Originally posted by Bardock42
Either they are "obsoleting" the phone by putting an OS on that makes it slow or they are "obsoleting" the phone by not updating it anymore.
The Windows 7 OS is used to prove that what you state here is a false-dichotomy. In an OS update, you can have both new features and performance increases. Apple has even done this before with iOS...
They usually don't, though. Telling of their business model, I think. 313
The best argument I have read against my position is the immaturity of phone software-hardware "synthesis." My counter-argument to that it is almost factually incorrect that software-hardware "synthesis" is still immature on mobile phones. Here is why: probably the biggest name in market trends in technology, Gartner Gropu, says that smart phones have long since reached the end of the "technological hype-cycle." This means that they have long since matured the "synthesis".
Originally posted by Bardock42
There's no way to win, at least not as long as the OSs haven't matured to the degree that Windows and OS X have, where updates can actually be better performance-wise even for older hardware.
I'll be honest: I did not read this far down into your post when I typed everything above. Yeah, you're making the same argument as others: smarthphone software-hardware synthesis has not reached the same level of maturity as PCs. I don't buy it. When you have smartphones that are more powerful than what many PCs were, 5 years ago, AND those 5 year old PCs run Windows 7 much faster than they did Vista, the argument is invalid. Here's why: OS programming is very similar to PC OS programming. They still have dedicated GPUs and CPUs. Still RAM allocation. Still display stuff. etc. etc. etc. They are not apples (ha!) and oranges.
Here's the bottom line: Apple is updating iOS in a way that it forces obsolescence in smartphones so that it forces consumers to have to update their hardware. I think this is unaffectionately called "planned obsolescence."
This was actually something that Apple was doing before they even had their iPhone: this was a "well-known" issue among techies that supported Macs.
There is a list of common tactics used by organizations that is part of a "planned obsolescence strategy." I'll see if i can find that list in one of my old college textbooks...but, iirc, Apple uses almost all of those tactics in the list.