I would say it is artificially shortened by design choices. It is a perfectly capable device, the harware is still fast and secure. However, I am just not allowed to fix the software, even if I have enough resources for that. This is exactly why we need free software.

> I would say it is artificially shortened by design choices.

The design choices have to be made to artificially shorten the life, not for any other purpose. For example, I can make a device cheaper and use cheaper materials that wear out faster - that's not planned obsolescence. However if I include a little plastic tab that I know will break before everything else for no good reason other than making it break faster - that is.

I suspect you'll have a hard time arguing compellingly that the purpose of apples closed update system was to shorten the useful life, rather than as a side effect of other product and design goals.

Phones are sort of a bad example, because for a long time the replacement cycle was driven by actual technical obsolescence, arguably only relatively recently has this ceased to be the case.

> the purpopse of apples closed update system was to shorten the useful life, rather than as a side effect of other product and design goals

So what is the reason to prevent updates of software after the support is over? This is a classical software anti-feature.

I suspect the main driver was consistency of experience. Obviously they didn't always nail this.

IT's a ton of work to make and push updates.

I am not speaking about making updates. I am speaking about preventing users from making them.

You know the answer to that - it prevent large classes of social engineering attack and is part of the overall security model.

Even when the device is no longer supported?

I fully support allowing the device itself to have alternative OS installations after the end of official support.

The reason 1st gen iPads don’t have this is fairly obvious though - the unlocking feature is itself a likely vector for attacks e.g. by law enforcement unlocking tools, etc.

I’m not sure what it would take to enable it to be done securely without destroying the overall security model but it’s clearly not trivial, and would take some investment that certainly wasn’t possible at the time the 1st gen device was released.

I cannot replace a battery on a perfectly working iPad otherwise, and Apple is charging almost a price of a new device to replace it for me, i.e. they are basially forcing me to buy a new one.

Wondering, can that be called a planned obsolescence or not?

If we're talking about an unsupported devices, aren't the downsides of third party repairs basically moot? There are any number of above-board companies that you can ship your device to and will do a battery swap for you so long as batteries are available.

Yeah, that's what I did. Found an unofficial repair and replaced the battery for less that $100. Anyway, I don't think it should be so hard to replace a battery. And I still remember times when I was able to replace battery manually at home.

> And I still remember times when I was able to replace battery manually at home.

This is definitely an issue, but it's not the same issue as planned obsolescence.

Why is it not the same issue? By preventing the users to replace the battery, you force them to buy a new device after a couple of years.

> Why is it not the same issue?

Because the design choices are pretty easily argued to have been made for reasons other than reducing user access, but have the side effect of reducing user access. Both size/weight constraints and case integrity drive you to the same sort of thing.

To be clear, I think it's fine to call out a company for planned obsolescence, and I think it's fine to call them out for emphasizing size, etc. over user serviceability. I just don't think it's useful to pretend they are the same thing.

They don’t prevent users from replacing the battery. I’ve done it myself.

For many devices the devices themselves are glued making the process of just opening the case interesting and then require near complete disassembly to remove the battery.

So what? That doesn’t prevent changing the batteries. I have done it myself, and Apple will do it too, as in fact do many third parties.

At minimum when a device opens up and swapping the battery takes 10 seconds near everyone does it themselves. As difficulty increases the propensity of users able to afford to do so trends towards zero. Imagine if a battery costs $200 and requires $100 in labor. If the cost at purchase is 400 and the value at end of warranty is $200 zero people will ever make use of this service and every device becomes trash after the battery wears out.

Artificially inflating cost of parts can trivially be used to enforce planned obsolescence.

> Artificially inflating cost of parts can trivially be used to enforce planned obsolescence.

It could, but nobody has presented any evidence that Apple is doing this, and their business strategy is openly stated to involve increasing the lifetime of their devices, so that they can deliver services to more users, so this is just innuendo.

> nobody has presented any evidence that Apple is doing this

Simply compare the cost of official Apple service and corrsponding third-party service.

That is not evidence of anything. There are many reasons that third party service is cheaper that have nothing to do with some conspiracy by Apple.

AFAIK the price difference is so huge that no reasonable explanation (except the "conspiracy", i.e., greed) is possible.

I’d be curious to see your statistics on the price differences. Do you have a link?

