While this isn’t our normal fare here, the Internet is abuzz today over the admission from Apple Inc. that they purposely slowed down older iPhones, and I have something VERY interesting to add. Business insider has this headline:
I’ll say, here’s the gist of it:
Apple has long inspired an almost religious devotion among customers and tech aficionados — but it just seriously undermined its fans’ faith and loyalty.
The company on Wednesday acknowledged what some people have long suspected: that it has been secretly stifling the performance of older iPhones.
Critics have accused the company in the past, based on anecdotal evidence, of purposely slowing phones to compel users to upgrade to the latest model. While Apple admitted to the practice on Wednesday, it sought to underscore that it had done so for a purely altruistic reason: to prevent older phones from shutting down unexpectedly.
The justification hasn’t mollified Apple’s outraged fans. If anything, the company’s statement has stoked the conspiracy theories, and for good reason.
…
By the company’s own admission, it’s been throttling the performance of iPhones since last year.
Apple hasn’t explained why it didn’t disclose the practice until now, after GeekBench released charts based on its data that showed how older iPhones were not performing as quickly as they had when they launched.
More here
Now here’s something very interesting, and very damning. This is a graph from Google Trends, which tracks how words are used in Internet searches on Google. I’ve done a search on the phrase “iPhone slow” which is what users that were frustrated with phone performance would likely search for looking for solutions. I’ve also added via annotations, the release dates of all iPhone models, and for comparison, the Google Trends results for the phrase “Android slow”.
The correlation is quite compelling:
Source for graph: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2006-12-31%202017-12-21&q=iphone%20slow,android%20slow
Source for dates: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_iPhone
And, I’m not the first to make this correlation.
Around the time of each new iPhone release, searches about “slow iPhones” peaked. There doesn’t seem to be any similar spike pattern for Android based phones. (h/t to Jeremy James on Facebook for the idea)
That’s gonna leave a mark, as the quote in the Business Insider article said:
“For years, we’ve reassured people that no, Apple doesn’t secretly slow down their older iPhones to make them buy new ones,” the blogger and iPhone developer Marco Arment said in a tweet Wednesday. He added in a follow-up Twitter post: “The reputation damage from secretly slowing down old iPhones, regardless of the reason, will likely linger for a decade.”
Schadenfreude here. Did I spell that correctly?
I’ve never owned an Apple product. I’m kinda proud of that. (Also never joined Facebook or Twitter, thank God.)
“Also never joined…”
Good on ya! Not a driveling mindless freak eh?
Driveling mindless freak here. But Apple free since they started lol
You should at least join Facebook like I did and purpously leave your page blank like I do.
OTOH, perhaps this situation is cause for a Class Action Suit (Not that I like Class Action Lawsuits, Lawyers make too much and the calss members get a pittance. I’ve long held that Lawyers should only be paid as members of the class and not get 30% of the Class Action settlement)
I sent 2 kids though a private engineering university with part of the AAPL stock I bought for $0.68/share (adjusted for splits)
Bryan A,
A class action will be punitive, if nothing more. Apple have to mount a legal defense, don’t forget. Class members get pennies, sure, but Apple just might feel a momentary pinch if the settlement is large enough.
I have had different iPhones over the past 8 years, and two iPads over 6 years. There is no question in my mind that all have had the same slowing-down problem. Now it’s confirmed to be deliberate, as many of us suspected. I’m an electroncs engineer. Their battery excuse doesn’t fly with me. Disgraceful behaviour. Next time I upgrade I will definitely consider Android devices.
I’m reasonably happy with my Samsung Galaxy J3, and I’m sure it’s an Android dinosaur already.
As Li-Ion cells age (get recharged a lot) their peak capacity to deliver current decreases, You have a choice, either put them out with limited speed at the start, or decrease the speed as they age. Apple went with #2. They should have done this as an option though. That was dumb on their part.
ShrNfr, the best choice would be to include a decent battery.
If the battery is aging, the proper fix is replacing it! Apple stores have been replacing batteries in iPhones forever – why not just warn people to get their battery updated?
Or Apple could be less like “corporate big brother” and let customers replace their own batteries. More than anything that was the reason I passed on the I-phone 1. The reasons changed later but they just made me feel more justified in hating everything apple.
Don’t get me started on the stupid apple mouse with the one button.
After getting badly burned on may last iPhone (5S), which one day announced that it had automatically upgraded its operating system and turned itself into a paper weight… demanding a password I never had in order to operate at all (inquiries to Apple generated a “screw you!” reply)… I moved to Android. Clunkier? Yes. Less elegant? Yes. But not simply evil. I will never will buy another Apple product. Their loss, my gain.
Anyone who is handy can replace their own batteries.
Ditto cracked screens, etc.
Videos on youtube will walk you through how to do it.
ShrNfr
You mug. That does not explain why Apple decide #2 ( crap on you users ) option became so necessary just as they released a new model.
This looks like criminal behaviour to me. Should be grounds for a class action law suit if DoJ are not prepared to charge Apple.
Yes, I too was grumbling “HORSE CRAP!” when Apple lamely stated it was to save the old batteries! That’s simply not how it works.
FWIW, Apple products are inextricably linked to my sound provider business. Most audio vendors (and all mainline vendors) offer no solution that runs on Android – and trying to get Windows apps (like first version Presonus) resulted in many hours of wasted time attempting to make the software/Dell hardware to play nicely, where those same Apple-version apps were plug, play and forget on Apple Macbook. Never a problem, never a question.
Am I unhappy with Apple’s behavior? No. Give me an option. As I said, my industry is pretty much Apple only, relying on iPad, iPhone and Macbook. Android? Windows tablet? Pulease. I have no other options.
Well, that did not come out quite as planned. I am appalled at Apple’s behavior. No, I’m not happy. I’m stuck, however.
Never owned a phone, but I have a first generation ipad. It began crashing when on the internet shortly after an ios upgrade. Within 3 – 4 years it was slow and almost useless. My partner bought an ipad about 3 years ago and guess what? It is doing the same thing.
Lesson learned and confirmed: don’t buy apple.
So your opinion, not based on any facts or investigation, is automatically superior because you’re an EE? Appeal to authority much?
He’s an EE which explains why he knows that the battery explanation is junk. No appeal to authority.
He’s basing his statments on his own experience.
Once again, no appeal to authority.
Your devotion to the cult of Apple is duly noted.
snap, i have no intention of doing so ever.
Why not make a battery change easy?
This happens with lots of other devices.
Apple likes to flaunt its commitment to ‘Green’ issues but is in reality part of the worst kind of ‘throwaway’ pollution.
Now its confirmed that this is intentional and based on profit greed.
Definitely Lawsuit time
I’ve used an Apple desktop puter since the iMac was released but now use the mini [no camera no mic] with third party peripherals. Their hardware is not as robust as it should be so I use as little as I can.
Sometimes absence of Apple seems like the indelible mark of the red-pilled. My reasons for avoidance were a need for flexibility, maintenance of at least some semblance of control over my platforms and an aversion to having the grasping skeletal hand of Steve Jobs forever groping in my back pocket.
My first – and last – Apple product I owned was the good old Apple 2.
That was a long time before Apple became the monster it is today….
Chris
I owned the Apple I (it was really just the motherboard of a computer) and the Apple II computer, but when the first Mac came out Steve Jobs completely undermined the Apple II computer and its community even though it was supporting the company at the time. Because of that, I swore I would never buy another Apple product again and I never have purchased one of their products since that time.
“Apple went with #2. They should have done this as an option though. That was dumb on their part.”
I wonder if some “Deilbert” employee at Apple suggested making it an option, but was overruled by a Marketing executive who felt it would hurt sales to alert potential buyers to the specter of battery degradation.
If Apple execs were smart 😉 they would yesterday have offered a $100 CASH rebate to any iPhone owner who applies, no questions asked. That might fend off the inevitable protracted class-action lawsuit and many more months of daily headlines. But, of course, Apple have the high ground, being so GREEN and all, so they will suffer the slings and arrows, probably hoping against the odds to come out as the victim of a vast right-wing conspiracy or something.
A couple of days ago, I saw Facebook being called a “bragging platform” on a tech site. Bang-O…
Ive never owned an apple product either, but Im thrilled with the performance of the APPL shares I bought in 2009.
+++.
Say what you want, but they know how to make money, hand over fist.
Me, I do not fancy paying triple for the same functionality, so I do not do that.
Great stock.
Maybe this is the wave of the future. Planned forced obsolescence right out of the box. Look at Tesla and their limiting of batteries on the new cars. Hurricane coming. Well lets just give you that extended range we have been hiding form you.
Vance Packard wrote of this in his 1960 book “The Waste Makers”.
Note: Only auto-fill can turn a simple typo into gobbldy gook. I don’t know how to turn it off in Safari.
Apple devices are the worst for autocorrect. I have never seen how to turn it off either.
I bought an iPad a long time ago, never Apple anything again…except the stock can be a real money maker at times. I usually go with short term options trades when the technical all line up with post Christmas earnings or something along those lines.
I think there is a decent chance that Apple will lose a bunch of customers on this news and the stock may really get stung.
Great thing about options…just as easy to make money when it is going down as up.
My wife (a children’s pastor) invited some of her friends over for an ‘orgy’, thanks to Apple’s spell correct.
Imagine the kerfluffle…
All you need to do to turn off autocorrect is go to keyboard settings and turn it off. This is true in either iOS or OS 10.
Many people have managed it. You can search it on the interwebs or use Apple’s own web site. I don’t use auto-fill myself for the simple reason that I use two languages all the time. Auto-fill does not work well under those conditions.
menicholas, just as easy to lose money in options as well. “Got caught, Jack, that’s all. Life contains a particle of risk.”
Yes, but autofill is handy. Just unpredictable and unreliable
Of course, to make money you have to guess correctly.
Otherwise you lose.
“Boris December 21, 2017 at 3:11 pm
Maybe this is the wave of the future. Planned forced obsolescence right out of the box.”
This has been going on since 1922 and IIRC started with light bulbs in Germany.
Apple are already facing legal claims for damages over this:
Filed in the Northern District of the State of Illinois on Thursday, the complaint aspires to become a class action for the supposedly thousands of affected individuals in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and North Carolina – the US states of residence for the five named plaintiffs.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/12/22/apple_sued_iphone_cpu_speed/
Supposedly this is done as the battery ages to extend the run time. They say if you replace the battery the speed goes back to what it was when new.
But you are forbidden from replacing the battery without going though Apple.
What do you mean “forbidden”? If you have Applecare they replace the battery free of charge. If you don’t have Applecare, you buy one for about 10 bucks from ebay and change it yourself.
They certainly should have been more upfront about the slowdown.
Battery can be replaced without going through the store but here’s the comparison:
-Practically any phone but an iPhone. Slide back cover, pull out old battery, put in new battery, power up phone, done. Takes a few seconds.
-For an iPhone, if you don’t have the ungodly small torx bit already you have to go buy one (most people don’t), carefully open phone while rendering it no longer water resistant, carefully unplug the connector for (Screen? been a while), unplug the battery, carefully separate the glued in battery from the case, reassemble everything. Probably done in ~5 minutes if you’ve done it a few times and have everything you need, most people will probably take ~30 minutes their first time if they dare to attempt it.
I have a company provided iPhone or I wouldn’t have one. Our local iPhone store will not work on phones, the nearest store where they will work on them is 2ish hour drive away. So it’s either drive up there to get it repaired or ship it and be prepared to wait a week or two to get it back. End result is IT buys us a new phone anytime there’s a problem with the old one. Want to take bets Apple knows this and plans for it?
Here ya go! Easy and only takes 5 minutes.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sQqPm3LmwV4
Darrin December 21, 2017 at 3:47
Oddly enough, all the IT people where I work use androids.
Darrin, none of the Androids I have had for the past several years have a battery compartment. They are built in, so it takes a bit of work to replace the battery.
But this makes them able to be thin and light and waterproof…something that a device with a removable cover will never be able to do.
Samsung phones are water proof to several feet.
But I am not testing that feature on purpose, thank you no.
I have to wonder if the real reason is because the batteries don’t last as long as Apple thought, and this is a way to hide that, at least until the warranty expires. Also has the side effect of persuading people to buy a new phone.
I have an IPhone 4s which I bought in 2012 and its battery still shows 100 percent level after overnight charging.
I had an occasion recently where I had to leave my home for three weeks straight and I forgot to take my IPhone with me and it sat on a table for those three weeks unconnected to a charger, and when I got back it still had an 18 percent charge on it, enough for me to make a phone call before putting it back on the charger.
I just use the phone for telephone calls. No apps on it. And I don’t think Apple automatically updates my software and I have never updated it myself, either. I haven’t noticed any slowdown, but you probably wouldn’t if you only use it to make phone calls.
My IPhone works good for me. No complaints.
The question is not one of voltage out of the battery, the question is one of max current that the battery can deliver when required of it. I suspect that you will find Tesla having problems with cars not capable of acceleration that they once were capable of down the road. This problem will not be uniquely Apple’s.
My 5S has been going downhill for a few months. Does not appear to hold a charge. Claims there is only a tiny amount of battery power left, shuts down. Plug it into a charger, and one of two things happens: it takes forever to finally turn on again, or it turns on and shows that the battery is at “63%” or similar.
You cannot tell me that engineers can create a handheld computer capable of so much, but cannot make a rechargeable battery that will last for longer than a phone contract. If they cannot do so, these companies have no business charging so much for phones. Yes, it used to be possible to get a phone for free or a smaller amount, but the new ones all seem to be running on a “lease”, so you pay the full $750 or whatever.
I love Apple, been loyal since I was a kid (pre iMac!!!). Quality is not what it used to be. I really do not want to replace my phone with a Windows based one, but I do not have the money to shell out for a new iPhone. It REALLY ticks me off that they still charge hundreds of dollars for an iPhone 6 when they are now on 8. I suppose I should be grateful I have gotten 4 years out of my phone, but planned obsolecense annoys me.
