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> And then Apple made their OS more heavy weight every year until my phone slowed to a crawl. I mean, it is a bit unfair against Apple - some of the reason beh

by kaba0 3y ago

> And then Apple made their OS more heavy weight every year until my phone slowed to a crawl. I mean, it is a bit unfair against Apple - some of the reason behind the OS getting more heavyweight is actually backporting new features in 7 year’s distance, many which actually has dedicated hardware in case of the more modern lineup. Also, there is a big aspect which is independent of Apple: every app is getting more and more heavy, the same phone now has to open a 500MB facebook app, not a 70MB one (just random numbers). Also, the whole “yearly replacement” thing is just.. not an actual thing. People on average change their phones every 3 years, where the accumulated small improvements do add up. But everyone is at a different point in the cycle, so it absolutely makes sense. Add to it how apple devices hold their value to an insane degree, often living 2nd-3rd lives, and one would be really hard-pressed to actually pinpoint apple as a threat against our planet - compared to cheap androids that are barely good for a single year due to instantly obsolete software, has no resale value whatsoever, and are absolutely single-use. I am not a proponent of extreme capitalism/libertarianism, but I really have a hard time with a realistic business model that would be significantly better.

tap-snap-or-nap 3y ago
> People on average change their phones every 3 years People in my circles seem to use their phones for 6-7 years atleast.
- kimbernator 3y ago
  This figure sourcing gallup has nearly half of Americans replacing their phone "as soon as their carrier allows it": https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/07/15/how-often-does-the-average-american-replace-his-or.aspx https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/07/15/how-often-...
  - jen20 3y ago
    Of course - it's not like the monthly bill becomes less if you have a phone taken from a carrier, so you should change it out immediately.
    - kimbernator 3y ago
      It absolutely does go down if you're not making payments on a phone
  - Clent 3y ago
    That article is from 2018. 2 Year Contracts were still a thing back then. The contract included a hidden fee that covered the cost of the device spread out over the length of the contract. That is all gone now. Carriers have post-paid plans where the monthly device cost varies based on device. These are 0% interest loans from the carrier. At the same time, people have started holding their phones longer. Renewal periods when to 30 months, then 36 months. Some people will never be happy but cellphone customers are never happy. Why can't people just enjoy our pocket computers with their always on connections?
    - _chu1 3y ago
      The mistake was giving the general public pocket computers with always on connections and acting like they wouldn't be stupid with them or turn them into status symbols
    - kimbernator 3y ago
      I worked for a verizon reseller in 2014-2015 and 2 year contracts were not very common by the time I left. 0% loans on 2 year periods were big by then. Functionally I don't think "normal" people really see a big difference.
- dotancohen 3y ago
  And those people are the reason that the average is three years, instead of one year like the teenagers do.
  - kaba0 3y ago
    Your bubble is showing again — only rich parents’ kids buy a new phone yearly.
    - dotancohen 3y ago
      This is not Reddit, you do not need to prefix comments with personal attacks. Nor is karma farmed here by insinuating that you are poor, confused about your gender, or had abusive parents. If by "bubble" you mean my family, nobody but the eight year old has seen a new phone since before the first COVID lockdowns. And the phones that my children use were are purchased with money they earned themselves - including the eight year old. He decided at six that he wants a phone, and saved for two years to buy one - not a grain of which was aquired through his parents.
      - ryanjshaw 3y ago
        Genuinely curious - how did your 6-8 year old earn an income that didn't come from his parents?
        dotancohen 3y ago
        He walks smaller dogs and sells drinks that he makes at the football field near the house. The neighbour lets him pick lemons to sweeten the drinks. He worked for two years to buy the absolute least expensive phone available. I did buy him a case as a gift for achieving his goal, though: $3 on Aliexpress. I should mention that he also managed to buy two goldfish during this time - also with his own money. So he learned very well to budget, and that each thing that he buys along the way pushed back his goal.
        3y ago
jonplackett 3y ago
If Apple just let people hang out on the last nicely-working version of iOS, where their camera still opens fast, then that’d be fine. But they don’t. They bully you into always being on the latest Also, I remember a while back they did a specific optimised speed-up release of iOS with barely any new features and it _really_ worked. My iPhone 6S went from being basically garbage I was going to replace to like a brand new phone. They can do it if they want to. It’s what’s needed now. My iPhone 12 Pro has started to feel super slow since I got iOS 17. I have a new battery. Even texting feels painfully slow. There’s no excuse for this. It’s either deliberate and bad, or lazy and bad. Either way it’s bad.
- ethbr1 3y ago
  If Apple committed to releasing a full + feature-slim version of each iOS going forward, I'd switch to an iPhone tomorrow. But that's a lot of maintenance burden, in exchange for slitting their own revenue throat. So hard to expect them to do it for altruism.
- whynotminot 3y ago
  I also have an iPhone 12 Pro and it’s just as snappy as ever on iOS 17. Sounds like you might have some buggy / bad app interactions going on? There’s really no reason for a 12 Pro to be slow at this point even if the OS was getting “heavier.” The 12 Pros have 6GB of RAM, which is now pretty standard across the iPhone lineup even years later. And the A14 SoC in the 12 Pro is effectively the same tech as the M1 processors that are still rock-solid at running full blown macOS, albeit with fewer cores running at somewhat lower clocks. I can’t really think of much reason for you to be having a slow experience aside from the usual bugs that can accompany any new major release, and usually get ironed out over the course of a month or two. FWIW you also don’t have to update. Of course they bully you to update. You don’t have to.
- kaba0 3y ago
  It’s just temporary - after you install a new update, every cache has to be regenerated in the background, so for a few days/week it will have a shitton of background tasks running. Also, ios 17 likely is a bit buggy - I’m on 17.1 beta with a 12 pro max and I can say that the performance is back to how it used to be.
soulofmischief 3y ago
No, it's not unfair at all. Apple's gotten busted for this exact thing and had to shell out $500 million in damages. https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/apple-to-start-paying-out-500m-in-iphone-slowdown-lawsuit/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/apple-to-start-paying-out-5... > I really have a hard time with a realistic business model that would be significantly better. Well this one might be good for business, but as you can see, it is extremely bad for the individual.
- jeromegv 3y ago
  The consequence of their upgrade was a slow down. But they didn’t slow it down just because they could. It was to prevent a phone with an old shitty battery to shut down in the middle of a task when there was still battery left. Better a slow down than just no phone at all. And yes they didn’t communicate it, that’s why they got sued. But this problem was real.
- scarface_74 3y ago
  Did you even read your own citation? Apple slowed down older phones when the battery degraded because the other choice was the phone would shut off.
  - dlubarov 3y ago
    That's Apple's claim, yes. But if they were genuinely just concerned about battery health, and not about their sales numbers, then why do the throttling covertly? Why not tell the user that throttling was happening, that it was related to power issues, and that they should consider a replacement battery?
    - thebruce87m 3y ago
      If they wanted a new sale, why not do nothing and let the phones reboot? Why only target individual handsets with degraded batteries? Why bring the phone back to full speed when the battery was changed? Why does the feature still exist? The only thing that has changed is they now tell you if it’s happening.
hyperhopper 3y ago
When a company is the first to be worth 1 trillion, maybe the business model is exploitative and should be forced to be worse. They make so much money, why should their business model have to be any better?

