Harvard Study Proves Apple Slows Down old iPhones to Sell Millions of New Models

[techbeck]

If you were Apple, what tricks would you utilize to increase the sales of your latest product?

 

If you know corporations, you’d know they use any possible trick they can as a generality to increase their profit: think of how huge a factor it would make in the sale of new iPhones if the old ones became slower.

 

People have made the anecdotal observation that their Apple products become much slower right before the release of a new model.

 

Now, a Harvard University study has done what any person with Google Trends could do, and pointed out that Google searches for “iPhone slow” spiked multiple times, just before the release of a new iPhone each time.

 

 

The study was performed by student Laura Trucco. The study also compared the results to “Samsung Galaxy slow,” and found that the same spike in searches did not occur before the release of a new Samsung phone.

 

More.....

http://www.anongroup.org/harvard-study-iphones/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2709502/Does-Apple-deliberately-slow-old-models-new-release-Searches-iPhone-slow-spike-ahead-launches.html

[Draconian Guppy]

google searches prove what

[Draconian Guppy]

Quote

'This is common knowledge,' one reader wrote. 'If you want to keep your iPhone running at the same pace do not do the software upgrade that comes out within six months of a new iPhone release,'

But Mr Mullainathan added that the research does not prove that Apple has done anything wrong.No matter how suggestive, he says, the data alone doesn't allow anyone to determine conclusively whether their phone is any slower

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2709502/Does-Apple-deliberately-slow-old-models-new-release-Searches-iPhone-slow-spike-ahead-launches.html#ixzz4tPrfOPzU 

exactly that, because based on searches... not hard benchmark numbers. Also, of course some new features might slow down a old phone!

[Astra.Xtreme]

"The study also compared the results to “Samsung Galaxy slow,” and found that the same spike in searches did not occur before the release of a new Samsung phone."

 

Well yeah... Android phones don't exactly get updates compared to how long iPhones are supported for.  Plus Samsung phones come with plenty of lag out of the box, so the bar is set pretty low from the get go. 

[margrave]

Needs to be illegal

[HoochieMamma]

Planned obsolescence. 

 

It's a real thing, every company does it. Apple especially!

 

Nothing you can do about it most of the time either. The best way to protect yourself is if its a hard wired device make sure you turn it off at the wall to it's not on standby as they love putting low quality capacitors in their power supplies (also they love to run 11v over a 10v cap which you can't even get in the shops!). If its a portable device, don't let the battery go to 0% and don't keep it on charge if it's on 100% over night etc.

 

Keep care of your devices and you'll have them for longer than their planned lifetime which companies like to aim for ~3-4 years.

 

If manufacturers built devices like they built say fridges back in the day they wouldn't make any money. Parents still have a kelvinator fridge that's from the 50's still running fine!

[techbeck]

1 minute ago, HoochieMamma said:

If manufacturers built devices like they built say fridges back in the day they wouldn't make any money. Parents still have a kelvinator fridge that's from the 50's still running fine!

I miss when things were built to last.  More reliable and better quality.  I hate the throw away society we live in.

[Skiver Veteran]

Little disappointed by the evidence for this, surely a better study would be to run benchmark tests frequently that would show sudden slowdowns? You could easily do this with one group of iphones set to take all the latest updates and one set to not get updates. If Apple really were slowing down phones before the launch the group without updates would show no obvious slowdowns via the benchmarks.

[The Evil Overlord]

3 minutes ago, Skiver said:

Little disappointed by the evidence for this, surely a better study would be to run benchmark tests frequently that would show sudden slowdowns? You could easily do this with one group of iphones set to take all the latest updates and one set to not get updates. If Apple really were slowing down phones before the launch the group without updates would show no obvious slowdowns via the benchmarks.

Stop using logic at once!

[Daedroth]

I'm not surprised. Didn't Bill Gates once get done for something similar with Windows way-back-when?

[protocol7]

1 hour ago, Draconian Guppy said:

google searches prove what

That university education isn't what it used to be.

[Buttus]

1 hour ago, Draconian Guppy said:

google searches prove what

just trends.  i guess it would be like taking a poll

[+InsaneNutter MVC]

It's probably more to do with newer versions of iOS and apps require more ram, so when newer phones with more ram come out the older devices struggle as apps are updated to take advantage of them.

 

iPhones usually ship with just enough ram not to hinder performance at the time, not enough to future proof them for the 4+ years apple usually support them.

[Draconian Guppy]

42 minutes ago, protocol7 said:

That university education isn't what it used to be.

I agree!

Harvard study based on google searches determines that after major OS revisions, OLD iOS devices tend to be slower and NEWER hardware seems to be up to par with software requirements 

39 minutes ago, Buttus said:

just trends.  i guess it would be like taking a poll

Yup really sneaky click bait title

[Jim K Global Moderator]

Google trends to prove that Apple intentionally slows down older iPhones before releasing new ones?  Really?