Rechargeable batteries last a lot longer when they are not allowed to run all the way down between charging.
Also, since the issue is related to the number of charge/discharge cycles, using the phone only for calls and never for apps means you do not have the same problem as people who use a ton of apps have. Some things really suck power, like using the maps and navigator apps, or even if you have location services enabled. Using the phone for a mobile hotspot drains battery fast, as does living in a place with fewer overlapping towers and travelling around a lot or spending time inside a building that blocks the signal, or even just having one of the less robust carriers…the phone is constantly searching for a signal under these conditions and uses a lot more power.
Long story short, the more you do with it, the less time until the battery begins to become seriously degraded.
I use my phone for everything, and have learned to avoid problems by keeping it plugged in as much as possible…when driving, when at home, when at my office desk at work…have chargers in each place and just plug it in. Nowadays you can get little portable power packs that you can plug in to the phone to recharge it, or keep it topped up.
Apple phones are not the only ones that have done away with easily changeable batteries…the last several phones I have had, various Droids and now a Samsung, do not have easily replicable batteries.
Not having that option makes the phone more easily water proofed (which was a major problem on older phones) as well as lighter and thinner.
But as noted…you can either get battery replaced or do it yourself with a little help from you tube.
AllyKat – do they still make Windows-based phones? /sarc
Windows based phones are not the only alternative to iPhone, Get a Samsung S8, It’s what an iPhone wants to be when it grows up… and it runs Android. Or, if you like bleeding-edge, get a Nexus Pixel 2. Google updates Nexus with the newest stuff as it’s released, which is usually quite a bit before the non-Nexus phones get them from their cellular providers.
I highly doubt you’d find any Android device deliberately throttled by the manufacturer to get you to upgrade. At worst, they just stop providing software updates.
I would not have the same confidence in anything from Microsoft. I trust them as much as I trust Apple.
Starting with the iPod Apple selects batteries that don’t last. It is a conscious and careful act. Some, like Motorola and BlackBerry, do the opposite. That’s why there was a battery team at BlackBerry. You may or may not remember New York iPod users chanting in the streets when they found out their $400 iPod had a 13 month battery in it. Apple charged $250 to replace it while ‘the newer model’ was ‘only’ $400. It is deliberate, always was, and if the battery lasted, they slowed the phone to make it appear to ‘be wearing out’ like a cheap gearbox. That, plus the marketing of it as a disposable fashion item created a low (low) standard in the field of industrial design. It is taught in the curriculum now.
Blackberries were wonderful. My wife replaced hers only when she physically wore something out. On one it was the scroll wheel. On the last one, the usb connector wore out and we couldn’t charge it any more. Her Playbook has a magnetic connector which isn’t a sliding contact and therefore doesn’t wear out.
Samsung has wireless charging, which should solve the connector problem. Motorola has accessory backs among which is one which has wireless charging and an extra battery. My wife’s phone is one of those and we’re hoping it lasts for years, as did her Blackberries.
Batteries are designed to last particular lifetimes. The life selected is not ‘the best technology available’. Not at all. The iPod was introduced with a 13 month lifetime battery as a conscious decision to force people to buy another one. It was planned obsolescence.
Every component in an iPhone is mediocre by design. Good enough to get by, with absolutely the latest manufacturing engineering methods. Very advanced each time. The combination is sleek, good looking and designed to fail after the contract is over. That is ‘their deal’. If you like being shafted every three years, then if is acceptable.
Those who don’t discharge their phones so often have the CPU crippled by software to simulate a failing system. After checking around others have the same systemic failure which is convincing, I guess. It is, after all, a new form of planned obsolescence: deliberate, post-market harm to create a market for the replacement product. It really is worse than what Enron was doing.
The phones have been evolving fast over the past bunch of years…if all you do is make calls, it does not matter, but screens have become better and brighter, phones more waterproof, cameras much better, better processors available, etc.
I have got new phones (all androids since they became available) every couple of years, even when the ones I had, had a easily opened battery compartment, because the new phones were and still are a lot better.
Also, for a while there, Verizon had the cost of a new phone every two years baked into the cost of the monthly payment, so it made no sense to keep a phone past two years…you were paying for a new one anyway.
(But Verizon has now moved to a leasing model of monthly service, and they basically finance a new phone for a $20-30 monthly payback.)
Although, like PCs did about ten years ago, there comes a point that they are good enough and improvements become not worth the price of replacing a device.
The Samsung I bought last Spring seems like it is a darn good little device and they will have to have some seriously improved features to make me want to replace it. Which I am sure they are doing their best to do, as has been the case all along.
A longer lasting battery will, all other things being equal, will probably be larger and heavier. Your wonderfully thin and light cell phone won’t have a wonderful battery. In fact, this was the root of the problem with the exploding Samsungs.
In a cell phone, everything affects everything. There was the story of the RIM antenna engineer who nearly murdered the battery engineer when he changed the battery in a way that wrecked the antenna’s performance.
Even without evil intent, it isn’t surprising that cell phone batteries are a compromise.
Started hating Apple’s primitive computers and crooked business model in the 1980s.
R U MSFT employee?
I think he’s just old.
I think he just doesn’t know how to spell DOS.
You can bet the others do it too.
The relatively smooth curve for Android in the chart that leads the article tells me otherwise.
I have had android phones slow to a crawl after the OS was “upgraded”.
At least twice.
Maybe three times.
I’ve been using Apple products exclusively for many years now. I can honestly say that I’ve never heard of this throttling thing, nor have I ever noticed my iPhone(s) to be slow or slowing down. As with any Apple product, they just work unlike a Windows-based system. Just an honest opinion here…
Have you ever used a Windows based system? Seems like you haven’t, but instead ascribe to a viewpoint that isn’t from your own experience. UPDATED: have a look at this graph and tell me again that Windows doesn’t work as well as Apple MacOS.
Market share is driven in no small measure by who makes the operating system that runs the applications you want to run. Personally, I could care less. I run Windoze under Parallels on my Apple machine. That way I get both.
What? No Windows XP?
Oopps! I just noticed Windows XP on the graph!
I guess I’m going to have to upgrade my Windows XP to Windows 7.
I just hate it when programmers change the interface of Windows software. Every version ought to have the option to choose the interface they want to use, the old, familiar one, or the new confusing one with the big learning curve.
If MS Windows 7 still leads all other MS products why doesn’t Mister Softy support the Win7 Pro that I use with Win 7 upgrades? The ONLY upgrade is to Win10. I have been sabotaged with cursor freeze and crash dumps because I refuse the upgrade because of Win10 tracking. But with PCMatic I’m able to overcome these issues for a time and it starts again–what a nuisance!! I also use DuckDuckGo as a browser because they claim they don’t track you??
Anthony:
Market share in no way implies “works as well as …”. If you ran the same graph in 1970 you would conclude that IBM 370 running MVS worked better than any other computer environment — o need to talk to actual users.
The decison-makers in typical corporate desktop environment are controlled by a ring through their noses with a string held by Microsoft, just as 45 years ago they were controlled by a ring with a string held by IBM. The choice of the corporate herd is only loosely influenced by usability.
If Microsoft had more than a 1.3% market share of the cell phone market they would be doing the same thing. The only reason this isn’t happening with Android is the software isn’t controlled by the cell phone manufacturers, who have to actually compete with each other.
It just doesn’t. They are slow and ‘clunky’. I used them for years and gave up, so yes I’ve experienced them. The graph means nothing to me, I am pulling from years of experience. If these devices were/are being throttled, it’s not enough to notice.
Anthony, I’m an old phart who always hated windows and Microsoft [Gates in particular]. Microsoft is, and always has been, as shifty as correspondents here say Apple is.
Except that it came on 13 floppies IBM XOS was superior. When IBM raised the white flag I went to Mac and have no interest in subjecting myself to learning windows for no obvious benefit. IOS is inherently more secure anyway. [Yes! I know there IS malware that infects it]
Carbon Bigfoot,
Get a little freeware program called “Never 10”, which permanently blocks the constant harassment and horse $hit to upgrade to Windows 10. One minute to install… and saved endless hours of torment. Highly recommended.
Windows 10 works fine.
If your machine has the capacity to run it.
If you have an old XP machine, there is little chance it has the memory or processor power to run either 7 or 10 effectively.
The graphics card on newer machines has more memory than was on the older units when they came with XP.
Windows 7 is a great OS…I have no idea what you guys are talking about, with them not working or being clunky.
Wow, apparently Windows versions after v7 “don’t work as well” as Windows 7. At least, that’s what the data indicate.
If you think Windows 7 beats Mac OS X on anything except graphics drivers (I do OpenGL 4 development sometimes, so I feel the pain) you are off your rocker.
Mac OS X is a pretty good ‘unix’ for development. Which is why so many developers on the leading edge use either Mac OS X or Linux. Windows is wonderful for gamers though.
Windows 10 is fine, although there were a lot of problems with downloading and installing it by people who did not have the machine properly prepared. The preinstall instructions did not make it clear how important this was.
Windows 8 was not liked because is tried to make everyone use “tiles”, as if people on a PC wanted it to look and act like a phone, with apps instead of programs.
Also, as stated elsewhere, upgrading an older machine to a new OS is prone to cause problems with memory being insufficient, etc.
The fact is, Windows 7 is “good enough”…there is little reason to upgrade.
For a very long time their were real improvement s being made as people used PCs for more and more stuff.
Older machines are useless for streaming or for downloading hi def movies…not enough capacity and not fast enough.
But by 7, there became little reason for change, because the changes were mostly just changes, rather than clear improvements.
And that is, I am pretty sure, the main reason why a lot of people do not care for versions newer than 7.
(8 really did suck, 10 is fine)
When it comes down to it, many people at home are using their computers for very basic stuff.
Many people pretty much are just using them for internet surfing.
There is no reason for ever newer and more capable machines…they became good enough.
Windows (7+) works much better than any Apple operating system. The only reason why some use Apple is the former status as a geek and the advocate of the free Internet, as claimed by Mozilla as a browser manufacturer for himself. But nothing is worse than that, Apple (and Mozilla) are only concerned with their advantage and increase the wealth of their owners. Windows of course, but they do not make such a scam on the user. I once tried Linux for fun. After the third total crash, I threw it out again. And you are completely alone in a crash and have to show the necessary steps of Windows operating systems on the Internet. There is currently no better operating system than Windows 10.
All this chart shows is that Windows users are slow to update their operating system. Ironically, part of the problem is that Apple doesn’t have this issue while Android users are typically not up to date on the latest operating system. Apple (phone) users have a much higher percentage of users with latest operating system because apple “forces” (tricks) you into getting the latest update, which contributes to the problem. I’m sure you can google a similar chart for percent of people on the latest operating system for both apple and android.
The problem is really a combination of Apple “forcing” people to upgrade their operating system and older batteries not being able to keep up with the demands of a new operating system. Take any old PC and update to the latest operating system. You will find the cpu maxing out to keep up. As an extreme, take a really old XP and put Windows 10 on it. It will slow to a crawl… that CPU will be maxed out. Something similar can happen when you upgrade a phone’s operating system. Old Li-ion batteries have a problem meeting this new load. This doesn’t happen with every release and it also depends on the battery profile, but it happens enough that people that some people can see it. As far as I know, replacing the battery fixes the problem. On the other hand, maybe I’m just wrong.
This is partly due to the pc producers. I know of a couple who will sell you a computer with no operating system but I was told by one supplier that selling non windows pc will affect your oem agreement with Microsoft.
Also nearly all corporate computing is microsoft I’m expected to use a compatible pf I have to have windows vms as I only run linux for jobs that don’t supply me a cmpany pc.
So market share is far from an indicator of satisfaction
Ahhhhhhh, my kingdom to have all of my XP machines back!
“menicholas December 22, 2017 at 12:27 am
Windows 10 works fine.”
Windows 10 is…getting better. Will be building an SOE for a health company with WIndows 10 1709 soon, once I get the SCCM infrastructure up to the latest version that is. The first cut available to the public, build 10240, was utterly dreadful and almost impossible to deliver via SCCM. In fact, my first build for Windows 10 10240 on Surface Pro’s was done using Ghost. The touch screen would not function properly and the fix was to run Windows Update, which fixed the touch screen problem but broke WIndows Update.
Stuff that used to work for unattended builds in Windows 10 1511 and 1607 were either removed and not available in 1703 which broke other things like lock screens being applied via GPO. XP was great, WIndows 7 pretty good, 10, not a great fan of it but the corporate world is heading down that path and that is where I earn my beer tokens!
My very first computer was an IBM 4381 with 48Mb RAM running under MVS 21bit addressing (16Mb address spaces) then upgraded to MVS/ESA 4.3.3 31bit addressing (2Gb address spaces). Been a while since I had to analyse a core dump.
I find it fascinating that Windoze Vista and 8 are way down there with NT, while XP, and to my surprise, 8.1 have respectable showings. XP absorbed practically all NT/Win2k users because it was better than both, Vista was awful, 7 has been great, and 10 is finally looking good enough to make the leap.
There are some things which work better on Mac, but they are not the one’s I expected. The seamless integration of mail, calendar, and photos across iPhone/iPad/Mac is a great plus, but actually editing photos or videos is so painful that I wait until I can get to my aging Win7 Pro laptop.
John,
Apple has admitted to throttling their phones, so whether you’ve noticed it or not, it is happening.
Honest, probably. Knowledgeable not. The reason Windows gets twice as many complaints is because there are 25 times as many users and half the people don’t know what they are doing.
Apple’s main draw is the simplicity. Most people don’t want to have to learn how to use what they bought. That doesn’t make it better, just easier.
“That doesn’t make it better, just easier.”
