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There's a decades-long meme that Apple purposefully slows down older hardware to push people to buy completely new hardware. Interesting that this effect may b

There's a decades-long meme that Apple purposefully slows down older hardware to push people to buy completely new hardware. Interesting that this effect may be a byproduct of automatic scaling the CPU frequency based on remaining battery capacity, rather than the newer OS versions being purposefully poorly optimized (like most people assume)

wtallis 9y ago
> There's a decades-long meme that Apple purposefully slows down older hardware to push people to buy completely new hardware. I seem to recall the first several years—maybe even the first decade—of OS X being marked by each new release being faster on the same hardware, though dropping support for the oldest hardware. It was definitely true for the first few releases of OX X, because 10.0 was notoriously sluggish. I also don't recall any slowdowns with my 2006 iMac across the several upgrades it received before Apple made 64-bit firmware a hard requirement. If there's any truth to the meme you cite, it probably stems from the mobile side of things, where iOS started out fairly efficient but the hardware was very underpowered. (And in that case, I'd like to point out that the iPhone is only 10.5 years old.)
- Washuu 9y ago
  Entirely the mobile side of things due to upgrading iOS. I was forced to upgrade from iOS 10 to 11 on my iPhone 6 to be allowed to use two factor authentication for my work place. Instantly it become a sluggish mess.
- alanfalcon 9y ago
  At that point Apple sold the OS upgrades, though, and now they only make money on the hardware (well, and services etc., but not on OS sales). So it makes sense that things have changes as their incentives have realigned, in addition to the factors you cite.
  - lparry 9y ago
    Apple has never sold updates for iPhones. What you’re misremembering is them selling updates for iPod touches back at iOS 2 because of some perceived accounting issue, and the cost was pretty token, something like $5-10 IIRC correctly. Hardly a cash cow that would have had them making more optimisations then they do today
    - alanfalcon 9y ago
      I was talking about OSX upgrades :-)
m_ke 9y ago
I used to think that was a joke, but since updating to ios 11 my 6s+ has been completely unusable. A bunch of the apps are now unresponsive for 5-10 seconds after they launch, the input lags and the standard ios animations are dropping a ton of frames. Battery is also sometimes draining 20-40% in a span of 15 minutes.
- exikyut 9y ago
  Solely from a performance analysis standpoint, you've just perfectly described something using 100% CPU across all cores. But you aren't reporting the phone being warm to the touch, so... hm. Have you tried wiping and restoring it? It could be interesting to back it up, wipe it (and maybe remove the SIM card for completeness?), install the worst performing apps on the fresh install, and _then_ (maybe wipe again(?), then) restore it back to normal. If app performance is terrible in the fully-wiped state, I'd take the phone into an apple store (regardless of warranty status) just to see what they say. Hmm. Just thought of this: maybe your battery is like the OP's from reddit but in really bad condition, and your phone is downclocking itself to compensate?
  - exikyut 9y ago
    Was randomly browsing elsewhere and stumbled on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15627880 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15627880 Adding this to my comment because it's relevant
  - diogenescynic 9y ago
    My iPhone 6s Plus gets extremely hot, battery life sucks, camera doesn’t focus, and apps are not responsive. Whenever I’ve brought it to an Apple store they said there are no issues...
- mcgrath_sh 9y ago
  iOS 11 was the same way on my 6s+. Then I swapped the device for a new one. It doesn’t feel nearly as sluggish. My battery works like it did on iOS 10. My old device had a battery that was barely in the acceptable range. Obviously, my experience is anecdotal.
colordrops 9y ago
If they purposely want to slow down older phones, they will do it in a way like this that gives them plausible deniability, so I wouldn't discount the possibility.
dannyw 9y ago
This effect has been in here since iOS 10.2.1; so it doesn’t explain any slowdown that occurred prior to that OS release It’s very real though. A fresh clean reset of my old iPhone 7 had a significantly lower Geekbench score, and that went away after the battery (capacity: 78% of design) was replaced.
modeless 9y ago
I feel like Apple (and any other manufacturers that do this) may be vulnerable to a class action here. If the article is true and performance tanks over 40% in 2 years, then planned obsolescence isn't just a conspiracy theory anymore. It's real and they have never disclosed it.
- ComputerGuru 9y ago
  It’s done in a deviously clever way, though. It’s not “planned obsolescence” if it’s “performance scaling for battery life optimization” combined with “you can always buy a new battery.”
  - sametmax 9y ago
    Only consumers are not made aware they can. Nobody knew the battery was the cause of the slow down, and apple certainly did nothing to let you know.
  - lostmsu 9y ago
    The court will have their own opinion, and probably would not agree with Apple.
Houshalter 9y ago
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/39/6c/a1/396ca1b7d8607490b59f6207961a9b22.png https://i.pinimg.com/originals/39/6c/a1/396ca1b7d8607490b59f...
- ak39 9y ago
  This is an extraordinary chart! Amazing insight
maltalex 9y ago
> Interesting that this effect may be a byproduct of automatic scaling the CPU frequency based on remaining battery capacity, rather than the newer OS versions being purposefully poorly optimized (like most people assume) 1. If such a common complaint has such a simple fix, why isn't Apple shouting this information from the rooftops? Why do we need anecdotal information posted on Reddit to figure this one out ten years after the launch of the first iPhone? 2. Being a byproduct of automatic scaling or the commonly cited flash degradation doesn't explain the abrupt spikes in the search for "iPhone slow" around the release of a new iPhone (Google Trends: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=iphone%20slow https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=iphone%2...). Could it be a purely subjective, psychological effect? Does anyone have actual benchmark data on this?
tomduncalf 9y ago
Not completely related, but my parents’ iPad Mini (first generation) became really slow over the last year or so, lots of freezing, some system apps refusing to open etc. I was preparing to do a backup, wipe and restore (which made my first gen iPad Retina somewhat usable again) but first thought I’d try some of the tips online for speeding up iPads, and to my surprise it really worked and made it much more responsive. If I remember correctly, the ones that seemed to make the most difference were: disabling animations (in accessibility) and disabling any kind of notifications/background app refresh/auto update, but if you’re in a similar situation it’s certainly worth trying some of the other tips in guides like https://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/ipad/how-speed-up-slow-ipad-3632709/ https://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/ipad/how-speed-up-slow-ipa... and if that doesn’t help, doing a backup and restore.
gluestic 9y ago
Why not both? People would not notice drastic performance issues after doing an iOS upgrade if it was just the battery.

