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.”
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 …..
@CFM: 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.