So 4 years is the average lifespan, not the maximum. That's pretty crazy, and even more than I thought it would be (4-5 years max).
And to think that virtually all the other OEMs barely even support their phones beyond a year and a half. Even Google is only supporting its own phones for 3 years, which is still less than the average lifespan of these phones (iPhones may be higher quality, but I doubt the avg lifespan for other flagship devices is much smaller).
I've argued before that there should probably be a law that says an electronic device has to be supported until at least 80% of the units stop being in use.
So,for instance, if 10 million people purchased a Pixel 2, Google should deliver software updates until fewer than 2 million Pixel 2 units are under active use. According to this report, that may very well be 5 or 6 years. Remember phones tend to continue to be used even after the original buyer stops using it, whether it's because they sold it or handed it to someone else.
A law forcing support for electronic devices until a certain amount of them fall out of use would discourage companies from making durable products. Companies would use even more brittle, low-endurance parts.
> And to think that virtually all the other OEMs barely even support their phones beyond a year and a half. Even Google is only supporting its own phones for 3 years, which is still less than the average lifespan of these phones (iPhones may be higher quality, but I doubt the avg lifespan for other flagship devices is much smaller).
I think the numbers include all Apple devices: iPhones, iPads, Airports, Macintoshes &c.
Certainly, I don't know anyone with a more-than-three-year-old iPhone.
Mine is also more than 3 years old. I hesitate to upgrade because I don't want to lose my headphone jack, but also I don't need to upgrade yet because it still runs fine.
Have you considered the SE? It's been a pretty reliable phone, it's durable, has a lot of the nicer features of the newer models, but still has a headphone jack, a decent battery life (though my battery is in need of a replacement after 2 years) and is fairly inexpensive.
The graph starts when the first iPhone was released. In other words, the tiny number at the left side of the graph was Apple's active base of non-iOS devices up until 2007.
Given the volumes they ship of each, I would expect that the vast majority of the devices in that graph are iOS devices. Macs might bring that number up a bit but the iPhone is going to dominate the average.
There shouldn't be a law requiring support but it sure would be nice if at least the manufacturer's would provide a way for people to support the devices themselves. It'd also be great if they offered paid support for old devices, e.g. $1 per month to cover developer time.
> there should probably be a law that says an electronic device has to be supported until at least 80% of the units stop being in use
Maybe not a law, since it seems like a bit of an overreach to force a company to continue working on a product they don't want to, but some sort of incentive program would be interesting.
Consumer protection laws. "Hey, I bought this $2000 laptop last year", an investment of their money.
Company, "Too bad. We don't care. Buy another one."
An investment in ensuring a device is able to live out a normal life. Laws come into place because companies show, repeatedly, that given the option they'll have absolutely no reluctance to be apathetic to that.
An average lifespan of about for years is just huge, even if this probably is pushed a lot by Macs having a longer lifespan than phones..
On the other hand, my mother still uses the iPhone 4S I handed down to get than I got my 6.
Even if it’s just iOS devices that’s not too surprising. Lots of people sell their old devices (which get new homes) or pass them down.
We also know the iPad tends to have a much longer lifecycle than the phone. If it wasn’t for the lack of updates and new software many people would still be using the iPad 2 from 2012 (?).
2011, amazingly. If it wasn't for lack of updates many corporate users would be too(i had to drag my work away kicking and screaming "but the apps still work!" and i've heard many similar stories)
My Mac Pro tower from 2008 is still going as my main desktop, not a single fan or hardware issue. iPhone 6S after a new battery, feels like a brand new device. I've had every iPhone since the first one, and decided to just stop buying new phones every year or two. I'll run this into the ground until it stops working. Beyond email , text messaging, and instagram for business. It doesn't serve much other purpose that requires the latest and greatest.
I bought a new iMac 2 years ago to replace my 2006 Mac Pro; unfortunately even with 9GB of RAM it's simply too slow to edit the monster 20MP images coming off pocket cameras these days. It was a great machine for me, though. The old Mac Pros are stuck back on Snow Leopard or something; it hasn't been eligible for a software update in quite a few release cycles, although I think the SLIGHTLY newer Mac Pros are still supported.
It's pretty trivial to get older Mac Pro's on the latest OS release, and it works fine. I've been running High Sierra since the day it was release without issue on my 2008. 32GB of RAM, and still the old 2600XT video card. No problem editing 45.7 megapixel raw files from my D850 for a side marketing business. With that said, it has its slowdown with just too much shit running, 3+ VM's, IDE's, whatever else I'm developing. Definitely is a powerhouse for ten years later though.
> My Mac Pro tower from 2008 is still going as my main desktop, not a single fan or hardware issue.
Considering how many fans that machine has, I’d say that’s quite good. Fan failures in the Dell machines I’ve dealt with over the years are practically guaranteed within three to four years.
I occasionally boot up a PowerBook G4 running Leopard - I think the last version to support PPC. It's had a battery replacement and an SSD installed but is still quite slow (and hot after a while). But the screen and keyboard are nice and I think it'll last another 10+ years if I'm careful.
Still, somewhere it pops up in web analytics as an outlier :)
Currently operating in my household:
- A 2003 iMac G4 (iLamp) acting as a audio media server
- A 2004 17" PowerBook G4 that I use for long-form writing because the keyboard is just. so. comfortable.
- A 2008 iPhone 3G (not 3GS) with a remote dock that plays music in the library.
- A 2011 MacBook Air that I carry around in my bag and use almost every day. (Though the battery life is down to two hours.)
- A 2012 iPhone 4 I just replaced the battery in. It pumps out music to the neighborhood AM radio station in my closet.
- And finally, a launch day 2007 iPhone, which I don't use regularly, but keep in my desk drawer and turn on every once in a while for kicks, and to make sure it still works. Man, that screen is very hard to look at now after becoming accustomed to retina displays.
On the other side of the coin, I can't seem to make an Airport last more than 18 months. Fortunately, there's a neverending supply of them for $5-$10 at Goodwill.
The iMac G4 is a design landmark. Even though my 1GHz system is by far the slowest of my daily drivers, I just love using it because of the form factor (the arm on this 15" is still great, springs move well).
What browser are you using? TenFourFox? Because if not you might want to grab a copy today as other browsers don’t support TLS1.2 and will stop being able to access the general web fairly rapidly. https://tenfourfox.blogspot.se/2018/02/the-tls-apocalypse-re...
I just threw together a downloader to deal with this problem, which is offered over unencrypted HTTP. It embeds a current cURL with TLS 1.2 so that a Power Mac can still bootstrap itself and get TenFourFox. It's available on the main page now.
Naturally a more secure approach is to use a computer that already has a current TenFourFox or other browser on it, but this at least gives people with no other options a way out. Barely two days after offering it there were 50+ downloads/day already through the Downloader, so there must be some subpopulation of Power Macs not already updated where their owners are starting to notice this.
Leopard is indeed the last version to support PPC. My mother still uses an iBook G4 for Bible software (on Tiger). It keeps working for this purpose and it is not networked, and she has enough spare parts stockpiled, so it will probably keep running for years more.
As an end-user, this is obviously a big benefit to me, as I don't need to purchase devices as often, but how does this play from a business perspective?
Is Apple consciously promoting this as a differentiator, or is it a side effect of their hardware/software ecosystem? How will this affect their sales numbers long term, either positively (by promoting their platform overall) or negatively (by reducing in-ecosystem churn)?
It helps Apple by driving the tolerable purchase price (and therefore tolerable profit margins) up.
Put another way, they capture the same share of your computing budget and of the App Store market but build fewer laptops and phones.
Also, Apple is highly diffentiated at the high end (walk in repairs and support, long software compatibility timespans). Driving up expected lifespans makes their offering cheaper than the low end in the long term, allowing them to capture increasing percentages of the total market.
They just need to execute better on the software and industrial design side than they did in 2017. Laptops without usable keyboards, the new busted gesture based iPhone UI, and iOS 11.0 are all bad enough to force long term users to other ecosystems.
FWIW, the iPhone 8 and X are awesome phones. There have been a few software issues with iOS but nothing major. For example, there was recently a crash caused by a very specific set of unicode characters. People could crash your phone by sending it to you via a text for a whole 2 days. Now that the novelty has worn off and Apple has patched it, it's not an issue.
