this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2024
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The business models of the current tech giants are very much based on planned obsolescence. Selling you a gadget for $ 1000 every two years will always be more profitable than selling you one very five years and doing service in the meantime.
Are you aware that the current version of iOS is supported by the phones Apple released in 2018? And they're still releasing security updates for the prior version, with support for 2017's iPhone 8?
and thats fine until you need replacement for a cracked screen or a bad battery and you find out its almost as expensive as a brand new phone. it good that they are doing it but software is just 50% of the problem.
This is before you even get into the ewaste and limited precious metals
Even for unrepairable, at fault replacement(you stepped on it) apple will normally sell you a reconditioned perfect replacement for 50% the cost.
Reliable repair and ultrafast swap and restore are one off the reasons I stick with apple.
In no case is it ever “ almost the price of a new one”.
ill repost this for good measure:
thats the price of another equivalent, or a decent brand new android.
A battery replacement from Apple itself for an iPhone 8 is $69. You can get third-party replacements for less. They actually offer battery replacements going back to the 5s (released in 2013) and screen repairs going back to the iPhone 6.
A decade of first-party hardware support for the most likely to fail components in a phone is pretty hard to square with allegations of "planned obsolescence."
Perhaps the easier argument is that they try to create a sense of urgency to sell people what they don’t need.
Hmm, I wonder what the latest iPhone would look like if Apple were on a once every two years release schedule instead of annual. I can see arguments for the same, better, and worse.
I've always been Android, but the easy counter is just "why do people feel the need to replace their working phone every year."
Car companies have a new model every year and even among those who could afford to, very few people feel the need to have an annual car upgrade cycle. Products aren't (/shouldn't be) fashion.
Apple's got a weird cult thing going, partly because the first few generations were legitimately large upgrades. I'd be curious about the stats of how many non-influencers actually upgrade annually.
Ahh, but that's the trick, because by saying "non-influncers", you'd be cutting out the peoples who fancy themselves influencers, or act like influencers, which is apparently everyone now.
Do they? Yes, they certainly advertise what's new but they're not primarily targeting customers with last year's phone. I recall seeing previously that the average time to keep an iPhone is three years. On Apple's iPhone 15 product page, I found two spots where it called out direct comparisons to previous iPhones: "A17 Pro GPU is up to 70% faster than the GPU in iPhone 12 Pro" and "iPhone 15 Pro has up to 6 more hours video playback than iPhone 12 Pro." They're targeting upgrades to the newest flagship at people with the flagship from three years ago. Of course due to the long support for iPhones, that three year iPhone will inevitably end up in the hands of another user, where it will continue to live on, so there's nothing at all wasteful about upgrading. It's not even wasteful to upgrade every single year because those year-old phones are still used. It's only when the phone is irreparably broken or hopelessly, legitimately obsolete (due to still rapidly-improving technology) that it's then recycled (and Apple has developed special robots to make extracting the rare earth metals viable at large scale).
I think it would look exactly the same as it does today except that it would include two years' of innovations and changes rather than one, but would also mean that if you needed a new phone before its release, your only option would be an increasingly dated model. Customer: Hi, I'd like the latest flagship. Store: Here's the best technology that was available 20 months ago.
I also think it's worth noting that Apple pretty much single-handedly slowed the release schedule for phones. Prior to the iPhone, Nokia was releasing roughly a dozen barely-differentiated models per year, spread throughout the year.
I think it's entirely possible that they chose to compare to a 3 year old phone not because they are only targeting those upgrades to people with 3 years old phones, but because it sounds a lot more impressive that way instead of just the smaller incremental improvements over last years model.
It should also be noted that Apple admitted at one point to purposefully slowing down older iPhones too, which very clearly was done to get people to upgrade. If that's not planned obsolescence I don't know what is.
You talk about them as if they are some benevolent entity, when that's just very much not the case.
could also be that they are marketing over 3 year old flagship owners because that's a likely demographic to upgrade phones, that isn't as locked-in foolproof as their serial buyers, which require no marketing, nor as hopeless as people with mid-ranges or low-end phones. basically, that their marketing buck goes further with this demo.
It is the literal exact opposite of planned obsolescence. Apple introduced a new feature, still present in all of their phones, to extend the useful life of old phones. Batteries degrade with time and use and, after a certain extent, are not able to maintain the sufficient and stable current levels for a phone to operate, particularly during moments of peak power draw. If this happens (and this applies to every Android phone as well), the phone will just shut itself down. Specifically it will shut down right in the middle of you trying to actually do something, since that’s what’s going to cause a spike in power demand. Apple added additional power management to iOS to dynamically throttle power use only when and to the extent needed. On a phone with a perfectly healthy battery, it’s not in use at all. On a phone that’s had years of hard use, it might still only barely be noticeable with some high-demand tasks running slightly slower or the screen slightly dimming. The worse health the battery is in, the lower its current charge level, and the greater the temporary spike in usage, the greater the throttling. Recharge it or resume less intense use and the throttling stops.
So after release (unplanned), they gave new life to what were otherwise obsolete batteries so you could wait longer to upgrade.
most people will probably need to pay someone to do it for them too.
and it aint close to being that "cheap" in my country.
There's no "too." This is the (US) price to have Apple themselves replace your battery for you with a new OEM battery, inclusive of the battery and labor. It basically represents the highest available cost.
you can pretty much get another one for the price they want here (cracked screen):
Well Say whatever about apple but my grandma is running an iPhone 5 for years, replaced the battery from a third party repair shop last year and it keep working absolutely perfectly. There was absolutely no issue finding someone to replace it and it costs 40€.
But yeah, if we had bought her a shity android third grade phone, support would be long gone and the thing barely working. Would have bought one or two other phone in the meantime.
Apple go out of their way to make it difficult for 3rd parties repair shops to get parts and same goes for "official" repair partners who are also gimped in what they're allowed to repair.
I imagine this isn't want you meant when you said say whatever you will about Apple.
It's not so much that I'm praising apple but that I'm criticizing android manufacturers. You can make it as much repairable as you want, if you stop updating after 2 year it's as good as dead.
I know we could have bought her a pixel, but they got their own issue. And not so much repairable.
Samsung back in these time, it was 2 year update too and Im not sure even today they keep updating their low end phone for much longer than that. Wouldn't buy a s23 for a grandma that only makes call and some internet search. 😀
Other than a lack of security updates, what does it matter if the OS isn't updated such that it is unusable?
That's fine for the iPhone 5 before they got as greedy as they are in modern times. Latest generation iPhones have parts locked to the motherboard of the phone, making it alot harder for 3rd party technicians to make repairs without bricking the phone. I forget the name of the YouTuber I think it's Louis Hoffman, he goes into alot more detail on this.
But you are right in a sense, if you never break your phone, it'll last until the battery does. If you get it repaired at a 3rd party shop that's not apple certified (a really expensive certification to get, not just for upfront cash but they restrict what you're allowed to work on to keep the certification) you risk walking away with a very expensive paper weight
Apple is on it's best way to kill all 3rd party repair shops. Luis Rossman has many videos about it. Basically you don't get any schematics, Apple makes it illegal for you to buy replacement parts and they make it more difficult to repair anything.
Well, at least for batteries we seem to be going in a good direction
Apple got in trouble for lowering CPU speed with a software update. They said it's to help old batteries but it made the experience noticable worse so it appeared like they tried to make getting a new phone more appealing by gimping old ones.
Updating proprietary software need not be in the user's best interests.
Checking in on a five year old XS MAXXX here. Runs like the day I got it.