[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.