Why does apple slow down old devices?

Or my original iPhone 😀. Why does Apple do that, do you think? Are they taking lessons from Detroit? Planned obsolescence? It makes no sense. I know that Apple could give my original iPhone Touch ID and 3D Touch if they wanted to....

GB

Csound1 wrote:

Can you tell me where I left my iPad, it was on the bedroom table but alas, has disappeared.

When Apple fails to coerce people into buying new iPads by slowing down older devices, they are teleported back to the Mothership, thereby demonstrating their levitatory capabilities.

iOS's slowdown and levitation parameters are enabled through iCloud and are not user-accessible.

John Galt wrote:

Csound1 wrote:

Can you tell me where I left my iPad, it was on the bedroom table but alas, has disappeared.

When Apple fails to coerce people into buying new iPads by slowing down older devices, they are teleported back to the Mothership, thereby demonstrating their levitatory capabilities.

iOS's slowdown and levitation parameters are enabled through iCloud and are not user-accessible.

And here I've been blaming the Secret Society of Felines all this time.

This is not just applicable to iOS devices (iPod, iPad, MacBook etc). I have been using an iMac for 5 or 6 years starting with Mountain Lion and currenly Sierra. After each so called upgrade this machine has ”slowed down”. It takes longer to start, longer to run apps and longer to shut down. It wasn’t fast to start with (compared with the equivalent Windows based machine) but now it’s excrutiately slow. No amount of resetting SMC and PRAM helps.

apple claim that their policy is to help your device with a degrading Lithium battery, but this doesn’t explain why a mains powered unit is slower. It’s called planned obsolescence.

the best advice I can give is don’t upgrade - it’s not worth the effort.

(Why can’t they fix the capitalisation on new paragraphs)

I'm using a 2012 Macbook Air, and have gone from Mountain Lion through Sierra. It still runs exactly like it did when I got it in 2012. So, clearly, there are various factors which affect how your machine runs. If it was planned obsolescence, then we both would be having similar issues....

GB

Well we now know this not to be true. Apple does indeed throttle old devices

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2017/12/20/16800058/a pple-iphone-slow-fix-battery-life-capacity

Currently the claim is it is iPhones and related to the battery but we’ll see if more if falls out as law suits roll in.

This said, I agree with most of the other explanations for why devices slow with updates BUT the issue is we are kind of forced to update to keep getting security updates, which are crucial to avoiding exploits. Please correct me if I’m wrong and Apple keeps providing parallel security updates to old versions of iOS. The problem isn’t just Apple though...same forced deprecation is in the Android world too.

You need to pay attention to the date of the posts you are responding to. MichelPM's post was from 2016. The throttling logic was not introduced until iOS 10.2.1 as the article you linked indicates. 10.2.1 was introduced in January of this year (2017).

So, the statements were absolutely true at the time they were made.

Cheers,

GB

Where Apple fails ethically in this is that they could have just as easily displayed a pop-up informing the user that the os is reducing performance due to a degrading battery and that the user should consider replacing the battery (and they could even do that and also try to upsell a new device).

I suspect this will be Apple's response, given how this has exploded in the media lately - and by "exploded", I mean it's now fodder for the New York Times, the Washington Post and every other major news outlet.

Its too bad that “Devepment” keeps adding “capabilities” to the base OS that continue to put a greater and greater load on the existing h/w that at some point the devices become near unusable !

You either abandoned the platform and move to some other platform or because of the investment in the platform yo7 shell out $$$$ to get a current device !

They should develop an Index of performance for each H/W level where they evaluate the response time of basic functions, and not let you upgrade past that version for you own good !

Yes some would certainly whine about not being able to upgrade, but I would rather have a Functioning IPad 2 vs. brick !

If think you've totally missed what the current news cycle has revealed, though your entry into Leonard Pinth Garnell's "Bad Metaphors" Competition is appreciated.

The current power management solution is silent and model specific, not age specific. One doesn't know if the os has decided to implement it on an iPhone 7 bought 1 1/2 years ago or an iPhone 7 purchased yesterday. That's the controversy in a nutshell. It's trivial to inform the user that performance is being degraded by design when the os decides it's necessary. This isn't about the iPhone6S shutdown issue, it is not about Low Power Mode, it isn't about checking what apps are taking up the most juice and it isn't even about tips to extend battery life. It's about a conscious decision to reduce performance on recent older versions of some of Apple's older devices.

Even accepting Apple's contention that it was done to improve the user experience, it was never disclosed to the consumer of the products in question.

DeadEyeD wrote:

Its too bad that “Devepment” keeps adding “capabilities” to the base OS that continue to put a greater and greater load on the existing h/w that at some point the devices become near unusable !

You either abandoned the platform and move to some other platform or because of the investment in the platform yo7 shell out $$$$ to get a current device !

Are you trying to say that product development is a bad thing. I for one prefer technology to advance.

Phlac wrote:

The current power management solution is silent and model specific, not age specific.

It IS age specific. It is all about the “age” of the battery measured in remaining capacity,

it it is also about the shutdown issue, which is caused by a degraded battery.

It it is about anything and everything that is a symptom of a failing battery. It is an alternative to random shutdowns and jumping state of charge, and what it does is extend the useful life of the phone as determined by the battery. The choice is to replace the battery or use the phone in a useful, but degraded mode.

I still have a list of things that Windows did better and some of these items Apple still doesn't do as efficiently.

Start another thread with this list and I'm sure a lot of folks would respond with potential solutions.

My biggest one would be single click to run an app. Get rid of this double click thingie.

R

Apple should allow users to downgrade OS version if there is a noticeable slow-down in performance -- especially if it makes the device un-useable. Case in point, when I upgraded my daughter's old iPhone 4 to iOS 7, everything slowed to a crawl and now she could only use it to play music, nothing else. Too painfully, annoyingly slow to run apps or go on the Internet, etc. Apple shouldn't brick or make useless older devices as they are very expensive and ought not to be crippled.

It does slow down the device for all of the time, eg. when fully or near fully charged performance should be as before.

Read more here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/12/19/apple-does-slow-older-iphones-n ot-reason-think/

Apple is often accused of deliberately slowing down older iPhones, with conspiracy theorists claiming it is a ruse to force customers to upgrade.

Now, it appears that the theory is true, at least in part. Apple admitted that it deliberately limits the performance of iPhones when a battery ages, to stop them shutting down without warning.

It added the "feature" to the iPhone 6, 6S and SE in 2016 in a software update last year and the iPhone 7 was updated earlier this month, with the release of iOS 11.2. New devices will have their processing power zapped in the future, Apple confirmed.

“Our goal is to deliver the best experience for customers, which includes overall performance and prolonging the life of their devices,” an Apple spokesman said.

Older iPhone batteries struggle to supply the required maximum current needed to power the phone processor at full speed, causing it to shut down unexpectedly, Apple confirmed. In some cases, customers reported powering off even when a phone had 40 per cent battery left.

By slowing the performance, the phone does not need the maximum current, and will no longer switch off without warning.

While smartphone battery capacity decreases as it ages, processing power is not meant to be affected in the same way.