Apple Releases First Public Beta of iOS 16.1 With Clean Energy Charging, Live Activities and More

MrTSolar said:
They only do it because so many people line up to upgrade. There hasn’t been any compelling reasons to do a yearly upgrade for a long time now. I went from an X (bought refurb from Apple) to the 12 mini to get the smaller size, Night mode, and MagSafe. Just shy of two years later, it’s still going strong despite falling onto concrete twice without a case.

Looking at the 14 Pro for the cameras, I found no reason to upgrade. Image quality is still amazing on the 12, lens flare hasn’t been improved much, and I have a dedicated camera when I need zoom (25x optical, 100x digital). The smaller form factor of my mini is more important to me.
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No individual¹ needs to upgrade their phone yearly, but that doesn't mean that Apple should stop releasing yearly upgrades. If Apple were to switch to, say, an every-two-year refresh of the phone, as many similar lines of thought seem to suggest, then that means if you have a phone you like and plan to keep, but you drop it and it breaks at, say, 3 months before the new introduction, now you're replacing it with a design/tech that's 1 year and 9 months old, rather than just 9 months old.

¹: (an argument could be made for some iOS developers needing new phones most years if their software needs to support new features that are only present on the new phone.)

And by switching Apple to every-two-years, you're heavily promoting even-number-of-year upgrades for users. What if someone's on their own roughly-every-3-years cycle? Either half the time they're buying a phone that's a year behind the latest technology, or they switch to buying every 4 years (a win), or... switch to buying every 2 years (a definite loss for sustainability).

I'm using an iPhone 8 (I switched from a 6 some years ago because the battery was shot and the processing was too slow for the apps I was running). It does what I need. Is the 14 better? Sure! Would I like one? Absolutely. Do I need it? Eh, not really. So, I stick with the 8 (if my phone irreparably broke today, I'd probably replace it with a 13 mini).

The answer to people upgrading too often is not to have Apple switch to an inferior upgrade cycle that makes it so people can't get up-to-date technology when they need a new phone, it's to educate people, to teach them that they don't need the latest model all the time.

The point of the latest iPhone has never been "last year's model now sucks, you need this year's model" (eh, maybe it was a bit that way in the very early days). It's "here's the latest updates, for those who need a new phone - it's this much better than last year's model, imagine how much better it is than your 3/4/5 year old model". Sure, Apple would love it if lots of people bought a new phone every year, but the target market is people with older phones.

MrTSolar said:
If the battery claims on the 14 are true, perhaps it’s time that Apple reduces the charge voltage at 100% state of charge.
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I have a feeling they're doing things like this already. Could be mistaken.
 
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