users who actually noticed or acted on those slower iPhones isn’t terribly high. One published report did suggest, though, that Apple might lose up to 16 million iPhone sales once users understand that they can replace the battery at a fairly reasonable price when it’s worn.

I accept that some people may not realize that iPhone (and iPad) batteries are replaceable, but I’d think they’d take it to an Apple Store or an independent reseller first to find out what was wrong, why it was running slow. Would they just assume it was broken beyond repair and act without checking? When your TV stops working do you throw it out, or call a dealer or a repair shop? What about the family car when it fails to start?

In any case, the blogger in question concludes that disaster has struck, that “Apple needs to take charge of this situation as soon as possible. Otherwise this is something that we’re going to be talking about for years, and it’s an issue that’s going to haunt Apple each and every time it releases new software. Trust in Apple is now shattered, and it feels like no one at the company cares.”

Evidently he failed to read Apple’s mea culpa: “We’ve been hearing feedback from our customers about the way we handle performance for iPhones with older batteries and how we have communicated that process. We know that some of you feel Apple has let you down. We apologize. There’s been a lot of misunderstanding about this issue, so we would like to clarify and let you know about some changes we’re making.”

That widely quoted message goes on to explain the reasoning behind the decision to throttle performance and the discount battery offer. That, to me, is taking charge of the situation. Sure, perhaps they can do something to manage customers who already acted ahead of this apology, but otherwise it appears Apple has learned its lesson.

But not about activating features without need of a password, evidently. But I’ll avoid the macOS High Sierra glitch that allows you to unlock App Store preferences without a password. At least for now.

As if there weren’t enough political fireworks occurring in Washington, you can bet that Apple will find itself involved, somehow. It all started with what I’ve been calling Throttlegate, the faux scandal that erupted when it was discovered that older iPhones, with failing batteries, were running a lot slower.

It was easy to attach a conspiratorial angle to this development, the theory that Apple deliberately reduced performance on older iPhones to trick you into buying a new one. But it was also discovered that the mere act of replacing the battery fixed the problem.

Apple admitted that it was doing this to regulate power utilization, and thus prevent a possible sudden shut down problem. Supposedly this was done to allow for smoother performance, though it’s obvious that customers should have been alerted as to what was really going on. It’s also curious why iOS doesn’t present an interface to check battery health.

The follow-up message was more detailed, with references to support documents that explained battery technology and its limitations in a consumer-friendly way. Apple dropped the price of replacement batteries from $79 to $29 until the end of 2018, but that evidently wasn’t good enough for some. There are a number of pending class action lawsuits against Apple.

I don’t think that Apple should be giving away free batteries with normal wear and tear. That should only be done for defective product, though I can still see where Apple wanted to be generous with customers to compensate for not fully explaining what it was doing and why.

On the other hand, anyone who replaced the battery in the month or two ahead of the announcement ought to get a rebate. If someone can demonstrate that they went ahead and bought a new iPhone because they wrongly believed the old one was broken, perhaps they should get a refund. But I can’t see how that could be proven. Perhaps just allow people a few extra weeks to return their devices for a refund.

But you know that the powers that be in Washington, D.C. are poised to make political hay of the situation.

So there’s a published report that Senator John Thune of South Dakota, who is chairman of the  Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, wrote a letter to Apple demanding an explanation.

In a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook, Senator Thune stated, “…even if Apple’s actions were indeed only intended to avoid unexpected shutdowns on older phones, the large volume of consumer criticism leveled against the company in light of its admission suggests that there should have been better transparency with respect to these practices.”

All right, they are being attacked for not properly communicating with customers. Apple isn’t the first tech company to be guilty of not providing adequate support information about a maintenance update. The letter also asks that Apple explain whether models previous to the iPhone 6, or the newest models, will be similarly throttled. And why not give the battery away free?

To me, this is little more than political posturing. Apple has already apologized for failing to provide sufficient information, and has promised to do better. There will reportedly be an iOS update this year that will allow you to check battery health on your iPhone and iPad, so you’ll know when it needs to be replaced.

But I understand where one might try to gain brownie points, or believe they might, by putting Apple on the carpet. All Senator Thune is doing, however, is just repeating what’s already been written on the subject, including Apple’s promises to do better.

Maybe he should be writing to Microsoft and asking why they released a patch for the CPU bug, fixing the Spectre flaw, which bricked some older PCs with AMD chips in them. We’re talking there about computers that were rendered inoperable. Whatever you say about what Apple did, all the affected iPhones continued to work. What about Samsung’s handling of the battery flaws that resulted in overheated and smoking batteries in the now-discontinued Galaxy Note 7? They were recalled twice before the company pulled the plug. Is it because Samsung is a foreign company? Well, its hardware still had to receive FCC certification to be sold in the U.S.

