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 $113 million in fines to settle consumer fraud lawsuits around a controversy known as "batterygate," in which iPhone users discovered that Apple installed new software that made devices with older batteries operate slower.
In addition, CEO Tim Cook in 2019 wrote in a letter to investors that "some customers taking advantage of significantly reduced pricing for iPhone battery replacements" was partly behind a lower-than-expected iPhone sales.
After Facebook and its family of platforms were down for nearly eight hours on Monday, other social media platforms like Snapchat saw a surge in usage. The social media platform already popular with teens saw a 20 percent jump in activity during Facebook's global outage.
Google's users will now have extensive greener options. The updated services across platforms will allow users to look for eco-friendly routes in Google Maps, book flights with low carbon emissions, and reduce energy usage at home with Nest thermostats.
The recent California oil spill has wreaked havoc on the shores of Huntington Beach as wildlife habitats and potentially some people have been exposed to the 140,000+ gallons of oil in the ocean. Cheddar News was joined by Dr. Deborah Bronsan, President of Deborah Bronson & Associates to learn more about the environmental dangers and how the area can recover from this tragedy.
Shares for Netflix ($NFLZ) surged on survey data that showed people still saw the streaming platform as offering the best content compared to its competitors. A report by investment banking company Cowen Inc. reported the findings, rating it an outperform, and expects Netflix to garner 3.6 million new subscribers in Q3.
Banks are calling on Apple to lower fees for processing payments. The current model allows the tech giant to collect 0.15 percent on each transaction processed through Apple Pay.
