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I'm not covinced companies are out to "make their old products feel worse over time". It's just the inevitable consequence of the steady march of technological

I'm not covinced companies are out to "make their old products feel worse over time". It's just the inevitable consequence of the steady march of technological progress. A 10-20% per year performance improvements and new radio/camera hardware just add up over time and means that your old phone is worse than a new one. And that's before you take into account any degradation in things like nand and battery that they try and make fail gracefully (even if the PR messaging occasionally goes very wrong on that front). There is of course also a degree of investing time writing to the new hardware more than the old one, and just cutting down features that don't fit due to lack of processing power or just lack of underlying tech on older hardware, but it's not something that being able to throw a different OS on seems likely to fix?

josephg 5y ago
> I'm not covinced companies are out to "make their old products feel worse over time" I don't think they're trying to make their old products worse over time. But I also don't think companies generally care that much about making old products work better over time. One of the parent commenters noted how well modern android runs on really old nexus phones if you strip out the "modern" animations and useless features. There's nothing stopping google doing this. People would love it. So its notable that they don't. Apple got a lot of good will from me a few years ago when they focussed on performance in ios 13 (or was it 12?). That OS release made my phone feel new again. After that update I think it ran faster than it did when I bought it. Another way to think about it is that when you buy a product, your incentives and the company's incentives are aligned. You want the best phone. The company wants your money, and knows they need to deliver a good product to get it. After you've bought a product, the company's motivations aren't as well aligned with yours. Arguably a company sells more phones in the long run when they have a good reputation for delivering on quality, and supporting their products. Eg, a few years ago some of my friends would buy every single blizzard game simply off the back of their reputation. But most companies don't take advantage of this, and mistakenly focus on short term sales even if it harms their reputation. And, in turn, their long term profits. As someone much wiser than me said, service and support is a form of marketing to repeat customers.
llampx 5y ago
People aren't comparing their old phone to the new hotness, but to how it was when it was new. I think it is reasonable to assume that planned obsolescence is a thing and that OEMs make their products slower on purpose so people buy new ones.

josephg 5y ago

> I'm not covinced companies are out to "make their old products feel worse over time" I don't think they're trying to make their old products worse over time. But I also don't think companies generally care that much about making old products work better over time. One of the parent commenters noted how well modern android runs on really old nexus phones if you strip out the "modern" animations and useless features. There's nothing stopping google doing this. People would love it. So its notable that they don't. Apple got a lot of good will from me a few years ago when they focussed on performance in ios 13 (or was it 12?). That OS release made my phone feel new again. After that update I think it ran faster than it did when I bought it. Another way to think about it is that when you buy a product, your incentives and the company's incentives are aligned. You want the best phone. The company wants your money, and knows they need to deliver a good product to get it. After you've bought a product, the company's motivations aren't as well aligned with yours. Arguably a company sells more phones in the long run when they have a good reputation for delivering on quality, and supporting their products. Eg, a few years ago some of my friends would buy every single blizzard game simply off the back of their reputation. But most companies don't take advantage of this, and mistakenly focus on short term sales even if it harms their reputation. And, in turn, their long term profits. As someone much wiser than me said, service and support is a form of marketing to repeat customers.

llampx 5y ago

People aren't comparing their old phone to the new hotness, but to how it was when it was new. I think it is reasonable to assume that planned obsolescence is a thing and that OEMs make their products slower on purpose so people buy new ones.