In 1666, Isaac Newton witnesses an apple fall from a tree, thus birthing his theory of gravity. In 2017, tech giants Apple slow down old iPhones so people go out and buy millions of new ones. The absolute bloody cheek.
Yep, you read that right. If your iPhone 6 or 7 has been acting up of recent late, there’s a decent chance it’s not bad luck, but actually the devious trappings of Apple who clearly find it increasingly hard to sell new models with little-to-no new features on them at eye-watering prices.
Do they care? Probably not. Profit > self-respect.
According to a study undertaken at Harvard University, Google searches for ‘iPhone slow’ spike a great deal right before the release of a new iPhone.
The study was executed by student Laura Trucco, who also found that ‘Samsung Galaxy slow’ results did not spike in similar ways prior to a new Samsung release.
So it’s just those weapons over at Apple that play tricks on our good and honest smartphones. Meddling with us for sick kicks. Steve Jobs didn’t die for this.
Harvard economics professor Sendhil Mullainthan said that although the company has the means and motive to disable existing devices, they have incentives to stop it from happening.
She also revealed the reason behind the Samsung-iPhone Google searches is Android fragmentation.
She said:
The important distinction is of intent. In the benign explanation, a slowdown of old phones is not a specific goal, but merely a side effect of optimising the operating system for newer hardware.
Data on search frequency would not allow us to infer intent. No matter how suggestive, this data alone doesn’t allow you to determine conclusively whether my phone is actually slower, and if so, why.
Making my blood boil all of this. I tell you what: if my phone was working, I’d be ringing up Apple’s complaints department ASAP.
