ADDED: Sort of. Let me explain.

Apple does slow down the clock speed on the main processors of your phone as the battery wears down. I assume there is a good technical reason to do this, and it kind of makes sense. So, yes, they slow down your phone but not to sell you a new one, but rather, to help your phone be a better phone.

But, the slowdown can be reversed by replacing the battery. And, Apple has never made even the slightest move to inform people that this is a thing. So, it is like the time Homer Simpson was told by Marge to not eat a pie she had just made. Homer found himself walking across the kitchen with his mouth making an up and down scarfing motion in an arbitrary direction that happened to lead directly to the pie. “If that pie doesn’t get out of the way, I’m going to accidentally eat it” he proclaimed. Sure enough, the pie remained still and Homer ate it.

Similarly, people will buy a new phone because performance is way down, when all they had to do was to replace the battery. Apple is Homer pretending to innocently happen to eat a pie. The phone is homer walking along. You are the pie. Not a pretty picture.

So, really, the slowdown is a) engineered into the phone, b) causes people to buy a new phone, not a new battery, and c) the fix that would be so much cheaper is kept out of the available information from Apple.

So, yes, Apple intentionally slows down your phone to make you want to buy a new one, it turns out. Effectively.

How do I know this? From this excellent and well documented source.

And now, back to my original post in which I argue that something suspicious is going on but I don’t quite know what it is:

ORIGINAL POST:

It is a widespread belief that Apple, as well as other computer manufacturers, do things that make your device, be it a desktop computer, a notebook, a smart phone, or anything, slow down as they lead up to and release, and begin to sell, a new version of their product.

I want to point to a study done that concludes that they don’t do this. The study is by FutureMark which is basically a benchmarking software producer. They to not explain in their methodology where they get their data from, but I will guess that it is from the phones of people who install their benchmarking app.

If so, then right there we have a problem with the study. Without describing the sampling design, the study is useless right out of the gate. But if it includes the sorts of users that will install a benchmarking app on their phone, the that’s a bias (and uncontrolled mysterious one at that).

The study has other problems. Continue reading Does Apple intentionally slow down your phone to make you want to buy a new one? YES it turns out! →