wtallis 9y ago

> There's a decades-long meme that Apple purposefully slows down older hardware to push people to buy completely new hardware. I seem to recall the first several years—maybe even the first decade—of OS X being marked by each new release being faster on the same hardware, though dropping support for the oldest hardware. It was definitely true for the first few releases of OX X, because 10.0 was notoriously sluggish. I also don't recall any slowdowns with my 2006 iMac across the several upgrades it received before Apple made 64-bit firmware a hard requirement. If there's any truth to the meme you cite, it probably stems from the mobile side of things, where iOS started out fairly efficient but the hardware was very underpowered. (And in that case, I'd like to point out that the iPhone is only 10.5 years old.)

Washuu 9y ago
Entirely the mobile side of things due to upgrading iOS. I was forced to upgrade from iOS 10 to 11 on my iPhone 6 to be allowed to use two factor authentication for my work place. Instantly it become a sluggish mess.
alanfalcon 9y ago
At that point Apple sold the OS upgrades, though, and now they only make money on the hardware (well, and services etc., but not on OS sales). So it makes sense that things have changes as their incentives have realigned, in addition to the factors you cite.
- lparry 9y ago
  Apple has never sold updates for iPhones. What you’re misremembering is them selling updates for iPod touches back at iOS 2 because of some perceived accounting issue, and the cost was pretty token, something like $5-10 IIRC correctly. Hardly a cash cow that would have had them making more optimisations then they do today
  - alanfalcon 9y ago
    I was talking about OSX upgrades :-)

m_ke 9y ago

I used to think that was a joke, but since updating to ios 11 my 6s+ has been completely unusable. A bunch of the apps are now unresponsive for 5-10 seconds after they launch, the input lags and the standard ios animations are dropping a ton of frames. Battery is also sometimes draining 20-40% in a span of 15 minutes.

