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Comment by duped

4 years ago

OS updates extend the lifetime of a device, not reduce it.

Another great example is fuel economy standards - the government says "no you cannot sell a car that has fewer than X mpg after the year Y" and it has done wonders for our energy policy despite the government doing what they can to keep gas prices down.

> OS updates extend the lifetime of a device, not reduce it.

They can extend the lifetime. They can also reduce it either by slowing things down to the point of becoming unusable or by preventing certain use cases - for example have you heard that the Nintendo Switch updates prevent subsequent downgrades in order to prevent users from making full use of the hardware by running custom/modded games?