My own anecdotal experience here: I have been using iOS 11 on my iPhone 6 Plus, and subsequently my iPhone X and now an iPad Pro (from which I type this) and the only severe issue I’ve encountered was my iPhone X entering some kind of weird state (possibly related to accidentally triggering the screen magnifier feature) and the display became mostly unresponsive, except for the emergency sos which triggered and dialed 911 while trying to reboot the device. Fortunately the phone part worked and I was able to explain what happened to the operator. After a successful force shutdown I turned off the automatic dial option.
From a business perspective, I would expect Apple to continue introducing satellite/companion products in their ecosystem that customers see as valuable. I think they've long seen the "peak iPhone" moment coming (it would seem we have at least arrived at "plateau iPhone" now [0]), and have been executing a broad, multiyear strategy to leverage the fact that there are over a billion of their devices in active use. That strategy includes: offering compelling services, new products to enhance their ecosystem (AirPods, Apple Watch, etc), and eventually products to cannibalize the iPhone.
I expect there to be a lot of noise from Wall Street now that the iPhone growth rocket ship has stagnated. But as others have pointed out, in a world of smartphone saturation Apple is well-poised to continue being quite successful[1], and viewing the world purely through a "number of units sold" lens is foolish.
1) 2/3 of devices Apple has ever sold remain in use today [0]
2) The average lifespan of an Apple device is 4.25 years
That should put to rest the "Apple's planned obsolescence" narrative, but I doubt it will. I think it has always been the case that Apple cares about building really good hardware that lasts. That's not to say that they don't make mistakes (they do), but they care most about making something good, regardless of the "business case."
On the most recent earnings call, several investors had questions about how Apple's new battery replacement program would affect business. For example, would the cost bring down profits, would the replacement prevent upgrades, etc. Tim's response was:
>On the battery, Toni, we did not consider it in any way, shape, or form what it would do to upgrade rates. We did it because we thought it was the right thing to do for our customers. And sitting here today, I don’t know what effect it will have. And again, it was not in our thought process of deciding to do what we’ve done. [1]
I will never understand why Apple gets all the "planned obsolescence!" flak, when I still know people using iPhone 4S's and 2011 iPads and iOS devices get software updates for 3-5 years. You're lucky if your Android phone gets two years of updates, and I don't there has ever been one with three.
I bought my Samsung Galaxy S5 in early/mid 2015 and it's still going "strong", although a bit laggy at times. The only issue is the battery has started swelling (again). I think I'll upgrade this time instead of replacing the battery.
My point being, I'm about to hit the three year mark on an Android phone.
No, it doesn't. Not through the OEM. The last version of Android was Marshmallow which is two major versions behind the most current.
Sure, you can flash it yourself to the latest version, but there's no guarantee that it'll work. In my book, not having support from the OEM on the latest possible version of Android that can be loaded on your device does not count as having access.
Through a custom ROM or something akin, I imagine? Not through regular channels, such as a regular software update notification received on the old version
Not exactly the most consumer-friendly way to get software updates. That's not comparable to how Apple does it
Android update is different when compared to iOS update. You don't need latest Android to get the latest apps. Google will not withhold the latest Chrome or Maps or Gmail or Youtube from you, unless you update to latest OS release.
But he's also not forced to use the latest version of Android. Apple however doesn't make every latest version available for every device. They have a cut-off. And that's all fine and normal and everyone accepts it. So, say a 4S won't run iOS 10.
So lets be clear, apple has no problem stopping you from running the latest iOS.
But they do let you install iOS9, which makes a 4S totally shite slow.
They don't have a problem stopping you from running a recent version. They just have a problem stopping you from running the version that will make your phone shit, and then preventing you from going back to the previous version.
they deliberately "brick" phones. they don't have to let you run iOS9, just because its the latest version. The iPhone 3 couldn't run iOS9. And they don't mind making it so that the 4S can't run iOS10. So why not say iOS8 is the cut-off for 4S? Well, because the 4S could run iOS8 and still be useable, and then you wouldn't need to buy a new fucking phone.
So the very last version they let^H^H^H force you to install is the one that'll make it shit.
You never understand because you're not affected by it, or don't understand it or think people are simply lying. The 4S turned into an unusable phone after all the updates. I know because I had one and had to get rid of it after it Apple updates slowed it down.
I have a coworker using either a 4 or 4S and I saw him install a new app on it last week. Are you referring specifically to apps that no longer support old versions of iOS? As far as I know the App Store maintains compatibility with old iPhones and allows them to download and install stuff just like new ones.
My mom is still happily using her original iPad mini with iOS 9. Some apps these days are not compatible with it but asurprising number are still targeting iOS 9. Lots of popular apps such as Telegram, Netflix, Overdrive books support iOS 9 and still get updates (unsure for how much longer). Others like the Target app, require later iOS versions and force her to use an older version, which tend to still be functional, though without the latest features.
Even if they don't get updates. The older versions should still work. I downloaded the older version of Netflix "the last compatible version" for my first gen iPad running iOS 5 and it still works.
It's really frustrating with app stores and auto-updating apps. I've got an ereader running an older Android operating system, and it's difficult trying to keep versions of apps that work on it to stay the same and not brick themselves. It's a little sketchy having to track down and sideload the right older appk package that still works.
I wish it was more like Nuget, where you can select the version you want and have to explicitly upgrade, with an easy downgrade option.
I have a functional iPad 1 that I reset last year. Apple let's you download the "last compatible version" of an app. I was able to download Netflix, Hulu, Crackle and a bunch of other apps.
You have to have downloaded the app previously on the same account. The workaround is to download the app with iTunes and then it will let you download the same app on your iOS device as long as there was once a compatible version.
iPhone 5Ss are great to keep around, you can generate an ECC private key inside the secure enclave (albeit only using the NIST P256 curve). Using Krypton[0] or your own software you can use the phone as a hardware private key.
Krypton includes support for SSH, gpg signed git commits, and soon generic gpg signing[1], all backed by TouchID or your passphrase[2]. Make sure to setup Krypton with the "Nist P256 (Secure Enclave)" curve. Private keys generated in the Secure Enclave are only possible to extract using a zero-day in the Secure Enclave coprocessor.
>That should put to rest the "Apple's planned obsolescence" narrative, but I doubt it will. I think it has always been the case that Apple cares about building really good hardware that lasts. That's not to say that they don't make mistakes (they do), but they care most about making something good, regardless of the "business case."
I hope it doesn't. I have experienced it first hand with my 4S which became horribly laggy and unusable after all of the iOS updates, and I had no way of downgrading iOS and returning it to the factory state.
Also regarding the battery issue, call me a cynic but there is no way that this wasn't PR driven. Apple took a PR hit because they sneakily slowed down the phone instead of informing the user that their battery is dying and that they should get it fixed. Obviously because it would highlight the flaws in their design (which other smartphones might or might not have too).
I'm not an Apple shareholder so I don't care about their profits at all, and hopefully neither should anyone else.
I don't doubt that you had issues. I had my own issues with an iPhone 6. I'm not saying we shouldn't criticize Apple, and I'm not saying they haven't made mistakes. I don't even care if the replacement program is PR driven--It's still the right thing to do!
What I am saying is: Apple seems to be holding to their guiding principles (sometimes with missteps), as opposed to giving in to shareholder pressure to increase short term profits at expense of a long term relationship with their customers. And, supporting 1.3 billion devices is an enormous engineering feat.
Making an update that breaks the home button, and refusing to fix it ("we can't, just buy a new phone") while rooted phones have community update that fix it is not "making a mistake".
People who had their home buttons replaced using third-party kits that didn't preserve the relationship between the fingerprint sensor and the secure enclave often blame the iOS release that blocked access to the enclave rather than the repair that broke the security.
I'm talking about the scandal of the iPhone 4, which didn't have a fingerprint sensor. They just made an update, and the button started to act out, randomly. Community found out it was a software bug, while Apple said it was a hardware bug and recommended an update.
It was only a few years ago. It was so common that you could see a lot of friends using the "AssistiveTouch" to get around it.
It's crazy you already forgot that.
It makes me so mad.
Companies can literally get away with anything as long as they have good PR. For god sake it was on every single tech site at the time, and you already forgot that ?
Take a deep breath, take a walk, something. I worry a bit when conjecture over a comment on HackerNews leads to feelings of hopelessness. Please, connect with a person IRL and talk with them about something good! Read the Bill & Melinda Gates letter, go see Black Panther, something!
