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Harvard Study Shows Apple Slows Down Old iPhones to Sell New Models

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Re: Harvard Study Shows Apple Slows Down Old iPhones to Sell New Models

#21

Post by Spooky23 »

bobajob23 wrote: post #13
stephenr wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a conspiracy theory to me. Comparing to Samsung is just a joke - how often do android users even get the choice to update, not to mention how Samsung releases may or may not match up with Google (Android) ones.

My 4 year old Samsung received an update to 7.0 last month, and a security patch the week after. I agree android patching is poor compared to apple, but a lot of fault lies with the phone companies refusing to pass updates onto the end user rather then the company making the phone.

Your experience is accurate and makes the point.

Android releases are not generally available at a consistent time. Apple marches software release in lock-step with hardware release.

When you write an article citing a "study" based on a spike of Google searches, the Android based metrics will be more spread out because implementation of the new software is more spread out. A "study" should control for that sort of variance.

Re: Harvard Study Shows Apple Slows Down Old iPhones to Sell New Models

#22

Post by Overtonwindow »

I've wondered if the reasons why Apple changes their UX so much, in small and big ways, is so they the new phone becomes "your" phone. You're forced to learn new swipes, taps, etc. Overtime the muscle memory makes other (and older) phones feel awkward. Often it doesn't seem like Apple needs to do this, but it could explain why.

Re: Harvard Study Shows Apple Slows Down Old iPhones to Sell New Models

#23

Post by Overtonwindow »

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #3
stephenr wrote: post #2

Software that does more things can run slower on older devices: news at 11

That's true, but what we really need to know is what are the typical performance benchmarks that are required when launching a new software update? And does Apple change its internal performance requirements for older phones when new phones are released. If internal documents from Apple showed that Dev's were allowed to release code that performed badly, but only at certain times of the release cycle, that news would…

Well maybe someday instead of hacking governments, hackers might hack Apple, and the big banks, and leak those emails!

Re: Harvard Study Shows Apple Slows Down Old iPhones to Sell New Models

#26

Post by cxseven »

S_A_P wrote: post #10

I am skeptical that apple would be that shortsighted. If there was a smoking gun here, it would likely kill their smartphone business. I will share an anecdote that I hear at every release cycle for each new idevice: Stepson: Hey, my phone is glitching and slow. I think I need a new phone. Me: Really? let me take a look. . Hmm I dont see anything wrong, other than you are connected to the wifi network that is about 3…

Time for stepson to get a used phone no better than the one he dropped, on his own dime

Re: Harvard Study Shows Apple Slows Down Old iPhones to Sell New Models

#27

Post by wristmittens »

I was an engineer at Apple for a while and I never got the feeling that this was malicious behavior. New features and ever increasing codebase always makes things slow down, and speed of old devices was never the top priority; instead, new power hungry features were often released to take advantage of new hardware speeds, so it's not surprising to me that the biggest iOS slowdowns coincide with new hardware releases.

Re: Harvard Study Shows Apple Slows Down Old iPhones to Sell New Models

#28

Post by calvinbhai »

This clickbait article links to a dailymail article posted in July 2014 as the source, which links to a NYTimes article posted 2 days earlier in 07/2014 as the source.

The article in NYT is about a phd student from Harvard showing the correlation in Google Trends wrt "iPhone slow"keyword and concluding that the Google Trends show a correlation and cannot be concluded that "Apple slows down old iPhones..." as it is in the title.

So much for a "Harvard Study".

Re: Harvard Study Shows Apple Slows Down Old iPhones to Sell New Models

#29

Post by oblib »

After buying new Apple computers for 25 years and iPhones for 10 years now I can attest that they've done this.

My wife has recently been complaining that her iPhone 6 is getting slow and has with everyone she had before it.

I will give Apple credit for not obsoleting my `09 Mac Mini as fast as they did every Mac I purchased before it, but it's definitely on that path now because it won't run their latest OS.

Not sure if I'll buy a new one. The "Mini" is the only thing they have that I'd consider and if they don't keep one in the $500 range I'll build a Linux box and use it going forward from here.

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