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How Apple Gets New iPhones Do you buy over and over again

How Apple Gets New iPhones Do you buy over and over again

Ever wondered why your iPhone seems to slow down after a few years? Why the once-incredible device becomes moody and strives to perform tasks or applications baseload?


The answer lies in Apple's software, and is a key part of the strategy of the company to keep millions of people who buy new iPhones.

Apple launches new mobile operating system each year, and maintains a powerful cycle in motion. Every fall in recent years, people have rushed to download the latest and greatest version of iOS, which is designed to - and as a result, works best - the latest hardware that is also released at the same time. In the months leading up to the release, many application developers furiously updated their applications to the latest operating system.

Here's how it affects you: If you have an iPhone that is more than two years, as Apple recommends you update the operating system a few times since purchase, you may find yourself wanting to throw your phone against wall. It has probably become slow and meticulous.

For many, the solution is simply to buy a new iPhone.


It is very unlikely Apple deliberately slowing older iPhones only for you to upgrade. The company declined to comment for this article. Instead, Apple designed the new operating systems, which have more features, take up more space and require more computing power for new iPhones. And one consequence of this is that do not work as well on older iPhones.

The system has been quite successful for Apple. iPhone users in the USA tend to pay a lot for a new iPhone every two years or so (which, not coincidentally, is also the traditional wireless contract duration.)

But with its latest update to iOS 8 Apple hit a few bumps.


Last month, the company made the rare move of pulling updating the operating system after some people reported they left their phone can not make calls and fingerprint sensors useless. Although Apple said the bugsonly affected a small number of people, and the company soon released a fix, the episode led to an avalanche of negative publicity. That, along with the whopping five gigabytes of valuable storage space required to download the update wirelessly, seems to have made people shy away from downloading the new operating system in bulk. Apple fans are embracing the new operating system much more slowly than iOS adopted 7 the previous version.

Still, many people rushed to download iOS 8 in the early days it was available.

Justen Meyer, 33 years old working in the professional sports industry in St. Louis, was one of those people. He regrets update your iPhone 4S, it says it is now "slow".

"It's horrible. My apps do not work. Twitter will not open," he said in a recent interview.

Before the upgrade, the phone was "perfect," he said. "I was completely happy. Now it's making me wonder if I'll go through it the next time I have a new phone."

Meyer is not alone. People complain about their iPhones feeling slow after new iPhones and operating systems out is nothing new. Catherine Rampell wrote in The New York Times last year that his iPhone 4 felt "much weaker" after the 5S and 5C were released. Sendhil Mullainathan, an economics professor at Harvard, said in another Times article this summer that Google searches in the USA for "iPhone Slow" peak when each new iPhone is released.

Part of that could be due to many people download the new operating system at the same time, iMore Editor in Chief Rene Ritchie said earlier this year. Apple launches its new OS to everyone at the same time, while Android updates hit different phones at different times. (This is one reason why the operating system Android is so fragmented. - Only a quarter of Android owners are on the latest version of the operating system)

iPhone models that are one year old - the next-generation - tend to be good when they are updated to the latest version of the operating system, said Mike Gikas, who as editor of the leading electronics Consumer Reports reported on the testing of every iPhone that has come out.

Are the oldest starting to lag, Gikas said.

"We know that the phone becomes old, the applications seem to be slow and some of the capacities are reduced," he said.

In fact, Twitter is full of people complaining about their phones after downloading iOS slowdown in August.

The new software has slowed from old hardware before Jamming CD-Roms in our Gateway 2000 What is different with the iPhone is the huge range of third-party software that runs on phones. Apple has 1.3 million applications in its App Store. And for those applications to remain relevant and continue to work, developers have to update to work with the latest software and hardware from Apple.

Apple aggressively pushing developers to design applications that run on the latest operating system, said John Poole, founder ofPrimate Labs, a Toronto-based company that makes applications for measuring the speed of smart phones.

"Apple encourages developers to run the latest version of iOS, providing tools and APIs that only support the latest version of iOS," Poole wrote in an email to The Huffington Post. "For example, it is difficult to write an application that is compatible with both iOS screen sizes 7 and the new iPhones."

Poole added that much publicity machine that is Apple's App Store currently promoting applications and games for iOS 8 which provides incentive for developers to design for the latest and greatest.

Of course, Apple wants to develop its software, too, and is not looking back to make sure older versions of the iPhone works seamlessly with the new versions of iOS. For Apple remains the leader in the highly competitive smartphone game, you need to innovate and focus on optimizing the experience of people with newer products.

"Apple faces this choice: Do they create an operating system that works well on older devices, or create an operating system that leverages the latest hardware?" Poole said. "Apple's approach has been to make an operating system that requires taking advantage of the latest phones instead of an operating system that will work well on older phones."

And therein lies the dilemma - or, if you are Apple, Genius: Do you want to download latest software from Apple and that's what developers are developing applications, and comes with new features and important security fixes. But if your phone over a year old, you can slow down.

Christopher Mims, a former editor of technology and science is now quartz technology columnist for The Wall Street Journal, has been using Apple products for over 20 years. Quartz In a story last year, Mims explained how he has found a way to get more time away from an iPhone over: He simply chose not to download the latest version of the operating system.

"Except for small incremental changes, not upgrade the operating system of hardware you are using," he wrote. "Especially if you currently do the job."

Mims now has an iPhone 5S, flagship phone last year. And he has no plans to download iOS August.

"The only time you should [upgrade your operating system] is when applications stop working and require reviews upgrade to the new operating system," said Mims HuffPost via Twitter. "Apple has always been so. It was true with the Mac, is now true with iPhones. Incremental updates are fine. Updates But integers? Not just. You get them when you get a new phone."

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