Apple $29 battery deal is for English-speakers only

Europeans have to upgrade or be throttled

It is impressive how easily Apple shuts up journalists. Jobs' Mob managed to convince the tame Apple Press that it was not evil for throttling old iPhones by dropping the cost of battery replacement – but it seems only English and American Apple fanboys will be given the discount.

Germans, Austrians and other Europeans still have to pay €89 plus €12.10 shipping for a new battery. If you add these two numbers together, you end up with €101.1 Euro for Germans or Austrians to do a battery swap. Apple clearly still hopes they will be stupid enough to upgrade instead.

Consumers have their limits, and longtime Apple users around us have reported massive slowdowns in their 18 months of older phones. Apple would come up with an update that would make the phone slower. Apple admitted that it is doing it and offered to swap your battery for $29 and 25 UKP for US and UK respectively. It is almost like Apple wants to punish the rest of the European Union for going after its sweetheart deal with the Irish government.

As for German and Austrian customers, the most significant market in Europe, Apple doesn't seem to care much about hacking off.

Apple might change this at some point, but it looks like unless you rebel against it, you won't get your battery replaced for reasonable money and will have to live with your phone being throttled.

As someone who still assembles its PCs, and has opened phones too, I can confirm that swapping a battery in iPhone is a five to seven minute effort and the battery itself in manufacturing costs is less than $10. For all the millennials reading, a PC is a big box that some of your friends use for gaming or that your parents or grandfather have below the desk.

Apple might have been given a get out of jail free card from negative publicity over its phone throttling. The press is now all over Intel’s strange Spectra bug that might be affecting just about everything, including most popular Intel and even Apple A series processors.