It's unfortunate that Apple has taught me (and I assume others as well) over the last 15 years that the best practice is to never install a major OS update.
It seems clear to me that they use OS updates as a way to eventually slow your device down so the lag becomes so annoying that you want to purchase a new device.
(Edit: And the really obnoxious part is that they force you to receive upgrade prompts every single day and you can't disable it.)
Unfortunately they have other ways to deprecate your device: App Stores won't work, apps won't talk to their backend with older versions or just straight up won't launch. Even Homebrew stopped supporting my 2015 Macbook I have for personal use.
Right, I think that was the point being made: I've had a closet of Apple hardware with no technical problems, but made useless due to Apple's software decisions.
With older Apple hardware you can usually find a working OS image, but Apple specifically is very strict with minimum OS versions for apps and deprecating APIs so that older iOS and macOS versions end up unable to install any software that hasn't had an older version archived somewhere, even if there's no real reason it shouldn't run on the hardware. You can only get older compatible versions of apps in the App Store if you happened to have purchased them before, again for no real reason other than inconvenience
> that older iOS and macOS versions end up unable to install any software that hasn't had an older version archived somewhere
iOS, sure. After a certain point, you need to be fine with simple functionality (but, I’ll add, more than adequate for most users, which means someone else could find use and value for what you treat as junk).
But macOS? What software? Everything I’m thinking of is graphics adjacent and significantly benefits from faster hardware. For almost everything else, a browser suffices.
No, what Apple made into junk by remotely flipping a switch. On an older iOS, you cannot log into your Apple ID any more, which then means you cannot update the OS any more. So you cannot upgrade, but you also cannot use the old OS for anything that requires you to be logged into your Apple account (which is practically everything). But you still get nagged at every turn that you need to log in and upgrade!
I downgraded an old Macbook last year to see if I could get it running fast again. I couldn't install all sorts of things. So many things that I gave up.
I don't know where this whole "Apple is slowing down my device" comes from, but it is misguided at best, and outright false at worst. My decades old iPod Touch, for example, still works today without performance issues. My oldest iPhones have no performance issues either, and they are (respectively) 9 and 10 years old. Do they still receive updates? Of course not! Neither do any of the other devices I have from the same era. My PC, built around the same time, doesn't even support Windows 11, and hasn't received a single BIOS update since 2020.
Apple was slowing down phones for a while, however, the general public entirely misunderstood why: At a certain point, the battery could not maintain the voltages required to keep the phone operating properly at all (if you understand silicon, you will understand why...CPU needs 1.5v, battery can provide 1.4v...and boom!), so Apple did the most graceful thing they could and they down clocked the phones rather than letting them abruptly turn off. That led to millions of people in a certain era of iPhone being able to use their phones...just more slowly...vs not being able to use them the second voltage > supply voltage...which basically means any remotely demanding app. They were (rightfully) sued because they made the change without informing the user first. They didn't have to touch the phones, period. They tried to allow the phones to be used/data recovered from gracefully.
Don't misunderstand me, I am not willing to defend the practices of any business at all, especially Apple (I've worked from, and walked away from, some despicable companies in my time as an engineer), however Apple went above and beyond to let folks continue to use their devices. If you think otherwise, I've a box full of android and non Android phones and tablets that the likes of Google, Samsung, LG, HTC, etc. all quickly abandoned.
For comparison, the Google Pixel 3a (among others) was released the same year and saw it's last major OS update in 2022. iPhone 11? Still receives updates to this day. No, they aren't slowing the phone down. Trust me, my non technical spouse would have complained super loudly by now. More importantly, I, as her tech support person would've. She is on 26.2 right now.
There is a time and place to bash Apple, however hardware/software support definitely isn't the place. If you think that the current OS/update you have installed is purposefully and intentionally slowing your phone in order to push you to update, please feel free to publish your testing and results...and make sure you isolate every other variable like filling up internal storage, running 50,000 apps at once, expecting any application made within the past 6-7 years to peform at top speed, etc.
Also make sure you aren't falling for things such as confirmation bias or worse: you simply parrot what others say because your decade old phone, much like your decade old PC,feels slower now than it did a decade ago, when apps and games were simpler, and didn't embed entire browser engines in order to display content.
Cheers, btw, and I mean no disrespect to anyone. Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays.
