Is Apple slowing down Apple Watches on purpose?

[Silly John Fatty]

I think it is. Technically, you can bloat software on purpose to a degree at which you can precisely set the amount of slowing down of an older device.

My Apple Watch would wake up with one tap (could be a nose tap too, it was very practical sometimes). Now, when it’s been sleeping for a while, it needs exactly three taps.

Apple is one of the biggest and most powerful organisations in the world. I think Apple is calculating all of this very precisely and slowing down devices on purpose. I think it’s a gangster firm that is damaging and polluting the planet.

I’ve been an Apple user since the 90s.

 

[chrono1081]

No.

 

[dumastudetto]

Apple would never do this.

 

[jz0309]

Still works for me…

Are you looking for help or just wanting to rant? If you want help, watch model, OS info is needed. And sometimes a reboot helps too

 

[Bichon]

Given the awful publicity, public apology, $29 battery replacements and numerous class action lawsuits that resulted from the iPhone "batterygate" controversy, it seems unlikely they'd want to repeat that fiasco by intentionally doing the same thing with older Apple watches.

 

[Silly John Fatty]

Apple would never do this.

Actually, Apple did this with iPhones and admitted it and paid a fine I believe. Why would they not do it with Apple Watches? Selling Apple Watches is part of their business. You can’t sell any Apple Watch if older Apple Watches still work and new ones don’t bring any benefits. So you make working devices obsolete sooner.

There’s no technical reason for my Watch to need 3 taps instead of 1 to turn it on. It’s not a new process that needs more computing power or anything. I’m not running some new design software on it that needs upgraded hardware. Same thing with browsing menus. It lags, compared to before. But browsing menus is not a new feature that needs better hardware. Why should this process suddenly slow down with an update?

Given the awful publicity, public apology, $29 battery replacements and numerous class action lawsuits that resulted from the iPhone "batterygate" controversy, it seems unlikely they'd want to repeat that fiasco by intentionally doing the same thing with older Apple watches.

I think they would risk it, because the strategy probably paid off. It wasn’t a fiasco for them, it was a good deal I think and I believe they made a lot of money off of it. And I noticed the same behaviour on my iPhone 13 mini. It’s a new device I bought a few months ago and it had iOS 15 on it. The first thing I did after using it for some time was install 17 on it and the difference was huge. Yet, there was absolutely no legitimate technical reason for it to be slowed down.

Similar story: I had a perfectly working 2011 27” Apple LED cinema display. I planned on keeping it to use it with my new Mac mini. Sadly a new Mac software update made it suddenly impossible to adjust brightness. The feature was just removed apparently. Interestingly, this update was released around the time the new Apple studio display came out. What a huge coincidence …

Apple knows their users like things to be perfect. You could install some dirty 3rd party app to bring back brightness adjustment, but it was a nasty solution. The result: people like me bought the Apple studio display.

Apple would never have sold me an Apple studio display if it didn’t make my old Apple display obsolete per software update, with “a single click” so to say.

Recently I also sent them an email that certain apps could use my camera, have access to my photo album or my microphone even though I had not given them permission in the privacy settings. They kept giving me alibi responses and seemed to not be interested at all in the issue or take it serious in any way. That surprised me a lot to be honest. So far I have not received a clear answer from them. They started playing stupid by telling me it wasn’t clear what I was meaning and what I was talking about; yet, it was very clear.

I think this company is involved in serious illegal activity. But it needs to be proven yet. I hope this company is torn apart someday and makes way for real innovation, high-quality, transparency and good prices. The US government should not protect Apple or its monopolies because it will miss out on innovation otherwise. It would be a big strategic mistake. Anyone who studied or worked in strategy knows this very well, it’s an empirically well researched field with clear results.

The US government probably wants to act protectionist in front of its native companies, but in the long term this strategy will not pay off. Someday someone better and more innovative will make software and computers better than apple and apple will disappear like Chinese car manufacturers will make European ones disappear in the years to come, because European car manufacturers betrayed and had an anti-innovative mindset.