Here are some reasonable explanations for how third parties cut costs without resort to a conspiracy:

1. Less warranty on repairs.

2. Lower cost substitute parts.

3. Lower quality control,

4. Less training for staff.

5. Lower profit margins, leading to unsustainable businesses.

> Wondering, can that be called a planned obsolescence or not?

I don't think it can, for reasons elsewhere in thread.

I'm going a little bit on a tangent here, and this may not apply so much to recent Apple phones, but Apple phones had planned obsolescence in terms of the design of their physical appearance such that you can tell almost instantly which generation it is. This allows broadcasting of status, that this person can afford the latest while that person can only afford to use a 2-year-old phone, thus artificially driving the upgrade cycle.

That isn’t planned obsolescence, because the people who upgrade for status reasons don’t destroy their phones - they either pass them on or trade them in.

Arguably it’s the opposite of planned obsolescence - even used phones are not obsolete and are still in circulation.

It’s also worth pointing out that this is Apple’s stated policy - they want phones to last longer so that more people have them and they can continue to sell services to them.

> That isn’t planned obsolescence, because the people who upgrade for status reasons don’t destroy their phones

This has nothing to do with the definition of planned obsolescence. It does not matter what people do with the old phones.

It obviously does. If the phones are still in service, then by definition they are not obsolete.

Reread the thread. In this thread, the OP is speaking about design obsolescence.

> Reread the thread. In this thread, the OP is speaking about design obsolescence.

I don’t need to reread it. My response applies to design obsolescence.

Relatively few people upgrade every year these days. The fact that the old devices are still desirable negates the idea that people don’t want them because they look outdated. I.e. changes in design are not causing people to stop using the devices.

For design obsolescence to apply to Apple, workable devices would need to be retired from service early because they were no longer seen as desirable.

That isn’t happening.

I don't think what you are stating is the definition for planned obsolescence. For example, even though there is a used car market, the fact that someone upgrades their car due to fashion means it's planned obsolescence. In fact, that's where the term was born.

> Relatively few people upgrade every year these days.

[Citation needed]

No - this is trivially googled.

Compare phones sold to phones in service.

Tens of millions vs more then a billion.

We know for a fact that Apple was artificially lowering their battery capacity, and that's most likely just the beginning. The PR speak about it being done to protect batteries is BS and we all know it. It incentivizes more purchasing. Much like how the GTA5 loading bug was never solved because it led to more advertisements for digital currency being forced upon one's eyes...

Every update I get on my mac, or Iphone slows it down. Bloat and "protecting the users battery" are the root causes, and ultimately Apple is one of the best examples of a company "artificially shortening" things via design choices.

> We know for a fact that Apple was artificially lowering their battery capacity.

This is completely false.

Apple artificially decreased the performance (not lowered the battery), which is why they were fined.

Firstly, thanks for confirming that that the parent poster was posting a false statement.

Secondly, as you must be aware, the reason Apple decreased the performance was to extend the useful lifetime of the battery.

The fine was because they didn’t explain this properly in advance, not because they did it.

They still in fact do alter the device performance to accommodate aging batteries and make them last longer.

This is a really silly issue to raise if the argument is about Apple shortening lifetimes of devices or batteries, since it makes the device usable for longer.

Imagine your phone with a still good working battery gets significantly slower "to extend the useful lifetime of the battery"...

Imagine that!

To imagine it requires understanding how technology works.

Batteries are chemical processes - they degrade slowly over time. An older battery produces less power, and so can’t support the same peak performance.

You can therefore extend the useful life of the battery by throttling the CPU performance to within the power envelope provided by the battery.

It’s fairly simple to understand.

Apple should simply allow easy replacing the battery and not deceive their customers with "helpful updates", which make devices slow. This is anti-consumer, as proven by the lawsuit.

Apple does allow easy replacing of the battery. Just go into an Apple store and ask for a replacement.

Nothing was proven by the lawsuit, since it never went to trial, you know this so it’s unclear why you’d repeat this falsehood.

As for not your suggestion that Apple not slow the devices down to extend the battery life and have users just replace the battery, that seems misguided.

Why would you want users to be forced to buy unnecessary battery replacements and further damage the environment by wasting working batteries?

It’s much better for the devices to be able to continue to use the batteries for longer, don’t you think?