I have a 4 year old M1 macbook pro running macos 12. It runs as good as when it was new. So you honestly think that if I upgrade it to macos 26 it wont start lagging? I am extremely confident that it will. Even without changing the other software running on it.
Honestly, the closet I mentioned were late PPC to mid Intel era. Those machines (putting aside the architecture changes) regularly outlived their ability to practically run the latest Mac OS, full stop. I am not even willing to say that wasn't intentional, because it was so conspicuous. Perhaps it wasn't 'designed' to do that, but minimally, I can say Apple did not maintain what I would consider minimum performance standards for the hardware they claimed their OS to support.
Maybe that's ancient history now, but from what it sounds like, they still have users that distrust their releases. When you say "I don't know where this is coming from" then a few lines later describe the known practice and the reason, well there you are. I guess it's a brand trust thing, and it sticks.
Like my brother printer's software. It kept pestering me to apply updates, and when I did, my non-genuine cartridges stopped working. So, never update the printer's software.
Damn. I bought brother just so I wouldn't be locked into overpriced cartridges. Although what I've been doing now is to reuse the starter cartridge, add some very inexpensive third-party toner to it, and reset the pages counter. It has worked well for the past few years.
They are not anymore, aim to buy an old used model. You can look up online to find out when they started their scammy behavior and which models to target.
13Mini+Lockdown mode user reporting here: I did a battery upgrade alongside the iOS 26 upgrade, and regretted switching to iOS26. It slowed down things wayy to much, the keyboard often lagged by dozens of keystrokes, and the camera app stopped working with 26.1.
I gave up yesterday, and disabled lockdown mode (and upgraded to 26.2). Seems fine now, but liquid glass is still a usability nightmare.
> It's unfortunate that Apple has taught me (and I assume others as well) over the last 15 years that the best practice is to never install a major OS update.
The sole reason I migrated from Android to Apple was to receive security upgrades for years not months. I am genuinely baffled by the take here on HN. People will (rightly) get up in arms about minor security issues across numerous domains then talk about never updating their phone. That has literally their entire life on it.
Apple users not updating major OSes goes back to the 90s with System 7. It's a seemingly weird habit that some formed even as exposure to vulnerabilities increased.
> It seems clear to me that they use OS updates as a way to eventually slow your device down
This sounds like an exaggeration of what happens after an upgrade: iOS has to re-index your entire phone for Spotlight, etc. Same thing for Photos if there have been changes.
Depending on which phone and the amount of storage, your phone can feel kind of sluggish for a while until the background indexing is done.
If you update before you go to sleep, your device will be fine in the morning.
I literally went out and bought the latest iPhone after my 4.5 years old, perfectly working iPhone 12 was forced to update to iOS 26.2 overnight, and next day was not usable anymore. It turned so slow that I went to an apple store and bought the latest.
This seems like a ridiculous point. Basically all software doesn't allow downgrades. Sure, if something happens during install, there's modern safeguards to prevent bricking your device, but upgrading software is usually a one-way street. It's why major companies have tiered rollouts of new features, beta programs, and developer previews.
To a corollary: Would you trust a software development team who doesn't trust their feature enhancements enough to where they provide an option to roll back the software? It would be like a clothing designer saying "Actually, buy last years runway, this year's might have some issues..."
As a user, I get 'undo' functionality because I'm playing in the sandbox. I trust that the sandbox is sound if I'm able to use it, and trust it will get ever-better as time goes on.
If I'm using version 1 of a tool to do some work, then I upgrade to version 2, and it means I cannot do my work as efficiently as before (maybe the update broke the tool, or maybe the user-interface was changed so much that my productivity went down the drain), then why am I not allowed to roll back the upgrade? What if I have a deadline, tomorrow morning at 9am? Not being able to downgrade can drive people up the wall.
Seriously these days everything looks like a work-in-progress. I think it is because of the internet. In many ways software was better before the internet. The continuous pushing of updates is a curse. And users need to have a way to deal with that.
I don't think so. There is always a cutoff for the last major version they recommend for any hardware. Why is the cutoff always after it lags the device severely and not -before- that happens?
It seems clear to me that they use OS updates as a way to eventually slow your device down so the lag becomes so annoying that you want to purchase a new device.
(Edit: And the really obnoxious part is that they force you to receive upgrade prompts every single day and you can't disable it.)