PropertyValue
?:author
?:datePublished
  • 2017-09-22 (xsd:date)
?:headline
  • Did a Harvard Study Prove That Apple Slows Down iPhones to Boost Sales of New Ones? (en)
?:inLanguage
?:itemReviewed
?:mentions
?:reviewBody
  • A long-circulating piece of technology lore surrounding the release of new iPhone models holds that Apple unleashes furtive iOS updates in order to dramatically slow down existing iPhone models just before the release of newer models in a case of planned obsolescence intended to increase sales of the latest iPhones. An example of the rumor was illustrated in an episode of the Netflix series The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: On 21 September 2017, a blog post strongly implied that a Harvard study had proved the rumor true: The referenced study was mentioned 26 July 2014 New York Times Upshot blog post authored by Harvard economics professor Sendhil Mullainathan, which he describes it as a graduate student's casual experiment using Google Trends: Mullainathan contrasted the Google Trends search with a similar one involving Android products, noting an absence of similar results and positing: A December 2017 article from Geekbench charted that some older iPhones did seem to exhibit slower performance after particular iOS upgrades, but that their speed picked up once their batteries were replaced: At that juncture, Apple finally acknowledged that yes, some recent iOS upgrades did throttle processor speeds in some older model iPhones. But, according to Apple, that action was intended to address a problem with unexpected power-related shutdowns (and other issues) in older phones caused by their batteries' degrading over time and was not — as rumor commonly claimed — deliberately coincident with the release of newer iPhones in order to drive sales: Although, as Geekbench noted, the issue might nonetheless serve to increase sales of newer iPhones, whether or not that was Apple's intended purpose -- in the absence of any explanation for the sudden change in performance, many iPhone users may assume the performance problem is related to their phones (and not specifically to their batteries) and therefore opt to upgrade their iPhone models: On 21 December 2017, a class action lawsuit was filed against Apple over the slowdown issue. (en)
?:reviewRating
rdf:type
?:url