Again, I understand why customers who bought batteries at full price from Apple, or a third-party reseller, should get a partial rebate. But it makes no sense to give them away free unless they are defective and the unit is under warranty, and that’s not what is being claimed. Besides, if there were batches of defective batteries that failed even after the original warranty expired, Apple would no doubt make some accommodation to be certain they were replaced at no charge.

I suppose one can suggest that Apple needs to be punished for allegedly misleading customers, although the real “crime” was failing to explain the workaround to deal with the problem of sudden iPhone shutdowns. But it’s not as if the U.S. Congress expects to force a company to give away free smartphone batteries. Maybe call on the Federal Trade Commission next and squander the public’s money on a probe?

In any case, I suspect that Cook will probably write to the Senator, make appropriate assurances of good behavior, there will be some headlines and that, as they say, will be that.

As Apple patches serious long-standing CPU bugs on its iOS, tvOS and macOS gear, they claim you shouldn’t notice any performance dip. Well, maybe a little in Safari, where, after installing the Spectre fix, Apple reported that one web benchmark was reduced by 2.5%. But you can get on with your life as Apple continues to “mitigate” the problem.

But there have been concerns, because Intel claimed that the impact would be in the range of 5-30%. So if it’s not so much on Apple’s platforms, what about the rest of the computing world?

Well, according to Microsoft, PC users with older processors and operating systems will pay the price and see lower performance.

Microsoft claims that people running Windows 10 and PCs with 2016 or later Intel hardware, should only see slowdowns in the single digits. But that means that people with older gear may suffer from far worse results. Microsoft has yet to publish detailed benchmarks, but tech sites have already begun to run their own.

I did catch a set of benchmarks at one site, but it appeared to involve recent or current hardware, and the impact was either insignificant or in the range of 1-4%. Another set of tests at a second site yielded similar results across a battery of benchmarks. Again they involved recent hardware, and that appears to confirm Microsoft’s conclusion that newer PCs would suffer minor losses, probably not noticeable under normal use. But I’d like to see what happens with older hardware, the PCs you’d normally see at many businesses.

Cloud systems may exhibit a worse impact, however. According to Epic games, it’s servers received Meltdown patches, and suffered from a 20% increase in CPU utilization as a result. The Linux server we use for these sites was patched recently and restarted today. I have yet to observe any increase in server load and performance of our sites appears normal. But the system is usually under especially heavy load on Sundays and Mondays, after my two radio shows are posted. I’ll see what happens then.

Obviously if you’re using using Microsoft Office, checking email or using a browser, even a more significant reduction in overall CPU performance may go largely unnoticed. The main impact will be when the hardware is pressed to work harder.

Unfortunately, users with PCs running older generation AMD CPUs may be essentially bricked after the Windows patch for the Spectre bug is installed. Last I heard was that AMD was working with Microsoft to fix the problem, but that means an unknown number of computers were left unusable. When these machines, running Windows 7 or Windows 10, were started up, they’d stall at the startup logo.

I suppose you could say that Apple got off pretty much scot free on this one, except that more fixes are expected, and it’s possible any of them might have a negative impact. It’s not that Apple hasn’t suffered from flawed updates.

In the meantime, it appears that Google and its Android vendors, such as LG, Motorola and Samsung, are working to patch their products. Recent Nexus and Pixel smartphones may have already been updated, or will be shortly.

Regardless, you won’t just suffer from Meltdown and Spectre without doing something. You need to install malware that has been programmed to take advantage of these flaws. Since the bugs went undiscovered for over 20 years, any exploits would have to be of recent duration.

So it goes back to practicing safe computing. Unless you jailbreak your iOS device, there shouldn’t be anything to worry about. Mac users need to download software mainly from well-known sites, or the Mac App Store. Clicking on unknown email links or visiting sites that are off the beaten track could leave you vulnerable to some sort of intrusion, but that’s always been true.

In any case, I’m not altogether certain how this all remained undiscovered for so long. One of my colleagues suggested the use of sandboxing in recent years created the climate where these bugs could be exploited. But you’d think hackers and security researchers have been regularly kicking the tires of operating systems and hardware for years in search of undiscovered flaws.

Why so long?

I don’t want to fear-monger, but if such serious bugs could exist for two decades before being found, just what else is lurking deep within the recesses of those millions of transistors that make up modern computing chips? Will other defects turn up next? Obviously, keeping abreast of security flaws is a 24/7 job, and there are always discoveries and fixes posted by Apple and other companies.

What it goes to show is that no computer is perfect. There are always going to be glitches along the way. Some will impact performance, or cause unstable behavior. Others will, as you’ve seen, open up the hardware or software to security exploits of one sort or another.

As new operating system features are tested, they might reveal other previously undiscovered flaws. At the same time, perhaps this episode will serve as an object lesson for Intel, AMD, ARM and other hardware makers to redouble their efforts to make the products installed in billions of homes and businesses as safe as possible.