Comment by mat_b 2 days ago
It's unfortunate that Apple has taught me (and I assume others as well) over the last 15 years that the best practice is to never install a major OS update.
It seems clear to me that they use OS updates as a way to eventually slow your device down so the lag becomes so annoying that you want to purchase a new device.
(Edit: And the really obnoxious part is that they force you to receive upgrade prompts every single day and you can't disable it.)
> they have other ways to deprecate your device
This is a wild take for a company known for the long lives of its devices.
Right, I think that was the point being made: I've had a closet of Apple hardware with no technical problems, but made useless due to Apple's software decisions.
> I've had a closet of Apple hardware with no technical problems, but made useless due to Apple's software decisions
You can do this to any product. (As can you undo it by wiping and reinstalling an old image.)
I don't know where this whole "Apple is slowing down my device" comes from, but it is misguided at best, and outright false at worst. My decades old iPod Touch, for example, still works today without performance issues. My oldest iPhones have no performance issues either, and they are (respectively) 9 and 10 years old. Do they still receive updates? Of course not! Neither do any of the other devices I have from the same era. My PC, built around the same time, doesn't even support Windows 11, and hasn't received a single BIOS update since 2020.
Apple was slowing down phones for a while, however, the general public entirely misunderstood why: At a certain point, the battery could not maintain the voltages required to keep the phone operating properly at all (if you understand silicon, you will understand why...CPU needs 1.5v, battery can provide 1.4v...and boom!), so Apple did the most graceful thing they could and they down clocked the phones rather than letting them abruptly turn off. That led to millions of people in a certain era of iPhone being able to use their phones...just more slowly...vs not being able to use them the second voltage > supply voltage...which basically means any remotely demanding app. They were (rightfully) sued because they made the change without informing the user first. They didn't have to touch the phones, period. They tried to allow the phones to be used/data recovered from gracefully.
Don't misunderstand me, I am not willing to defend the practices of any business at all, especially Apple (I've worked from, and walked away from, some despicable companies in my time as an engineer), however Apple went above and beyond to let folks continue to use their devices. If you think otherwise, I've a box full of android and non Android phones and tablets that the likes of Google, Samsung, LG, HTC, etc. all quickly abandoned.
For comparison, the Google Pixel 3a (among others) was released the same year and saw it's last major OS update in 2022. iPhone 11? Still receives updates to this day. No, they aren't slowing the phone down. Trust me, my non technical spouse would have complained super loudly by now. More importantly, I, as her tech support person would've. She is on 26.2 right now.
There is a time and place to bash Apple, however hardware/software support definitely isn't the place. If you think that the current OS/update you have installed is purposefully and intentionally slowing your phone in order to push you to update, please feel free to publish your testing and results...and make sure you isolate every other variable like filling up internal storage, running 50,000 apps at once, expecting any application made within the past 6-7 years to peform at top speed, etc.
Also make sure you aren't falling for things such as confirmation bias or worse: you simply parrot what others say because your decade old phone, much like your decade old PC,feels slower now than it did a decade ago, when apps and games were simpler, and didn't embed entire browser engines in order to display content.
Cheers, btw, and I mean no disrespect to anyone. Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays.
These two things are not exclusive:
- Apple used to provide updates for longer than the rest of the industry.
- Apple has a history of using updates to make old devices less usable (see battery-gate or the current issue with Liquid glass).
Nothing wild there.
Other companies are now catching up on supports because the EU made longer support window mandatory. We will see how this pans out for Apple.
Damn. I bought brother just so I wouldn't be locked into overpriced cartridges. Although what I've been doing now is to reuse the starter cartridge, add some very inexpensive third-party toner to it, and reset the pages counter. It has worked well for the past few years.
> It's unfortunate that Apple has taught me (and I assume others as well) over the last 15 years that the best practice is to never install a major OS update.
The sole reason I migrated from Android to Apple was to receive security upgrades for years not months. I am genuinely baffled by the take here on HN. People will (rightly) get up in arms about minor security issues across numerous domains then talk about never updating their phone. That has literally their entire life on it.
>Running iOS 17.6.1 on my iPhone 13 mini right now.
You really shouldn't. There are dozens of RCE exploits, some of which were found in the wild, that you're missing out patches for.
13Mini+Lockdown mode user reporting here: I did a battery upgrade alongside the iOS 26 upgrade, and regretted switching to iOS26. It slowed down things wayy to much, the keyboard often lagged by dozens of keystrokes, and the camera app stopped working with 26.1.
I gave up yesterday, and disabled lockdown mode (and upgraded to 26.2). Seems fine now, but liquid glass is still a usability nightmare.
> And the really obnoxious part is that they force you to receive upgrade prompts every single day and you can't disable it
Enable iOS 18 Developer Beta and the nag screens go away.
> It seems clear to me that they use OS updates as a way to eventually slow your device down
This sounds like an exaggeration of what happens after an upgrade: iOS has to re-index your entire phone for Spotlight, etc. Same thing for Photos if there have been changes.
Depending on which phone and the amount of storage, your phone can feel kind of sluggish for a while until the background indexing is done.
If you update before you go to sleep, your device will be fine in the morning.
This seems like a ridiculous point. Basically all software doesn't allow downgrades. Sure, if something happens during install, there's modern safeguards to prevent bricking your device, but upgrading software is usually a one-way street. It's why major companies have tiered rollouts of new features, beta programs, and developer previews.
To a corollary: Would you trust a software development team who doesn't trust their feature enhancements enough to where they provide an option to roll back the software? It would be like a clothing designer saying "Actually, buy last years runway, this year's might have some issues..."
As a user, I get 'undo' functionality because I'm playing in the sandbox. I trust that the sandbox is sound if I'm able to use it, and trust it will get ever-better as time goes on.
Why is this a ridiculous point?
If I'm using version 1 of a tool to do some work, then I upgrade to version 2, and it means I cannot do my work as efficiently as before (maybe the update broke the tool, or maybe the user-interface was changed so much that my productivity went down the drain), then why am I not allowed to roll back the upgrade? What if I have a deadline, tomorrow morning at 9am? Not being able to downgrade can drive people up the wall.
Seriously these days everything looks like a work-in-progress. I think it is because of the internet. In many ways software was better before the internet. The continuous pushing of updates is a curse. And users need to have a way to deal with that.
Unfortunately they have other ways to deprecate your device: App Stores won't work, apps won't talk to their backend with older versions or just straight up won't launch. Even Homebrew stopped supporting my 2015 Macbook I have for personal use.