Apple has been consistently accused of deliberately slowing down older models of their products. The debate is this: Are they doing it to protect their consumers or to force them to purchase more?
Planned obsolescence is a trick that many manufacturers use. It’s where a product is purposely made to break in a few years, which forces you to buy a new one. Apple has already admitted to slowing down iPhones, but they claim that if they did not throttle iPhone performance, older Phones would experience malfunctions or break earlier than they should. iPhones use lithium-ion batteries, which degrade as time goes on. Apple says that if they did not slow down iPhone performance, there would be a larger risk of the internal components being damaged. However, when battery life really gets bad, people have the tendency to want to replace the entire phone instead of just the battery.
Simon Smith, an iPhone software developer, said that iPhone software begins to degrade faster than we expect, and he says that the frequent software updates make older models less usable. He states that Apple imposed a rule in iOS 9 that prevented applications in older phones from accessing external websites. Apple counter argues that changes are made for the benefit of new iPhones, but there are unintentional and unavoidable consequences for older models.
So is Apple really helping their customers by slowing down their older iPhones? Or is this one of their profit strategies?
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This is interesting to read, especially since I've heard that Apple said they slow down their phones as they get older to preserve battery life and prevent malfunctions. It will be intriguing to see how this issue develops in the future, especially concerning what Apple may do if they find a way to better preserve their batteries or even use different components for their batteries.
ReplyDeletePlanned obsolescence is definitely relevant in terms of Apple products. I personally have observed the limit to how long Apple products last, specifically my phone, and it definitely causes me to look at new phones. However, it also makes me think about straying from Apple and moving to a different and perhaps more reliable brand.
ReplyDeleteOn top of slower batteries after several years of owning an Apple product, wanting to replace said product can also be attributed to being caught up with modern technology. Apple products often will start to degrade after the one-year warranty expires. Generally, Apple products do not run into serious problems within this one year, meaning that instead of issuing longer warranties in order to protect consumers, Apple intentionally sets their warranties as short in order to drive purchases. This is because, instead of having to replace a broken product within the warranty, consumers are driven to buy new products once their old ones break.
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