A startling new study by a grad student at Harvard has led to the revelation that Apple may be intentionally slowing down old iPhone models to encourage users to purchase new ones. The study by Laura Trucco showed a spike in Google searches for “iPhone going slow” just before launches of new models. The study at Harvard University compared results between “iPhone going slow” to Samsung “Galaxy going slow”. The research found that the search term was unaffected by new releases of similar Samsung Smartphone products.
The revealing study has sparked suggestions that Apple is indulging in planned obsolescence by slowing down their services integrated with iPhones to compel users to purchase new models. According to theory, manufacturers integrate a stipulated lifetime to a certain product and there may come a point in time that the software will stop working which then forces a user to purchase a new phone. The new study is reinforcing suspicions that Apple does indulge in such practices which encourages users to buy the latest releases. The study analyzed search metrics in Google for the term iPhone slow and found that search spiked just before a new iPhone was about to be released or launched. When it compared the results with Samsung for terms like “Samsung Galaxy going slow”, they found it was not the case.
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The Harvard study by PhD student Laura Trucco claims that Apple is intentionally sabotaging its own products. Harvard Professor of economics, Stendhal Mullainathan wrote in the New York Times that the results were striking. He said “Wouldn't many business owners love to make their old product less useful whenever they released a newer one? When you sell the device and control the operating system, that's an option'. Several users now feel that Apple sabotages older phones through software updates. As one reader in a news daily stated 'If you want to keep your iPhone running at the same pace do not do the software upgrade that comes out within six months of a new iPhone release.
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Catherine Rampell writing in the New York Times also expressed concerns that Apple was engineering their operating systems to work well only with latest releases. She too found that her iPhone 4 worked a lot slower after downloading iOS7 and that the only remedial solution was to purchase an iPhone 5. She even accused the company for a lack of marketing ideas by attempting to brainwash users into purchasing their latest releases. Apple has been accused of such unscrupulous practices before when it introduced tamper proof screws which experts said was done to prevent users accessing the phone for their own repairs.
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However, in support of Apple Professor Mullainathan says that Apple hasn’t done anything wrong. Echoing his views are Dom Ferkin, managing direction of UK-based iOS experts, Creation Application who stated ‘On every hardware release they tend to upgrade the chips and they are faster every time they are released, each year they release a new iOS. ‘It’s just enough to annoy the users, but it’s needed if you want the slew of new features that Apple releases each year.’ Ferkin also suggested that there could be other reasons for older models slowing down. Apple is yet to respond to the study. If your iPhone is going slow, maybe now you know why.
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