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Comment by baz00 | Hacker News Reader

Step one - reduce product cycles to every 2 years.

I bet no one ever thinks that!

The yearly updates hardly bring meaningful changes for most people.

We don’t have new gaming consoles every year, with iPhones being just as locked down, we could have new ones coming out every few years.

Just so you know - you dont have to buy a new one every year.

Doesn't mean they're not making them - a lot of people will buy them regardless, or get a new one from their carrier.

For Apple devices especially, this is incentivized by the culture around them - a lot of folks just want the newest.

If my 3 year old iphone falls off a cliff I shouldnt have to buy a "new" 3 year old iPhone because someone decided that people should only buy 1 every 4 years - that would be a collosal waste.

Update the technology on a regular basis as everyone is on a different purchasing cycle.

That is such an interesting perspective. You're saying that buying this years model is an important part of buying 'new' for you. I get it but I've never seen it written down before.

I guess cars are the same. If you walked into a dealership and all the models had been released 2 years previous you might feel like you shouldn't be paying full price even though you are getting a brand new car.

> saying that buying this years model is an important part of buying 'new' for you

Arbitrarily lengthening release cycles like this is performative. Particularly in high tech. Doubly so in a category that’s reducing its energy and material footprint.

Consider if we did this for cars. New model once a decade. This would be horrible for fuel economies. To say nothing about safety and EVs.

Some might say yearly release cycles may be a bad incentive to hold back innovations because you have to bring something new every year... So you do _not_ get the latest and greatest, but a carefully planned "older" product with newer stuff in the pipeline for the next 5 years.

> Some might say yearly release cycles may be a bad incentive to hold back innovations

Based on what evidence?

Seems like you just don't want to give up the convenience of being able to buy the most top-notch hardware at any point in time. No one ever said that being sustainable wouldn't be without sacrifices :)

So what if people get the latest. It’s not like the previous device will just magically disappear.

It will get resold and reused.

Why? The factories manufacture something all the time. The hardware/software design engineers are already hired. Never saw somebody throwing fresh (1,2,3 years old) iPhones away.

https://shop.fairphone.com/fairphone-5 <- 5 year warranty, 8 years of software updates, easy to repair, made from recycled parts etc. etc. This all exists today. We do not have to wait for Cupertino.

I think this would have much less effect than you think it would. People don't actually pay attention to when new phones come out and it's not why they buy new phones.

Well .. people buy new phones because of advertising (not you and I obviously). If it wasn't true they wouldn't spend so much on it. Those advertising folks want something new to talk about. That's why.

Apple product lifetimes are pretty good. iPhone 6s (2015, 8 years) still gets security updates, iPhone 8 (2017, 6 years) only now will stop getting new feature updates. The current trajectory seems to be supporting older models for even longer. If the device is not physically damaged beyond repair, you can just keep on using it.

On one hand, having annual release cycles encourages innovation to happen much faster. Sadly, it might also introduce bugs. Having product cycles as 2 years is probably reasonable, but might slow innovation a bit.

I don’t think much innovation happens year to year. At the beginning of iPhone development every other year Apple was releasing an S model of the previous year, which was just improved specs, but no new features. At this point the smartphone has stagnated, with small edge case features being introduced each year.

Would that really make a noticable difference.

Most people don't upgrade every year, but those that do, typically have a still very good condition and usable second hand device to sell or hand down to another friend/co-worker/etc - that same person would otherwise just have to have bought a new device. So on net, no difference.

I'm sure there are some people that both upgrade needlessly and just let them collect dust but I can't see it being a significant percentage?

(This is coming from someone who had every iPhone from the 3G through to the X on Day 1, though now I am going from a 12 Pro Max to a 15 Pro max :)

> Most people don't upgrade every year, but those that do, typically have a still very good condition and usable second hand device to sell or hand down to another friend/co-worker/etc

I don't upgrade every year and still was able to turn in my previous phone for some hundred bucks so far

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