The new iPhone 14 smartphones are on display at an Apple Store at The Grove in Los Angeles, Friday, Sept. 16, 2022. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
On March 1, Apple will start charging an extra $20 for battery replacements on out-of-warranty iPhones, according to an update on the AppleCare+ webpage.
The new price will be $99 for the iPhone 14, and while these models are currently under warranty, they won't be after the one-year anniversary of their release in September 2023.
At that point, the higher price point could encourage customers with broken batteries to simply buy a new phone rather than shell out nearly $100 for a replacement part.
Apple has adjusted prices multiple times in recent years, as supply chain issues have raised production costs. Just last month, labor unrest at an iPhone supplier in China led to a production shortfall. The company struggled with similar disruptions throughout the pandemic.
There is also a history of consumers pushing back against Apple's practices around batteries. The company in 2020 was forced to pay $113 million in fines to settle consumer fraud lawsuits around a controversy known as "batterygate," in which iPhone users discovered that Apple installed new software that made devices with older batteries operate slower.
In addition, CEO Tim Cook in 2019 wrote in a letter to investors that "some customers taking advantage of significantly reduced pricing for iPhone battery replacements" was partly behind a lower-than-expected iPhone sales.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, is facing a lawsuit from Ohio's attorney general Dave Yost, who said the company misled the public about safety on the platform.
Bitcoin received its first update in four years called Taproot. Unlike the previous bitcoin update in 2017, Taproot has widespread support — in part because these changes involve fairly incremental improvements to the code. Christie Harkin, tech managing editor at CoinDesk, explained what the move could mean for the future of cryptocurrencies as a whole.
Snap has announced a licensing deal with Sony Music, giving its social media platform Snapchat access to the label's entire catalog. The deal now gives the company agreements with all of the major industry labels.
Kyndryl isn't wasting any time as an independent company. Just over a week after spinning off from IBM, the IT infrastructure services provider has announced its first global strategic partner in Microsoft. The two tech giants are coming together to form a new kind of power duo, creating multi-billion dollar revenue opportunities between the companies. Stephen Leonard, global alliances & partnerships leader for Kyndryl, told Cheddar more about the partnership and what it aims to achieve.
Bitcoin has successfully activated Taproot, the cryptocurrency's first major upgrade since 2017 and a highly anticipated change to the blockchain. Taproot will introduce what's known as Schnorr signatures, which will help transactions become more private, efficient and perhaps even less expensive. Robert Hackett, a cryptocurrency expert and journalist, breaks down the new upgrade and what it means for bitcoin users.
Jill is joined by Baker Machado to talk all things infrastructure: where will the money go and who’s in charge? Plus, Sesame Street has its first Asian-American muppet. And a trailer for the trailer for Spiderman. Huh?