exikyut 9y ago
Solely from a performance analysis standpoint, you've just perfectly described something using 100% CPU across all cores. But you aren't reporting the phone being warm to the touch, so... hm. Have you tried wiping and restoring it? It could be interesting to back it up, wipe it (and maybe remove the SIM card for completeness?), install the worst performing apps on the fresh install, and _then_ (maybe wipe again(?), then) restore it back to normal. If app performance is terrible in the fully-wiped state, I'd take the phone into an apple store (regardless of warranty status) just to see what they say. Hmm. Just thought of this: maybe your battery is like the OP's from reddit but in really bad condition, and your phone is downclocking itself to compensate?
- exikyut 9y ago
  Was randomly browsing elsewhere and stumbled on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15627880 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15627880 Adding this to my comment because it's relevant
- diogenescynic 9y ago
  My iPhone 6s Plus gets extremely hot, battery life sucks, camera doesn’t focus, and apps are not responsive. Whenever I’ve brought it to an Apple store they said there are no issues...
mcgrath_sh 9y ago
iOS 11 was the same way on my 6s+. Then I swapped the device for a new one. It doesn’t feel nearly as sluggish. My battery works like it did on iOS 10. My old device had a battery that was barely in the acceptable range. Obviously, my experience is anecdotal.

colordrops 9y ago

If they purposely want to slow down older phones, they will do it in a way like this that gives them plausible deniability, so I wouldn't discount the possibility.

dannyw 9y ago

This effect has been in here since iOS 10.2.1; so it doesn’t explain any slowdown that occurred prior to that OS release It’s very real though. A fresh clean reset of my old iPhone 7 had a significantly lower Geekbench score, and that went away after the battery (capacity: 78% of design) was replaced.

modeless 9y ago

I feel like Apple (and any other manufacturers that do this) may be vulnerable to a class action here. If the article is true and performance tanks over 40% in 2 years, then planned obsolescence isn't just a conspiracy theory anymore. It's real and they have never disclosed it.

ComputerGuru 9y ago
It’s done in a deviously clever way, though. It’s not “planned obsolescence” if it’s “performance scaling for battery life optimization” combined with “you can always buy a new battery.”
- sametmax 9y ago
  Only consumers are not made aware they can. Nobody knew the battery was the cause of the slow down, and apple certainly did nothing to let you know.
- lostmsu 9y ago
  The court will have their own opinion, and probably would not agree with Apple.

Houshalter 9y ago

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/39/6c/a1/396ca1b7d8607490b59f6207961a9b22.png https://i.pinimg.com/originals/39/6c/a1/396ca1b7d8607490b59f...

ak39 9y ago
This is an extraordinary chart! Amazing insight

maltalex 9y ago

> Interesting that this effect may be a byproduct of automatic scaling the CPU frequency based on remaining battery capacity, rather than the newer OS versions being purposefully poorly optimized (like most people assume) 1. If such a common complaint has such a simple fix, why isn't Apple shouting this information from the rooftops? Why do we need anecdotal information posted on Reddit to figure this one out ten years after the launch of the first iPhone? 2. Being a byproduct of automatic scaling or the commonly cited flash degradation doesn't explain the abrupt spikes in the search for "iPhone slow" around the release of a new iPhone (Google Trends: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=iphone%20slow https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=iphone%2...). Could it be a purely subjective, psychological effect? Does anyone have actual benchmark data on this?

tomduncalf 9y ago

Not completely related, but my parents’ iPad Mini (first generation) became really slow over the last year or so, lots of freezing, some system apps refusing to open etc. I was preparing to do a backup, wipe and restore (which made my first gen iPad Retina somewhat usable again) but first thought I’d try some of the tips online for speeding up iPads, and to my surprise it really worked and made it much more responsive. If I remember correctly, the ones that seemed to make the most difference were: disabling animations (in accessibility) and disabling any kind of notifications/background app refresh/auto update, but if you’re in a similar situation it’s certainly worth trying some of the other tips in guides like https://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/ipad/how-speed-up-slow-ipad-3632709/ https://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/ipad/how-speed-up-slow-ipa... and if that doesn’t help, doing a backup and restore.

gluestic 9y ago

Why not both? People would not notice drastic performance issues after doing an iOS upgrade if it was just the battery.