[slt2021]

these performance hungry "improvements" are forcefully introduced to legitimately slow down older devices and force the device refresh across the user base.

I have been using 8 year old iPhone just fine, but features like these over time will make the experience slower and slower and slower, until I am forced to refresh my iphone

[cosmic_cheese]

I think probably a much bigger problem is app bloat. Devs are usually using very recent if not brand new top end devices to test and develop against which naturally makes several types of performance degradation invisible to them (“works on my machine”). Users on old and/or low end devices on the other hand feel all of those degradations.

If we want to take increasing device lifetimes seriously we need to normalize testing and development against slow/old models. Even if such testing is automated, it’d do wonders for keeping bloat at bay.

[dkarl]

More likely it's a result of pressure to ship highly visible "improvements," combined with a lack of ideas that could improve the experience in a meaningful way. What do you do in that situation? Ship an obvious UI update that wouldn't have performed on the last gen hardware.

[Someone]

I haven’t used the new UI, so don’t assume this to be an endorsement of it, but even if you have good ideas about UI improvements and implement them, there still is pressure to make the UI look different because that, at a glance, shows users that they get something new.

And yes, “looking different” doesn’t have to mean “requires faster hardware”, but picking something that requires faster hardware makes it less likely that you will be accused of being a copy-cat of some other product’s UI.

[mikestew]

And you base your first sentence on…? Surely not the ol’ “my phone slows down when my battery is failing so that I’ll buy a new phone” canard?

To be clear, these are new features that will likely have a setting to turn off. There’s no conspiracy, nothing “forcefully” added for the purpose of driving upgrades. (Ah, ninja edit): There’s not even a guarantee these features will be supported on an eight year old phone. EDIT: wait a minute...your eight year old phone won't even be supported.

(EDIT: reworded first paragraph to account for the ninja edit.)

[hshdhdhj4444]

What’s the exact canard here?

It’s a legitimate concern even assuming good intent.

But Apple has had to publicly admit bad intent specifically with their batteries and had to offer people money etc.

Strange to criticize people for something Apple publicly admitted they did wrong.

[mikestew]

Apple publicly admitted they did wrong.

When is the last time a company has admitted wrong-doing? No, Apple admitted to slowing down phones when the battery was shot so it wouldn’t just suddenly shut down.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batterygate

[nerdsniper]

I adamantly believe this was the right call for Apple to make. I frequently switch between Apple and Android phones across different generations. At the time I had an aging flagship Samsung that did NOT do this. My battery indicator would say "18%" and it would last however long that implies...if I didn't do anything remotely CPU-intensive. If I did anything that boosted the CPU, the current draw caused the battery voltage to fall off a cliff and the phone would instantly shut down without warning.

The worst part was that during the boot sequence, the CPU ran at full-throttle for a few moments until the power-management components were loaded. So I couldn't restart it. As long as I didn't open a game or YouTube or a wonky website with super awful javascript, I could continue using the phone for another couple hours. But if the phone turned off, it couldn't be turned back on without charging it more ... even though it had "18%" battery left (as determined by voltage, not taking into account increased internal resistance in the battery as it ages).

I was envious of iPhone users that got a real fix for this (Apple slowing down the phone when the internal voltage got low). I would have greatly preferred that Samsung had done the same for my phone too.

[ascagnel_]

I agree, it was the right call to make -- a temporarily-impaired device is always better than a temporarily-failed device, especially when you're talking about something you may need in an emergency situation.

That said, Apple _significantly_ erred in not over-communicating what they were doing. At that point, the OS would pop warnings to users if the phone had to thermal throttle, and adding a similar notification that led the user to a FAQ page explaining the battery dynamics wouldn't have been technically hard to do.

[slt2021]

the solution to old battery is $15 replacement battery, not the $1500 replacement iPhone.

which I am doing exactly, but still new iOS version make my phone slower and slower and I cannot even opt out of updates.

because some apps are forcing me to use the latest version of iOS (Authentication, Okta 2fa, etc)

[threeseed]

Apple provides a battery replacement program.

