It's a psychological game. People are primed to want new things, and more investment into something old is hard to justify even if it's financially right. Also OS's lose supprt, softwares bloat, and bundled offers from carriers are toward replacement. You'd have to be really disciplined to not succumb to upgrade pressure when you go into an Apple Store of all places where the entire setup is to generate sales.
An Apple Store is one of the least sales oriented retail environments. You can go in and play with stuff for hours, chat with people who work there who can’t even make sales, and drop things off for them to repair. They don’t even have cash registers in most of them.
Most of the time I go into an Apple Store I don’t buy anything, and I’ve never gone in and bought something that I didn’t plan on buying before I arrived.
Of course they gross more money than a jewelry store. That sounds impressive, but really isn't if you think about it. They sell very popular items that almost everyone in any mall in the country owns some version of that people WANT to buy every few years at most(computer, phone, headphones). Jewelry stores sell items that a lot of people will never own, and they sell items that people might buy every 5 years if they are really good customers.
The phones and software don't stop working when they aren't supported anymore. They just don't get more free updates. You can keep using the device in perpetuity with the same software that you have on it right now. Its a relatively recent phenomenon that the OS and all updates are free.
You used to have to pay for the OS on your hardware at each update. If I wanted to go from OSx Tiger to OSX leopard on my first Macbook, it cost me $99 at the time. That computer still works fine with Leopard. It does everything Apple said it would do when they sold it to me. Why would I be entitled for it to do the things that the latest macbook does?
Again, the phone won't stop working. It will still do everything that it did the day you bought, and in many cases more. It will connect to any 2g/3g network that you subscribe to, and connect to any server that operates on the same protocols that existed on the last day it was supported.
You can't blame Apple that network and site providers don't continue to provide service, anymore than model T drivers can be upset that their local tire store doesn't stock tires for their car.
How is any company supposed to provide updates in perpetuity for technology advances that wasn't even planned at the time of purchase.
The fact that Apple has teams of developers providing free seamless updates to my iphone 11 from 6 years ago is a modern miracle. What other item in the market can you expect the maker to provide free maintenance and functional improvements for years after purchase?
I am not blaming Apple. But I am saying that older phones will stop functioning as phones eventually.
Apple isn’t supporting older phones out of the goodness of their hearts. The larger the installed based, the more they can sell you. There biggest revenue increases are coming from Services
I agree with you, the fact that they are providing security updates for a phone that came out in 2015 as a recently as two months ago is remarkable
Were you around during the first 17 years of personal computers?
A computer from 1986 would be useless in 1996. A computer from 1996 would be useless in 2006.
Computers were getting so much faster so fast back then, that obsolescence was really a big deal.
There is physically no hardware support for 32 bit software on modern iPhones. Do you suggest that Apple still supports 32 bit iPhones and 64 bit iPhones?
Would third party developers want to support phones back to the iPhone 6 that is 6x slower and has 1/8 the RAM of a modern iPhone?
Should Apple support phones like the 3GS that doesn’t support LTE and has 256KB of RAM?
