‘Suddenly you have an update?’: Woman accuses Apple of crashing her iPhone just as a new model launches
An Apple customer is demanding answers after she says her iPhone coincidentally crashed just as the new model was announced.
Sarah Doses (@sarahdoses) got over 915,000 views on her TikTok and tagged @Apple in the caption to demand answers. “PLEASE EXPLAIN YOURSELF," she told the company.
To start her video, Doses says, “This is a message to Apple. So if you’re Apple, please watch this.”
She says she recently updated her iOS settings on her iPhone when everything suddenly stopped working. “Everything’s broken,” she says. “Storage is full. The phone is lagging. The phone is frozen, overheating. … [It] just doesn’t wanna work.”
Doses says she finds it especially strange how the iOS update was suggested to her in September, the same month the new iPhone 16 was released.
“Suddenly you have an update,” she asks, “when the new phone comes out?”
She adds that Apple’s strategy of releasing an update at the same time as the release of a new phone is like saying, “'We’re gonna ruin your phone so you can buy the new phone'” since the update allegedly froze her phone.
“I have the iPhone 15,” she continues. “It was working perfectly until you decided to update.”
Doses says the night she updated her phone, she put her phone on the charger while she slept and woke up to it completely broken.
Before ending her video, Doses says that instead of calling iOS a software update, she thinks Apple should label it as a “software downgrade.”
“I’m not buying the new phone,” she adds. “Stop trying to steal my money. … I need an answer now, Apple. Comment below.”
@sarahdoses @apple PLEASE EXPLAIN YOURSELF???? #apple #iphone15 #softwareupdate ♬ original sound - sarahdoses
“Didn’t Apple already get in trouble for releasing updates that slow down old phones?” one user questioned in the comments section of Doses’ video. “I’m sure they don’t do that anymore.”
Does Apple release iOS updates to push you to buy a new iPhone?
BBC News reports that Apple was involved in a lawsuit about this that dates back to December 2017.
Apple reportedly confirmed a “long-held suspicion among phone owners by admitting it had deliberately slowed down some iPhones as they got older.”
However, Apple called the lawsuit, which alleged it intentionally slowed phones down after releasing upgrades, "baseless." It reportedly said, "We have never - and would never - do anything to intentionally shorten the life of any Apple product, or degrade the user experience to drive customer upgrades.”
"[Apple] said that as batteries aged, their performance decreased, and so the 'slowdown' lengthened the phones' lifespan," according to the BBC.
Apple has since settled and maintains that it didn't do anything wrong.
Can iOS updates make your iPhone slower?
Updating your iOS software may still cause an iPhone to slow down over time. “While this is not the number one cause of slowdown, it should be considered as a factor,” USwitch states.
The cause of the slowdown is most commonly linked to “apps having to adapt to the new technical standards of the major update,” it adds. “This means some of them won’t work as intended on older software versions and will cause your devices to lag.”
The Daily Dot reached out to request a comment from Doses via TikTok comment and direct message and to Apple via email.
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