> What is debunked?

I'll help you a bit.

> > [...] Apple had liberally sprinkled wait() into the iOS 11 code base so that I'd feel like my ole A9 CPU just wasn't cutting it any more

From the article

> Are older iPhones being deliberately slowed? [...] maintain a consistent level of performance across iOS versions

Sure, as you snarkily remark, your CPU/GPU hasn't changed, but neither has the iOS version inherently made your phone slower. Apps on the other hand might be assuming more power nowadays, but that is a whole other question... Or, you could also just have read the end of my comment...

Tired of people bringing up that "article" and the sensationalist media headlines. All that articles shows is that the CPU, given 100% utilization, does the same result as it did on iOS 10. Really surprising for sure. So what was the point of you posting that article? People saying "Apple is slowing my device" don't actually mean "the CPU has become slower". There goes the entire premise that benchmark. The CPU is the same—the software is less optimized for older hardware. The net effect? The software runs slower (and in some cases much slower) than older versions of the OS.

The real rebuttal of "slow" claims should be to look at the added features and security and discuss whether such trade-offs are worth the reduction in performance. For example, to make the user's data much more secure, Apple puts a lot of mechanisms behind XPC, which is inherently slower than mere API calls. These slow the system. Are they worth it, for the security benefit? That's the productive discussion we should be having.

>Tired of people bringing up that "article" and the sensationalist media headlines. All that articles shows is that the CPU, given 100% utilization, does the same result as it did on iOS 10

But that is LITERALLY what people were accusing Apple of doing, actually slowing their devices to make them buy newer models. There might have been less conspiracy-esque claims, but jesting they were "sprinkling wait() calls in the code to make me upgrade" is not in that category - so I disagree with your claim that people weren't meaning that.

Anyways, this discussion has derailed, so I'm just gonna leave it at that.

No—even at face value, "sprinkling wait()" does not slow the CPU, it slows the software running on the CPU; if you then manage to obtain 100% for your thread, that does not disprove that Apple has not added `wait()` anywhere in their code. In their code—software.

Technically the 6s is now [latest - 2] hardware. X/8/8+ have the A11 Bionic; 7/7+ have the A10 Fusion; 6s has the A9.

Exactly what I said. It runs "fine" on 7, while it runs slow(er) on 6S.

iOS 11 runs fine and just as fast as iOS 10 on my SE. It sounds like you are experiencing a bug.

Aren't there, like... 3rd-party chat or emoji apps or something now? I don't use any of that stuff, but if only some people on 6-series iPhones are experiencing a multi-second delay opening the iMessage editor, my first guess would be they have some of those installed and one or more of them have shit the bed.

Ah, my mistake, I was taking the scare quotes to mean you were complaining about it on your hardware.