We think we’re the best in Europe and North America, but we’re going down baby, and it’s all due to this mindset that we think we’re the best. While we party and believe we’re super good, others work hard and overtake us segment by segment.

And then we will wonder how it could ever have been possible for Apple to suddenly disappear so quickly. This has happened millions of times and it’s happening every day and it will keep happening.

 

[Mac7]

Actually, Apple did this with iPhones and admitted it and paid a fine I believe. Why would they not do it with Apple Watches? Selling Apple Watches is part of their business. You can’t sell any Apple Watch if older Apple Watches still work and new ones don’t bring any benefits. So you make working devices obsolete sooner.

There’s no technical reason for my Watch to need 3 taps instead of 1 to turn it on. It’s not a new process that needs more computing power or anything. I’m not running some new design software on it that needs upgraded hardware. Same thing with browsing menus. It lags, compared to before. But browsing menus is not a new feature that needs better hardware. Why should this process suddenly slow down with an update?



I think they would risk it, because the strategy probably paid off. It wasn’t a fiasco for them, it was a good deal I think and I believe they made a lot of money off of it. And I noticed the same behaviour on my iPhone 13 mini. It’s a new device I bought a few months ago and it had iOS 15 on it. The first thing I did after using it for some time was install 17 on it and the difference was huge. Yet, there was absolutely no legitimate technical reason for it to be slowed down.

Similar story: I had a perfectly working 2011 27” Apple LED cinema display. I planned on keeping it to use it with my new Mac mini. Sadly a new Mac software update made it suddenly impossible to adjust brightness. The feature was just removed apparently. Interestingly, this update was released around the time the new Apple studio display came out. What a huge coincidence …

Apple knows their users like things to be perfect. You could install some dirty 3rd party app to bring back brightness adjustment, but it was a nasty solution. The result: people like me bought the Apple studio display.

Apple would never have sold me an Apple studio display if it didn’t make my old Apple display obsolete per software update, with “a single click” so to say.

Recently I also sent them an email that certain apps could use my camera, have access to my photo album or my microphone even though I had not given them permission in the privacy settings. They kept giving me alibi responses and seemed to not be interested at all in the issue or take it serious in any way. That surprised me a lot to be honest. So far I have not received a clear answer from them. They started playing stupid by telling me it wasn’t clear what I was meaning and what I was talking about; yet, it was very clear.

I think this company is involved in serious illegal activity. But it needs to be proven yet. I hope this company is torn apart someday and makes way for real innovation, high-quality, transparency and good prices. The US government should not protect Apple or its monopolies because it will miss out on innovation otherwise. It would be a big strategic mistake. Anyone who studied or worked in strategy knows this very well, it’s an empirically well researched field with clear results.

The US government probably wants to act protectionist in front of its native companies, but in the long term this strategy will not pay off. Someday someone better and more innovative will make software and computers better than apple and apple will disappear like Chinese car manufacturers will make European ones disappear in the years to come, because European car manufacturers betrayed and had an anti-innovative mindset.

We think we’re the best in Europe and North America, but we’re going down baby, and it’s all due to this mindset that we think we’re the best. While we party and believe we’re super good, others work hard and overtake us segment by segment.

And then we will wonder how it could ever have been possible for Apple to suddenly disappear so quickly. This has happened millions of times and it’s happening every day and it will keep happening.

I think you need to get off the internet and get some fresh air

 

[jz0309]

Actually, Apple did this with iPhones and admitted it and paid a fine I believe. Why would they not do it with Apple Watches? Selling Apple Watches is part of their business. You can’t sell any Apple Watch if older Apple Watches still work and new ones don’t bring any benefits. So you make working devices obsolete sooner.

There’s no technical reason for my Watch to need 3 taps instead of 1 to turn it on. It’s not a new process that needs more computing power or anything. I’m not running some new design software on it that needs upgraded hardware. Same thing with browsing menus. It lags, compared to before. But browsing menus is not a new feature that needs better hardware. Why should this process suddenly slow down with an update?



