A viral video from an alleged ex-Apple software engineer claims intentional hidden code in updates slows older iPhones to force upgrades; the claim is unverified and Apple has not responded.
Key Takeaways
The allegation echoes 2017 Batterygate, when Apple admitted throttling older iPhones via updates, citing aging battery protection as the reason.
No technical mechanism is specified in the video: no mention of clock rate changes, OS-level throttling, or any verifiable implementation detail.
Apple has not responded to the viral video; the claim remains completely unproven.
iPhone 18 Pro is separately rumored to move Face ID sensors under-display and replace the pill cutout with a punch-hole camera.
Hacker News Comment Review
Commenters are skeptical: the video provides zero technical specifics, making independent verification or falsification effectively impossible without a controlled test.
A plausible alternative raised is software bloat rather than deliberate throttling: newer OS versions optimized for newer hardware without backporting performance tuning.
Anecdotal counterevidence exists; at least one commenter reports no perceptible slowdown on an iPhone 14 across its lifetime, attributing sluggishness to third-party app baseline creep.
Notable Comments
@Manuel_D: proposes a falsifiable control-group test: keep phones on older software and compare against updated units to verify the claim.