On-topic:
I do remember the story you're talking about; it happened to a tiny percentage of the people the story I mentioned did, but one of those people was my daughter, about six years ago. (Time flies!)
My daughter also had a cracked screen and generally did not treat her phone with the care an expensive piece of electronics merits, so I didn't think much of it, and she use the on-screen home button for a year or two. She liked it so much that even after she later upgraded, she kept using the on-screen home button!
I remember people blaming a software update, but mu daughter hadn't updated. I wondered at the time whether that was a coincidence, or multiple issues that people were conflating.
It's also worth noting that while you call it a "scandal" and say the community found out it was a software bug, iFixIt seemed to have a good handle on the exact flex cable that caused the problem: https://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/56206/Home+button+someti...
>I'm not saying they haven't made mistakes. I don't even care if the replacement program is PR driven--It's still the right thing to do!
Sure, but doing it under PR pressure kinda dilutes it. I still welcome it. I've had battery issues with my 6S too, where it simply shut down in winter. Apple didn't reach out to me at all (even though they had my info since I purchased it directly from them). I chanced upon an article about a battery recall and that's when I realized that my battery had a defect. Apple doesn't have a lot of trust surplus with me. YMMV.
>And, supporting 1.3 billion devices is an enormous engineering feat.
It is an engineering feat, maybe a mini, or a middle feat. I'm not quite sure whats enormous about it. They control the hardware and software. They have only a small number of models, which are identical. Samsung has hundreds of models. (Not that I think Samsung is doing a stellar job)
I’m not defending the somewhat emotional / hyperbolic tone of the comment to which you replied. Just considering that they may not have adequately explained that they were referring to two separate cases (though it isn’t clear from the comment that the difference is recognized).
For my own anecdotal response, my Apple products last many years. They are consistently in good working order by the time I choose to upgrade. I also think that those who still believe that Apple has some nefarious scheme to build-in obsolescence are being manipulated by FUD, and that is based on firsthand knowledge.
> It is the same as all batteries - they degrade. Apple can’t change that.
But I have not had a battery completely stop working in the winter, ever. My car battery continues to work just fine. My camera works just fine, so does my laptop, so does my smartwatch, so does my TV remote, so does my powerdrill, so does my radio, so does my torch, so does the wall clock. But who knows, maybe I've just been lucky all these years. And BTW I'm not talking about some crazy Siberia winter. I'm talking about 30-40F here!
>But it seems the intent was to allow people to continue using their devices without upgrading and without having to pay for a battery replacement.
Apple decided to hide information that let a user decide if it was worth it to upgrade the battery. The user had no idea that their battery had degraded.
>But people who [..] and who expect that Apple should pay to support replacing batteries for the lifetime of the device, with no out-of-pocket expense for the consumer is a ridiculous double standard that no other manufacturer has ever been held to in the history of consumer electronics.
> But I have not had a battery completely stop working in the winter, ever. My car battery continues to work just fine. My camera works just fine, so does my laptop, so does my smartwatch, so does my TV remote, so does my powerdrill, so does my radio, so does my torch, so does the wall clock. But who knows, maybe I've just been lucky all these years. And BTW I'm not talking about some crazy Siberia winter. I'm talking about 30-40F here!
Weird, my history with car batteries suggests that they do, in fact, completely shut down in cold winters. They do it with such regularity that many people carry specialized equipment in their cars to deal with this eventuality, and roadside-assistance crews regularly deal with it as well.
I happen to have had my camera battery drain completely within minutes of full charge when used outdoors in mid-winter, but I don't often take my DSLR outside in mid-winter any more since my phone fills that need.
I don't usually take my tv remote, power drill, or wall clock outside in mid-winter, but your mileage may vary.
Apple doesn't have access to a different set of physical laws than other companies. Physics is physics, and those batteries don't deal well with cold, period.
Apple's battery was defective. They replaced it. It no longer shuts down.
>Apple doesn't have access to a different set of physical laws than other companies. Physics is physics, and those batteries don't deal well with cold, period.
Well, that certainly is your opinion. But it doesn't change the fact that the battery was defective.
> I have experienced it first hand with my 4S which became horribly laggy and unusable after all of the iOS updates, and I had no way of downgrading iOS and returning it to the factory state.
This is a big issue. It's one thing for a device to get slower over time as programs become more and more demanding. It's another to have a device that's running great and then suddenly slows to a crawl the moment after an irreversible OS update (what happened to my MacBook after Snow Leopard).
It would be understandable if the user was presented a clear choice of extra features that required more hardware, versus less features and snappier performance.
Apple uses dark patterns to get you to update and then blocks the downgrade path. __That__ is the part that's infuriating.
I installed the last iOS update on my iPhone 4s because Apple explicitly wrote that older devices would become faster. The reverse was the case. This was when I decided to never again buy an Apple device.
>I have experienced it first hand with my 4S which became horribly laggy and unusable after all of the iOS updates,
If it became unusable, presumably you deactivated it, which means it was tallied into this article's estimation of lifespan.
Important to consider that what HNers call unusable is perfectly acceptable to a great number of people. I've never used a phone with a cracked screen, but I've seen a fair number of people who don't consider this a reason to deactivate the device.
> That should put to rest the "Apple's planned obsolescence" narrative, but I doubt it will.
After less than 20 months my iPhone SE was at 45% of the original CPU speed it was marketed as. This was by design. A conscious decision by multiple people in the know, who instead of selling me a device that could last four years sold me a device that lasted one and a half and kept quiet about it until called out on it.
I never believed the planned obsolescence narrative, until I experienced it the past months.
Because it was found out that they were doing the battery thing. If not, he and everyone else would have continued suffering a poor experience without knowing that it was a battery problem, or bought a new iPhone.
I know that’s what happened to me with my 6s at least.
My beef with the popular narrative on this isn't that Apple shouldn't be criticized for the way they handled it -- it's that what they did that was wrong seems to me to be terrible communication, not some kind of nefarious plan to make everyone buy new phones.
People seem to be tacitly dismissing the problem the CPU throttling ostensibly fixes -- iPhones with worn batteries just shutting down instantly without warning when an application asks for more power than the battery's now capable of delivering -- but I've experienced it. It's a real problem. And while it's a subjective call as to whether that's more infuriating than CPU throttling is, I can tell you, it's really infuriating. And it's not some kind of crazy only-Apple thing; it's a problem with battery technology. It happens with Android phones, too, and their "solution" is what Apple's was until they rolled out the throttling: nothing. Eventually you figure out you have a battery problem because your phone keeps spontaneously shutting down! Yay.
If we're going to criticize Apple for this, maybe it should be for making this change without notifying users. The iPhone can presumably determine when its battery is sufficiently worn that it's facing the choice between CPU throttling and spontaneous shutdowns, and it should let the user know when it crosses that line.
But the notion that Apple is deliberately crippling phones to get you to buy new ones faster has always been...odd. They do want you to buy new phones, to be sure, but they want you to buy new phones from them. If you stop trusting them, you're less likely to going to do that, unless you're very heavily "into" the Apple ecosystem -- which most consumers arguably aren't. (At least half my friends with iPhones rarely install applications other than Spotify, Telegram, and the occasional game -- and I live in Silicon Valley. These folks aren't Mac users, either, and so I suspect they don't feel very much lock-in pressure at all.)
> Apple cares about building really good hardware that lasts
That used to be true. Nowadays they seem to care more about building hardware that looks cool, is as thin as physically possible, and is full of wizzy features that people may or may not care about (like face-unlock, or whatever they call it).
There are good reasons for pursuing thinness. One, it naturally puts you (through accumulated R&D, supply chain and design know-how) on the leading edge of miniaturisation, a resiliant multi-decades long trend in technology. Pushing for a smaller laptop made possible the iPhone; pushing for a smaller iPhone made possible the Apple Watch, et cetera. (Thinner, lighter devices also have a demonstrated ability to increase usage, by being lighter to hold up.) It’s a design philosophy built into a longer-term strategy.
There's a difference between pursuing thinness in R&D and releasing a thin product that cannot be repaired in the field.
True story: the other day I was on a trip when my wife's Macbook Air started to rock back and forth on the surface it was sitting on. The battery had failed. It was still working, i.e. providing power, but it had started to bulge. (This turns out to be a known problem.) There was so much pressure that the keyboard and bottom case were visibly deformed. But it was impossible for me to open the case and get the battery out because I didn't have the right pentalobe screwdriver with me. Fortunately, we were able to find a Mac repair shop that was able to get the battery out before it caught fire or exploded. (But we were very lucky. We do a lot of traveling to places that lack this kind of infrastructure.)