Well, some people will say easier is better. But yes, a Windows system is far more “open” to the user than any Apple OS. That is by design, not by error…. Apple wants the user to be as unaware of the workings of the OS as possible…..and to buy outrageously expensive new Apple hardware on a regular basis.
“Apple’s main draw is the simplicity. Most people don’t want to have to learn how to use what they bought. That doesn’t make it better, just easier.”
I’ve been compiling Linux kernels since the mid 90s. Today, lots hours cost me lots of dollars. Mac OS X is great for myself and many developers not because it is ‘simple’ (clearly you don’t live in Terminal/iTerm land) but because it is *RELIABLE*.
Reliability matters. Mac OS X is more reliable than Linux and much more reliable than Windows. Upgrading to new hardware is easy as all your settings and data comes across painlessly and *reliably*.
Hence, all the professional software developers I know who are senior enough to choose their hardware use Mac OS X except for one guy who uses a System 76 Linux for ideological reasons.
Sneering at Mac users as stupid simply shows you don’t understand what attracts people to Macs, and for almost everyone that is *reliability*. When people who can build systems from discrete hardware components on up and write software as a profession choose Macs then I’d say your hypothesis that they are chosen because the “people don’t want to have to learn how to use what they bought” is as accurate as the UN IPCC AGW hypothesis (as in, not very).
For professionals time is money, and an unreliable Windows system can be VERY costly when your charge-out rate is very high. It is the pro-sumers and corporate slaves who use Windows – poor b@stards.
Moa on December 22, 2017 at 12:51 am
Wow. Sorry 😞 I hurt your feelings. But people who don’t use apple are “corporate slaves”? Got a bit of an anger 😠 problem, don’t you?
huh? unreliable Windows.. I just create an embedded version of my system setup with all the programs I want installed. Opera browser (pre 9) to keep the win-dependent bugs out and it’s as stable as a rock. no updates thanks, if I pick the appropriate versions of software then I’ve no need to “update” (why is adding fluff, DRM, intrusive ads and crap to a program called an ‘upgrade!?). Windows 7 embedded is easy to get and to set up
I had a win98 machine running on a UPS for over a decade with not a hiccup running headless as a downloader and print server; Talking to folks I heard horror stories of BSoD all the time and when asked what the system messages told them and how did they fix it the usual answer I got was they reinstalled. It was always a mystery to me why when confronted with information people would resort to destruction.. mind you, it was often the ‘updates’ to programs that broke things. Vendors always loved to rewrite dlls with their own versions which wasn’t a MS flaw, it was a vendor (or user) flaw.
As for phones even when the MS phone OSes held reasonable market share the various tech reviewers rated them as vastly more secure than Apple or Android – but no one listened, they preferred to chant the mantra that Windows was a broken OS, windows bashing always having been a popular thing to do.
Honest, probably. Knowledgeable not. The reason Windows gets twice as many complaints is because there are 25 times as many users and half the people don’t know what they are doing.
Apple’s main draw is the simplicity. Most people don’t want to have to learn how to use what they bought. That doesn’t make it better, just easier.
Years ago, I had three computers in my office – a PC running DOS, a Sun running a windowing version of Unix, and the original Mac. The Mac was absolutely the least reliable. And when it crashed, it provided that stupid bomb symbol as the only method of debugging it. I was never afraid of the C prompt, so maybe I was biased to working with a computer that gave me some control of the OS.
One of the really enjoyable pastimes in the old days was to sit down at the lunch table and state to the folks that “(pick your OS) sucks”, and then sit back and watch the fun.
Lets take a look at the market share for Wintel computers versus that for Apple computers. I think that the marketplace has spoken.
I don’t think the marketplace has spoken for that reason. I believe the primary reason is cost, whether associated with hardware or software. It stems back to the production of the Apple II and the first IBM PC. In the late 1970s the Apple II was based on a single chip—the MC68000—which was so “powerful” that Apple thought the chip could handle the processing and all I/O, whereas the PC was based on the 8085, and later the 8086, which IBM knew could not cope with all the functions. IBM’s solution was to introduce parallel processing to a low power computer—separate boards to handle I/O, one for each of the processes. For some period the PCs outstripped the Apples in performance. There was another important aspect. Apple refused to allow other manufactures to licence their computers. IBM on the other hand licensed their designs and concept to anyone who wished to manufacture a computer. The result was a lot of competition and consequent price war reductions. Those of us who were in the game at that time will remember the substantial price difference between the numerous PCs and the Apple. The game changed a little when the first Mackintosh appeared but although the difference in performance was greatly reduced, the price difference remained.
Microsoft made a fortune from, firstly MSDOS, as opposed to IBM’s PCDOS, and then creating a visual environment. I don’t wish to get into who first produced “windowing”—I don’t really care—Windows and the first Mac appeared at roughly the same time. The big difference was that whereas Windows as an operating system had to cope with all the variations of the PC manufacturers, Apple had to cater for one only. Apple decided to latch on to Unix and adopt its memory partitioning system which has stood it in good stead over the years. Windows on the other hand became more and more “bloated” the more systems it had to cater for and its memory partitioning system was nowhere near as secure as Unix. The “bloating” was the reason for Windows based computers slowing down with each new version.
Which system is the best? Toss a coin. Again, I don’t care. If Windows suits your operations, good for you. If Apple suits you, then good for you.
As to price difference there is another consideration—consumer software. Buy a Windows based computer and you have to pay for your Office suite, unless you choose to use Open Office or something similar. Purchasing a Windows based PC means spending a substantial sum on the latest Office suite of programs (Apps, these days), or a substantial annual subscription to Office 360. If you purchase iMac, or MacBook Pro there is no need to spend anything on an Office type suite. Pages, Numbers, and Keynote come with Mac OS. The price, then, is about the same when buying comparable hardware. Indeed, if you purchase a Surface Pro you will likely spend more than the corresponding MacBook Pro.
My own history is a very pleasant experience with Windows on desktops and laptops until Vista was introduced. My experience with that OS, delivered with a new, upmarket, Dell laptop, was horrible. After struggling for a while, well before the next Windows incarnation was released I purchased another HDD for the laptop and installed Linux (Ubuntu) on it. That continued happily for nearly 10 years until the laptop died. Prior to its death I had purchased a MacBook Pro with which I was very happy, and the Dell continued the rest of its life looking after my weather station. When it died I purchased a cheap HP laptop, pre-installed with Windows 10, to look after the weather station. (There was no way I was going to purchase another MacBook for just one task! I could have used one of the new micro computer systems becoming available, but for the work involved the HP was a better option in my opinion.) I prefer MacOS to Windows 10.
I am a pragmatist and I have reservations about my MacBook, but see my comment earlier https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/12/21/apple-admits-they-throttled-iphones-one-graph-tells-the-whole-story-of-why-they-are-slow/#comment-2699262 about changing out the HDD for an SSD. That gave it a new lease on life! It has restored it to providing an experience similar to my iPad Pro with the bonus of more powerful operations and file handling.
Lest someone wish to pick me up on Office suites, let me say “Horses for courses”. IMO Pages is superior to Word, Keynote is superior to PowerPoint, but Numbers is woefully inadequate compared to Excel. I use the ones that suit me. Outlook I detested and before I switched to Linux I used anything but Outlook for my mail.
Glad I am not the only one who understands that they all work fine, and there are various reasons for the differences.
But I like the version of outlook on my at work PC, even if only for the calendar, which allows people in different cities to look at scheduling and add in new service requests and such…but I never wanted to buy office so I never have had it except for free trial periods on my at home machines.
When any of these machines get old they tend to get clunky because newer programs and software versions use more memory. Vista was a terrible OS…everyone hated it. Windows 7 solved all of those problems, which I think were somewhat related to not having enough memory to run the graphics, but I am not sure…I went from XP to 7 and never had any problems except for needing memory upgrades.
A lot of problems people have is due to adware and spyware inserting itself on the machine, and other slowdowns related to crap just accumulating on the memory and disk drive.
Programs like Belkin Advisor (free) and Spybot Search and Destroy (also free) can solve a lot of problems, as can just using the remedies built into windows, but in my experience, most people have ability or desire to learn anything about how to fix machines that stop working properly.
One of the main reasons why there is so much Intel PC as compared to Apple is because IBM published the PC Bios. That level is still there even on Win10 and will never, ever go away. It’s how the the thing works at a very low level. Even though M$ chose to embrace and extend the OS, the underlying glue is still the same. Apple, while it ripped off the OS from BSD, has really never opened the BIOS kimono.
Not too many Apple clones out there, eh?
You have been inhaling too much fumes of facebook-apple-liberal-california swamp. Have you noticed your tits growing bigger lately?
Windows 10 would be nice if it weren’t loaded with bloatware, forced updates and automatically-downloaded game apps from the Windows Store. It might be fine for a non-technical home user to use until it chokes on its own vomit, but from a professional-use viewpoint, Microsoft makes it difficult to manage and support, and bakes in a lot of time-wasters that should not be allowed on a company-provided computer. The only way to have even a semblance of control is to get the Enterprise version which is only available to large, volume-licensed companies. Even the Windows 10 “professional” version is very unprofessional.
Windows 7 is/was a PITA with the UAC nag screens and dumbed-down message boxes that took the toy-like feel of Windows XP to the next level, but Windows 10 is a bridge too far. When a new user logs into a domain-member Windows 10 computer, instead of the simple message at the upper-left of the screen in normal typeface as the profile is built, instead it has to say “Hi.” centered on a blank screen, then another blank screen that says something goofy like “Please wait while we set up your computer for you” (I forget. I want to forget.)
If people would just switch from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice, we could all be running a Linux desktop OS and be done with both Microsoft’s and Apple’s BS. Or switch to Chromebooks and use Google Apps in your browser and be done with f…utzing with the OS layer altogether. I’m disgusted with both Microsoft and Apple.
Then stay away from Chromebook. Google is the biggest big brother of all. 😠
“jstalewski December 22, 2017 at 4:06 am
Windows 10 would be nice if it weren’t loaded with bloatware, forced updates and automatically-downloaded game apps from the Windows Store. It might be fine for a non-technical home user to use until it chokes on its own vomit, but from a professional-use viewpoint, Microsoft makes it difficult to manage and support, and bakes in a lot of time-wasters that should not be allowed on a company-provided computer. The only way to have even a semblance of control is to get the Enterprise version which is only available to large, volume-licensed companies.”
It’s horrid. Windows 10 Enterprise CB, CBB and LTSB. LTSB is the only version where you don’t get the bloatware applications and the monthly (CB)/8 monthly (CBB) forced updates. It’s a nightmare in the corporate space to manage, especially if being managed by SCCM. And if you have O365, Windows 10 all managed by SCCM, keeping all three up to date and supportable is a full-time job in itself.
Or is it psychosomatic iPhone owners do a slow iPhone query each time a new one is released or Android users and Google are surreptitiously messing with iPhone users heads on the net? This clearly needs more grants to get the bottom of it and an International Panel on Clapped Communicators.
If the real reason was to “protect the user” from having the phone shut down unexpectedly due to low battery power (which is possible if the battery is particularly weak and there is a sudden spike in processor usage), then this should have been explained from the outset and presented as a user-selectable option. Transparency is always the best way to handle these things, but then we are talking about Apple. They love to hide things from the users to make it “easier”. In reality they think their average user is an idiot, which is why I don’t use their products. I think this newest revelation is going to leave a mark.
Seriously? A user-selectable option? What would it say? “Allow your phone to crash when you’re using it most. Yes/no.”
It would do like every other Energy Management system does, have a slider where you can choose “Performance” or “Battery Life”.
It works like that on my MacBook Pro, although my trashcan MacPro doesn’t give that option (since you want to run the dual D700s at full throttle always), and my Windows rig with the GTX 1080 Ti has similar options for power management.
Users are used to choosing this on their laptops and desktops. Apple are shady (too bad nobody makes anything as reliable as OS X, otherwise I’d switch).
“In reality they know their average user is an idiot,” Fixed it for you.
Awful, although I will note that Google has done worse stuff than this.
Please explain. Id like some suggestions on what to search.
Try this with Google. Search for “American Scientists” (assuming you are in USA or can VPN there). Then click Images. What do you see ?
Now VPN to another location outside and do the same search. What do you see ?
Welcome to 1984. Brought to you by Google.
we need to get the onion of concerned scientists onto this, quick
+ 100
We already HAVE a consensus!
For those visiting new car showrooms to order Apple Carplay and Android Auto with a side dish of ‘would you like a car with that?’ we Windows phone tragics remain aloof and above it all. That’s because we’re still trying to connect to the Bluetooth machinations of carmakers proprietary offerings for the mentally bewildered.
I have one of those unsupported Windows phones. I’m about to have to give up and go Android. I was holding out for Tizen but it never made it to market.
Blackberry has just announced they are going to extend the life of BB10 by two years. I am not sure that will decrease their effort to get customers to move to their gutted and re-secured android offering but is it perhaps a sign of lingering interest in secure communications.
They had, for a long time, replaceable batteries and their own formulations. The only ones better in my view were Motorola phones, the heavy ones.
Conspiracy theories exist for a reason. A percentage WILL turn out to be the truth once exposed. A larger percentage will also be true but not exposed (yet). This is why the sensible thinkers among us do NOT throw all conspiracy theories into the bin but keep them in a special place ready for further work or further consideration as new things come to light.
You will of course have noticed that there is a HUGE amount of effort that goes into trying to convince you to treat ALL conspiracy theories as the work of nutjobs. Could this effort be organised? Is there a conspiracy to discredit conspiracy theories?
If you think about it for a bit you will know how to find out. YouTube metrics are a valuable source.
With regard to Apple and iPhones I suggest that if you have not yet learned to distrust large corporations then you have some catching up to do. Try digging around Tesla and Space-X as an excercise to start you off.
