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Apple Doesn't Deliberately Slow Down Older Devices According to Benchmark Analysis

brushlee said:
Exactly what I had with my "beloved" iPad Mini 2 - was perfectly fine up to latest iOS 10. As soon as I put iOS 11 - even simple home pages swipe animation is now slow - it is soooo visual.....
(sigh) Had to go to the store and get myself iPad Pro 10.5" :D
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Thanks for the confirmation. I've stopped my daughter's mini 2 at 10.3.3
 
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I love how the study is supposed to "debunk" accusations of newer iOS slowing down iPhone 6, when anyone with eyes can see each iteration of iOS10 slowly crippling the CPU until the trainwreck that is iOS 11.
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Peter K. said:
Thanks for the confirmation. I've stopped my daughter's mini 2 at 10.3.3
Click to expand...

I concur. iOS 11 "broke" iPad Mini 2. Got iPad Pro 10.5 envy too.
 
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brushlee said:
Exactly what I had with my "beloved" iPad Mini 2 - was perfectly fine up to latest iOS 10. As soon as I put iOS 11 - even simple home pages swipe animation is now slow - it is soooo visual.....
(sigh) Had to go to the store and get myself iPad Pro 10.5" :D
Click to expand...

kerching
 
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Compote said:
I love how the study is supposed to "debunk" accusations of newer iOS slowing down iPhone 6, when anyone with eyes can see each iteration of iOS10 slowly crippling the CPU until the trainwreck that is iOS 11.
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iOS 11 works really well for me with a 5s, and the A7 inside it is hopelessly outdated in terms of performance compared to Apple's more recent SoCs.
 
:Facepalm: Apple doesn't slow down older devices by crippling their hardware capabilities. That would be stupid and illegal. Instead, Apple slows down older devices by tricking them into upgrading the operating system even when it's clear they cannot operate with the newer software in a smooth manner.
 
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It is not a matter of benchmarks and raw cpu/gpu performance here, it never was. It's the user experience and in particular the UI that feels slower. Benchmarks is one thing, what actually user experiences on his/her device is another.

Apple was never about benchmarks, anyway. But they always claim they care about user experience.
 
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So all of these “.....I am getting a iPhone 8 or an iPhone X....because it a good speed upgrade on my 5x, 6x.....” is all bunkum because these test proves it won’t be!
 
MacRumors said:
Raw CPU and GPU power across devices does not offer a complete picture of performance on an older device that's updated to a new operating system, however, nor are benchmarks an accurate measure of real world performance. Apple may not be deliberately slowing down older devices with its software updates, as some have speculated, but there are other factors to take into account.

New features that eat up more system resources can make a device feel slower, as can more system intensive design elements and other tweaks and changes designed for newer devices that are more powerful.

Apple's operating system updates also introduce more advanced APIs and technology for its newest devices, leading to built-in and third-party apps that are aimed at more powerful devices and may not be optimized on older devices, resulting in an older device feeling more sluggish than a newer device following an iOS update.
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All reasons users should be very cautious about upgrading iOS to major new versions. I won’t be caught out by Apple’s “tempt and trap” tactics again.
 
gnipgnop said:
iOS 11 works really well for me with a 5s, and the A7 inside it is hopelessly outdated in terms of performance compared to Apple's more recent SoCs.
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I don't factor in the age of the chip as an excuse in my review of the overall experience.
It stutters, freezes, refreshes, crashes, the key board doesn't respond and then catches up suddenly, same for some videos/games. It doesn't work really well, really. Really well is what the iPad Mini 2 and 5S did on iOS 7.
 
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The approach of this benchmark is wrong! Measuring pure CPU/GPU performance won't yield real life situations. with every iOS increment "fancy/blurry" animations and background tasks increase, so eventually, the iPhone is getting slower!

Did you have sluggish animations and long loading times/freezes when you got your then new iPhone? Probably not. But you have them now! With every iOS update, every new feature cripples down performance and system stability. You can't deny or mask that with synthetic benchmarks.
 
