Apple stands alone in iPhone slowdown controversy

By now, you’ve heard that Apple is deliberately slowing down old iPhones; the company said as much earlier this month. That means even the iPhone 7, one of Apple’s best-selling smartphones ever, is likely noticeably slower than it was when it first launched. Expect other devices, including the iPhone X, to potentially suffer the same fate as time goes on.

The news has elicited a number of responses from Apple’s fiercest rivals, including Samsung and LG, both of which claim not to employ a similar practice. “We care about what our customers think,” LG proudly said in a statement. Clearly, Apple’s stands alone in its approach, which is pretty much par for the course.

While Apple has come clean about the practice, the company’s initial lack of transparency over the matter has helped fuel one of tech’s oldest conspiracy theories, which claimed Apple was maliciously slowing down old phones to force people to upgrade. There’s a term for it: planned obsolescence.

While there was never concrete evidence proving anything was taking place, Apple finally admitted to the practice following a report by Geekbench developer John Poole. The problem is Apple didn’t tell anyone it was doing this until it was forced to. That has to change.

In a letter this week, Apple said it slows old iPhones to compensate for battery degradation—but it’s not to make people buy a new device. Regardless, the response to this news has been mixed. At worst, the degraded performance of old iPhones is causing people to think they need to upgrade. At best, the company is looking out for consumers by extending the life of older devices, albeit with compromised performance.

Article source: https://www.technobuffalo.com/2017/12/30/apple-stands-alone-in-iphone-slowdown-controversy/