Wonder how many “Climate” gurus use iPhones? I’d say 97%. The other 3% use rotary dial phones. Do they throttle their Pc’s and iPads too? Never used an Apple product.
Not very nice. Probably (okay – almost definitely) correct. But not very nice.
“Could this effort be organised?”
A good starting point for you is the excellent book “Disinformation” by Lt Gen Ion Mihai Pacepa (the highest ranking defector of the Cold War).
That system is now in place in the “Free” World.
Remember…they’ll get you if they want to…
I agree Reverend,
while a few conspiricy theories can be taken with a pinch of salt a lot of them can be taken more seriously and not just laughed off as ‘cranky’.
I refer to Jesse Ventura for his expose “Is Global Warming a Hoax”. The evil Maurice Strong who held a senior position at the UN was exposed as nothing more than a greedy oil tycoon who fled to China after the ‘oil for food’ scandal.
The show revealed the numerous tactics he employed way back many years such as ‘Only One Earth’ during the 70’s or 80’s (I’m not sure which), in which he pretended to be ‘green’ to further expand his already vast fortune.
Christopher Monkton was on the show to explain his tactics (Strong’s), of him wanting to implement a One World Government (OWG), to do away with our currencies, therefore giving away more of our freedoms.
Thankfully now the b’stards gone but his legacy lives on with the likes of Ben Santer who, admitted to going through leading scientists summaries which concluded there was no significant evidence of human caused global warming. Santer deleted these summaries and substituted his own… (You can fill in the BS here).
Anyway, whilst I’m here, I have never owned any Apple product and nor do I ever intend to. As my late father used to say “I wouldn’t have one as a gift”.
Merry Christmas!
The original idea for looking at “iphone slow” search trends seems to have come from Harvard University PhD student Laura Trucco. See this 2014 article.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/does-apple-throttle-older-iphones-to-nudge-you-into-buying-a-new-one/
Has anyone been fired yet for making this admission? That’s usually the gold standard for measuring truthful speaking.
If Apple really did it to protect the phone then Apple will now have to make it an option that the user can control. The phones are not Apples property, they are not leased, they have no right to impose speed constraints on users phones without the users consent. But if Apples reasons are shown to be false then it will surely affect their market share.
“The phones are not Apples property”
What desert island do you live on? Dunno about you but with our PCs, Surface tablets, laptops and Lumias Bill and I are bosom buddies although it’s more a case of like Freddy- He’s back again!
Personally I’m looking forward to the day when Bill calls the flock together in Silicon Valley.
‘I have called you all here together to make the big announcement..please, please enough with the washing and kissing of feet…as you know we’ve all been busy here together creating Heaven on earth and I’m pleased to announce I’ve put the last fullstop on the code and that’s it.. Wonders Infinity it is! (Hallelujahs all round) So naturally you’re all dismissed to go back to your individual callings as you won’t be needed anymore as Wonders Infinity will now be available to all online via BillPayola forever more. Amen.’
Yes Virginia, there is a Father Xmas. He’s the poor schmuck paying off the plastic in Jan, Feb, March…
Why are talking about this here. Isn’t this a climate blog? Anthony are you just indulging a pet peeve for Apple products?
@scraft1
About Watts Up With That? News and commentary on puzzling things in life, nature, science, weather, climate change, technology, and recent news by Anthony Watts.
Scraft, you should do a little research before blundering in, insulting people and making a fool of yourself.
He defines the blog as a “science news site”.
And who are you, his personal apologist?
Get a life.
So scraft? If Wuwt annoys you so much please explain why you are here?
I admit I am assuming you are an Apple user (like Rush Limbaugh – sorry, couldn’t help rubbing it in)
“Why are talking about this here”
To piss of some jerks who mostly just lurk but every once in a while speak up and let us know it is working.
Do they slow down their older lap top’s connection to the internet?
Could well do so, Jim. I have a mid-2012 MacBook Pro. Came fitted with a 500GB HDD. As the years past it became progressively slower starting Apps. So much that it was annoying. I didn’t correlate it with OS upgrades but it would be easy to assume it. I solved my problem by replacing the HDD with a 500GB SSD (from Amazon at less than $200). The upgrade in performance was notable. Apps that were taking upwards of a minute to load were suddenly up on screen waiting for input in a tenth of the time. Full boot time is around about 30-40seconds; Word for Mac takes 3-4 seconds; Pages loads in about 5 seconds. This prompts me to ask whether successive OS versions require more disk accesses which would give the appearance of the computer slowing.
Newer versions of Mac OS X have programs which are larger in size and have more resources. You notice this a great deal with spinning rust drives, which are painful when doing ‘seek’ operations.
SSDs have seek operations that are nearly 1000 times faster than spinning rust HDDs. The streaming transfer speed may or may not be faster as it is generally limited by the connection speed. But a HDD might have a transfer rate between 50 – 100 MB/s. A recent internally RAID-ed OWC SSD I put in my Mac Pro ‘trashcan’ gets around 20 times that.
Hard disks are slow and get fragmented. Programs get larger. This is nothing sinister from Apple, Microsoft or the Linux distros.
You changed to SSD and noticed the huge performance boost in seek times and transfers. That is not at all the same as Apple throttling performance in software on older phones.
When better technology becomes available, desktop makers will use it. As SSDs become more and more common, developers stop noticing the performance degradation of their new software on rotating drives. It’s not deliberate; it’s just that the priority is always going to be on new features and a glitzy appearance. So the effort required to optimize performance for old storage technology is seen as less and less important to market acceptance.
The same thing happens with websites — try using one over a 1.5 Mbit DSL line. That used to deliver quite acceptable experience but not today. Hell, I remember when the Computer Science and Engineering departments at Yale University were all connected to the internet over a single 56 Kbit SDLC line. Back in the days of ASCII text for email, that was sufficient.
This really pisses me off. I’ve been a long time Apple fan and this stunt is just wrong.
I hope somebody starts a class-action suit that forces them to stop doing this OR letting us know if we want to turn this option on.
Not just Apple.
Since retiring from real engineering due to breeding, I’ve been using and supporting Micro$oft Windows since it appeared (I still have my Windows (no version no.) SDK – complete with 5 1/4 floppies.
I and many others are firmly of the opinion that when a new version of Windows is released the upgrades for the previous version very definitely slow it down and (possibly) reduce its stability.
Of course, we could be mistaken…
Newer versions (i.e. “larger” versions) require newer (faster) hardware to run as fast as older versions (yes, tighter code is better but it is really hard).
People want more functionality to justify the expense of upgrading. Software developers want money for writing new software. Win-win? Lose-lose?
Sometimes the only answer is “life’s a b***h and then you need a new computer”.
“Newer versions (i.e. “larger” versions) require newer (faster) hardware to run “
Of course they do but that’s not my point, which is that service packs and especially patches issued towards the end of life of an OS have a suspicious tendency to reduce both the performance and reliability of the system, which is arguably intentional to persuade the user of the necessity to upgrade to the latest OS.
Frankly, for the productivity, and the ease, and wide variety of programs, I think it is a great deal to pay $100 for a new version of Windows every 3 or 4 years.
“I think it is a great deal to pay $100 for a new version of Windows every 3 or 4 years”
A great deal more than $100 by the time you’ve paid someone to get all the printers, scanners, comms packages and whatnot reconfigured so the user can actually use them…
I have updated my MBP with every version from OS X Mountain Lion to the current version Mac OS High Sierra at no additional cost.
My entire family (5of us) had iPhone 5’s … I would STILL have it … if it hadn’t become so buggy, weak, and unreliable. Same with every other one owned by my family members. Their iPhone 5’s had become so Awful that ALL HAD to pony-up and buy iPhone 8’s last year. I suppose this crop of iPhones will CRASH right around the launch of the iPhone XI
I believe it is time to return to a “dumb” flip-phone. Something FREE (again) with my carrier contract … or I’ll just buy a basket of “burner” drug-dealer phones.
I got rid of the TV…..went back to a flip….and never been happier 🙂
I admire you …
I have never trusted that company, and never used one of their products, and will never buy one of them. Apple is most famous for joining a very short list of companies that invented new ways to turn materialism and waste into profit.
The first is the guy who invented planned obsolescence in 1926 creating a vast industry-wide conspiracy to reduce the lifetime of light bulbs from 2500 hrs at the time to <1000 hrs, a secret agreement that endured across all major producers about 1995.
The second is GM which invented selling planned obsolescence as a fashion statement in 1955 – buy a new car you don't need in order to make a fashion statement.
The third is Apple which invented the planned obsolescent iPod with a crappy 13 month battery life as a fashion accessory that you would throw away after one year: disposable, obsolescent fashion technology designed to induce the customer to set aside a monthly budget permanently hooking them to an obscure, proprietary 'community of users'.
Trapped inside the system, product owners find themselves hostage to a weak battery (that is what those charging stations are for at airports: iPhone users trying to get through the business day. Now we see the double edged sword: the built-in obsolescence battery starts to fall from its modest capacity and the company slowly squeezes the performance with 'free updates' to force the stranded user into buying a new model or risk losing their accumulated 'cloud services'.
This is a new low standard of unethical behavior eclipsing even that of Siemens, GE, GM and Enron. Apple is also the US's largest tax cheat/avoider in history. Why am I not surprised?
I see a big opportunity to file the largest law suit in history. If you want a better phone for a lot less, get a KeyOne and avoid all three social pathologies.
WOW, what short memory, or just young.
MS DOS persisted with the 520 K [?] memory limit even after windows was launched, long after others could read large memories. MS DOS and Windows were so pitiful users had to upgrade to every new offering but each one was only an incremental improvement on what went before. W 98 was the first MS OS that met basic expectations. Microsoft is still public enemy No 1 in my mind. A terrible company selling terrible products while making a fortune.
MS is that, yes. Apple is the standard in “corporatism”. Jobs taught it to Gates.
Welcome to reality.
oh btw – companies selling “terrible products” don’t survive for decades. Much less capture 90% of the market.
squiggy9000
I assume you never tried to run MS Word on W3.
640K. IBM wanted the IBM PC to be “ten times better than the Commodore 64”. It was an albatross on the neck of the Intel platform for years – 640K, then “upper memory” IIRC reserved for various drivers and crap up to 1024K (1MB), and using himem.sys? to load DOS high to make more room in conventional memory for programs to run, and having to deal with assorted kludges by various third-party vendors for years in order to get at anything over 1 MB. Yeah, 1 MB, not GB! Pretty strong evidence in support of Moore’s Law’s memory corollary.
Whoa up can’t let the everlasting light bulb conspiracy go through to the keeper-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest-lasting_light_bulbs
Those old Edison globes chewed too much power so naturally there was an economic trade-off between running cost vs depreciation as they developed finer filaments and before the demise of the traditional light globe, you could buy specific use long lasting ones where the cost of changing them (ie difficult access) brooked large in the overall economics of them.
CiWbriB:
I think you’re going a bit overboard. Companies have been using fashion to promote sales since forever. GM and Apple are no different. Give Steve Jobs and Apple their due: they created a workable and affordable realization of Alan Kay’s Dynabook. That someone else would have done it eventually doesn’t diminish the achievement. If you recall, at the time just about all the technology pundits predicted it would be a flop because “what does Apple know about telephony?”
Telecommunication service is better, cheaper and vastly more portable today than when I used to spend hours in the Telephone exhibit hall at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry in the 60s. Apple deserves at least some credit for moving the technology along to this point.
You don’t have to buy the $700+ phone from Apple or Samsung to reap the benefits, just as you don’t have to buy a Mercedes or BMW to get wherever you need to go. In any competitive market there will be value providers and fashion providers. Apple aims to create products with a unique user experience cheaper competitors can’t match and they appeal to consumers who want to feel special. Sometimes I appreciate their devotion to design excellence and sometimes I deplore it when usability and durability are sacrificed.
The KeyOne (Blackberry) is selling on Amazon for about $450. Granted, less than an iPhone but I still don’t see this as cheap, particularly when there are smartphones to be had for less than $100.
Fashion sells. Maybe in an ideal world it shouldn’t, but it always has and I see no reason that will change. Speaking of Beijing — try to find a Mao suit for sale anywhere. That was the epitome of utility over fashion, and it disappeared once more fashionable dress became available and politically safe.
How to go from conspiracy theory to truth in a micro second. “Conspiracy theory” is a favorite go to for AGW supporters when confronted with facts supporting the UN using AGW to cripple Capitalism.
Just the way a Windows computer gradually bogs down over time, so people replace the malware infested, dust filled, bloated machine.
‘Search google for “Windows rot”
The solution is back up all your files and reset the machine to original factory condition. Works like a charm
How many people are going to be bothered doing that? Not that what you are saying is incorrect, but Windows ain’t worth it.
Aint worth it?
Considering the choice is between buying a new machine and applying an easy fix to what you already have, that makes no sense.
Anyone who has stuff they need ought to already have everything backed up, and if they do not, it is a good time to do it.
I imagine there are few people that do not have any files on their computer they would hate to suddenly lose.
Windows decay was noted long ago. If you are a Windows user and haven’t yet read Verity Stob’s “State of Decay” (2002), I can recommend it wholeheartedly. FWIW, I generally give up on a machine at somewhere around Cruft Force 6-7, as life gets a bit too “sporting” much beyond that.
I had to look that up…Cruft Force 6-7.
Funny.
Not hysterically funny, but somewhat amusing.
“Verity Stob has developed a new tool that will help you make rapid diagnoses of sick PCs. A rolling computer gathers “cruft.” When you spot a class interface that is no longer used by any client, but that nobody dare delete, that’s cruft. It is also the word “seperate,” added to a spellchecker’s private dictionary in a moment of careless haste, and now waiting for a suitably important document. Cruft is the cruel corruption and confusion inevitably wrought by time upon all petty efforts of humankind. There.
