[blueking]

Wouldn't buy the iwatch or the new iphone, and I have been a Apple longterm user. Like the motorola 360 better, round design is a huge win and again Apple are last to market with a inferior product. The iphone's main feature for me was that it was more secure than android phones. But after the celebrity icloud hacks and the iphone backdoors that were revealed (then denied by Apple) I have had enough - Apple products have lost premium status in my eyes. Other than that my nexus 5 had all these features at $350 unlocked last year - including NFC payments. It also doesn't help that my $3000 retina macbook dies after a few months of use bc of bad ram, and now I need a new logic board. Planned obsolescence is a huge problem with Apple. They were caught out slowing the older versions of their phones right before the release of the new ones by analyzing google search data, and this unserviceable expendable model they are pushing just won't fly anymore. Don't tell me laptops without dimm sockets and exchangeable batteries are a necessary design compromise for slimmer devices. Thats total bullshit. My iphone 4s ground to a halt right at the release of the iphone 5. It had become comically slow - a product I would never have bought if it had been presented that way in store. Apple is the worlds largest computer manufacturer and they don't need to pull underhanded tricks like that. It says a lot to me that Apple joined PRISM one year after SJ passed. Right there on the NSA slides.

https://pentest.com/ios_backdoors_attack_points_surveillance...

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/27/upshot/hold-the-phone-a-bi...

Yes the article from the Times has a different opinion, but I wanted to share the slides mostly, as I cant find the original paper by Laura Trucco. His theory is that its the ios release that slows the phone, no denying that they are slowed. But leaving the phone functional should be the first priority. Any developer who tested ios 6 on the iphone 4 and approved it should have been shot.

[eridius]

Wow, this comment is really full of FUD. Planned obsolescence? iPhone backdoors? You need to reevaluate where you get your Apple-related news from.

> They were caught out slowing the older versions of their phones right before the release of the new ones by analyzing google search data

Where did you even get this from? That's 100% made-up. But it's also oddly specific in a way I've never heard before. What site is pushing this particular brand of garbage?

[alasdair_]

It's from a google trends graph showing that the number of searches for "why is my iphone so slow" or something similar consistently peaks (at a 300% above baseline rate or more) right before a new iphone model is released.

[blueking]

The New York Times published the article from a Harvard Professor. Link in the original comment, as is the paper revealing the backdoors.

Here is the PRISM slide showing the timing of Apples participation, exactly one year after SJ passed.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/prism-...

It's not FUD I'm stating a set of facts here. It is what it is.

[eridius]

Ok I read it. That "article" states from the very beginning that it's wacky theory. It doesn't even attempt to offer evidence for anything. It's literally just "hey, what does Google Trends show for the search 'iPhone slow'".

Apple has been accused of planned obsolescence before, and the claims have always proven to be complete bullshit. There's a very simple explanation for why people complain about their phones being slow around the time new devices come out, and that's the fact that a new OS is released at the same time (as your link even states), and it's very common for new OS's to not perform as well on old hardware as the previous OS. This is partially because the new OS typically adds more functionality, which takes computing resources to use, and partially because the new OS is predominately only tested on new and current-gen hardware, and not tested much on older hardware. This is very well-known, and it affects pretty much every computing product ever. The only reason you're not really seeing this with Android phones is because a) new Android phone releases don't correlate with OS upgrades, and b) most Android phone users either don't or can't upgrade to the latest OS anyway.

[zorpner]

Did... you even read the article? Yet that's all it shows: People suddenly feel that their phone is slowing down. It doesn't show that our iPhones actually became slower.

And provides some possible reasons related to consumer psychology.

[snowwrestler]

I think you need to read the Times article more carefully. It's about how correlation is not necessarily causation in big data analysis, and uses the iPhone theory as an example.

[eridius]

I didn't know that link was for that tidbit. Reading now.

[Mandatum]

Apple planned obsolescence is a myth. Yes it might be true that the new iOS updates will require more resources, and thus the older models perform less well - but that's akin to running Windows 7 on a PC that was released formerly running XP, with all of the "Aero" features enabled.

I agree Apple does some crappy things; but every large company, government and organisation does. Does that make it right? No. Is there any point in complaining about it in an iPhone 6 release thread? Not really.

Let's talk hardware and new features instead of grabbing our pitchforks.

[blueking]

No - lets decide if we want to give this company more of our money before comparing features. They are absolutely using planned obsolescence and the non exchangeable batteries across their product lines and removal of dimm sockets are a clear signal. You don't own the product, or control the data you put on it. You appear to purchase but in reality - you effectively rent. Apple designs are pretty, but not made to last. And while they like to hand you the 'license' of security, the backdoors and icloud breaches and PRISM participation show that is not backed by any real substance. Jokes on the user.

[Mandatum]

That may be true - but the world is run by consumerism. There's a reason people don't always buy store or generic-brand products where the quality is the same. There's a reason people will spend $1000 on a phone comparable to a $300 one.

People buy brands and aesthetics, not function.

And people don't care about privacy or security, not yet anyway. I'm a hobbyist pen-tester, I've reported breaches which would allow full identity theft - and what happens? Nothing.

I swear I'm getting more and more pessimistic by the day, time to go camp in the woods.