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.”
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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.