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SteveJobs2.0 said:
Yes, but this is raw performance in a specific task. People are generally complaining of GUI slowdowns in new versions of iOS.
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Exactly, apple throws in a lot of new complex UI elements which use way more power than they should, the raw performance of these devices are the same, but they are too slow to work through what apple throws at them. Apple does some to optimize, but they don't ever fix things to where they should be. It's understandable though, apple has a lot of other stuff on their plate. They can't put 100% of their effort into optimizing everything particularly because it means people wont upgrade as soon.

So yeah they don't slow down anything at all, slow devices just can't handle the new stuff Apple throws at them with new major iOS revisions. Apple could throw less intensive stuff at them, but Apple doesn't have the time or desire to do this, they have to focus on other things.
 
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It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation for Apple when it comes to allowing older devices to upgrade to new OSes.

If Apple lets them upgrade to the latest OS, it evinces planned obsolescence. If Apple doesn't let them upgrade to the latest OS, it evinces planned obsolescence.
 
actually, what the data in the benchmarks is saying, and, what several posters are pointing out about their phones slowing down are both correct at the same time.
the graphed data is very misleading, in that the scales used in the graphs need to be greatly enhanced to show better the performance degradation when older devices run later iOS.
what appear to be only small declines in the current chart actually are consistent with people's perceptions of how sluggish iOS 11 actually is on their older devices.
what the data and the people's experiences are showing collectively is that even small quantifiable performance hits amount to noticeable lag.
my reading of the charts does support the conclusion that apple is not blatantly slowing down older devices as a marketing ploy to get you to upgrade. it shows clearly that only small incremental performance hits are occurring.
the data is by quarters, not just by initial iOS releases. this is useful to see that apple does control whats in its update process of each iOS per each new update release, and is doing an adequate job of making sure that older devices do not become suddenly out of date.
dont forget, its easy to say if iOS 10 and iOS 11 are just 2 operating systems, but actually theres a great deal of optimization that must and does occur on a per-device level so if there are 5 devices that can run iOS, there really are 5 iOS 10 and 5 iOS 11 "systems".
the data do show that apple is taking care to prevent sudden obsolescence for any device.

lastly, and this is true even for and especially macs as well, when you buy a new device, buy the best CPU/GPU/RAM/GB you need and can afford. it gives you the ability to wait for several upgrade cycles before you feel your system cant handle it anymore.
 
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This should stop once forever the old crap about "planned obsolescence"... iOS could be buggier in the first releases for sure, but Apple is doing great supporting very old devices
 
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Wow, did people genuinely think this? These are probably the same people who think the moon landings were faked and 9/11 was an inside job.:confused: Older devices only run more slowly because the newer apps are designed to run on newer hardware.
 
You don't hear people complaining about their laptops/PCs slowing down when they keep upgrading to the newest OS even though it definitely slows down, yet when it is on an iPhone everyone goes crazy.
 
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The last update available to my mom's iPad 2 made it unusable. The last update available to my iPad 3 made it unusable.

So we both got the iPad 2017. I'm on iOS 11.0 and it works great. I'm not updating hers from 10.3.3 because I'm afraid it'll confuse the hell out of her.

However, even though I've learned my lesson from the iPads, the iPhone still bugs me. I have a 6. The 5s is the oldest device to get the update and yet the general consensus is that iOS 11 will turn the 6 to ****.

I want to install it but I won't. God knows what iOS 12 will do to the 6.

Bottom line. If a device turns to **** because of a major iOS update, Apple, don't make it available to that device. My 6 is only three years old, though. And I'm disappointed.
 
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myscrnnm said:
Wow, did people genuinely think this? These are probably the same people who think the moon landings were faked and 9/11 was an inside job.:confused: Older devices only run more slowly because the newer apps are designed to run on newer hardware.
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I'm sorry but if you truly believe the official story of 9/11 in its entirety, you have been living under a rock.
 
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