What they were not able to do was recycle the battery because they didn't have a replacement, so they could not open an official repair ticket. So we had to take the bad battery, still fully charged despite being blown up like a balloon, with us on an airplane so we could take it home and dispose of it properly.
It's perfectly fine if Apple wants to offer products like this for people who want to trade off volume for field-repairability. What irks me is that Apple no longer offers any choice in this. My choices today are non-repariable, or Windows (or Linux, but that is not a viable option for my non-geek wife). Those are pretty sucky choices.
Lithium polymer batteries can be molded and shaped to fill up all available space inside the case. A replaceable battery can't be shaped to nearly that degree. Making a battery user-replaceable means it must be smaller.
2. It doubles-up the case
There is no way you can legally sell a product with an unprotected Lithium battery, especially not one that is laptop-sized. It would be a massive safety hazard. You need an internal case for the computer and an entirely separate case for the battery. That takes up space and adds weight. It also further restricts your ability to shape the battery to fill the available space (meaning the battery must be smaller or the case must be larger).
--
There is no magic in battery technology. We aren't going to wake up one day and have computers as light as a piece of paper that last all day. It requires constant iteration and improvement. If everyone listened to naysayers it would greatly slow down the pace of innovation. I am absolutely certain there are still people out there angry about the removal of RS-232 serial ports or VGA ports on laptops. Probably a few still upset about removing floppy drives too.
Actually the MBA battery is quite easy to replace. I did my own replacement when I got home. The only real obstacle is the pentalobe screws, and I don't see any possible argument that those add value for the consumer.
> So we had to take the bad battery, still fully charged despite being blown up like a balloon, with us on an airplane so we could take it home and dispose of it properly.
That was incredibly dangerous and put everyone on the airplane at risk. You didn't have to take it.
I am well aware of that, and it was not a decision I made lightly. FWIW, it was several days between removing the battery and the flight, and I monitored it closely to make sure it wasn't continuing to expand or throwing off any heat. But the alternative would have been to throw it in the trash, and that had risks of its own.
If you really feel the need to think ill of me then I am not going to stand in your way, but please consider the possibility that I really do understand and that I took appropriate precautions. (You might even think to ask me about those before passing judgement.) Also, you should keep in mind that lithium batteries can catch fire with no warning signs at all, so just because your laptop battery hasn't swollen up is no guarantee that it is safe. Have you ever taken a laptop on a plane? Does that make you a terrible person who risked everyone's lives?
Lithium batteries contain safety systems that become compromised when the part is mechanically deformed. A damaged battery is significantly more dangerous than an undamaged one (although undamaged batteries aren't really safe either). As the Li-Ion batteries contain their own oxidizer a fire caused by one is extremely difficult to contain.
There are no FAA approved ways to transport damaged Lithium batteries that I'm aware of - but since your a pilot perhaps you could enlighten?
Compared to a whole slew of Ultrabooks, and other 13" laptops which were smaller. I'm not sure how you get that Apple's drive for smaller laptops made the iPhone possible (given that it's form factor, LG Pradas, etc., were also quite widely available at the same time) - I don't see the size innovation here that you seem to be.
> is full of wizzy features that people may or may not care about (like face-unlock, or whatever they call it)
You may not care, but I assure you, the millions of people who use it multiple times every day do. I suggest you try it out yourself and compare it to Touch ID.
If you're going to applaud apple for "doing the right thing for customers", it might be good to think about apple's history. When during the last decade has apple ever not tried to ignore severe hardware issues before they lost a lawsuit? Apple has mistreated customers for a long time. They can get away it because their customers have few high end alternatives.
The truth is that they make calculated decisions whether ignoring the issue, or responding to the issue will be more beneficial to them financially and public opinion wise. This time they decided that the fallout from evidence of possible planned obsolescence—intentional or not—combined with the fact that a lost lawsuit was likely, and the fact that smartphone sales have fallen for the first time ever, would be financially more painful than compensating their customers.
>That should put to rest the "Apple's planned obsolescence" narrative, but I doubt it will.
That argument has never made much sense to me.
If Apple wanted to force people to buy a new device, wouldn't it be much easier to simply stop providing OS and security patches after two years the way most of the Android device makers have traditionally done?
How does providing four years of software support (on average) force users to buy a new device more quickly than providing two years of software support (on average)?
Because a slow (but secure) device is a continuous and frustrating reminder that you need to buy a new phone. Whereas a fast (but unpatched) phone is a joy to use, except in the unlikely event that someone actually hacks you, and then it's not clear whether you would go buy another Apple device. I'm thankful that Apple is doing the right thing by patching older devices, but I also think it aligns with their financial incentives.
And to be clear, I don't subscribe to the theory that Apple is intentionally slowing iOS down on older devices. But subjectively, the iPhone 4S struggles with iOS 9 the same way that the iPhone 5s struggles with iOS 11. Even if you work in IT, it's hard to fathom that iOS 11 looks and works the same as iOS 9, but requires a ~4x more powerful CPU to barely chug along[1]. Planned Obsolescence almost wins Occam's Razor here; I'm not surprised that so many people misinterpret the battery throttling thing.
I've seen these okay-ish numbers, but subjectively it was a crap experience (bad enough to buy an SE). It wasn't really app launch times that bothered me, though. Scrolling all around the OS "felt" (not sure how to measure it) like it was running way below 60 FPS, whereas everything was buttery smooth on iOS 10. And the OS seemed to only keep one or two apps in memory, ever.
I suspect it might be because I only had 1GB of free storage, and iOS 11 was uploading and downloading cloud photos like crazy? Often I would take a picture, and by the time I wanted to send it via message ten seconds later, the phone had deleted the original it from my phone, and had to re-download it.
I would gladly assume that I'm an outlier, but a friend with a 5s asked me for new phone recommendations right after updating to iOS 11, so there's at least two points of anecdata.
This is very clever from a financials analysis perspective, but I'd be careful taking it to mean anything from an end-user perspective. This can be phrased as: suppose some number of devices are in the wild at a given time. How long does it take for that many devices to become inactive?
Note this is very different from: how long does it take for all the devices on the market at the time to become inactive? If these would be equivalent if (1) iPhones were homogeneous and (2) devices had a constant lifetime, but the truth is there are many models available and different devices become inactive at different rates.
Concerning point (1): As an extreme example, imagine Apple releasing a rock solid phone (iPhone RS) with a ten year lifespan followed by a crappy phone (iPhone CR) that dies in a year. Within a year of the CR's release, they'll all be inactive, meanwhile all the RS's will be plugging along (assuming they all last exactly their lifespan). Meanwhile the average lifespan will be identical to what it would be if they were released in the reverse order.
Concerning point (2): These numbers can be skewed by devices with different lifetime distributions. If we assume, realistically in my opinion, that device decay is a Poisson process, different devices with different decay rates mixed together in this analysis would render this analysis way too simplistic.
For consumers who buy the very newest of devices, this isn't a particularly helpful metric because of (1). For consumers who buy older devices, it's not very helpful because you don't know the distributions pointed out in (2).
For financial analysts, however, this is a very interesting analysis because it can be used to make predictions. For instance, if you assume the lifecycle is increasing, then you see a strong incentive for Apple to get their hands on older-but-still-functional devices so they can resell the same phone again and again. My takeaway is I'll keep an eye out for how aggressively they market the iPhone Upgrade Program.
I think I follow what you are saying, but I'd disagree with one thing: For consumers, all these devices come from the same company, and are developed with (broadly) the same process. Because these products are related, a consumer can make assumptions about both new and old devices. In fact, there is evidence that they do, if you take a look at secondary markets for Apple devices.
What you are saying is similar to telling a consumer that they should not trust Toyota vehicles to last longer than any other brand. When, in fact, there is a general trend that Toyotas do last longer. Sure, you aren't guaranteed that one specific Toyota Corolla will last longer than another specific Ford Focus, but there is a general trend you can rely on.
While my criticism is of a more technical nature than this, you do have a good point that this can be used as a comparative metric. This certainly has value to the marketer, but then again any number that goes up has value to a marketer, so I suppose it should go without saying...
