Should Apple cease fixed annual iPhone updates? [Poll]

Macworld enjoys its more provocative pieces, the latest of which takes issue not just with the Camera Control button on the iPhone 16, but with the Action button before it.

Those particular views aside, it goes on to argue that a fixed(ish) annual iPhone update cycle forces Apple to launch new phones before it really has enough to offer …

Buttongate

It’s clear that the site’s Mahmoud Itani is not a fan of hardware buttons.

To me, it feels like the Camera Control button is an accessibility feature designed for those shooting with one hand rather than an enticing addition that mainstream users will adopt. Simply put, it creates many problems and solves nothing in the process […]

Like the Camera Control button, the Action button (first introduced with the iPhone 15 Pro) also feels like an unnecessary change done for the sake of showcasing a reimagined device […] Apple could’ve upgraded the existing double-back-tap feature, allowing users to assign a wider variety of tasks to it. It could’ve served the same purpose without requiring any hardware changes.

I am a fan of both the Action Button and Camera Control, though I think the latter needs some UI work, but I won’t get into that particular debate here.

Should Apple cease fixed annual iPhone updates?

But the broader proposal Itani makes is that Apple should abandon annual iPhone updates.

The annual iPhone upgrade cycle is burning out Apple. As we’ve established, the company sometimes carries out poor decisions in the name of radical change. Otherwise, as was the case with the iterative iPhone 13 Pro, users wouldn’t care as much about upgrading. But what if there was a third route?

He suggests instead a two-year cycle, but others have advocated for an ad-hoc approach: launch a new iPhone when there’s a reason to.

It’s unlikely that either approach would be financially tenable. Although Apple’s product line-up is very slowly growing, and it is making an increasing amount of money from services, the fact remains that the iPhone brings in around half of the company’s revenue.

Annual updates certainly play an important role in driving those sales, so it’s hard to imagine that the board would ever agree to even partially close the tap. Indeed, Apple chip designer last year suggested that Macs are likely to join the annual update party, and that does appear to be the case.

What’s your view? Do you like annual iPhone updates? Would you prefer to see Apple slow the pace to every other year, or should the company abandon fixed update cycles altogether and just launch new models when it has something interesting to offer?

Please take our poll, and share your thoughts in the comments.

Image: Apple