I think they would risk it, because the strategy probably paid off. It wasn’t a fiasco for them, it was a good deal I think and I believe they made a lot of money off of it. And I noticed the same behaviour on my iPhone 13 mini. It’s a new device I bought a few months ago and it had iOS 15 on it. The first thing I did after using it for some time was install 17 on it and the difference was huge. Yet, there was absolutely no legitimate technical reason for it to be slowed down.

Similar story: I had a perfectly working 2011 27” Apple LED cinema display. I planned on keeping it to use it with my new Mac mini. Sadly a new Mac software update made it suddenly impossible to adjust brightness. The feature was just removed apparently. Interestingly, this update was released around the time the new Apple studio display came out. What a huge coincidence …

Apple knows their users like things to be perfect. You could install some dirty 3rd party app to bring back brightness adjustment, but it was a nasty solution. The result: people like me bought the Apple studio display.

Apple would never have sold me an Apple studio display if it didn’t make my old Apple display obsolete per software update, with “a single click” so to say.

Recently I also sent them an email that certain apps could use my camera, have access to my photo album or my microphone even though I had not given them permission in the privacy settings. They kept giving me alibi responses and seemed to not be interested at all in the issue or take it serious in any way. That surprised me a lot to be honest. So far I have not received a clear answer from them. They started playing stupid by telling me it wasn’t clear what I was meaning and what I was talking about; yet, it was very clear.

I think this company is involved in serious illegal activity. But it needs to be proven yet. I hope this company is torn apart someday and makes way for real innovation, high-quality, transparency and good prices. The US government should not protect Apple or its monopolies because it will miss out on innovation otherwise. It would be a big strategic mistake. Anyone who studied or worked in strategy knows this very well, it’s an empirically well researched field with clear results.

The US government probably wants to act protectionist in front of its native companies, but in the long term this strategy will not pay off. Someday someone better and more innovative will make software and computers better than apple and apple will disappear like Chinese car manufacturers will make European ones disappear in the years to come, because European car manufacturers betrayed and had an anti-innovative mindset.

We think we’re the best in Europe and North America, but we’re going down baby, and it’s all due to this mindset that we think we’re the best. While we party and believe we’re super good, others work hard and overtake us segment by segment.

And then we will wonder how it could ever have been possible for Apple to suddenly disappear so quickly. This has happened millions of times and it’s happening every day and it will keep happening.

since this is the AW forum, mine (S7 and Ultra2) still wake up with 1 tap, so I don't experience your problem.
What watch model and OS version do you have?
have you rebooted the watch?

 

[Silly John Fatty]

since this is the AW forum, mine (S7 and Ultra2) still wake up with 1 tap, so I don't experience your problem.
What watch model and OS version do you have?
have you rebooted the watch?

It’s a series 6 running watchOS 10.4 and I’ve rebooted it very often of course.

Since the slowing down of devices chronologically happens in a too perfect way (it never feels like a natural circumstance, the correlations and cycles when it happens are just way too perfect, so I assume it is precisely calculated by Apple) it makes me conclude that your Watch might have this happen at the next update.

From a purely hypothetical perspective, would you be mad if you found out your Watch was still doing fine but was slowed down or made obsolete earlier consciously? Or would you accept it and say it’s a legitimate behaviour of whoever is producing or selling it?

 

[Silly John Fatty]

I think you need to get off the internet and get some fresh air

Such a primitive comment to be honest. If you’re not interested in the topic, why reply? I created this thread to talk about this. Kind of logical, don’t you think?

 

[TechnoMonk]

My S6 shows no sign of slowing down. Run a diagnostics and see what is causing the slowdown.

 

[Silly John Fatty]

My S6 shows no sign of slowing down. Run a diagnostics and see what is causing the slowdown.

I already completely erased and reinstalled the watch. What do you mean by running diagnostics?

For me it’s very clear it was the update, as the issues started persisting the second after the update was done.

Maybe you use your watch differently than I do. When I use it a lot, it doesn’t do that. But when i don’t look at it for a longer while, it needs some time to wake up, it needs more than one tap. And the other things like lost smoothness in scrolling etc.

