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it depends on how much "consumer effort" repairing costs.

Most people seem to replace their phones on a regular 2-3 year cadence. Much less so on laptops -- and surely Macs tend to get supported for long period of time; I can run Big Sur on a 6 year old Mac.

Same with iPhones -- iPhone 6S is going to run iOS 14.

As a consumer, if I were to buy an alternative to the iPhone -- which is practically _only_ Android -- then I'm looking at software obsolescence much earlier;

I mean, look at Android 11 & iOS 14. iPhones released in 2015 are still supported but Android 11 goes only as far back as Pixel 2, a phone from 2017.

So it doesn't seem like Apple is a company that is using "planned obsolescence" from a purely functionality perspective.

Sure, hardware degrades in quality overtime -- but that's a function of physical constraints -- not business strategy to get people to buy new stuff; well, at least for the _most_ (some?) part.




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