My Apple //e is still running. My Newton 2100 is still running. My iPhone 5s is still running on original batter (on iOS 11 to boot). My MBP 2011 is still running (albeit with new SSD).
Sadly my Macintosh Portable isn't running but that's only because the batteries are dead and I haven't refurbished them yet.
No other hardware I've ever purchased has run for that long. My Palm Pilot is dead. My Treo is dead.
No one who says Apple builds in planned obsolescence has probably never used any Apple hardware.
I still have my original Apple ][+ from high school, purchased used in 1986, originally manufactured in 1982. It performs just as well as it did in 1986, even including the floppy drive, a mechanical device that by all rights should have died decades ago. (Then again, my Atari 2600 still works fine, too.)
Conversely, every Apple product I've owned since the late '90s has been buggy in one way or another, had hardware issues, and generally has not stood the test of time. As mandatory updates and cloud-based software have become the norm, things have gotten even worse. To be fair, machines are far more complex now. A lot of the rock-solid reliability of early Apple products came from their relative simplicity. But I would not say they've built robust products ever since. They certainly believe in planned obsolescence. The perennial changing of port standards, abandoning of backwards compatibility, and lack of support for older machines is an Apple hallmark. I'm not saying they're worse than their competitors, but they definitely adhere to planned obsolescence.
I have a Newton 2000 that turns on, but the touch screen matrix isn't working properly, apparently a common issue.
Also had a Quadra 950 at one point loaded with 1990s game dev stuff in storage. Pulled it out, it wouldn't turn on and the plastic had turned into the color of cigarette smoke, so got rid of it. Sometimes even good shit breaks.
Right. My 2013 MBP had a "charging circuit" issue. The laptop worked fine, the battery was fine, it ran on AC. It just could not allow a charge to the battery.
Me: No problem. I'm sure it's no more than maybe $200, parts and labor.
Apple Store: So because we have to replace x, y and z to do this, you're looking at $820.
Two thirds of the original purchase price of the laptop to repair the ability to _charge its battery_.
My 2013 MBP had a charging circuit issue, too. I brought it to Apple, and they said replace most of the internals, $800. I took it to a third-party authorized Genius Bar (Create More on 3rd St), and they replaced just the charging circuit for about $200.
My frustration was with that, and then they were very eager to say "Hey, it's going to cost you this, how about we start looking at a new Mac?", a very used car sales vibe.
I don't believe Apple designs for "planned obsolescence", but you appear to have been cautious or lucky enough to buy mature products, not new product lines -- in some cases, the very final iteration of a design.
I own 1 early-model and 2 first-of-its-line Apple products from the 2000's, and they've all had quality issues and are no longer usable. In every case, the flawed feature was improved or simply removed in subsequent models. It's a shame, because I liked them all more than what I replaced them with, apart from the reliability trouble.
On average, I don't think Apple is any worse than any other manufacturer, but they do tend to be more enthusiastic about trying new materials and designs and manufacturing techniques. Perhaps there are people who run out and buy a completely new model on day 1, and discover it's not as robust as the 5-year-old one they were using before (i.e., sample bias).
I was anxiously awaiting the second iteration of the black cylinder Mac Pro, simply because I'm paranoid about buying a first-generation product. Now I'm going to have to wait even longer, because once again there's going to be a completely new design.
* 2012 rMacBook Pro 15": a major GPU defect found just as the 1-yr manufacturer's warranty ran out. Had to pay $300+ for repair although it was clearly a manufacturer's fault. After a threat of class-action lawsuit -- there were similar class-action lawsuits in motion for older MacBooks models made in 2007, 2009, 201x as well -- Apple started a repair/recall program in 2014 and they refunded my repair cost.
* 2 x iBooks in my college days: none of them lasted longer than 1 year; all failed due to some hardware problems.
* iPhone 3GS: didn't know how laggy it was until I upgraded to the 4Gs. Oneplus 5T is my current phone, with Samsung Note 3 as backup -- which was used for 4 years.
* 1999 Dell Inspiron: in service for 6 years and still usable. dropped it several times on concrete floor. Virtually indestructible, but I wanted to get a new hardware (see my 2 x iBooks). Required no repair or replacement despite heavy use; in my Manhattan mini-storage now.
* 2008 Dell Inspiron: cost $350 (with some special offer from Discover Card) and used it until I got my 2012 rMacBook. Virtually indestructible; required no repair or replacement; still running and my backup laptop.
Based on my experience, Dell XPS 15" is going to be my next workhorse.
As far as smartphones are concerned, many years ago before his death, Steve Jobs claimed to have "cracked" the integrated TV business, but Apple decided not jump into it -- because their product lifespan is too long, especially compared to iPhone's 2-yr short lifespan. The iPhone's 2 year short lifespan in turn was in large part determined by 2 year contract subsidies in the US. Likewise, you see in Horace's second graph that the iPhone lifespan increased as US carriers phased out 2 year-contract subsidized model in favor of monthly payments with no subsidy. I'm very disinclined to believe that Apple's QC improved so much in the past 4 years that the iPhone's lifespan nearly tripled and, contrary to a few fanboi's anecdotal stories about Apple's stellar hardware QC, I'm willing to bet a few pennies that the overall lifespan trend holds the same for other phone manufacturers as well.
In short, I think it's mostly it's mobile carriers' subsidy (or lack thereof) that changed consumers' buying habit and iPhone lifespan, not Apple's super durable hardware or quality control.
Dell isn't usually too bad indeed. My GF just retired a Lattitude after about 10years of usage, it was still running, but became a bit heavy in comparision with modern hardware, and the screen also isn't exactly all that. My mom's 7 year old Lattitude just needed a new keyboard but ok for the rest. My XPS15z is now about 6 years I think and I'm still very happy with it. My main job is for an all-Dell shop, average age of the unix workstations is well over 5 years. Sometimes needs new RAM, sometimes a power supply replacement due to caps, but no real problems for the rest. Those are all higher end machines though, not sure how well the cheaper ones hold up with heavy usage in general.
the hardware is great. I still have ipod minis that are in use playing music everyday in my kids' rooms. However the 1st gen ipads are basically bricks as most software wont run. Existing games work and we can run netflix, but not amazon.
The hardware is excellent, the software deprecation path is out of sync with the quality of the hardware.
This is exactly the issue. I still have a MacBook Pro from 2009,a first gen iPad, and a first gen iPod Touch. All still work well, though I did have to replace the battery in the MacBook. But none of them can run supported software...
I mean, I guess that's interesting, but the controversy was never about the broader lifespan of Apple devices. It has always been, as far as I've heard and experienced, about the lifespan of Apple's phones. To think that the knowledge that their devices quickly dropping in CPU speed wasn't considered when they decided to throttle based off battery life is naive. They definitely did this, and if they didn't, they are doing something seriously wrong.
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[ 0.16 ms ] story [ 312 ms ] threadAnd to think that virtually all the other OEMs barely even support their phones beyond a year and a half. Even Google is only supporting its own phones for 3 years, which is still less than the average lifespan of these phones (iPhones may be higher quality, but I doubt the avg lifespan for other flagship devices is much smaller).
I've argued before that there should probably be a law that says an electronic device has to be supported until at least 80% of the units stop being in use.
So,for instance, if 10 million people purchased a Pixel 2, Google should deliver software updates until fewer than 2 million Pixel 2 units are under active use. According to this report, that may very well be 5 or 6 years. Remember phones tend to continue to be used even after the original buyer stops using it, whether it's because they sold it or handed it to someone else.
I think the numbers include all Apple devices: iPhones, iPads, Airports, Macintoshes &c.
Certainly, I don't know anyone with a more-than-three-year-old iPhone.
Given the volumes they ship of each, I would expect that the vast majority of the devices in that graph are iOS devices. Macs might bring that number up a bit but the iPhone is going to dominate the average.
Maybe not a law, since it seems like a bit of an overreach to force a company to continue working on a product they don't want to, but some sort of incentive program would be interesting.
Company, "Too bad. We don't care. Buy another one."
An investment in ensuring a device is able to live out a normal life. Laws come into place because companies show, repeatedly, that given the option they'll have absolutely no reluctance to be apathetic to that.
We also know the iPad tends to have a much longer lifecycle than the phone. If it wasn’t for the lack of updates and new software many people would still be using the iPad 2 from 2012 (?).
