It’s been about a month since Apple confirmed the slowing down of older iPhones, and despite apologizing for the fracas and promising to replace old batteries for cheaper, the storm that’s been dubbed ‘batterygate’ hasn’t blown over for the Cupertino-based giant.
Now Apple faces a plethora of lawsuits filed in the US (45 at the last count) and, earlier this month, France announced that the country’s consumer watchdog would be investigating the “deception and planned obsolescence” by the company.
It’s China’s turn now, with the Shanghai Consumer Council requesting an explanation for the battery-related slow-down and how the American company plans to address the issue.
Apple’s apology already states that it will replace old iPhone batteries for $29 (or £25 in the UK and AU$39 in Australia), so what the Chinese investigation hopes to achieve is as yet unclear.
The spectre of a meltdown
Alongside the lawsuits and investigations, Apple is now also facing legal action in the US for Meltdown and Spectre, the CPU vulnerabilities affecting millions of computing devices around the world using modern Intel, AMD and ARM processors, reports MacRumors.
The new lawsuit alleges that Apple knew about the flaws since June 2017 but chose not to disclose this information to the public.
“ARM Holdings PLC, the company that licenses the ARM architecture to Apple, admits that it was notified of the Security Vulnerabilities in June 2017 by Google's Project Zero and that it immediately notified its architecture licensees (presumably, including Apple) who create their own processor designs of the Security Vulnerabilities,” reads the complaint.
Meltdown patches were added to the recent 10.13.2 macOS update, which was released to the public back on December 6, while Spectre will be addressed in the 10.13.3 release that is currently in beta testing.
