An Apple conspiracy theory actually turned out to be true this week, just before the end of 2017, and it still isn’t the craziest thing that happened this year.

2017 has been a rollercoaster for a variety of reasons, but it looks like Apple wanted to go out swinging. What started as a conspiracy theory earlier this month, one that postulated that Apple was actually slowing down older iPhones as the battery life degraded, and was subsequently backed by Geekbench scores showing a correlation, turned out to be true.

Apple is slowing down older iPhones as battery life decays.

If you’ve seen the reactions to this, then you know that the response has been the usual situation: Some folks think this is the worst thing Apple has done (in at least a week), and some think this is a feature worth having in your phone. However, while the feedback is justifiably harsh or positive, depending on how you look at the “feature” and Apple as a company, there is one thing I think they can all agree on. Apple’s lack of transparency usually doesn’t work out in their favor.

Apple is a secretive company. This isn’t breaking news. The company holds its plans for products, both software and hardware, close to its chest. And there’s nothing wrong with that! The company believes that genuine surprise –if it can achieve that– is a genuine marketing boost, and that methodology isn’t going to change anytime soon. However, that secrecy also trickles down to other aspects of the company, and that usually means into areas where the company would be best-served in being transparent.

This is where I’m going to say that I fall firmly in between the two aforementioned camps when it comes to reaction to this particular situation. I think the feature itself, the one where Apple prioritizes battery life –so you can keep your phone longer– over performance isn’t a bad thing. However, it is a bad thing that Apple would rather have customers unhappy with their phone’s performance, and maybe they upgrade to a new phone that isn’t Apple-branded, over just letting them know what’s going on.

Let’s take a sidestep here and address that bit about keeping your phone longer. Apple’s statement yesterday made it clear that this was the goal: They want to make sure that your iPhone doesn’t randomly shut down, and they want to preserve as much battery life as they can. But the Lithium-Ion battery in the iPhone can only take so much — it begins wearing down the moment you first turn on your phone. The more you use it the faster it gets taxed and depletes. There’s just nothing Apple can do about that (oh, except put bigger batteries in their phones, maybe). So it figured out a workaround.

There were write-ups about how Apple designed their iPhones to stop working after a year. “Stop working” insofar that they drop in performance and become unusable so people think “it’s about time for an upgrade!” and, hey, Apple just so happens to have a brand new iPhone for you to consider! I will just say right here that I hope this isn’t Apple’s plan, and that they actually do intend for you to keep your iPhone longer, with this feature meant to help achieve that. But the company does have a yearly refresh cycle and if phones start slowing down around that time, I understand why people might give a side-eye to that “coincidence.”

Still, I’ll say again that I think the feature isn’t a bad one. Some might say that Apple should prioritize performance at all times, even above battery life, and I can understand where they are coming from. I can also relate to the folks who think Apple shouldn’t be doing either one. Let the consumer, the owner of the phone, figure out whether or not they want to prioritize battery life or performance. That one probably makes the most sense, honestly.

And that’s where the transparency thing comes in. Apple should have a notification on your iPhone that lets you know when the battery is starting to degrade in a meaningful way (without the need for an app, mind you. This is a built-in feature, according to Apple, so we shouldn’t need an app to get the details). That pop-up notification would go a long way to let customers know what’s going on and let them make an informed decision about what to do next. Whether that’s going in and getting a new battery or just changing some settings.

But this is Apple, a company that when faced with troubling reports regarding battery life in their MacBook lineup opted to remove the feature that showed customers how much battery life was remaining in hours and minutes. Keeping things behind the curtain is a tactic for Apple, but it’s one that the company needs to start doing a better job of picking-and-choosing when to do it. Not everything needs to be a secret from the customer. In fact, that should never be the default.

If you haven’t taken it yet, we’ve got a survey asking how you feel about Apple’s decision right here. And let me know in the comments what you think about this situation.