[dkrich]

I don't disagree with you about what people should do, but the reality is that consumers have been this way for a long time, the only thing that changed is that phones shifted from commodities people bought for performance to fashion accessories. People pay more for cars, bags, clothing, etc. to elevate their feeling of status, now we can add phones to that list. Perhaps this has been Apple's greatest contribution to the hardware industry.

[bunderbunder]

The part that irritates me is, I am actively punished for being someone who doesn't behave this way.

It used to just be the hidden surcharges that phone companies tacked onto my bill to cover the cost of the "free" phone, calculated from the assumption that I'd get a new phone each year.

Those surcharges are now gone. But they have been replaced with constant nagging to update the OS to a version that will harm the performance or battery life (or both) of a >2yo phone. They have been replaced with apps that will eventually refuse to stop working if I don't upgrade to a version that doesn't run on the older version of the OS that I used to use. They have been replaced with mobile sites that flat-out don't work on my older device's smaller screen.

[valuearb]

Those updates are always optional, and also keep your 2+ year old phone secure.

[chadgeidel]

As long as there have been cellular phones, they have been "fashion accessories". We all joke about the business guy with the giant phone, but that was the "iPhone X" of the 80's.

[QAPereo]

Consumers have this in them, but it’s conditioned by a couple of centuries of marketing.