by kaba0 3y ago

tap-snap-or-nap 3y ago

> People on average change their phones every 3 years People in my circles seem to use their phones for 6-7 years atleast.

kimbernator 3y ago
This figure sourcing gallup has nearly half of Americans replacing their phone "as soon as their carrier allows it": https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/07/15/how-often-does-the-average-american-replace-his-or.aspx https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/07/15/how-often-...
- jen20 3y ago
  Of course - it's not like the monthly bill becomes less if you have a phone taken from a carrier, so you should change it out immediately.
  - kimbernator 3y ago
    It absolutely does go down if you're not making payments on a phone
- Clent 3y ago
  That article is from 2018. 2 Year Contracts were still a thing back then. The contract included a hidden fee that covered the cost of the device spread out over the length of the contract. That is all gone now. Carriers have post-paid plans where the monthly device cost varies based on device. These are 0% interest loans from the carrier. At the same time, people have started holding their phones longer. Renewal periods when to 30 months, then 36 months. Some people will never be happy but cellphone customers are never happy. Why can't people just enjoy our pocket computers with their always on connections?
  - _chu1 3y ago
    The mistake was giving the general public pocket computers with always on connections and acting like they wouldn't be stupid with them or turn them into status symbols
  - kimbernator 3y ago
    I worked for a verizon reseller in 2014-2015 and 2 year contracts were not very common by the time I left. 0% loans on 2 year periods were big by then. Functionally I don't think "normal" people really see a big difference.
dotancohen 3y ago
And those people are the reason that the average is three years, instead of one year like the teenagers do.
- kaba0 3y ago
  Your bubble is showing again — only rich parents’ kids buy a new phone yearly.
  - dotancohen 3y ago
    This is not Reddit, you do not need to prefix comments with personal attacks. Nor is karma farmed here by insinuating that you are poor, confused about your gender, or had abusive parents. If by "bubble" you mean my family, nobody but the eight year old has seen a new phone since before the first COVID lockdowns. And the phones that my children use were are purchased with money they earned themselves - including the eight year old. He decided at six that he wants a phone, and saved for two years to buy one - not a grain of which was aquired through his parents.
    - ryanjshaw 3y ago
      Genuinely curious - how did your 6-8 year old earn an income that didn't come from his parents?
      - dotancohen 3y ago
        He walks smaller dogs and sells drinks that he makes at the football field near the house. The neighbour lets him pick lemons to sweeten the drinks. He worked for two years to buy the absolute least expensive phone available. I did buy him a case as a gift for achieving his goal, though: $3 on Aliexpress. I should mention that he also managed to buy two goldfish during this time - also with his own money. So he learned very well to budget, and that each thing that he buys along the way pushed back his goal.
        3y ago