Considering how many fans that machine has, I’d say that’s quite good. Fan failures in the Dell machines I’ve dealt with over the years are practically guaranteed within three to four years.
Still, somewhere it pops up in web analytics as an outlier :)
Currently operating in my household: - A 2003 iMac G4 (iLamp) acting as a audio media server - A 2004 17" PowerBook G4 that I use for long-form writing because the keyboard is just. so. comfortable. - A 2008 iPhone 3G (not 3GS) with a remote dock that plays music in the library. - A 2011 MacBook Air that I carry around in my bag and use almost every day. (Though the battery life is down to two hours.) - A 2012 iPhone 4 I just replaced the battery in. It pumps out music to the neighborhood AM radio station in my closet. - And finally, a launch day 2007 iPhone, which I don't use regularly, but keep in my desk drawer and turn on every once in a while for kicks, and to make sure it still works. Man, that screen is very hard to look at now after becoming accustomed to retina displays.
On the other side of the coin, I can't seem to make an Airport last more than 18 months. Fortunately, there's a neverending supply of them for $5-$10 at Goodwill.
Naturally a more secure approach is to use a computer that already has a current TenFourFox or other browser on it, but this at least gives people with no other options a way out. Barely two days after offering it there were 50+ downloads/day already through the Downloader, so there must be some subpopulation of Power Macs not already updated where their owners are starting to notice this.
Is Apple consciously promoting this as a differentiator, or is it a side effect of their hardware/software ecosystem? How will this affect their sales numbers long term, either positively (by promoting their platform overall) or negatively (by reducing in-ecosystem churn)?
Put another way, they capture the same share of your computing budget and of the App Store market but build fewer laptops and phones.
Also, Apple is highly diffentiated at the high end (walk in repairs and support, long software compatibility timespans). Driving up expected lifespans makes their offering cheaper than the low end in the long term, allowing them to capture increasing percentages of the total market.
They just need to execute better on the software and industrial design side than they did in 2017. Laptops without usable keyboards, the new busted gesture based iPhone UI, and iOS 11.0 are all bad enough to force long term users to other ecosystems.
I expect there to be a lot of noise from Wall Street now that the iPhone growth rocket ship has stagnated. But as others have pointed out, in a world of smartphone saturation Apple is well-poised to continue being quite successful[1], and viewing the world purely through a "number of units sold" lens is foolish.
[0] - https://www.aboveavalon.com/notes/2018/2/21/the-goldilocks-e... [1] - https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/02/24/the-smartphone-en...
2) The average lifespan of an Apple device is 4.25 years
That should put to rest the "Apple's planned obsolescence" narrative, but I doubt it will. I think it has always been the case that Apple cares about building really good hardware that lasts. That's not to say that they don't make mistakes (they do), but they care most about making something good, regardless of the "business case."
On the most recent earnings call, several investors had questions about how Apple's new battery replacement program would affect business. For example, would the cost bring down profits, would the replacement prevent upgrades, etc. Tim's response was:
>On the battery, Toni, we did not consider it in any way, shape, or form what it would do to upgrade rates. We did it because we thought it was the right thing to do for our customers. And sitting here today, I don’t know what effect it will have. And again, it was not in our thought process of deciding to do what we’ve done. [1]
[0] - http://www.asymco.com/2018/02/27/the-number/ (this does not include iPods, I don't think) [1] - https://sixcolors.com/post/2018/02/this-is-tim-transcript-of...
My point being, I'm about to hit the three year mark on an Android phone.
Sure, you can flash it yourself to the latest version, but there's no guarantee that it'll work. In my book, not having support from the OEM on the latest possible version of Android that can be loaded on your device does not count as having access.
Lenovo doesn't provide OEM support for ubuntu on my thinkpad, but that doens't mean to I don't have access to it.
Not exactly the most consumer-friendly way to get software updates. That's not comparable to how Apple does it
So lets be clear, apple has no problem stopping you from running the latest iOS.
But they do let you install iOS9, which makes a 4S totally shite slow.
They don't have a problem stopping you from running a recent version. They just have a problem stopping you from running the version that will make your phone shit, and then preventing you from going back to the previous version.
they deliberately "brick" phones. they don't have to let you run iOS9, just because its the latest version. The iPhone 3 couldn't run iOS9. And they don't mind making it so that the 4S can't run iOS10. So why not say iOS8 is the cut-off for 4S? Well, because the 4S could run iOS8 and still be useable, and then you wouldn't need to buy a new fucking phone.
So the very last version they let^H^H^H force you to install is the one that'll make it shit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSkZQ3XNW58
Awesome hardware though. Built like a tank.
I wish it was more like Nuget, where you can select the version you want and have to explicitly upgrade, with an easy downgrade option.
I know people that've reluctantly retired their otherwise fully functional iPad 2-era devices for the same reason.
You have to have downloaded the app previously on the same account. The workaround is to download the app with iTunes and then it will let you download the same app on your iOS device as long as there was once a compatible version.
The only problem with the two computers was a lack of SSD but a kit from OWC fixed that for both of them.
Krypton includes support for SSH, gpg signed git commits, and soon generic gpg signing[1], all backed by TouchID or your passphrase[2]. Make sure to setup Krypton with the "Nist P256 (Secure Enclave)" curve. Private keys generated in the Secure Enclave are only possible to extract using a zero-day in the Secure Enclave coprocessor.
[0] https://krypt.co [1] https://github.com/kryptco/krypton-ios/pull/95
[2] Protip: iOS passphrases consisting of only digits will use a keypad on the unlock screen.
When it passes, I planning on replacing it with another old macbook. Are following models as reliable? What about macbook air ?
I'm worried because the white macbook was easy to repair and upgrade, the others seem much harder to take apart.
I hope it doesn't. I have experienced it first hand with my 4S which became horribly laggy and unusable after all of the iOS updates, and I had no way of downgrading iOS and returning it to the factory state.
Also regarding the battery issue, call me a cynic but there is no way that this wasn't PR driven. Apple took a PR hit because they sneakily slowed down the phone instead of informing the user that their battery is dying and that they should get it fixed. Obviously because it would highlight the flaws in their design (which other smartphones might or might not have too).
I'm not an Apple shareholder so I don't care about their profits at all, and hopefully neither should anyone else.
What I am saying is: Apple seems to be holding to their guiding principles (sometimes with missteps), as opposed to giving in to shareholder pressure to increase short term profits at expense of a long term relationship with their customers. And, supporting 1.3 billion devices is an enormous engineering feat.
It's a con.
It was only a few years ago. It was so common that you could see a lot of friends using the "AssistiveTouch" to get around it.
It's crazy you already forgot that.
It makes me so mad.
Companies can literally get away with anything as long as they have good PR. For god sake it was on every single tech site at the time, and you already forgot that ?
This is excruciating to read.
I feel so hopeless.
On-topic: I do remember the story you're talking about; it happened to a tiny percentage of the people the story I mentioned did, but one of those people was my daughter, about six years ago. (Time flies!)
My daughter also had a cracked screen and generally did not treat her phone with the care an expensive piece of electronics merits, so I didn't think much of it, and she use the on-screen home button for a year or two. She liked it so much that even after she later upgraded, she kept using the on-screen home button!
I remember people blaming a software update, but mu daughter hadn't updated. I wondered at the time whether that was a coincidence, or multiple issues that people were conflating.
It's also worth noting that while you call it a "scandal" and say the community found out it was a software bug, iFixIt seemed to have a good handle on the exact flex cable that caused the problem: https://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/56206/Home+button+someti...
- that time they stole billions in wages by price fixing
- that time they sold out all their chinese customers to the government
- that time they sold out all their US customers to the government (PRISM et c)
what guiding principles specifically do you refer to?
Sure, but doing it under PR pressure kinda dilutes it. I still welcome it. I've had battery issues with my 6S too, where it simply shut down in winter. Apple didn't reach out to me at all (even though they had my info since I purchased it directly from them). I chanced upon an article about a battery recall and that's when I realized that my battery had a defect. Apple doesn't have a lot of trust surplus with me. YMMV.
>And, supporting 1.3 billion devices is an enormous engineering feat.
