Evidence of meeting #97 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 42nd Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was apple.
A video is available from Parliament.
Regional Counsel, Canada and Latin America, Apple Canada Inc.
—for newer devices? That's an interesting question, but our sales always go up in the month of December because it's Christmastime.
Liberal
Regional Counsel, Canada and Latin America, Apple Canada Inc.
We came out with new devices also this year, the 8 and the 10 just before Christmas, so we're not sure.
Liberal
Terry Sheehan Liberal Sault Ste. Marie, ON
I guess that's something we could probably pull because it's a public company. We could probably see the numbers for ourselves if we wanted to.
Regional Counsel, Canada and Latin America, Apple Canada Inc.
Apple Canada is not a public company. It's a private company.
Regional Counsel, Canada and Latin America, Apple Canada Inc.
You would have to look at the Apple Inc. sort of aggregate numbers.
Liberal
NDP
Brian Masse NDP Windsor West, ON
Apple reported that the final quarter 2018 was the most successful quarter in its history from a revenue standpoint of $88 billion. That equates to a $20-billion profit, also a record for Apple.
Liberal
Terry Sheehan Liberal Sault Ste. Marie, ON
Thank you, Brian.
Continuing on with the ideas of either replacing the battery or buying a new phone, there was another solution that was posted on your website. You were going to issue an iOS software update with new features that give the user more visibility on the health of the iPhone battery. Has that happened yet?
Regional Counsel, Canada and Latin America, Apple Canada Inc.
I mentioned that. That's iOS 11.3. It's in public beta now. It's going to be released in the springtime. It's going to give the user more information about their battery.
We already do provide a lot of information on our support pages, on our website, but under 11.3, you'll be able to see on your phone the state of the battery and the performance. If you wish to have these features on, it will turn on the performance management, and it will notify you when it's time to replace your battery.
Liberal
Terry Sheehan Liberal Sault Ste. Marie, ON
Okay, so that has been going ahead to circumvent many of the issues that are going on.
I think I'm running out of time, Mr. Chair.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy
Yes, you have run out of time.
We're going to move to Mr. Longfield.
You have five minutes.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Thanks, Mr. Chair.
I really appreciate your coming in. It's a difficult thing to try to answer the range of questions. It feels like question period all of a sudden, so I thank you for doing the great job you're doing in keeping up with us.
I want to come more to the technical side. I started talking about this last time and ran out of time.
When you have so much available power, and from that power you're getting outputs, and depending on the number of applications, you're going to be able to operate at different speeds, from what I understand, the more you enhance the product, the more power you're going to be taking in order to drive the product.
As I mentioned, I was a machine designer in my previous life, and people would add things to my machines and then call me because it had shut down, breakers were thrown, and whatever else. You described the slowing down of the system so it could accommodate more things. You can do more things, but you have to sacrifice something in order to do that with the current design. I can empathize with the designers. Now you have a solution that wasn't available before so you can say that you could let the customers know when the conditions are changing or putting them into a risk mode so that they can choose whether to shut down or go more slowly. It sounds like the designers have been working in the background on the physical limitations because of the combination of what you're trying to do, how many applications you're trying to run, and what temperature you're operating at.
Am I summarizing the technical side of this?
Regional Counsel, Canada and Latin America, Apple Canada Inc.
Yes. This is how it was explained to me—and I'm no engineer. The engineers developed a look-up table that is looking at different things. It's looking at the workload that the user is putting on it. Are they watching something or playing games? Then they're looking at the ambient room temperature.
Now, I mentioned cold temperatures, but the iPhone device will also shut off if it's extremely hot. That's a safety feature that's always existed. It's looking at ambient room temperature. It's looking at the chemical age of the battery, as batteries do age. Then it's looking at the charge status of the battery. It's dynamically operating, and as you said exactly, it's shifting energy in some place to compensate for something else. If it changes, it changes.
It's also really important to say that this doesn't happen to everybody all the time.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
It sounds to me like it's a technical problem.
There was a news item today. A competitor's product—not an Apple product—got too hot on an airplane and burned a person who was operating the unit at the time. It sounds like physical characteristics are what we're bumping up against here, and you're working on some technical solutions.
I used to take the blame for people trying to get more horsepower than a machine could provide, and I had to explain horsepower. You can only get so much out of Mother Nature and especially when losses start increasing because of the age of the product.
On the testing of the units, then, over the range of temperature, is there a standard minimum temperature? I know when we used products out of Europe they tested at a slightly higher temperature than what we were testing in Canada and we had to make allowances for lower temperature operations.
When you're operating out of California, is there a global standard for temperature, where you're going from -20° to 40°, or something along those lines?
Regional Counsel, Canada and Latin America, Apple Canada Inc.
I could probably take this away and try to get you more comprehensive answers, but what I can tell you is that the testing.... We have the same devices everywhere in the world and we have standards that we have to meet, different standards in different countries. What we do is make sure that we comply with all of them—
Regional Counsel, Canada and Latin America, Apple Canada Inc.
—so we have to be testing very vigorously for all the various situations in order to make sure that we meet all the standards that are required.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Yes.
The technical comparisons in terms of marketing are probably not something you would normally market, for example, how many more features you're running on your phone compared to other phones, because—
Regional Counsel, Canada and Latin America, Apple Canada Inc.
—the user experience is so different.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Right.
I wanted to put that on the table. I think I'm sympathizing possibly more than some of my colleagues because of my working in a field of trying to get as much power out of a machine as you can, and at some point you can't get any more power without changing something.
Regional Counsel, Canada and Latin America, Apple Canada Inc.
I think you would also agree that you'd rather keep the hydraulic machines that you're familiar with running than have them unexpectedly shut down.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Absolutely. The worst failure you can have is an unexpected failure. It's better to have a predictable failure in any event, even on a phone.