At Laboratoires Stob, we have been working on the cruft crisis for a while. Recalling the maxim “to control a problem you must first measure it,” we have devised a suitable metric, an index of cruftidity”
That gets one “ha”, but not a “haha”.
Definitely not a LOL, let alone a LMAO, and under no circumstances do I imagine anyone is ROFLMFAO.
Lawsuit.
I love Apple products but now I know not to upgrade the OS system. I suspected the upgraded OS slow down our iPads, but now I know for sure. Perhaps that was the marketing of the free OS upgrades?
This is the same theory I have had about razor blades. When a new blade is released, the old ones continue to be mfg. The question is, are the old blades less sharper than the new ones so the user moves up to the new model? What do you think? No specific mfg.
[SNIP – accusing the blog owner of “malfeasance” (4 times!) for expressing an opinion won’t fly here -MOD]
Four times because it was warranted.
The blog owner has made claims whose accuracy are on the level of Big Al’s “millions of degrees” comment and passed them off as facts. The integrity of this site demands that such transgressions do not stand unquestioned.
I laid out exactly why it’s not some grand conspiracy.
In this short of a story there were 4 major flaws upon which Anthony’s published opinion was based.
That means either he didn’t understand the situation enough, yet still chose to publish those conclusions, or understood it perfectly well, ignored the facts, and published.
In other words, either the author didn’t live up to the obligation of a standard of truth this site demands or the post was intentionally misleading…. in either case, it’s a big failure of trust.
But wouldn’t you expect old hardware to slow down as new software is introduced? If you look at the growth of total lines of code for operating systems over time, you would expect it to run slower on the same hardware. Try putting Windows 10 on a very old machine. Couple that with how Li-ion batteries and you have a reason to throttle it.
Three observations from a former senior Mot exec and long time Apple user, from the former inside.
1. Never upgrade from a stable system (Hw/Sw) until that system collapses of obsolescence. Then do a complete HW/SW changeout, not a partial upgrade as here. There are simply too many moving parts. That is why gens and gen x builds are released as betas.
2. Never do a partial upgradenof a stable system. It will always go crazy in some bug later found.
3. batteries degrade. Get used to that, and figure out how to replace them without system SW/Hw changes, or resign to be led by the nose by the Apple/Google/Samsung types on minimsl functional upgrades cause batteries always degrade.
Apple, the “Walled Garden Company” that makes it very hard for you to ever escape with anything you use or buy from them. Well, you virtually have to pay for everything Apple, now that I think about it. Try this. Compare how much an Apple person pays for the same free Android apps. Want to take your purchased media with you to a non-Apple device? Good luck….. How many of their over 500,000 employees work in China anyhow? Yep, that number would suprise most folks.
http://c8.alamy.com/comp/CR549Y/cut-apple-rotten-inside-CR549Y.jpg
What’s worse than finding a worm if you apple?
Half a worm.
If you own Apple stock (and you do if you have any mutual fund, ETF or pension fund), then you should like what Apple is doing to keep its revenue rising.
It is, after all, the biggest company in the world in terms of market value and net income.
20 years ago, many many companies had higher value. Today, it is Apple alone and all the financial data says it is not over-valued at all. Maybe the iPhone X doesn’t quite sell as good as is projected and then that will change. But all the other mobile devices are just not as good. In the next two years, you will want to own the X.
Apple has added more value to the human experience than any other company. That is why ii is worth so much. That is why we should respect and value what Apple has done. They might screw with us every now and again like they are doing with the old phones, but they have changed your daily life experience to the better more than any other company has done. That is why they worth so much.
Bill Illis commented: “Apple has added more value to the human experience than any other company.” To the “human experience”? Really Bill? More than IBM, Intel, US Steel, Standard Oil, etc. name all the companies that Apple’s existence is owed to and think again.
Xerox PARC first commercialise the windowing operating system. Apple simply took their work and cheapened it so ordinary people could afford it.
Both Windows and the MAC OS were rip-offs of the XEROX PARC windowed operating system. The problem with XEROX, as Steve Jobs said, was that they were “Copier heads” and didn’t know what they had.
How hard is it to be the most profitable company in the world if your business model is slave labor? Foxconn?
“Slave Labor” ?
I believe the labor is engaged on a voluntary basis.
Any one of the labor force are free to leave and create a product that supersedes Apple’s (assuming Apple’s products are as terrible as you suggest). All of us are.
Or are you just doing some cheap anti-Free Market virtue signalling using the Cultural Marxist meme of “exploitation of the workers”.
It is *impossible* to exploit workers in an actual Free Market with voluntary exchange. Nobody engages in transactions unless both sides feel they are getting what they want from the deal.
The exploitation of workers happen in non-Free Market systems, where State force is used to engage in *involuntary* transactions. This exploitation is inherent in all ‘socialist’ systems, which are predicated on State force enslaving citizens for the benefit of the political ‘elites’ who run the State.
So spare us with the “slave labor” slander. The Chinese have a choice to work for Foxconn or not, and people are desperate to get jobs there because conditions are *better* than elsewhere in the socialist ‘Workers Paradise’ that numptys have no clue about the actual reality of socialist slavery.
Sure they have a choice. Many of the workers choose suicide over seven days a week and fourteen hour days. So yeah, in leftist-world they have a choice.
(not sure if /sarc)
<¿<
I always say that Apple is for the 1%, not for the likes of me.
No, their advertising strategy is to make it appear as though it’s for the 1% which makes it especially appealing to youth as a status symbol.
In reality, what you’re paying for is the body of a luxury car with the engine of a buggy.
I don’t like to leave comments without supporting evidence of my claims so here’s an example:
Lets take the Mac Pro and see what we can build for the same price:
https://www.apple.com/mac-pro/specs/
Starting Price: $2999
Since it’s tiny, we’ll go with a Mini ITX build:
Chassis:
https://www.amazon.com/Corsair-Obsidian-250D-Mini-Case/dp/B00HFRTF5W/
PSU:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00M2UINT6?pd_rd_i=B00M2UIXX2
GPU:
https://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-GeForce-Graphic-Cards-GV-N1080IX-8GD/dp/B076MRH446/
Mobo:
https://www.amazon.com/GIGABYTE-GA-Z270N-Gaming-LGA1151-Mini-ITX-Motherboard/dp/B06X1FJBCH/
CPU:
https://www.amazon.com/Intel-Unlocked-Skylake-Processor-BX80662I76700K/
MEM:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B018GK2G9S/
SSD:
https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-960-PRO-Internal-MZ-V6P512BW/
Cooler:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B019955W7C?pd_rd_i=B019955RNQ
Subtotal (7 items): $1,909.17
For a thousand bucks less, you get WAY the hell more performance.
Dog–
2 of your links lead to dog pix
@Lance Wallace
That’s hilarious!
Sorry, I rushed it and tried to cut the link size down and screwed up since for whatever reason Amazon guy rid of the share link function that auto-shrinks them down:
CPU:
https://www.amazon.com/Intel-Desktop-Processor-i7-7700K-BX80677I77700K/dp/B01MXSI216/
SSD:
https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-960-PRO-Internal-MZ-V6P1T0BW/dp/B01LYRCIPG/
Price adjusted since I wanted to try and reach $2999:
Subtotal (8 items): $2,352.48
For an almost an exact replica of the Mac Pro at its starting price:
Mobo:
https://www.amazon.com/ASRock-Mini-Motherboards-X99E-ITX-AC/dp/B00VTFA2QM/
$190 (out of stock atm)
CPU:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MU045JU/
MEM:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B017NW5NZY/
SSD:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00OAJ412U/
GPU x2:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0093HV4N8/
PSU:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00M2UIXX2/
Chassis:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00LA6WXEO/
Subtotal = $2013
Some of the parts they list for the Mac Pro are out dated such as the memory and GPU so the ones I list above have slightly better specs.
For three grand you can get a seriously sick PC, that is for sure.
“CPU:
https://www.amazon.com/Intel-Unlocked-Skylake-Processor-BX80662I76700K/ ”
Take AMD Ryzen 7 1700, this is much cheaper and you will not notice the difference in performance as a normal human being. If so, then it can only be measured in milliseconds.
I’m one of the dinosaurs whose computer at graduation was a slide rule so my thoughts may be off the mark on this, although I seem to have been fair to good in the majority of my reading of ‘tells’. I’ve been sceptical by inclination for as far back as I can remember and that’s probably a factor. Anyway, here it is re Apple.
I’ve long thought, probably because of a) the cubby, fraternal loyalty and zeal of Apple users and their enthralment with each and every new gadget at scary prices – hey these people have huge discussion groups, chats, etc. etc. They are family. b) i never met an academic, humanities graduate, MSM employee, school teacher.. who didn’t belong to the ‘Family’. Okay, these ‘tells’ tell me that (the majority of them) vote left, have ‘progressive’ (post normal meaning) worldviews, yadda yadda.
With the revelation of sneakiness, we can add the strongest tell of all, c) Entitlement! Apple is big on entitlement. So, I don’t think I’m going to get away with this quietly, but I sure would like to know if I have this mostly correct.
100% correct.
The black roll neck jumper was the biggest ‘tell’.
1. Apple Inc.
With a market capitalization of $868.8 billion, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has made for one of the greatest investing stories in history.
1. Largest publicly traded company in the U.S. I like Apple. They’ll be fine. Apple loyalists and all.
If you own an S & P 500 index fund, almost 3% of that money is Apple stock.
Well, I’m glad Apple fans are happy but for those who are technophiles, they just don’t deliver a product that will ever meet our standards in customization, security, speed, and performance. And with the recent revelations, they remind us why they never will…
Proud owner of an unlocked/rooted Nexus 6 that’s rocking Darkrom which is way the hell faster and more secure than stock:
https://forum.xda-developers.com/nexus-6/development/rom-dark-rom-t3580215
Never will I buy a phone that doesn’t give me complete control.
It came time to pay for a new laptop for the college son. I asked him, what do your science profs use? MacBook with no hesitation about the cost. He’s STEM.
Now I’m scared. Stem?
If the leftist crowd have bought off real scientists we are doomed.
“The reputation damage…, will likely linger for a decade.”
I have never bought an iPhone, simply because Apple’s founder was a sociopath. He behaved like one and he built the corporate culture to also behave like one.
iPhones also need a hard reset now and then – that’s part of the slow-down. You all have heard of this, right:
https://www.igeeksblog.com/how-to-clear-ram-and-speed-up-iphone-ipad-quickly/
It is a great stock, and hacking their own customers phones is really messed up but marketing genius.
Evil genius, but genius nonetheless.
AAPL may be a SELL here.
Recall what happened to Cony when it was revealed that they were installing a root kit into any computer that played one of their CDs?
That was the end of them as a successful and growing company.
People are very clear on how they feel about a company that acts like they own your equipment.
Sorry, Sony.
Conny BMG, right? I remember that too, never buy anything branded Sony. Installing a rootkit is something so absolutely moralfree that it is only some inadequate laws that prevented them from going paws up. But the trouble is, corporations like Apple are very similar in that respect. As said, Jobs was behaving sociopathically and his company is something I deeply hate even when I admire their good reliability and apparently flawless software. It is just that they decieve you. And cash.
BTW, I’m using android that’s chitty but at least it is not trying to own me. Just steal my location, microphone, phone book and email contacts.
+++
I believe Apple was caught trowsers dow – they are not slowing the devices to keep the battery live, but to cripple the experience without admitting a weak inbuilt battery.
Surely this should all just be settings in low battery detection software?
For a long time, Microsoft Windows has run slower and slower as it ages, until it becomes unusable – typically over a 5-year period. This is due to a variety of internal design decisions.
The fact that the operating system becomes unusable at about the same time as the next version is due out is, of course, a complete coincidence……
I have a 6 YEAR OLD Windows 7 Pro installation, with no slowdown issues at all. Then again I follow regular maintenance and use an SSD rather than a hard drive, which needs no “defrag”. I also use “drive cleanup” once a month. It’s all about managing the O.S. properly.
Well, maybe that explains why you are not part of The Consensus. You may need Apple products to properly analyze climate data and photoshop polar bears onto ice cubes.
You don’t store your credit card details anywhere on that Windows 7 rig do you Anthony ?
Windows 7 is kinda swiss cheese. Beers on you !
Any issues I have ever had with PCs running Windows versions 7 or later have been completely fixed by backing up all files on an external hard drive and then doing a system restore to original factory condition.
Then install updates. Then transfer files you want to have back on your PC back to your PC.
Most of the recent problems I have had involved upgrades to the newest versions of Windows 10, on machines that did not have Windows 10 to begin with.
Some older machines do not have enough memory to run newer software and operating systems efficiently, but there are also other problems with machines just getting clogged up or weighted down with stuff than accumulates somewhere in the machine.
Restoring them has invariably fixed them for me.
I do not have any really expensive or fancy machines, just ones I assembled from off the shelf components.
Adding as much memory as your machine has slots and the ability to utilize does not hurt either, and is very inexpensive.
There is NO REASON WHY any computer system should slow down over time unless altered – after all there is no physical wear as in a gearbox or something. Just don’t allow it to download and install updates and other alterations unless inevitable for a certain task you are doing. The only such thing I can think of in my windows machine is a few webpages demanding the latest version of Flash and/or Java. Among professional uses (mostly audio processing and an archival database in my case): NOTHING. Software is installed, software is running, when I close down the machine tonight and restart it tomorrow morning, everything will behave and react just the same. I don’t even need an internet connection to do the important stuff. Have long ago set up a “throwaway” laptop to handle emails and web browsing that can be reset to factory state without qualms because there’s nothing irreplaceable on it (downloaded documents and files are moved to the offline workstation via external SSD drives physically moved from one machine to the other). OS? WinXP on the workstation – 100% reliable except for hardware failures (!) for well over 10 years now – and Win7 on the laptop, downgraded from Win8.1 which wasa a PITA. Apple? Wouldn’t touch it with a bargepole, not for any “moral” reason, but because NO working equivalents exist to dozens of tools I am using daily (for others, the difference is measured in four-digit dollar amounts, also prohibitive for a small business like mine…..). A friend of mine, wanting to “do it right”, invested in a desktop Mac some years ago, wanting to a bit of the same stuff I am doing – restoring audio from old 78rpm records – and was almost immediately stumped because everything that produces pro-quality results in this field wasn’t available for Apple OS. Ended up with running a virtual WinXP (or was it Win7) box inside the Mac HAHA…..
