Student 1) I'm honestly not sure if I believe if the settlement of the Apple Inc., class action lawsuit was ethical or not. The reasoning behind this is I personally believe that what apple did was unethical. I say this because I feel like they took the easy route out. When apple made the decision to go forward with the settlement, they did not think about the thousands of people who spend $800 plus on new iPhones every year when a new iPhone is released and everyone's phone mysteriously starts to have problems. Apple did not even let their customers know they possibly qualified for a free $25, I found out from TikTok. These examples amongst others all justify how Apple did not think about what was best for their consumers, only what was best for their company. On the other hand, even though this seems unethical, according to Immanuel Kant the decision that Apple made would fall under the Duty-Based Ethics theory. My brief definition of The Duty-Based Ethics theory would be pretty much making the best decision that you think is best because it is your duty to act accordingly, regardless of the consequences you may encounter. Being that apple is a big company they can't consider every customer who has ever bought an iPhone. This is why I am torn between the two because if Apple believes they made the best decision for their company, who am I to say what they did was unethical just because I do not agree with them? I do feel that this topic could go both ways depending on what you believe is ethical. Citiation Lyons, K. (2021, January 25). Apple faces yet another lawsuit over throttling iPhones. The Verge. https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/25/22248408/apple-class-action-suit-throttling-iphone-europe Edited by Terriah Matthew on Feb 12 at 4:48pm Student 2) I think the settlement of the Apple Inc class action lawsuit was unethical. They purposefully slowed down iPhones in order to improve battery life and tried to hide it from users. On top of this the payout for iPhone users is only $25 which is not only a ridiculously small amount but also poses problems. The first problem is that the payout only covers people with iPhone 6, 6 plus, 6s plus, 7, and 7 plus which also taking into account the due date they set at Dec 21, 2017 (Morrison, 2020). This means that anyone who downloaded the update after this will not be covered. The update had caused other problems like shutdowns for many of these models than Apple would want to admit. Apple lied to their customers about this update and came clean stating they did it to help old batteries. This however had a negative effect on people because it forced many to spend money to upgrade to a new phone when it was not necessary. Another issue was that the court set aside 30% of the lawsuit for Apples attorney fees which is completely unethical because Apple is benefiting from this action, which is suppose to be restitution. Even though Apple came out with an update to help this problem they still tried to hide this from their customers which is extremely unethical on the companies part. I think it is unethical because the lawsuit of $500 million which was not even payed in full, Apple had only paid $113 million which is basically pocket change for the company which is estimated to be over $207 billion dollars (Morrison, 2020). Apple has cheated users by intentionally slowing their phones down, the biggest problem is that they did not notify users and only came clean because they were caught. I think the lawsuit should have been more money because many feel cheated, lied to and many were forced to upgrade because their older models were slow. References Morrison, Sara. “Apple's $500 Million IPhone Settlement, Briefly Explained.” Vox, Vox, 2 Mar. 2020, www.vox.com/recode/2020/3/2/21161524/apple-iphone-500-million-settlement-throttling-class-action-lawsuit.