jonplackett 3y ago

If Apple just let people hang out on the last nicely-working version of iOS, where their camera still opens fast, then that’d be fine. But they don’t. They bully you into always being on the latest Also, I remember a while back they did a specific optimised speed-up release of iOS with barely any new features and it _really_ worked. My iPhone 6S went from being basically garbage I was going to replace to like a brand new phone. They can do it if they want to. It’s what’s needed now. My iPhone 12 Pro has started to feel super slow since I got iOS 17. I have a new battery. Even texting feels painfully slow. There’s no excuse for this. It’s either deliberate and bad, or lazy and bad. Either way it’s bad.

ethbr1 3y ago
If Apple committed to releasing a full + feature-slim version of each iOS going forward, I'd switch to an iPhone tomorrow. But that's a lot of maintenance burden, in exchange for slitting their own revenue throat. So hard to expect them to do it for altruism.
whynotminot 3y ago
I also have an iPhone 12 Pro and it’s just as snappy as ever on iOS 17. Sounds like you might have some buggy / bad app interactions going on? There’s really no reason for a 12 Pro to be slow at this point even if the OS was getting “heavier.” The 12 Pros have 6GB of RAM, which is now pretty standard across the iPhone lineup even years later. And the A14 SoC in the 12 Pro is effectively the same tech as the M1 processors that are still rock-solid at running full blown macOS, albeit with fewer cores running at somewhat lower clocks. I can’t really think of much reason for you to be having a slow experience aside from the usual bugs that can accompany any new major release, and usually get ironed out over the course of a month or two. FWIW you also don’t have to update. Of course they bully you to update. You don’t have to.
kaba0 3y ago
It’s just temporary - after you install a new update, every cache has to be regenerated in the background, so for a few days/week it will have a shitton of background tasks running. Also, ios 17 likely is a bit buggy - I’m on 17.1 beta with a 12 pro max and I can say that the performance is back to how it used to be.

soulofmischief 3y ago

No, it's not unfair at all. Apple's gotten busted for this exact thing and had to shell out $500 million in damages. https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/apple-to-start-paying-out-500m-in-iphone-slowdown-lawsuit/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/apple-to-start-paying-out-5... > I really have a hard time with a realistic business model that would be significantly better. Well this one might be good for business, but as you can see, it is extremely bad for the individual.

jeromegv 3y ago
The consequence of their upgrade was a slow down. But they didn’t slow it down just because they could. It was to prevent a phone with an old shitty battery to shut down in the middle of a task when there was still battery left. Better a slow down than just no phone at all. And yes they didn’t communicate it, that’s why they got sued. But this problem was real.
scarface_74 3y ago
Did you even read your own citation? Apple slowed down older phones when the battery degraded because the other choice was the phone would shut off.
- dlubarov 3y ago
  That's Apple's claim, yes. But if they were genuinely just concerned about battery health, and not about their sales numbers, then why do the throttling covertly? Why not tell the user that throttling was happening, that it was related to power issues, and that they should consider a replacement battery?
  - thebruce87m 3y ago
    If they wanted a new sale, why not do nothing and let the phones reboot? Why only target individual handsets with degraded batteries? Why bring the phone back to full speed when the battery was changed? Why does the feature still exist? The only thing that has changed is they now tell you if it’s happening.

hyperhopper 3y ago

When a company is the first to be worth 1 trillion, maybe the business model is exploitative and should be forced to be worse. They make so much money, why should their business model have to be any better?