A lot of performance degradations are driven by external factors; increase in the prevalence of JavaScript, a larger variety of web features, higher resolution images, higher resolution video, new video codecs, new image formats, advertising etc. Some degradations are driven by fundamental physical things, for example batteries and storage devices have physical degradation. So you have to be careful how you define things.
I don’t know about this take, software updates when it comes to consumer products have never been mandatory, only perceived as mandatory in order to gain some new feature. As a developer, there are times we have to compromise old logic in order to add new logic. In other areas of life we call those changes progress.
But there's no distinction between a security patch and a feature update. And it's never just an update to only get new features. It's to get bug fixes and better compatibility with new programs (I'm thinking of libraries and dependencies). And there's the case of Windows and Chrome OS, where software updates cannot be opted out of by official means.
When I think of planned obsolescence and sorta-unintentional performance regressions on desktop operating systems, I'm instantly brought to YouTube's Polymer website and UWP. Two complicated things but they largely only benefit the developers of the software and have not actually delivered any features. Google is a huge part of the desktop world and they're not so "external" as pabs3 says and to me it's just part of the software right to repair movement.
I was intent on keeping this iPhone on iOS 14 until Apple released a statement that they had buried their plans to introduce what I see as spyware or the precursor to spyware.
Now 14 suddenly isn't an option anymore. Exploits are still found and the only way to patch them seems to be to go to iOS 15.
Luckily the latest Nokia clamshell phones have good mobile broadband support and also support Telegram and Signal it seems. With the price difference between a brand new iPhone and a brand new Nokia clamshell I can also buy a really good camera and then I think I got it sorted mostly.
Just off the top of my head, OS updates are mandatory if you do any mobile banking.
Banking apps have mechanisms to check if there's an update available and not give access unless you install it. You then can't install the app update unless the OS is sufficiently new.
I anticipated a response like that and you have a valid point, but it does not explain nearly all the issues. Just as an example, not only why does simple swiping home screens on an iPhone/iPad lag after a few years when nothing has fundamentally changed about that behavior, but an even greater question is why is it permissible that/if other features and expensive computations are added that are impacting performance of such fundamental and core functionality/behavior.
There should be no right that barring some major security changes, that core functionality is not only impacted, but that added features impact performance or that a user should have the right to choose performance over features.
I reiterate my example, would it be ok with you if your car lost 100 hp or 20 mpg fuel economy over 5 years because there were things added to your car that weigh it down so much or due to a roughshod rebuilding of your engine every time you changed your oil?
It is really a clear case of fraud and destruction of property when, e.g., a phone becomes so laggy that it is unusable over 5 years solely due to updates that were imposed and required by manufacturers even if they try to justify it by adding things you did not request or need or want.
I am actually surprised that an enterprising technology aware lawfirm has not latched onto this issue. It seems to me to be a rather simple case of proving at the very least the negligence and willful destruction and degradation of others' property.
To simplify the concept, e.g., we are constantly told by phone makers that next-phone is N times faster/more powerful; so how is it that the phone I was told is 5 times more powerful than the predecessor, all the sudden lags when swiping between home/app screens or launching a dialer, a core functionality that hasn't changed in years and like it never did before?
At best, we are facing an immensely sloppy industry that damages our products and property through forced updates; at best.
What about the slowdowns due to the Intel chip bug mitigations? That’s the biggest slowdown I have experienced of on Xeon based computer. It is significant.
That is something you can and always could disable. I would however not want someone with a buggy system in some of my networks which makes this choice have side-effects in some scenarios.
> That is something you can and always could disable. I would however not want someone with a buggy system in some of my networks which makes this choice have side-effects in some scenarios.
Could you expand on this? Why wouldn't you want a machine that's not running spectre mitigations on your network?
Because they want to maximize performance rather than a security patch that they believe, rightly or not, is a mitigation against something that think is a small risk for their use case.
