Remember the woman who proved that Apple consistently slows down sold iPhones with "updates" right before the launch date of a new model? [0]
Apple is in the business of selling (overpriced/overengineered) hardware. Their tactics make that very clear.
The only problem with that is that there is no real competition in mobile phones anymore, it's just a giant duopoly. Sure, you can switch to Google/Android, which as the giant ad company (in other words: personal data hover/mass surveillance company) is just as bad.
My only hope is for Ubuntu to make the right moves soon.
Remember the woman who proved that Apple consistently slows down sold iPhones with "updates" right before the launch date of a new model?
No, because that never was a fucking thing.
Seriously, this is supposed to be a community of reasonably well-informed tech-oriented people. Step back for a second, take a deep breath, and think before you spread nonsense like this. Jesus.
But please don't comment like this and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11047606 on HN. That just makes the threads worse. Instead, please stay civil even when some people are being silly.
That was frankly horribly researched. They started off with a supposition, and ignored any data that didn't help prove it.
They completely ignored that a new handset release tends to come in lockstep with a new OS release. This is relevant because it means many, many people are changing the operating characteristics of their existing handsets at the same time - leaving their phone not only not a "known constant", but potentially creating the same results even if a new generation of phone hadn't just appeared at the same time.
Seriously, if you take their graph and replace the labels for each 3g, 3gs, 4, 4s etc, with ios2, 3, 4, 5 .. the data is still accurate, but the take-away assumptions change entirely.
They ignored that geekbench scores show that scores for any given generation stay roughly constant over the phone's lifetime. That's a fantastic set of data that isn't coloured by changing expectations over time.
And they were quite happy to brush off that the samsung numbers showed exactly the same changes over time, as they didn't spike around releases. Completely ignoring that Android has entirely different update strategies (having to wait until your telco 'blesses' the update, etc).
If you look at their graphs, and think of each label as an OS release rather than coinciding with a new handset (which is still accurate), the story it now tells is that ios updates receive much larger adoption in hurry, when compared to adoption of android updates.
Which we already knew. Apple's update strategy is that every compatible handset is able to update "today", whereas android updates are staggered by various levels of support from different mffrs and different providers.
From the link: "The important distinction is of intent. In the benign explanation, a slowdown of old phones is not a specific goal, but merely a side effect of optimizing the operating system for newer hardware"
When we try to judge intent we do judge the context. So let's look at the context: people do know that iPhone updates will probably slow their device(even though Apple doesn't tell them that). And there's no way to stop the nagging update notification (aside from jailbreaking).
So let's not be naive. Maybe it's hard to prove at the legal level, but there's a pretty decent chance that this is intentional by Apple.
EDIT: if you upvote, please explain why you think this is wrong.
Software getting slower with updates is a fact of life. It's been an obvious and expected thing since I started being aware of computers and updates in the late 1980s and I'm sure it was a thing even before that. The odds that Apple is doing this on purpose, rather than as a standard side effect of cramming ever more features into their stuff, are so low it doesn't bear more than a moment's consideration.
What's next, people say Apple deliberately destroys batteries after a few years, rather than being a natural consequence of battery chemistry? Apple deliberately makes their screens shatter when dropped?
I'm not arguing against the update making the device slower. But the fact it's built so people would upgrade(via irremovable nagging), even when it's clearly not what's best for them.
Huh? Of course you're not arguing against the update making the device slower. You're arguing that the update not only makes the device slower, but that this is a deliberate action by Apple to make older devices slower. And I'm saying that's ridiculous since it happens to pretty much all software anyway and all Apple would have to do to make this happen is just develop updates the same way everyone else does.
>> Sure, you can switch to Google/Android, which as the giant ad company (in other words: personal data hover/mass surveillance company)
While on the iPhone: Do you use Google search ? Do you use Google maps ?
Well, if you do , there's not much sense in hiding from Google. And if you use Android, you could use tools like cyanogen's "privacy guard" to hide your data from all/most app authors , which i don't think you can do in iOS.
Also , unless they target you specifically, so long that you use an alternative keyboard - i don't think Google on Android collects your key press data - so you can use anonymity apps for special circumstances, But i could be wrong about that. Same goes for encryption keys, unless your targeted.
With Microsoft shutting down Windows Phone, Blackberry giving up on making it's own OS, Palm's WebOS now just a TV interface and Firefox OS rightfully shut down, the market has very clearly proven that there is no room for a third mobile OS.
No, it doesn't -- It just shows that people google "iPhone slow" more when new models come out / Apple releases major versions.
> No matter how suggestive, he says, the data alone doesn't allow anyone to determine conclusively whether their phone is any slower.
> There are other explanations for why an older model iPhone may slow down, he claims.
> For instance, the latest version of the Apple operating system, iOS, is always tailored to the newest device and may therefore not work as efficiently on older models.
Apple is in the business of selling (overpriced/overengineered) hardware. Their tactics make that very clear.
The only problem with that is that there is no real competition in mobile phones anymore, it's just a giant duopoly. Sure, you can switch to Google/Android, which as the giant ad company (in other words: personal data hover/mass surveillance company) is just as bad.
My only hope is for Ubuntu to make the right moves soon.
[0] A source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2709502/Does-...