And you can use third parties as well which Apple now officially supports.

It is just a lie to say you need a new phone.

[HeatrayEnjoyer]

We don't need to carry water for greedy billionaires.

[sanswork]

You can opt out of updates by not using new software. You want the best of both worlds.

[slt2021]

the software forces me to update

[DecentShoes]

That was fake, tho. They slowed down old iPhones to make you buy a new one. My iPhone 7 wasn't auto shutting down, battery health was good, but they still made it so slow it was unusable the same week they released the iPhone X.

There is literally a zero percent chance it was anything to do with batteries. This is not a conspiracy theory. It's an objective fact.

[Klonoar]

Right, yes, your anecdotal experience is totally objective fact.

[sanswork]

They didn't admit bad intent. They admitted to doing something with good intent(the slowing was to stop crashes with near EOL batteries) but that they weren't transparent about it.

I'd much rather us have progress and people with 8 year old phones suffer than ensure that everything continues to run smoothly on any old device for eternity.

[skywhopper]

Disagree. I much preferred my phone running slightly slower to shutting down randomly. Maybe that’s just me.

[wolpoli]

I would prefer to be told that my battery is weak so I could make a decision on if I want to replace the battery, replace the phone, live with the phone shutting down randomly when battery is low, or continue with a slower phone. That's just me.

[DecentShoes]

So why did they slow down iPhones that weren't shutting down randomly?

[tatersolid]

To prevent random shutdowns.

Apple absolutely effed up by not communicating the specifics well, but that’s corporate policy. Apple docs have always been targeted at the non-technical user and therefore inadequate for others.

[dmix]

No matter what happens in the world someone will blame it on a top down conspiracy decided in some smoke filled back room.

[DecentShoes]

But this one is true. Apple obviously puts out slowdown updates right as they release a new phone. They made my iPhone 7 unusable the same week they released the iPhone X.

[threeseed]

Do you have some actual evidence that this is the case ?

Otherwise saying it is definitively true is misleading to put it mildly.

[Toutouxc]

I'm very happy with my iPhone 13 Mini, my wife is very happy with her iPhone 12. They feel exactly the same as when bought new.

Whatever is it that you're saying that Apple does, it's either not obvious or they're shit at it.

[apetresc]

Apple announces all iOS updates in June and releases them simultaneously with the newest iPhones in September. So you're right, but only trivially so.

[zeckalpha]

Replying to you from an iPhone 7 that I use daily.

[slt2021]

if conspiracy makes hundreds of billions $$$ then nothing stops people really.

like Charlie Munger have said: "Show me the incentives and I will tell you the outcome"

[whynotminot]

I don’t think your overall take is wrong (it’s about money), but maybe the simplicity of it is.

Reality is that designers, product managers, engineers — they all wanna build cool things, get promoted, make money etc.

You don’t do that by shipping plain designs, no matter how tried and true. The pressure to create something new and interesting is ever present. And look we have these powerful Apple silicon chips that can capably render these neat effects.

So no I don’t think it’s a shadowy conspiracy to come after your iPhone 8. Just the regular pressure of everyday men and women to build new and interesting things that will bring success.

[sanswork]

In the late 90s/early 2000s desktop computing was moving at such a pace that an 8 year old PC was near unusable. Overtime progress slowed and its not unusual to have a decade old desktop now. The problem is thinking that mobile has slowed that much too. Mobile is still progressing quite rapidly so yeah an almost decade old device is going to feel slow.

You have what an iPhone 6? 1GB of RAM vs 8GB for modern devices, the first A chip came out 2 generations after yours as has 2% of the power of a current chip so modern chips are likely close to 100x as powerful as your phone.

Why should we hold back software to support extreme outliers like you?

[lurk2]

> Why should we hold back software to support extreme outliers like you?

