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It may be more accurate to say "it seems likely the intended purpose of this is planned obsolescence" After all, this doesn't prevent people from NOT upgrading
by ergothus 9y ago
It may be more accurate to say "it seems likely the intended purpose of this is planned obsolescence"
After all, this doesn't prevent people from NOT upgrading, it just prevents them from un-upgrading. It adds the ability for the company to release whatever they want as the "last" upgrade and be sure that no one (of ordinary consumers) would be able to undo it. That last upgrade COULD be wondrous and happy...or it could be a massive degradation of performance. In the former case, there's not much of an argument for forcing people to be unable to leave it. But effort was expended to make that the case, so planned obsolescence seems a reasonable conclusion.
More generically, this feature exists so the company can change the product after you purchase it and you can't undo that change. Planned obsolescence is your product not longer working "as well" as it did initially, forcing a replacement. Those concepts seem awfully close.
- apostacy 9y agoThe "last" update that my Mom's iPad got rendered it virtually unusable. Apple support told her to just buy a new iPad. iOS10 is far too slow for her iPad 4, to the point where the onscreen keyboard lags severely. And many of her favorite apps no longer work. I somehow doubt that it would be in any company's best interest to leave older devices on the market that compete with new devices.
- CodeCube 9y agoI wonder if this is less a result of a newer OS, and more a result of the reported slowing of the CPU, due to a bad/old battery. Try replacing the battery and seeing if that speeds things up
- frio 9y agoBattery throttling was introduced somewhere in the iOS 11.x series; 10 didn't do it.
- apostacy 9y agoFirst of all, this iPad was almost untouched for years, she only got it to use this one particular presentation software, so it was in near mint condition. Secondly, I've seen this happen to other iOS devices, in a clear progression.
- babypuncher 9y agoThe much more likely reason, at least in the case of the Switch, is to lock users out of old software vulnerabilities that could enable piracy.
- gascan 9y agoYeah, with all the fuss people are making it almost seems like feigned ignorance. Hacking the original Xbox via software exploits depended entirely on rolling back the system to exploitable system software versions, and using old unpatched game discs. It seems blindingly clear the efuses are exactly for blocking piracy.
- BEEdwards 9y agoBut like all thing designed to block piracy, they only block this specific type of piracy and meaning the pirates will just find others (such as the one they found on the switch) and yet legitimate customers who just want to roll back to the last version for a legitimate reason are screwed (Say their favorite game loses performance on the new firmware.