“Each year, fall ushers in a few certainties. Leaves change color and fall gently to the ground. Pumpkin spice flavors turn up in unlikely foodstuffs. And iPhone owners feel pretty sure that Apple has intentionally slowed down their smartphone, in a dastardly attempt to get them to upgrade to the latest model,” Brian Barrett writes for Wired. “That last one? It’s not a thing.”
“A new look at historic iPhone performance data disproves the notion for good. Does your iPhone run a little slower than it used to, just in time for the iPhone 8? Maybe. If you’re blaming Apple, though, you’re barking up the wrong corporate monolith,” Barrett writes. “The data that disproves any malicious intent on Apple’s part comes from Futuremark, the company behind a popular benchmarking app called 3DMark. The app runs a series of tests that measure your phone’s performance… If Apple were purposefully debilitating an older iPhone, that would clearly show up in the 3DMark score. Reader, it didn’t.”
“iPhones do slow down a bit over time, largely thanks to your various downloads,” Barrett writes. “Just like those other unfortunate side effects of fall, there’s no underlying conspiracy. It’s just how things work.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: There’s no conspiracy here. Apps just get more resource-hungry as time marches on.
SEE ALSO:
No, Apple does not purposely slow down older iPhones with iOS updates to spur new model sales – October 6, 2017
Of course, my lying eyes. Those apps that started crashing that hadn’t before (not third party apps, Mail and Safari and Camera!) right after installing iOS11 on a 6+, I was just hallucinating. I don’t think Apple tries to intentionally hamstring older devices (well maybe by only giving my device 1GB of RAM), but it’s an obvious byproduct of their updates that works in their favor.
I went through the Public Beta of IOS 11 with a 6s. It flew through. Now we’re on to the second point update and it just gets faster. Nothing crashes, not a single issue. To me, these “wide ranging” reports that older devices are having problems I attribute to user error as opposed to Apple error. If you are having serious issues, wipe your phone and restore it from a backup. That generally fixes such issues.
Lucky you after backup restore etc. having same issues and waiting for another phone call from Apple tech support. We aren’t all fools
I didn’t even have to do the “back up wipe restore” thing. Went through the Beta and just kept updating. Not a single hiccup.
What do you mean user error, opening an app incorrectly? 6s has 2GB of RAM from what I recall, and a better processor, that’s probably the main factor.