What are apps and mobile sites doing differently today besides loading up unnecessary animations and user tracking? How has user experience improved for those operating on devices fast enough to make up for developer laziness?

[sanswork]

Games are dramatically bigger in scale and graphics quality.

I can now do on-device transcription without issue, security improvements at the chip level, HD graphics for video streaming, etc.

[worthless-trash]

Right, but you choose when to play the games right ?

You can't choose when to use your OS, and you need to 'update your os' to stay secure.

[slt2021]

if I want to play games, I will buy the latest iPhone. If I want to a smartphone with couple simple primitive apps that just send JSON and call REST APIs in the cloud, I don’t want to be forced to shell out $1500 every couple years

[cardanome]

So trashing fine working hardware that was produced using valuable and rare resources sounds perfectly sane to you?

For what? So a designer can get a promotion? This is not progress, this is pure fashion. As if the planet being literally on fire needed more fuel.

[sanswork]

Yes, everything has a lifetime, 10 years is a very good run for a complex piece of technology you can carry in your pocket. Send it in for recycling.

So that we can have better features and functionality in our future systems. Backwards compatibility is an anchor. If you want new things then expect to get new platforms to run them on don't expect everyone to limit their possibilities to support you.

[cardanome]

The vast majority of things don't get recycled properly.

We are not talking about new features. Of course no one expects to run a LLM on an ten year old phone, again we are talking about fashion. It is change for change's sake. It is not providing value to users it is so the the designer gets to eat and management and shareholders are kept happy.

There is a difference between actual technical progress and you throwing out your skinny jeans because baggy pants are now in fashion.

Why shouldn't we build phones that last ten year, twenty years, or even more?

[sanswork]

Apple offers a recycling program.

>We are not talking about new features

We are, you are just choosing to ignore them and call them fashion. There have been immense changes in capabilities over the past 10 years.

>Why shouldn't we build phones that last ten year, twenty years, or even more?

We do, dumb phones, why don't you own one of those instead of trying to limit progress in the phones pushing progress?

[slt2021]

I am totally fine if I stop getting software updates. In general I prefer not to update software either, because every new version brings only bloat

[jay_kyburz]

Windows 10 keeps telling me I need to buy a new Desktop in October. I don't remember when I bought it, but it runs fine for everything I do. I've been running Linux for ages on my laptops, I be upgrading my desktop to Linux too!

[sanswork]

Windows 10 is EOL. As a fellow internet user I'm glad Microsoft is taking a harder line these days on people running EOL software. The internet has a history of being swamped by people running EOL versions of Windows full of security issues causing problems for everyone else.

[nsonha]

No one is holding back software. You're not running local LLM or anything useful, you're adding performance cost for merely displaying icons on screen.

[sanswork]

No one is holding back software because they aren't being allowed. If we were forced to support decade+ old devices though software would for sure be held back.

Laggards cost society by running insecure devices that generally impact the rest of the world besides just complaining about no one continuing to support them long after the useful life of their devices.

[bschwindHN]

> Laggards cost society by running insecure devices that generally impact the rest of the world

Maybe there's also a cost to updating phones as frequently as people do, and inefficient software running across billions of devices.

I wouldn't blame people who make their hardware last longer and call them "laggards". And it's not their responsibility to write security patches for their device, that falls on the manufacturer.

For these people, me included, they don't need the latest hardware features to ray trace a game or run some local LLM. We're just taking some photos, making calls, getting map navigation, messaging, interacting with CRUD apps, and web browsing. None of that requires the latest hardware, and especially Apple hardware from 8 years ago is more than capable of handling it smoothly.

[sanswork]

Ask anyone who had to deal with supporting IE back in the day what the cost to the world is fort supporting tech laggards. They are an anchor on tech growth and a real issue.

If you're running an insecure device past it's support life it's your responsibility and your fault if it's used to attack others. You are fully to blame for choosing to use something past it's serviced life. You cannot expect companies to support old software forever.