It is an engineering feat, maybe a mini, or a middle feat. I'm not quite sure whats enormous about it. They control the hardware and software. They have only a small number of models, which are identical. Samsung has hundreds of models. (Not that I think Samsung is doing a stellar job)
They may have been referring to this issue:
https://www.apple.com/support/iphone6s-unexpectedshutdown/
I’m not defending the somewhat emotional / hyperbolic tone of the comment to which you replied. Just considering that they may not have adequately explained that they were referring to two separate cases (though it isn’t clear from the comment that the difference is recognized).
For my own anecdotal response, my Apple products last many years. They are consistently in good working order by the time I choose to upgrade. I also think that those who still believe that Apple has some nefarious scheme to build-in obsolescence are being manipulated by FUD, and that is based on firsthand knowledge.
Well, all I know is Apple replaced the battery, and I stopped having random shutdowns.
https://www.apple.com/support/iphone6s-unexpectedshutdown/
> It is the same as all batteries - they degrade. Apple can’t change that.
But I have not had a battery completely stop working in the winter, ever. My car battery continues to work just fine. My camera works just fine, so does my laptop, so does my smartwatch, so does my TV remote, so does my powerdrill, so does my radio, so does my torch, so does the wall clock. But who knows, maybe I've just been lucky all these years. And BTW I'm not talking about some crazy Siberia winter. I'm talking about 30-40F here!
>But it seems the intent was to allow people to continue using their devices without upgrading and without having to pay for a battery replacement.
Apple decided to hide information that let a user decide if it was worth it to upgrade the battery. The user had no idea that their battery had degraded.
>But people who [..] and who expect that Apple should pay to support replacing batteries for the lifetime of the device, with no out-of-pocket expense for the consumer is a ridiculous double standard that no other manufacturer has ever been held to in the history of consumer electronics.
Yeah, who are those people?
Weird, my history with car batteries suggests that they do, in fact, completely shut down in cold winters. They do it with such regularity that many people carry specialized equipment in their cars to deal with this eventuality, and roadside-assistance crews regularly deal with it as well.
I happen to have had my camera battery drain completely within minutes of full charge when used outdoors in mid-winter, but I don't often take my DSLR outside in mid-winter any more since my phone fills that need.
I don't usually take my tv remote, power drill, or wall clock outside in mid-winter, but your mileage may vary.
Apple doesn't have access to a different set of physical laws than other companies. Physics is physics, and those batteries don't deal well with cold, period.
>Apple doesn't have access to a different set of physical laws than other companies. Physics is physics, and those batteries don't deal well with cold, period.
Well, that certainly is your opinion. But it doesn't change the fact that the battery was defective.
This is a big issue. It's one thing for a device to get slower over time as programs become more and more demanding. It's another to have a device that's running great and then suddenly slows to a crawl the moment after an irreversible OS update (what happened to my MacBook after Snow Leopard).
Apple uses dark patterns to get you to update and then blocks the downgrade path. __That__ is the part that's infuriating.
When Apple decides that the support for your iOS device ends, you have no choice but to upgrade, or risk running outdated vulnerable software.
The laptops, desktops are a different story since you can breathe new life to them by installing a free operating system.
The only realistic options for a smartphone are android and iOS. Between the two (and I have used both), I much prefer iOS.
Not for features or smoothness, mind you. I actually felt like my Android experience was better.
With google, however, I always felt like they were trying to sell me something and harvest my data through android. Not the case with Apple.
If a consumer buys something, there should always be a way to return it to the state it was at the time of purchase.
If it became unusable, presumably you deactivated it, which means it was tallied into this article's estimation of lifespan.
Important to consider that what HNers call unusable is perfectly acceptable to a great number of people. I've never used a phone with a cracked screen, but I've seen a fair number of people who don't consider this a reason to deactivate the device.
After less than 20 months my iPhone SE was at 45% of the original CPU speed it was marketed as. This was by design. A conscious decision by multiple people in the know, who instead of selling me a device that could last four years sold me a device that lasted one and a half and kept quiet about it until called out on it.
I never believed the planned obsolescence narrative, until I experienced it the past months.
I know that’s what happened to me with my 6s at least.
People seem to be tacitly dismissing the problem the CPU throttling ostensibly fixes -- iPhones with worn batteries just shutting down instantly without warning when an application asks for more power than the battery's now capable of delivering -- but I've experienced it. It's a real problem. And while it's a subjective call as to whether that's more infuriating than CPU throttling is, I can tell you, it's really infuriating. And it's not some kind of crazy only-Apple thing; it's a problem with battery technology. It happens with Android phones, too, and their "solution" is what Apple's was until they rolled out the throttling: nothing. Eventually you figure out you have a battery problem because your phone keeps spontaneously shutting down! Yay.
If we're going to criticize Apple for this, maybe it should be for making this change without notifying users. The iPhone can presumably determine when its battery is sufficiently worn that it's facing the choice between CPU throttling and spontaneous shutdowns, and it should let the user know when it crosses that line.
But the notion that Apple is deliberately crippling phones to get you to buy new ones faster has always been...odd. They do want you to buy new phones, to be sure, but they want you to buy new phones from them. If you stop trusting them, you're less likely to going to do that, unless you're very heavily "into" the Apple ecosystem -- which most consumers arguably aren't. (At least half my friends with iPhones rarely install applications other than Spotify, Telegram, and the occasional game -- and I live in Silicon Valley. These folks aren't Mac users, either, and so I suspect they don't feel very much lock-in pressure at all.)
That used to be true. Nowadays they seem to care more about building hardware that looks cool, is as thin as physically possible, and is full of wizzy features that people may or may not care about (like face-unlock, or whatever they call it).
There are good reasons for pursuing thinness. One, it naturally puts you (through accumulated R&D, supply chain and design know-how) on the leading edge of miniaturisation, a resiliant multi-decades long trend in technology. Pushing for a smaller laptop made possible the iPhone; pushing for a smaller iPhone made possible the Apple Watch, et cetera. (Thinner, lighter devices also have a demonstrated ability to increase usage, by being lighter to hold up.) It’s a design philosophy built into a longer-term strategy.
True story: the other day I was on a trip when my wife's Macbook Air started to rock back and forth on the surface it was sitting on. The battery had failed. It was still working, i.e. providing power, but it had started to bulge. (This turns out to be a known problem.) There was so much pressure that the keyboard and bottom case were visibly deformed. But it was impossible for me to open the case and get the battery out because I didn't have the right pentalobe screwdriver with me. Fortunately, we were able to find a Mac repair shop that was able to get the battery out before it caught fire or exploded. (But we were very lucky. We do a lot of traveling to places that lack this kind of infrastructure.)
What they were not able to do was recycle the battery because they didn't have a replacement, so they could not open an official repair ticket. So we had to take the bad battery, still fully charged despite being blown up like a balloon, with us on an airplane so we could take it home and dispose of it properly.
It's perfectly fine if Apple wants to offer products like this for people who want to trade off volume for field-repairability. What irks me is that Apple no longer offers any choice in this. My choices today are non-repariable, or Windows (or Linux, but that is not a viable option for my non-geek wife). Those are pretty sucky choices.
1. It restricts the size of the battery
Lithium polymer batteries can be molded and shaped to fill up all available space inside the case. A replaceable battery can't be shaped to nearly that degree. Making a battery user-replaceable means it must be smaller.
2. It doubles-up the case
There is no way you can legally sell a product with an unprotected Lithium battery, especially not one that is laptop-sized. It would be a massive safety hazard. You need an internal case for the computer and an entirely separate case for the battery. That takes up space and adds weight. It also further restricts your ability to shape the battery to fill the available space (meaning the battery must be smaller or the case must be larger).
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There is no magic in battery technology. We aren't going to wake up one day and have computers as light as a piece of paper that last all day. It requires constant iteration and improvement. If everyone listened to naysayers it would greatly slow down the pace of innovation. I am absolutely certain there are still people out there angry about the removal of RS-232 serial ports or VGA ports on laptops. Probably a few still upset about removing floppy drives too.
That was incredibly dangerous and put everyone on the airplane at risk. You didn't have to take it.
I don't think you understand just how dangerous these things are in an airplane.
It seems vastly more likely that you simply don't understand that you risked everyones lives.
There are no FAA approved ways to transport damaged Lithium batteries that I'm aware of - but since your a pilot perhaps you could enlighten?
Reference?
> There are no FAA approved ways to transport damaged Lithium batteries that I'm aware of
Then you haven't done your homework. The official rules are here:
https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/retrieveECFR?gp=1&SID=bba5ad065...
