> For the last 5-6 years however, everyone I asked told me that their iPhone and iPad either gets a bit smoother or stays the same after a new iOS.

Except those who Apple was "helping" "preserve battery life" by purposefully slowing the clock speeds on updates without telling them? I've often wondered how many people went out and actually purchased an entirely new phone due to this unannounced "help" vs slapping a (relatively cheap) new battery in it?

It's a basic electronics knowledge that there's a danger in physically damaging a chip if you continuously feed it less voltage than it needs.

What Apple did is to prefer to have people's devices run slower compared to breaking them.

What they did wrong was keeping quiet about it. I ain't ever disputing that, it was a really bad decision to hide it.

The reasoning to do it however has solid foundations in physical reality. Even I that I know nothing of electronics went out of my way to read about it and asked several electronical engineer acquaintances of mine and they all said Apple did the right thing by slowing down the devices.

I was just bringing it up to dispute your claim

> So please don't imply iOS updates brings iDevices "ever closer to unusably slow" because that's very non-factual.

Because THAT was non-factual. They have done it, and for some it was "unusably slow." Whether the reasons were electrically sound wasn't in dispute.

Seems we're on the same page but we argued different parts.

IMO the original statement implied some ill will from Apple -- a myth that has been debunked pretty quickly. That's what I was arguing against.

Oh get off it. Either Apple didn't know they were ruining last gen phones, which means they're incompetent at best or they knew and chose to do it anyways which makes them actively malicious.

As a long time Android user and app developer I would rather use slow secure device that doesn't break rather than fast insecure one. Every single Nexus device I have owned, and I have owned every model starting from Nexus S, went out with some sort of hardware failure in 2.5 years time. Either faulty chip, buttons or connectors.

Say what you want about Apple pricing and some bad decisions along the way, but their approach to security, hardware build quality and overall experience of using their device over longer periods of time is very good and certainly beats Android devices.

I wish there were good alternatives with open platform but there are none currently and I don't think there will be any in the next few years.

P.S. I switched to iPhone about a year ago and I don't really miss Android.