 

If Apple really wanted to push people off of old iPhones ... they'd quit releasing iOS updates for 3+ year old hardware.  iOS11 will support the 5s and mini2 both released in 2013....4 years ago.

 

Anyway, such a rubbish study (from Harvard which is a bit mind boggling)... you'd have to convince me through some better data than Google Trends that Apple is nefariously reducing the performance of iPhones prior to next gen releases.

 

Not an Apple fan ... but hard to argue with their support of older hardware.

 

Probably should go in the "Conspiracy" section.    (joking of course ... just a poor study IMO)

 

Edit:  I was a bit harsh on the study itself until I read the NY Times article ... instead the OP source is poor a reflection of the study.

[+Eternal Tempest MVC]

45 minutes ago, InsaneNutter said:

It's probably more to do with newer versions of iOS and apps require more ram, so when newer phones with more ram come out the older devices struggle as apps are updated to take advantage of them.

 

iPhones usually ship with just enough ram not to hinder performance at the time, not enough to future proof them for the 4+ years apple usually support them.

This, if apple gave the option to downgrade iOS to it's older versions, users would see their performance come back.
Newer apps user more resources as the newer models become the most common platform to develop for, and run slower on older devices.

[zhangm Supervisor]

Where's the actual study? Seems like the title has become sensationalized as people editorialize the editorials that no doubt are based off of a press release.

 

I'm not convinced based on the searches alone. However, if we're going to assume that Apple is malicious enough to pull this planned obsolescence scheme, then shouldn't we also assume that they'd tweak the OS to check for common benchmarking apps and modify the performance during benchmark runs to hide any intentional slowdowns?

[Jim K Global Moderator]

1 hour ago, zhangm said:

Where's the actual study? Seems like the title has become sensationalized as people editorialize the editorials that no doubt are based off of a press release.

 

I'm not convinced based on the searches alone. However, if we're going to assume that Apple is malicious enough to pull this planned obsolescence scheme, then shouldn't we also assume that they'd tweak the OS to check for common benchmarking apps and modify the performance during benchmark runs to hide any intentional slowdowns?

The New York Times editorial by Sendhil Mullainathan (Laura Trucco's professor at Harvard) is probably the closest you'll get.  The original source and the title in this thread are unfaithful to his editorial ... and in no way did he mention that the study was proof that Apple slows down hardware.  DailyMail, IMO, was pretty faithful to the NY Times article (if not a little sensationalist). 

 

Anyway, in part Mullainathan wrote ...

 

Quote

At a minimum, this shows that my experience is not unique. Yes, phones feel slower over time as they hold more software and as our expectations of speed increase. But the spikes show that the feeling doesn’t grow gradually; it comes on suddenly in the days after a new phone is released.

 

Yet that’s all it shows: People suddenly feel that their phone is slowing down. It doesn’t show that our iPhones actually became slower. Imagine that someone points out a buzzing sound in your office. Until then, you hadn’t noticed it. But now you can’t hear anything else. Perhaps this is the digital equivalent of that experience: Hearing about a new release makes you contemplate getting a new and faster phone. And you suddenly notice how slow your old phone is.

 

//

 

The second chart shows searches for “Samsung Galaxy slow.” In this chart, there are no noticeable spikes or anything correlated to the release of new Galaxy phones. Try other types of Android phones, and, similarly, there are no new spikes. This is suggestive, though it’s important to note that new releases of Apple products inevitably draw much more media attention than those of other phones.

 

//

 

Finally, we see a big limitation: This data reveals only correlations, not conclusions. We are left with at least two different interpretations of the sudden spike in “iPhone slow” queries, one conspiratorial and one benign. It is tempting to say, “See, this is why big data is useless.” But that is too trite. Correlations are what motivate us to look further. If all that big data does — and it surely does more — is to point out interesting correlations whose fundamental reasons we unpack in other ways, that already has immense value.

 

And if those correlations allow conspiracy theorists to become that much more smug, that’s a small price to pay.

 

[zhangm Supervisor]

1 hour ago, Jim K said:

The New York Times editorial by Sendhil Mullainathan (Laura Trucco's professor at Harvard) is probably the closest you'll get.  The original source and the title in this thread are unfaithful to his editorial ... and in no way did he mention that the study was proof that Apple slows down hardware.  DailyMail, IMO, was pretty faithful to the NY Times article (if not a little sensationalist). 

 

Anyway, in part Mullainathan wrote ...

 

 

So not a journal-published study that would have been subject to peer review. That would have been interesting to read in this case, but it seems that it simply doesn't exist.