And the version distilled for public consumption is here:
https://www.faa.gov/about/initiatives/hazmat_safety/more_inf...
There is no distinction made between damaged and undamaged batteries unless the battery has been recalled.
When the iPhone came out, this was the 13" MB you'd get: https://everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook/specs/macbook-cor...
Compared to a whole slew of Ultrabooks, and other 13" laptops which were smaller. I'm not sure how you get that Apple's drive for smaller laptops made the iPhone possible (given that it's form factor, LG Pradas, etc., were also quite widely available at the same time) - I don't see the size innovation here that you seem to be.
You may not care, but I assure you, the millions of people who use it multiple times every day do. I suggest you try it out yourself and compare it to Touch ID.
The truth is that they make calculated decisions whether ignoring the issue, or responding to the issue will be more beneficial to them financially and public opinion wise. This time they decided that the fallout from evidence of possible planned obsolescence—intentional or not—combined with the fact that a lost lawsuit was likely, and the fact that smartphone sales have fallen for the first time ever, would be financially more painful than compensating their customers.
That argument has never made much sense to me.
If Apple wanted to force people to buy a new device, wouldn't it be much easier to simply stop providing OS and security patches after two years the way most of the Android device makers have traditionally done?
How does providing four years of software support (on average) force users to buy a new device more quickly than providing two years of software support (on average)?
And to be clear, I don't subscribe to the theory that Apple is intentionally slowing iOS down on older devices. But subjectively, the iPhone 4S struggles with iOS 9 the same way that the iPhone 5s struggles with iOS 11. Even if you work in IT, it's hard to fathom that iOS 11 looks and works the same as iOS 9, but requires a ~4x more powerful CPU to barely chug along[1]. Planned Obsolescence almost wins Occam's Razor here; I'm not surprised that so many people misinterpret the battery throttling thing.
[1] https://browser.geekbench.com/ios-benchmarks
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/09/ios-11-on-the-iphone...
I suspect it might be because I only had 1GB of free storage, and iOS 11 was uploading and downloading cloud photos like crazy? Often I would take a picture, and by the time I wanted to send it via message ten seconds later, the phone had deleted the original it from my phone, and had to re-download it.
I would gladly assume that I'm an outlier, but a friend with a 5s asked me for new phone recommendations right after updating to iOS 11, so there's at least two points of anecdata.
Note this is very different from: how long does it take for all the devices on the market at the time to become inactive? If these would be equivalent if (1) iPhones were homogeneous and (2) devices had a constant lifetime, but the truth is there are many models available and different devices become inactive at different rates.
Concerning point (1): As an extreme example, imagine Apple releasing a rock solid phone (iPhone RS) with a ten year lifespan followed by a crappy phone (iPhone CR) that dies in a year. Within a year of the CR's release, they'll all be inactive, meanwhile all the RS's will be plugging along (assuming they all last exactly their lifespan). Meanwhile the average lifespan will be identical to what it would be if they were released in the reverse order.
Concerning point (2): These numbers can be skewed by devices with different lifetime distributions. If we assume, realistically in my opinion, that device decay is a Poisson process, different devices with different decay rates mixed together in this analysis would render this analysis way too simplistic.
For consumers who buy the very newest of devices, this isn't a particularly helpful metric because of (1). For consumers who buy older devices, it's not very helpful because you don't know the distributions pointed out in (2).
For financial analysts, however, this is a very interesting analysis because it can be used to make predictions. For instance, if you assume the lifecycle is increasing, then you see a strong incentive for Apple to get their hands on older-but-still-functional devices so they can resell the same phone again and again. My takeaway is I'll keep an eye out for how aggressively they market the iPhone Upgrade Program.
What you are saying is similar to telling a consumer that they should not trust Toyota vehicles to last longer than any other brand. When, in fact, there is a general trend that Toyotas do last longer. Sure, you aren't guaranteed that one specific Toyota Corolla will last longer than another specific Ford Focus, but there is a general trend you can rely on.
Sadly my Macintosh Portable isn't running but that's only because the batteries are dead and I haven't refurbished them yet.
No other hardware I've ever purchased has run for that long. My Palm Pilot is dead. My Treo is dead.
No one who says Apple builds in planned obsolescence has probably never used any Apple hardware.
Conversely, every Apple product I've owned since the late '90s has been buggy in one way or another, had hardware issues, and generally has not stood the test of time. As mandatory updates and cloud-based software have become the norm, things have gotten even worse. To be fair, machines are far more complex now. A lot of the rock-solid reliability of early Apple products came from their relative simplicity. But I would not say they've built robust products ever since. They certainly believe in planned obsolescence. The perennial changing of port standards, abandoning of backwards compatibility, and lack of support for older machines is an Apple hallmark. I'm not saying they're worse than their competitors, but they definitely adhere to planned obsolescence.
Macbook G4 - still works fine, boots up fast, resume/sleep very fast
Macbook Pro 2010 - battery holds about 30 minute charge
iPhone 4/4S - batteries are fine, never replaced
iPhone 5S - on my 4th battery
Also had a Quadra 950 at one point loaded with 1990s game dev stuff in storage. Pulled it out, it wouldn't turn on and the plastic had turned into the color of cigarette smoke, so got rid of it. Sometimes even good shit breaks.
Me: No problem. I'm sure it's no more than maybe $200, parts and labor.
Apple Store: So because we have to replace x, y and z to do this, you're looking at $820.
Two thirds of the original purchase price of the laptop to repair the ability to _charge its battery_.
I own 1 early-model and 2 first-of-its-line Apple products from the 2000's, and they've all had quality issues and are no longer usable. In every case, the flawed feature was improved or simply removed in subsequent models. It's a shame, because I liked them all more than what I replaced them with, apart from the reliability trouble.
On average, I don't think Apple is any worse than any other manufacturer, but they do tend to be more enthusiastic about trying new materials and designs and manufacturing techniques. Perhaps there are people who run out and buy a completely new model on day 1, and discover it's not as robust as the 5-year-old one they were using before (i.e., sample bias).
I was anxiously awaiting the second iteration of the black cylinder Mac Pro, simply because I'm paranoid about buying a first-generation product. Now I'm going to have to wait even longer, because once again there's going to be a completely new design.
* 2012 rMacBook Pro 15": a major GPU defect found just as the 1-yr manufacturer's warranty ran out. Had to pay $300+ for repair although it was clearly a manufacturer's fault. After a threat of class-action lawsuit -- there were similar class-action lawsuits in motion for older MacBooks models made in 2007, 2009, 201x as well -- Apple started a repair/recall program in 2014 and they refunded my repair cost.
* 2 x iBooks in my college days: none of them lasted longer than 1 year; all failed due to some hardware problems.
* iPhone 3GS: didn't know how laggy it was until I upgraded to the 4Gs. Oneplus 5T is my current phone, with Samsung Note 3 as backup -- which was used for 4 years.
* 1999 Dell Inspiron: in service for 6 years and still usable. dropped it several times on concrete floor. Virtually indestructible, but I wanted to get a new hardware (see my 2 x iBooks). Required no repair or replacement despite heavy use; in my Manhattan mini-storage now.
* 2008 Dell Inspiron: cost $350 (with some special offer from Discover Card) and used it until I got my 2012 rMacBook. Virtually indestructible; required no repair or replacement; still running and my backup laptop.
Based on my experience, Dell XPS 15" is going to be my next workhorse.
As far as smartphones are concerned, many years ago before his death, Steve Jobs claimed to have "cracked" the integrated TV business, but Apple decided not jump into it -- because their product lifespan is too long, especially compared to iPhone's 2-yr short lifespan. The iPhone's 2 year short lifespan in turn was in large part determined by 2 year contract subsidies in the US. Likewise, you see in Horace's second graph that the iPhone lifespan increased as US carriers phased out 2 year-contract subsidized model in favor of monthly payments with no subsidy. I'm very disinclined to believe that Apple's QC improved so much in the past 4 years that the iPhone's lifespan nearly tripled and, contrary to a few fanboi's anecdotal stories about Apple's stellar hardware QC, I'm willing to bet a few pennies that the overall lifespan trend holds the same for other phone manufacturers as well.
In short, I think it's mostly it's mobile carriers' subsidy (or lack thereof) that changed consumers' buying habit and iPhone lifespan, not Apple's super durable hardware or quality control.
The hardware is excellent, the software deprecation path is out of sync with the quality of the hardware.