Under monopoly and tyranny, can Apple proudly walk through the next decade?

When the public learned that Apple had deliberately slowed down the speed of older iPhone models, this global technology giant once again became the target of public criticism.

The consequences of this incident are far more severe than when Apple cancelled the WeChat reward function. After all, for most domestic consumers, being able to reward in the app is not a rigid need, but the fact that the iPhone they bought at a high price is deliberately slowed down is indeed something they cannot tolerate.

Perhaps Apple itself has forgotten how difficult it was to get started in the smartphone industry from the computer field in 2007. At that time, Nokia had the largest share of the global mobile phone market, and Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and other giants were leading the way. For the fledgling Apple, those guys at the top of the pyramid in the mobile phone industry seemed out of reach.

The Scholars says: "Thirty years on the east side of the river, thirty years on the west side of the river." But in the field of smartphones, or the entire field of technology, the most obvious characteristic is impermanence. So it didn't take thirty years. Ten years later, Apple has stood in the position that Nokia was in back then, and has long replaced it.

At this moment, it is dressed in fine clothes and riding a horse, majestic and awe-inspiring. As for the so-called original intention and the beginning and the end, it seems to be just a fairy tale, which has been thrown behind the mind long ago.

As the industry leader, Apple is certainly entitled to be proud of itself, but limiting the performance of older iPhones to extend their lifespans seems unreasonable.

Because Apple did not give consumers the right to choose, Apple directly cut the battery life and operating speed of the old iPhone. Consumers can only passively accept it.

Instead of saying that it prevents old iPhones from shutting down unexpectedly and thus extending the life of old devices, Apple should just say, we deliberately slow down your phone so that you will buy a new iPhone. If not, you can just replace the battery and solve the problem, so how can you make money?

In fact, Apple has always been very good at deliberately slowing down old iPhones. But this time, it was extremely ugly. After all, the iPhone models that were slowed down in the past were all old models from 3 years old, and this time, Apple blatantly included iPhone 7 in the calculation.

As we all know, iPhone 7 was released in 2016, which is only one year away from this year's iPhone X. Judging from the previous slowdown, this time is unprecedented.

So when Apple announced that it had to do this for the sake of consumers, its underlying message was, I have already done this, you can use it or not. If we classify it according to the recently popular schools, Apple is definitely not Buddhist, but Taoist.

The far-reaching impact of this incident is that for iPhone users, the cycle of replacing a phone every 2 to 3 years may be shortened to 1 to 1.5 years.

This means that Apple has begun to use all means to gain this limited time bonus. That is why Xiaolou feels that the company that has achieved the ultimate monopoly in the field of technology today may be Apple, which was founded by Steve Jobs.

But this extreme is achieved at the cost of unanimous criticism from iPhone consumers. But is it really worth it to gain profits and turnover at the cost of moral infamy?

Indeed, the batteries in any brand of mobile phone will face aging and unusability. But one thing is that consumers have the right to know about the products they buy. However, Apple does not give consumers the right to know. It upgrades the system in a forced way, and its attitude towards users is to inform, not to choose.

In short, regardless of whether the user agrees or not, Apple has already done it, and it just notified the user. The normal process must be to first ask the user whether it is okay to do so, let the user choose, and then execute it after obtaining the user's consent.

Such sneaky behavior also shows that Apple is guilty, otherwise it would not have to find a high-sounding reason to cover up the truth.

I once discussed with a friend why American technology companies, after becoming the dominant force, often lose to Asian companies. For example, Kodak was at its peak in the 1990s. It owned the entire industrial chain from civilian film to commercial professional film, to cameras, to central photo processing kitchens, and to photo processing shops.

So it can be said that almost all traditional imaging industry chains are making money. But nowadays, when it comes to video and photography, the products of Canon, Nikon, Sony, etc. are well-known. The reason is that when giant companies monopolize the market, it is not that they are not innovative enough, but that they have to release them bit by bit. This gives competitors enough space.

For example, when Apple released iPhone 5, it was already able to release the features of iPhone 7. However, if it did so in one go, its revenue would drop significantly in the next two years. However, Asian companies are different. For example, Samsung can’t wait to push new features to consumers as soon as it develops them. This is the biggest difference between Western and Asian companies.

So Xiaolou thinks that with Apple's strength, there are more ways to deal with battery aging, but in order to maximize profits, it has to resort to this last resort. But it is really not worth the loss. After all, profits have increased, but the impact on the company's reputation is slow and far-reaching.

At present, although Apple still sits at the top of the pyramid of the mobile phone industry, this position has begun to show cracks. A thousand-mile dam is destroyed by an ant hole. Individual incidents that seem to have little impact will gradually increase over time, and one of them may be the last straw that breaks the camel's back.

Therefore, the collapse of a building is often the result of long-term accumulation. Although this incident has not caused fatal damage to Apple, if Apple continues to act on its own, then with the accumulation of time, it will only take a few minutes to be replaced, not to mention ten years later.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.