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.
Coming off of a fourth-quarter delivering just over 300,000 cars, Tesla is expected to report tremendous earnings after the bell on Wednesday. Al Root, a senior writer for Barron’s, spoke with Cheddar’s Baker Machado about the anticipated earnings report and speculated about what Elon Musk will discuss during the call with investors, including a Cybertruck update, new factories, a possible new vehicle, and/or new larger form batteries. "There's a menu of things he could talk about, and any combination of those would be good," said Root.
The American Federation Teachers Union has announced its latest partnership with NewsGuard in efforts to help educators play a greater role in deciphering facts from fiction that students see online. They say the goal is to help students build critical-thinking skills while also teaching them the importance of media literacy. Executive Vice President of Partnerships at NewsGuard, Sarah Bandt, joined Cheddar to talk more.
James Whitley, Core Contributor at cypher, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell, where he discusses the underlying factors that support a bounce-back for Bitcoin despite the token's recent slump.
Commercial and residential buildings account for 13% of carbon emissions in the U.S., according to the EPA, and one company says it has a solution. Runwise says it has updated the boiler and heating systems of thousands of buildings, and that its technology not only lowers carbon output but also saves landlords money. Lee Hoffman, Co-Founder and COO of Runwise, joined Cheddar Climate to discuss.
