<story><title>Apple and Samsung fined for deliberately slowing down phones</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/oct/24/apple-samsung-fined-for-slowing-down-phones</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kodablah</author><text>&amp;gt; Samsung told owners of its Galaxy Note 4 phone to install a new version of Google’s Android operating system intended for the more recent Galaxy Note 7, but which rendered the old model sluggish. Likewise, Apple told iPhone 6 owners to install an operating system designed for the iPhone 7, leading to problems for owners of the older mode&lt;p&gt;A bit of a scary precedent. The 5m fine on Apple for intentionally reducing resource usage to such a large extent without notification seems kinda reasonable. But the 5m fine for both Apple and Samsung for their updates causing slowdown on older devices is a different issue.&lt;p&gt;If I were a company fearing that suggesting an OS upgrade for an older phone would cause slowdown on that older phone, I am now incentivized to not suggest that update. We might want companies to support old OSs forever or stop adding resource-intensive features or feature gate them or whatever. But short of legislating that specifically, all this does is make old phones even more of a liability than they already were.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hrktb</author><text>I think making company think twice before offering the &amp;quot;update&amp;quot; is kind of the point.&lt;p&gt;There is two parts to consider I think:&lt;p&gt;- iOS updates are not reversible (technically it can be done, but for lambda users it&amp;#x27;s a lost cause).&lt;p&gt;- Apple is very aggressive towards making users upgrade, nagging indefinitely if there is any available newer version&lt;p&gt;So, users are very aggressively pushed towards the newer version, can&amp;#x27;t go back, but their phone becomes less useable, for new features they might not care about.
As it is now, not offering the major update to old phones will be a grace in a number of cases.&lt;p&gt;It would still be nice if users wanting to upgrade can have a path forward, understanding the trade-offs. But users should be less complaining if their device keeps working basically the same way as when they bought it years ago.</text></comment>
<story><title>Apple and Samsung fined for deliberately slowing down phones</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/oct/24/apple-samsung-fined-for-slowing-down-phones</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kodablah</author><text>&amp;gt; Samsung told owners of its Galaxy Note 4 phone to install a new version of Google’s Android operating system intended for the more recent Galaxy Note 7, but which rendered the old model sluggish. Likewise, Apple told iPhone 6 owners to install an operating system designed for the iPhone 7, leading to problems for owners of the older mode&lt;p&gt;A bit of a scary precedent. The 5m fine on Apple for intentionally reducing resource usage to such a large extent without notification seems kinda reasonable. But the 5m fine for both Apple and Samsung for their updates causing slowdown on older devices is a different issue.&lt;p&gt;If I were a company fearing that suggesting an OS upgrade for an older phone would cause slowdown on that older phone, I am now incentivized to not suggest that update. We might want companies to support old OSs forever or stop adding resource-intensive features or feature gate them or whatever. But short of legislating that specifically, all this does is make old phones even more of a liability than they already were.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>freehunter</author><text>Yeah, you really have three options now. Either (1) never introduce features that require more processing power but newer phones are capable of handling, (2) have those new features but lock older phones out of being able to use them, or (3), stop supporting older phones with your updates.&lt;p&gt;The problem with (1) is now you&amp;#x27;ve completely stagnated the market, and if your competitors choose either of the other options you&amp;#x27;re left lagging behind and you lose sales.&lt;p&gt;The problem with (2) is now customers of older phones will be upset that they didn&amp;#x27;t get the full upgrade for reasons they don&amp;#x27;t understand. The iPhone 4S and Siri or the iPhone X and Animoji show the reaction you should expect.&lt;p&gt;The problem with (3) is now you have planned obsolescence and old phones just become throw-away leading to an ecological disaster.&lt;p&gt;None of these are good options.</text></comment>