It’s very clear it has to do with the update, it’s a classic Apple language and it occurred the moment I updated it.

 

[TechnoMonk]

I already completely erased and reinstalled the watch. What do you mean by running diagnostics?

For me it’s very clear it was the update, as the issues started persisting the second after the update was done.

Maybe you use your watch differently than I do. When I use it a lot, it doesn’t do that. But when i don’t look at it for a longer while, it needs some time to wake up, it needs more than one tap. And the other things like lost smoothness in scrolling etc.

It’s very clear it has to do with the update, it’s a classic Apple language and it occurred the moment I updated it.

Sounds like you already made up your mind. I was just trying to help your resolve the issues.

 

[Mr_Brightside_@]

Have you set up a class action?

 

[bransoj]

S6 here as well....no issues and i barely reboot it to be honest.

 

[JonaM]

The solution to your problem would be to never apply any updates if you think Apple is targeting your devices for planned slowdowns.

Interestingly I was having similar thoughts earlier in the week as my iPad suddenly slowed down and started misbehaving just after the new iPads were announced.
Then I had a look at the logs and spotted it was having repeated errors and applied a forced reboot, which has restored it back to normal behaviour. As humans we look for patterns that support our theories - if you think your devices are getting slower after updates you will perceive that they are slower, and I doubt that there's much anyone on this forum will be able to do to change that perception

 

[Sami13496]

I think it’s a gangster firm that is damaging and polluting the planet.

Almost all companies are. Why? Because people are ready to buy stuff they don’t need in search of happiness where they can’t find it. And other people are ready to make that stuff to get wealthy. If no one bought [company name] products that company would not pollute anything. It’s the people’s greed. We can only blame ourselves.

 

[chrono1081]

Actually, Apple did this with iPhones and admitted it and paid a fine

This isn't a case of Apple intentionally throttling phones for a malicious reason though. Any developer knew about this if they were developing since the beginning because Apple mentioned before the device was a phone first, and that performance would be throttled to preserve battery life if need be in cases like degraded batteries, temperature extremes, etc. Apple just didn't convey that message to the public.

 

[ApplesAreSweet&Sour]

I think it is. Technically, you can bloat software on purpose to a degree at which you can precisely set the amount of slowing down of an older device.

My Apple Watch would wake up with one tap (could be a nose tap too, it was very practical sometimes). Now, when it’s been sleeping for a while, it needs exactly three taps.

Apple is one of the biggest and most powerful organisations in the world. I think Apple is calculating all of this very precisely and slowing down devices on purpose. I think it’s a gangster firm that is damaging and polluting the planet.

I’ve been an Apple user since the 90s.

Devices will slow on their own as long as you keep updating to the latest WatchOS and Apple keeps optimizing for newer watches while optimizing increasingly less or not at all for older devices.

In this sense, Apple doesn't need to deliberately cripple devices. It happens on its own as Apple makes everything more and more complex, and works to support newer hardware, wireless radios, internal storage specifications, etc.m while not spending much time making sure older devices are supported on newer OSs to the same extent.

I'm not opposed to the idea that Apple should create more limited versions of their OSs to let older devices run fast for more years and not get bogged down with no way to revert if they opt to update to a newer OS.

But I don't think what they're doing is deliberately slowing older devices as it is just focusing on optimizing for the last and the upcoming product releases.

While I don't know this for a fact, I think specifically updating to an os that's designed for a new generation of SoC, like watchOS 10 is optimized for Apple Watch Series 9, is something one should avoid.

I have an old SE 2020 in my drawer and it should and does support iOS 17. But it has been feeling way slower on both iOS 16 and 17, and certainly struggles to run some media-rich apps. Battery life has taken major toll although I've recently got it replaced.

For this reason, I don't think I'll update it to iOS 18. Not unless I hear all of tech media praising iOS 18 as making older iPhones run like new(-ish) again. I doubt that will be the case.

Call it useless bloat or necessary complexity. Apple doesn't optimize for old(er) devices as much as for the newer ones. The negative impact of this practice is multiplied by how newer hardware components are more powerful and higher spec'ed in newer products.