No doubt most if not all problems that are not hardware failures are because of being connected to the internet.
Since most people I know have computers primarily for doing stuff involving the internet, and because of viruses and spyware and such, you have to install all of the patches and updates etc.
And do periodic maintenance.
I originally intended to have one machine that I never connected to the internet, or rarely, but I found I did not have the patience or discipline to be switching machines all day…to much hassle.
They are machines, stuff happens.
It is a dirty world out there, and hackers and viruses are a fact of life.
So it is important to know how to fix problems when they arise…for me anyway.
I have never been one to decide not to learn how to do a thing.
I’ve never owned an apple phone, computer, or tablet. I once had an old ipod, but I got it for cheap.
However… my brother gave my mom his old iphone 5 something when he got a new one (he’s already rushed out and got the x, waste of $)
I’ve spent more time trying to help my mom use that worthless pile of garbage…. apple seems intent on ignoring all UI standards. Almost every time my mom tries sending a text she ends up in some balloons submenu that I only just figured out where it came from.
apple is the worst tech company ever. But they’re still a good investment, because they alone have figured out how to get the low IQ image-conscious “sheep” to like their mediocre products. I’ve had every “feature” my brother is bragging about on his new x for 2 years on my Nexus 6. 4K video, large hi-res screen, great battery life, etc. Android for me.
Ditto.
Android phones are fantastic.
I have had several over the years.
One year I bought the one that had the best camera, another time I wanted the brightest screen, another time the biggest screen.
The ones that have come out in the past few years from Samsung or Motorola are amazing.
Ones older than that I have had slow down to the point of being almost unusable when I accidently allowed the phone to install a new version of the OS.
It may be that the upgrade to Three Musketeers from the O’Henry bar OS was not the problem, but I have had instant problems in the past when this was done.
There seems to be a 97% consensus here that Apple has been misbehaving. I believe the consensus is wrong and Anthony’s graph above is comparing apples and cookies. 🙂 Here is why.
Every time Apple releases a new iPhone it also releases a new and more capable OS. Hence the spikes in Anthony’s chart. iPhone owners tend to upgrade to the new OS very very fast compared to Android owners. Therefor you would have the combination of a new OS on an older smartphone with most iPhones running the newest version of the OS. That tends to slow older iPhones down, but it also gives them more capabilities.
The same does not apply to Android. Apart from some high end smartphones from Samsung and a few other companies with a very small market share most Android phones never get an OS upgrade. Most Android phones are cheap throwaway devices and often they are not able to be upgraded to the newest OS and tend not to be supported by their maker for more than a year or two.
In other words, there is a huge fragmentation in OS versions in the Android world, just as there is a huge fragmentation as far as hardware is concerned. There are probably several dozen versions out there with a hugely varying adoption rate on a widely varying hardware. Just google it to see for yourself.
THAT IS WHY YOU WOULD FIND FEW ANDROID OWNERS GOOGLING THE ISSUE OF A SLOW ANDROID PHONE.
Most just buy a new device once their phone company gives them a new subsidised one. Just like you experience a slow PC, and eventually, after a much longer timeframe a slow Mac respectively, after multiple OS upgrades, you also experience a slower iPhone. It just doesn’t have the hardware specs to deal with new OS capabilities after several years.
Apple supports its Macs and iPhones, iPads, iPods much much longer with OS upgrades than what you would be able to run with acceptable speed on a PC or Android. That speaks highly of Apple. You all who complain about Apple should complain about lack of OS upgrade support from Android device manufacturers.
Regarding an earlier comment about a 13 month planned obsolescence of iPods, I never experienced that. I always had mine for years until I would eventually forget them on a plane along with my Bose headphones. I still have one with the chip of the iPhone 5S, and while it doesn’t run the newest OS it is still a darn fine device that does what I want it to do.
I have owned the iPhone types 3G, 4, 4S, 5S, 6S Plus, and 7. I have never been forced into an automatic OS upgrade. Apple doesn’t do that. I suspect a fat finger somewhere. My old iPhone 5S is still in use by my nephew’s girlfriend. It is more than four years old and the battery still works well. You probably don’t find too many Android devices of that age and functionality.
To me Apple’s explanation has credibility.
“The same does not apply to Android. Apart from some high end smartphones from Samsung and a few other companies with a very small market share most Android phones never get an OS upgrade. Most Android phones are cheap throwaway devices and often they are not able to be upgraded to the newest OS and tend not to be supported by their maker for more than a year or two.”
This is exactly opposite all of my experience.
Android phones always try to upgrade themselves to the newest candy bar from Google.
Otherwise you are correct…new OS on old phone with old chip and less memory manes it will run slower…plus by then the battery is getting old and no longer holds a full charge…but that does not slow a phone down.
Menicholas – That may be certainly true for your specific phone model. But while the Android phone may attempt an upgrade, the specific OS upgrade may depend on the manufacturer of the phone making OS upgrades available that work with your model. Samsung is pretty good in that regard. But they are more high end than others. Other OEMs slap some components together and do not much care about support and neither do their owners.
When you look at the fragmented state of Android OS out there the fact is that a huge number of devices never get upgraded by their owners. Many people don’t care and just want a phone that makes calls, sends messages, and snaps pictures. They couldn’t care less about OS upgrades. My point was that this is why you do not see those spikes in Anthony’s graph wrt Android as you see with iOS. There is a benign explanation for those spikes in iOS.
A new OS puts almost always a higher demand on an older phone in terms of processing requirements and this puts a higher demand on the battery and it lends credibility to Apple’s reason for slowing down the phone. I’d rather have a somewhat slower phone than one that crashes.
Menicholas, I appreciate your factual and polite reply. I wish online discussions were always that polite.
All very fine Manfred, but Apple was caught out and have admitted their crime. This is what the left does every time. Brazenly overwhelms the conversation as a dodging tactic Get real. Drop Alinsky’s rules and simply admit that you can be wrong sometimes. Be mad about being manipulated. ‘Progressive’ elites are manipulating all the time – I’d hate to think you don’t know this.
Gary, please see Tony Swash’s excellent comment at 3:14 AM of which I quote a few elements below:
Tony Swash says:
…
“Second – Apple has not been slowing down older iPhones. What is has done is introduce a throttling system used in very specific and episodic situations where iPhones with older partially worn out batteries encounter peak system utilisation (a relatively rare event) which without the episodic throttling could cause the iPhone to suddenly shut down due to lack of power. Once the peak usage passes the throttling is turned off. Most of the time the throttling isn’t implemented because most of the time older iPhones with worn out batteries are not being used at full system capacity. Obviously the more worn out a battery is the more like it is likely to encounter an event that requires throttling but even a very worn out battery is highly unlikely to require permanent throttling.
Third – this episodic throttling will almost always show up in benchmarking exercises as benchmarking software is intended to test the maximum system performance and will thus almost certainly trigger precisely the circumstances which trigger the throttling. The benchmarking software does not replicate normal everyday usage.”
I am not gifted enough in commenting software (as I rarely comment) to post a direct link to the comment which is much longer and includes much pertinent information, but it should be easy to find.
I think Tony’s comment should put to rest any thoughts of a conspiracy here. That said, I always must hold my nose whenever I buy an Apple product due to Al Gore being on their board.
Also, please see Pic Werme’s excellent comment at 6:13 AM regarding what ifixit.org found.
“I have never been forced into an automatic OS upgrade.”
Quite true but I ceased to be an Apple fan when in order for my phone, my home computer and my itunes to sync up properly, updates became unavoidable. In a sense some updates became effectively automatic since I really had no choice if I wanted to retain the functionality of my devices.
This was once a wonderful part of the Apple user experience: consistency. A new OS would come out and everything previously was supported. But Apple got greedy. They realized that they could make me replace my incredibly powerful and functional home computer by making it not pair with my new iphone without a newest itunes that only runs on the latest OS which barely runs on my super powerful desktop.
That’s when I threw away 20 years of Apple customer satisfaction and vowed never to buy anything Apple again. This latest news is just consistent behavior from a company that turned its back on its customers years ago.
Hi Dave!
You have a good point there but I think technology has moved in a different direction. It has been about 18 months since I have backed up my iPhone to a computer or synched with iTunes. When I moved to Europe last year I gave my iMac (3 TB fusion drive) to a friend in Sacramento and currently only use a late 2012 MacBook Air with a 500 GB SSD. I am planning to buy a new iMac in late 2018 when my new permanent digs are ready for move in. Right now I don’t need the clutter.
My iPhone has 256 GB, and while it is not nearly full it would still eat up too much space on a backup. My MacBook Air is too small to hold a local backup of my iPhone. But it is not needed. Between automatic cloud synching of photos, files, music (Music Match), etc. between my iPhone, iPad, Apple TV 4, and my Mac, and Mac OS moving files automatically to the cloud with 2 TB storage or downloading it when needed, it is a seamless experience; at least it has been for me. Dropbox works like a charm. Dropbox Pro (which I do not have yet but eventually will get) gives you control over files in the cloud and on your device. Mind you, I still have a number of old fashioned HDDs on which I keep multiple MBA backups of all files. I don’t trust iCloud THAT much. In addition I have files on HDDs and DVDs that are not routinely connected to my Mac on which I store files. I am a big believer in redundancy, flexibility, and security.
I came to Europe with an unlocked iPhone 6S Plus with 256 GB which I gave to my niece. I backed it up to iCloud and download all the files to my new iPhone 7 as needed. I have a 200 mb/s download and 100 mb/s upload fiberoptic link with very low latency. I actually didn’t restore from the backup as I didn’t want all my US apps on my new phone. I selectively downloaded the apps I wanted from the US app store and then got the other ones I wanted from the German app store to which I switched. It didn’t affect any data stored in iCloud.
That said, I wish I could download apps or TV shows, movies, etc. from any store. But this is something that plagues everybody regardless of OS due to regional licensing rights. That is the next thing they need to change.
In 2006 I switched from Windows to Mac. I have never looked back. I always used to provide free tech support for my less technically inclined friends for their Windows computers. They were always a complete mess and I was sometimes fixing three PCs in a single day. My Windows PCs (I go back to DOS 2.0 and used to build my own PCs and also ran OS2 from IBM, which was very hardware sensitive) were fine, but they did require a lot of maintenance including boot-up file editing, etc., as well as a bit of knowledge. Eventually I switched almost all my friends to the Mac. After that my tech support burden declined dramatically. Those PCs mostly ran XP back in the day. I never used Windows Vista, although it was a fine program if you disabled all the services you didn’t need via admin tools. I ran Windows 7 for a while on a partition on one of my iMacs but gave it up once I had all programs I needed on the Mac side.
I thought Windows 7 was a fine program, but at one time a MS update destroyed IE and I needed to download a Windows version of Firefox on my Mac and install it on the Windows side. After that it worked sort of, but not really, and I just gave up on Windows. I didn’t need it anymore in any case.
Merry Christmas to all!
Merry Christmas to you Manfred!
I know lots of people that are very happy with their Apple products, and I myself have been very happy with various PCs and various Android phones, only the most recent one was a Samsung. Before that I had a Droid super yowza special (Droid Turbo )or something from Motorola, and before that the previous version of same, and before that I had an HTC Thunderbolt from Verizon.
All were at the time very incredible with larger screens than the newest iPhone but likely not as extra fancy in all the bells and whistles. But they were a lot less money too.
I did buy an iPad at one point and still have it…it works great, and when I got it, it was new and amazing.
But it cost a lot of money.
I bought a Kindle Fire HD8 recently with special offers, and it is a very nice and functional tablet, not much of a camera, but I never used the camera on my iPad so big deal….and was dirt cheap at about $49.00…because it plays some ads on the locked screen. For that I save huge amount of money.
I think for the people that use them all of these devices are more than adequate, and all of them suffer from obsolescence after a few years although they still work. All have strong points and also all are outdone by some other device for specific purposes or for cost or something.
For the most part, our gadgets have far more functionality than is ever used by most people who have them.
We take to these inventions like a fish to water, and forget how life used to be.
Remember when long distance was dollars per minute unless you called after 11PM, and even then it would be as much as your rent of you made calls even a few times a week?
Remember when the best anyone had was a beeper?
Recall having to either have a calling card or a pocketful of quarters for the pay phones?
Remember paper maps? Film? CDs?
Having to buy music in a store for like $10-20 an album, and the only way to have it outside of your house was to make cassette tapes?
I can still remember the first time i downloaded a picture on the internet, in 1988 or so…it was of the Pillars of Creation dust clouds…it took about an hour and I could not even believe my eyes.
I can recall being able to play chess with someone when I was alone and thinking it was absolutely incredible.
I can recall my first high speed internet connection, when a web page suddenly loaded instantly…no line by line waiting at all…and being shocked…SHOCKED!
I wonder what we will take for granted in another 20-30 years, and be pissed about when it does not work?
Merry Christmas to you too Menicholas!
That is a great comment! You and I pretty much went through the same experiences with computers and gadgets over the years, as well as music, it seems. When I was younger I was very experimental in the tech field, building my own gadgets and using all kinds of different OS. I was the early adopter, and I surely wasted a ton of money on gadgets that in hindsight were useless and superseded by something better.
Eventually life caught up with me and I just wanted to have something that worked – and worked together – without having to give too much thought to it. The iPhone 3G was not my first smartphone. I had a few Palm Treos first, and then also a Japanese full screen device with a little pull-out stick (whatever you call those widgets) to operate the screen. I bought it because it was 3G when the iPhone was still on the EDGE network. I returned it a few days later as the OS was a pain in the a$$.
The iPhone impressed me with its OS, its slickness, simplicity, and logic. That was back in the days when Steve Jobs was riding herd on things. But I remember being very impressed by a Windows phone a friend had (he is THE gadget freak) and I thought the software was much slicker in many ways than iOS. One of my godchildren has a Samsung and I thought the photos were much better than those of my iPhone 7. But then I have always been a terrible photographer, so it may not have been the fault of the iPhone.
I am completely agnostic as to what people do, what brands they buy, what cars they drive. It is none of my business, unless I am asked to provide tech support for computers or smartphones. 🙂 I don’t know if the same applies to you, but I am getting to that age where I no longer want to deal with setting up gadgets; I just hand them to one of my nephews and let them deal with it. And they are young enough to be happy to do it.
Merry Christmas and let’s just all get along – Manfred
iPhone,like Tesla , is a cultist product. Tesla owners recently rated themselves the happiest and amost satisfied of car owners. This after the Model X appeared on several “10 least reliable car” lists. The Model S is considered to be of average reliability. You should know that Elon Musk’s (stupid) bright idea of electronic disappearing door handles cost $800 plus labor to replace, and have reportedly been flakey and actually freeze shut in snow and freezing rain. That is just plain imbecilic engineering. Tesla requires body repairs to be done at a “Tesla authorized shop”, and the prices are outrageous according to internet owner reports. I would no more own a Tesla vehicle than a boa constrictor. Then there is the Youtube 30 minute video of a Tesla Model S owner describing all of the things that were wrong with his car – during the first 6 months. But at the end he claimed he loved his Tesla.I assume when he gets his autonomous driving software installed (for $9,000) he’ll be OK when the car runs over him.
Anthony’s spiky graph co-ordinating with the release of new i-phones needs some explaining. If obsolescence was built-in it would be unlikely to produce such clear spikes – unless the timing of the trigger was varied so as to be shorter towards the end of the sales run of the earlier marques. Or is the suggestion that Apple can degrade the phones remotely?
No! Is just “Market” planning. If you decide to release a new product every, said, 2 years you can plan also degradation time. And in order to prevent an “evidence” you can imaging an obsolescence after a certain amount of “use”, as a Company asked me once for their product! At that time I refused the work and start thinking that that was not the only Company that want to do it!
So – are you saying the amount of built-in obsolescence varies according to the sale date of the product?
Suspicious search “android slow”. I bet people would be more likely to search “samsung slow” or “cell phone slow” or “nexus slow” or “motorola phone slow”.
Darn – I spoke before research. Just now I used Google Trends to compare “nexus slow”, “cell slow”, “phone slow”, “mobile slow”, “galaxy slow”, and “samsung slow”. None of them comes anywhere near “iPhone slow”. — Maybe if I added them all up …..
@cynthia: No you first bet is correct. For example if you search nexus slow, you’ll find a peak in Nov 2014 when a new Nexus was released.
@anthony watts: this is not a valid comparision to make a link to the Apple fraud. Iphone has a market share of 15%, even more in the past.
Android has about 85%, but this is split in multiple vendors (Samsung, Sony, HTC, …..). All of these have different release dates and people might search completely different (nexus slow, pixel slow, galaxy slow etc.). And to make it worse, they often have tablets and phone with the same name (galaxy tab, galaxy phone, nexus tab etc.).
Another example: Galaxy S8 was released March 2017. And google trends starts to peak there.
Or for ‘galaxy s6 slow’ you’ll find the peak in april 2015 when S6 was released.
So it could be that people who are interested in the new phone do a search if it is slow or maybe they are dissapointed because the expected more performance after switching from their old one 😉
Whatever the cause is, it seems to be normal that people search ‘slow’ in conjunction with a new cellphone release.
Best whishes, and a Merry X-Mas from Germany 😉
http://vps.templar.co.uk/Cartoons%20and%20Politics/original.jpg
Funny!
@Manfred Schropp: Not sure where you get your information from, but my experience and that of my friends and family tells me that all of their android phones receive regular system updates. My 18 month old samsung A5 is on the latest v7 as of last week. Wrt to the graph, recall that the number of sales of iphones is about 13% versu 86% for android. When that is factored into the relative size of the curves on the graph, apple have a real problem.
@Steve Richards
Here are some links:
https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html
https://david-smith.org/iosversionstats/
This gives you an idea about fragmentation by OS for Android and iOS. Like I said, Samsung is an exception with regard to updates. They are a premium product.
Yes, Android has a huge market share but there are dozens and dozens of products from a whole bunch of different manufacturers.
For any of these devices, backing them up to the cloud, and reformatting them to original condition will improve performance, and some of this will be retained even after updating.
Androids do update regularly, and each upgrade seems to slow them somewhat if it includes a whole new OS…you can refuse the update but it becomes tiresome because you have to postpone the update one day at a time, every single day.
With any of the phones, you can save oodles of money by buying the older version after an new product release, but will get ripped off if you buy one just before a new product release.
As for Apple, there are reasons why they are alone among device manufacturers in reaping outsized profits…they have a loyal fan base who pay a huge premium for their products.
I have heard from several of these fans that they are done with Apple after buying nothing else for many years.
And they are indeed being sued.
Will be interesting to see how it goes for the profits and the stock in the coming months and years.
I think they will take a hit but bounce right back.
Menicholas – I have now doubt that Android devices have a lot of merit. Many of my friends have them. Frankly, I don’t know that much about them. Whether it is Android or iOS, they all do what I would want them to do. But I freely admit that I am locked into Apple’s eco system and I don’t even think about switching. For me it is about convenience and also security. If I want the best camera then I will buy a dedicated camera. I just don’t have a real incentive to switch, and I think this plays to Apple’s advantage.
I know Apple products are more expensive, maybe much more expensive than viable alternatives, but I look at it as investment research. I bought lots of Apple stock back in 2004 and as long as their products are good and my family, friends, and most importantly the children of my friends (the next generation), desire their products I am going to hang on to it.
Much like BMWs, Porsches, and other high end products Apple products are aspirational goods for many, especially those that are brand conscious. Some of my friends are very brand conscious, mainly the women, though certainly not all of them. My guy friends look more at the technical aspects and don’t much care about brand names.
I suspect that even people who are saying they think Apple did a Very Bad Thing will realize upon a more detailed look that there were some technical reasons and it is not as bad as they first thought, although Apple does seem to have erred in not being upfront about it to begin with.
I am surprised by the number of people who seem to think rechargeable batteries can be made to never wear out…they cannot. Depending on usage, it may happen more or less quickly.
The other thing that surprises me is that they do not seem to be advocating replacing batteries as a part of every announcement, as replacing old batteries seems to remedy the entire issue.
But there is no doubt that regular replacement is a major part of their business model and marketing strategy, so that may be why they do not emphasize this.
Stepping back a few steps, what is most amazing may be how important these little boxes we all carry have become.
Even the new versions of Star Trek seem to not take into account how much functionality everyone will have in one little pocket sized device.
All of this has evolved overnight…what will we have jammed into them in a few hundred years?
I used to think a few years ago we would all soon have them implanted into our body, but now I am thinking it is more likely we will have our whole self transferred into our phone, and buy a robot to carry it and us around.
I view the split between apple lovers and others in this way:
Artistic types: (graphic designers, music composers/performers) tend to prefer the simplicity of use of the apple interface, others (engineers and normal people) find the MS windows PC interface acceptable.
Personally I use Ubuntu at home and corporate MS windows at work. No problem with either.
We can hate Apple, but what about Samsung’s exploding phones? At least Apple didn’t try to kill me.
Oh yes, Samsung is pretty much second on my hate list. They do good phones though, but they also play the decieve and cash. Fairphone? Too expensive. Jolla? Sank and sailed to where fish live.
I suspect overheating lithium batteries like that was down to makers like Samsung pushing the envelope with the difficult tradeoffs between capacity, charge rate and longevity, the very same problems the EV and batteries for unreliables fans are coming to grips with. There have been some iphones go up in smoke and clearly makers have to be cautious and make them idiot proof for a range of consumers that don’t necessarily read the safe use instructions.
As for mobile phone platforms, Apple provide a mainstream user experience as does Windows mobile perfectly well now although MS came late to the party and suffers from app availability as a consequence. Android allows infinite customisation (rooting?) as well as comparable Apple app availability but realistically most don’t have the time or inclination to mess around with infinite wallpapers, ring tones, yada, yada and increasingly opt for the Google umbrella similar to Apple anyway. These things are like the old telly remote where most of us used a fraction of their functionality but it was there if you could be bothered.
But then again you have to remember that it’s always the complainers who go to then internet. If your phone works fine, you don’t go to the internet proclaiming how it works fine. Same reason why news stories always report house fires but never mention the houses that didn’t burn. I have had a Samsung phone for over a year and I had no problems with it. I don’t know why people always assume that if 1 Samsung malfunctions then EVERY SINGLE Samsung everywhere MUST always do the same. And obviously it has to be a conspiracy by the company to kill you even though that doesn’t make any sense logically.
They were too busy setting fire to someone else. There is virtually no difference in the failure rate between firms products and battery fails and only in the reporting of it.
I think there was one product that was a new release that caught on fire a bunch of times…maybe several dozen out of who knows how many sold?
They took them back and fixed the problem pretty quick, and I think it was only one model of one device…the Note 7 phablet.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/lithium-battery-fire-risk-samsung-galaxy-note-7/
An apple a day keeps the docter away. What happened to it?
Please guys let’s try to be rational. One of the reasons I like this website so much is that in a sea of climate irrationality it offers a space for rational, evidence based discourse. A few points about this unfortunate – and inaccurate – story about Apple slowing older iPhones.
First – please lets drop the Mac versus Windows stuff. That debate leads nowhere but it already clogs up so many tech sites. Its like arguing about which is better The Beatles or Bach. Its a waste of time.
Second – Apple has not been slowing down older iPhones. What is has done is introduce a throttling system used in very specific and episodic situations where iPhones with older partially worn out batteries encounter peak system utilisation (a relatively rare event) which without the episodic throttling could cause the iPhone to suddenly shut down due to lack of power. Once the peak usage passes the throttling is turned off. Most of the time the throttling isn’t implemented because most of the time older iPhones with worn out batteries are not being used at full system capacity. Obviously the more worn out a battery is the more like it is likely to encounter an event that requires throttling but even a very worn out battery is highly unlikely to require permanent throttling.
Third – this episodic throttling will almost always show up in benchmarking exercises as benchmarking software is intended to test the maximum system performance and will thus almost certainly trigger precisely the circumstances which trigger the throttling. The benchmarking software does not replicate normal everyday usage.
Fourth – over time each new iteration of iOS (which adds new functionality and possibly new complexity) may well cause older phones to feel slower. The same as with PCs. However with recent iPhones (i.e those using the last few versions of the A series CPUs) such slow downs if they occur are almost undetectable.
Fifth – all ‘Version One’ editions of iOS updates will contain bugs that are corrected by later point releases. Those bugs could mean system slowdowns and/or show stopping crashes. Later point release iterations of the OS will progressively squash those performance sapping bugs until the next numbered release restarts the cycle. This is pretty much the same for all software.
Sixth – the reason Google returns different hit rates regarding the effects of system upgrades in the iOS world compared to the Android world is largely a function of the fact that in the Android world system upgrades are a relatively rare event whereas in the iOS world they are ubiquitous and older hardware can and does almost always get its OS upgraded for several years after its release.
Seventh – based on purely anecdotal evidence (which is quite a bit more robust than the evidentiary basis of some of the more hysterical comments in this thread) my iPhone 6 which is three and half years old, and which has the latest system software installed along with a ton of apps, shows battery wear at 9% (there is a free app called Battery Life which measures it) and it runs at the same speed it always has, which is pretty fast.
Let’s get back to talking about a real issue which is the ongoing intellectual scandal which is climate alarmism
+1000
Thanks Tony. I would expect that if you are one who does not use your phone for gaming or streaming videos you will not notice any difference in performance.
Tony Swash. I certainly agree with your criticism of this post as going off on a useless tangent. Apple vs Android vs Microsoft vs Compaq etc. is a waste of time on which more “ink” has been spilled than on Donald Trump. Can’t we reserve this blog for more serious things?
Having Anthony go off on Apple is his prerogative, clearly, and it’ll certainly generate clicks and comments. But the resulting comments amount to a millennials’ game. Any minute we may be treated to how one’s smart phone can fly a drone or change your thermostat or “like” yourself on facebook.
I’d rather hear about how climate change will increase volcanoes.
The battery excuse is pure rectal synthesis. Voltage depression doesn’t slow data transmission. And decrease of data rate doesn’t save any energy..in fact, the longer one waits for data, the more power the backlight consumes.
Now they might have connected Steve Jobs’ corpse to a generator and are cashing in on free power.
If say Ford or Chevrolet or GM had throttled previous years cars to say 45MPH when newer models came out, how long before they would be charged with a crime? What makes what Apple did any different?
Because Apple has not generically throttled older iPhones – read my longer comment above.
WP only displays images if the URL ends in a recognized image extension. You should have dropped the “?dl=0”, see the WUWT test page, link in the top nav bar, for more details.
Here’s a good article, with empirical data to back up the battery issue:
https://ifixit.org/blog/9472/ios-update-slows-iphone/
This is also a reason to dispense with electric cars. If you want to replace the battery there several years after, you have more financial problems. The hype about the battery technology advances shows in this example of Apple as a real hype and not justified by the technology. There is currently no battery technology without tremendous performance loss over time.
Exactly, and this is very well known.
Lithium ion batteries can stand up to more charge discharge cycles than previous types of batteries, but since many people run them down every day if not several times a day, after a few years they have been severely degraded.
Any reasonably handy person can replace the battery themselves, and if this is not for you, just have it done my an expert.
Or get a new device.
What I heard, is yes, they throttled performance, but there is a possible fire issue with a failing battery as the volts drop, the amps rise, and hence the possibility of a serious fire with a L-ion battery, but I suspect there is also a little bit of truth to the rest of it here. Batteries wear out, and issues begin to develop. But if you want to sort of regain original performance, just do a factory re-set or re-install the OS and start from scratch as if it is a new computer or phone. And put in an SSD in an old desktop. This will all extend and enhance performance.
I have had a fair number of both Windows and Apple computers/phones, and tried an Android phone. Apple definitely is the easiest to use out of the box. But you pay thru the nose for a fairly nice product too compared to the competition. Part of the problem like the reported story today with Apple fiddling with the OS and cranking it down to save some demand on the battery, is that at some point they also quit supporting the OS completely and no updates. Then you are totally outright outta luck. Most of the apps on my old 3GS iPhone don’t even work anymore… mail works, but iMessage doesn’t. I don’t think Apple even provides updates for it now. I’ll save it for a museum piece and will be worth money some day.
Windows quit updating XP, but NASA need it for its legacy applications, and cut a deal with MS to provide them with updates. A lot of the world still works on XP, and is a shame that MS tried to abandon it, since that was one of their best OS ever. You think they would have worked on expanding that market and enhancing it into a more robust OS so as to make even more money. But that cannibalizes current products.
I tried to get a new iPhone today since my contract ran out last year. The Telco’s, especially on the retail side, make it so difficult to do so if you are an existing customer, that after the Loyality dept. screwed me around for a few hours and said I couldn’t keep my old grandfathered plan if I got a new phone, that I just walked out of the store and lo and behold, there was a repair kiosk in the mall right our their door. I got a new battery for a iPhone 6 Plus, installed for $44 USD at the kiosk and now I really don’t need to upgrade at all. Unless of course, they really are throttling performance. Have had it 3 years and other than the battery issues, is absolutely running as well as the day I got it 3 years ago now. If I get another 2 years out of it, will be the best $44 I ever spent. Does everything an 8 or X does…I don’t need the latest gadget, just a decent battery. Make the battery accessible to easy replacement, otherwise the critics are right.
In case somebody wants to do some research:
https://www.futuremark.com/pressreleases/is-it-true-that-iphones-get-slower-over-time
When androids come out with free Skype with other androids, I will switch back. Right now I get free FaceTime with my kids.
You can install skype on any Android phone, or use Google voice, which unless I am mistaken will connect with skype.
They have had this for years now.
https://support.skype.com/en/faq/FA10653/how-do-i-get-skype-on-my-android-device
So how do they accomplish the slowdown ? Do u have to do their software upgrades ? I’ve had my 6S at least a couple years, but I have refused the constant requests for software updates.
And what is the slowdown ? How do you know if it’s the phone or the network ?
And here is the reason I still use a Samsung Galaxy Edge (Note 4+) – I can change the battery. Before they released the Galaxy 8 Note I had set aside some money to purchase one but they still haven’t learned, they still have an embedded battery. I have HAM portable radios that are waterproof with removable batteries but phone manufactures want us to pay them $$ every 2 years.
This is why I want to be able to replace my battery: https://goo.gl/g8xHCy How to prolong your battery
My brother left his phone in his truck one day and had to replace it, Samsung 7.
You tube is your friend…type in your device and pick any of dozens of videos walking you through the replacement.
The only difference is it takes a little work…this is so they can make them waterproof and also thinner and lighter:
I’m in publishing, as in typesetting, where I often deal with special characters and even foreign languages. In that market, Apple OS UI has the best interface for that work, hands down. Windows™ doesn’t come close. Linux has the option of emulating the Mac interface (keyboard), but it’s somewhat clunky and it emulates the Mac OS9 interface instead of the latest OS-X, but it’s close enough for most work. Android is brain dead like Windows™.
IOS when accessed through a keyboard can access all the special characters as does Mac OS-X.
For my work, Mac OS-X and IOS give the best results, Linux comes in second, Windows™ and Android are out of the competition. Windows™ and Android are for non-essential activities. I have at least one of each.
That’s my 2¢ on this issue.
Sigh. Yet Another “Windoze” vs. Apple monkey-fight. Never mind that the NT platform was designed by one of the guys who developed VAX VMS, or that OS X is based on BSD Unix. They both suck, right?
Then we have people who want to sue Apple over a business decision and a marketing decision. Apple screwed up by pretending the slowdown didn’t happen. Now we have uninformed people making all sorts of claims about the company and are almost literally spitting mad.
It’s not that hard to understand that the iPhone has always been positioned as a higher-end phone, which includes how much the thing weighs. Apple did everything it could to make the device lighter, including using a non-replaceable (in terms of warranty) battery. Customers knew this when they bought the phone. The only problem now is so many people having hysterics over an engineering decision. All the wrasslin’ about operating systems, marketing philosophies, and the evils of profit seeking* are irrelevant. Apple slowed down older phones to avoid system damage. If you can’t believe that I can’t help you. Buy a cheap Nokia or something, but please stop with the hysterics. As for Anthony’s chart, all I say is “correlation is not causation.” That is, it doesn’t prove that Apple deliberately throttles old phones to motivate you to buy a new phone.
A more likely scenario is that they had a good idea of how long the effective lifetime of the battery was and planned to introduce a new generation at that time, since the previous generation was becoming less useful. True, this doesn’t allow for conspiracist thinking, but you can’t have everything. Not to mention I would love to hear about a small but powerful battery capable of driving a modern smartphone which never wears out. Good luck on that.
I don’t have a political dog in this fight. I buy Android phones because I can’t afford an iPhone, and it’s easy to get a decent ‘droid cheap, if you don’t demand state of the art hardware. I use Wintel stuff at home (and I use {gasp} Windows 7) because for a long time Apple was stuck in its own little ecosystem. These days their hardware is indistinguishable from Wintel hardware, but it still costs more. Both systems have strengths & weaknesses. My special interest in college was technical writing, including user interface. That’s one thing Steve Jobs excelled at. MS finally started catching up, so we can say that Apple (via OS X) won the interface war which MS copied, but Wintel (actually Intel & AMD) won the hardware war after Apple started using Intel processors, PCI & USB busses, and other hardware standards.
Arguing about this is as silly as arguing which is cooler, Kirk or Picard. (It’s Kirk,BTW) There were several intelligent comments explaining the technical reasons Apple did what they did, but haters gotta hate. Most folks ignored them so they could have another gang war.
*I may have missed it but I think the Apple haters missed mentioning the “Apple uses slave labor” bit.
Yes you missed it above.
I have an iPhone 7 only be cause my Samsung Galaxy S5 went bonkers one day and the iPhone was free from my wife. I gave the Sammy to my mother in law lol. My wife is an Apple fangirl though, MacBook Pros (Which I will admit is rather nice), iPhones and iPods.
With the iPhone 7 and IIRC a 1.3Gb initial update to iOS 11 and then 3 further updates of about 400Mb each and one or two more smaller updates to iOS 11.2.1 the battery does seem to drain very quickly.
I am seriously thinking of something like the old Nokia 3210 which stayed charged for over a week. I have to charge the iPhone 7 every day. I can manage without any “smart” device that is used 99% of the time as a phone. My wife on the other hand could not manager her life, work and business without hers. So I guess it’s horses for courses.
http://www.news.com.au/technology/gadgets/mobile-phones/apple-facing-legal-dilemma-over-updates-that-slowed-down-older-model-iphones/news-story/84d3faf35cf544f515463bfdb7e64159
“Plaintiff Kirk Pedelty, of North Carolina, contacted Apple as his frustration grew. However, the lawsuit says: “Nobody from Apple customer support suggested that he replace his battery to improve the performance of his iPhone. … Frustrated by slowdowns and intermittent shutdowns of his iPhone 7, Pedelty purchased an iPhone 8.”
I think some people really do need to get a life.
[snip – fake email address – policy violation -mod]
First, I’m a long time reader of WUWT, and a big admirer of Anthony. That’s why I’m disappointed in this post. It’s pretty sloppy.
The Google Trends graph is called “damning,” but it’s a nine-year graph, when everyone knows that this battery software throttling only goes back about a year. So the 9-year spike pattern must be related to some other phenomenon. That’s just the start.
And there’s no regard for correlation vs. causation (troubling for a WUWT Post). Lots of people are thinking about their old phones’ failings when the shiny new phone model beckons. This could be another driver for the spikes.
The direct comparison to Android is extremely flawed because the Android upgrade cycle is completely different. Various manufacturers’ new models come out year round, and aren’t necessarily tied to Android OS updates.
And Android updates roll out much, much more gradually than iOS, so one can’t expect spikes like the ones that happen when (literally) tens of millions of iPhones upgrade over the course of a month.
In any case, the throttling software that was revealed doesn’t trigger based on date. The new graph’s x-axis is performance. It’s a multi-modal distribution unrelated to time. Thus, although both graphs have spikes, the spikes have completely different meanings. The new graph shows that many or most users aren’t even affected.
Finally, the performance values are derived from synthetic benchmark tests. These tests typically generate the largest possible CPU load for sustained periods. This creates a large, sustained current draw- coincidentally the exact parameter that triggers Apple’s throttle. Transient current spikes found in real-world use may not trigger the throttling in the same way.
That’s a long post, but when I go to WUWT, I expect rigor. 😉
A word of advice to those with SSD’s. Make sure you have a backup. You CANNOT recover any data from a failed SSD. Well, I will say I have not seen any successful results. You can, most times, restore from a failed HD, even a head crash. Costly? Sure!
To me this constitutes a breach of contract between Apple and everyone who has purchased Apple’s smart phone prpducts. Apple should provide all Apple smart phone owners with brand new, latest model smart phones, updated so that Apple cannot in the future at any time reduce the speed of their smart phones. Apple should also pay the cost of the inconvenience and of transfering data and applications from the old smart phones to the new smart phones. Apple should also pay punative damages to each smart phone owner.
Apple have admitted that it installed a software throttle to slow down old phones.
It then said it did it to ‘help’ consumers.
If it was done in secret, then it is a simple marketing ploy.
They should have done the sensible thing and announced a ‘new feature’, that was switchable, that ‘assisted’ legacy phone users battery life, until they upgraded. Thereby earning brownie points and happier customers.
@Steve Richards
Android and Windows call it Power Management… I can adjust everything including the fans, I’ve done a week without a charge or updates (Android Airplane mode)
All the angst! The weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth! Cast into outer darkness by what is nothing more than a con game played on those devoted to Apple (like my sister). The announced price for the newest model was, I think, somewhere around $1,000.00. I fail to understand the greed that impels a company to market something that is a glass-fronted membrane keyboard that costs about $15.00 to manufacture, but people who groove on this stuff are the suckers at the door to the carnival sideshow tent.
I have two Katana flip phones from Sprint. They’re very tough. I’ve had one for at least 12 years, never had a problem with it until I dropped it and cracked the hinge because it was open. Still works fine, though, but I asked Sprint for a newer one and I use both. Never had any issues with either beyond my own clumsiness in dropping my first flip phone.
It seems to me that the difference between the Apple products and my two flip phones is that I view them as phones – telecommunications devices – instead of electronic toys, and nothing else.
Anything else is just empty silliness, and iPhone owners fell for the con. Who was it said ‘There’s one born every day?’
Well, I used to love my flip phone as well, but then again i used to have to have a separate navigator for each car/truck, and had to have a camera, and blah blah blah.
I use my phone now for everything from web browsing and trading stocks, taking pictures (and there are a hundred uses for instant pictures…like looking at details of stuff I am fixing that I used to need a mechanics mirror for), navigation, flashlight, alarm clock, calendar reminders, light meter, decibel meter, plumb bob and level, star finder, emails on several different accounts, wifi hotspot for my laptop or tablet…
More things than I could ever remember of the top of my head, and I am sure I am only using a small fraction of what it is good for.
Oh, yeah…and phone calls.
I know people who only use their garage for parking their car too.
I don’t own any Apple products either. Let me explain. From the very start of Apple, they have been at Shady bunch. And I’m talking about their early computers. First it was our customer service. If something happened to your Apple computer you could best rely that you wouldn’t get any help from them although the big rumor was always how great Apple service was. Next it was the capabilities of the computers were so much better than the Windows computers The resolution was better, the chips were faster, everything was better on an Apple computer blah, blah, blah. I actually believed a lot of that until I looked a little closer. Turns out that the majority of that turned out to be complete BS as well and Apple built their considerable reputation on all of it. More recently Apple laptops that had problems weren’t delalt with in a transparent, upfront way by Apple. Again they hadn’t learned their lesson. Seems that Apple is big on deception and greed, exactly the opposite image they push out there.
Not owning any Apple and proud of it.
Quit Sony a few years back for the shady practice of ditching customer support for the technologies greedily owned by Sony. Say MiniDisc. A company that throws customers under bus does not need my money.
Absolutely disgusted I still have 3 iPhones that I’ve up graded every year , because of performance problems and now I know the reason why. I don’t think I’ll be getting another upgrade again with Apple .
Observations:
1. Apple is a cult. A dumb one with a decent industrial design team and authoritarian tendencies.
2. Wow. So many calls for lawsuits from people who would normally be screaming “Don’t get the government involved! Let the free market take care of Apple!”
2A. You can’t sue Apple over this anyway. Silly, naive idea. When you power on your expensive new shiny toy, you agree to a long and comprehensive User Agreement that insulates Apple from annoyances like consumers and the court system.
Why are you all so anti-business around here? Big Tech knows what’s best. Sheesh!
(poke, poke, poke)