The Upgrade Holdouts
· The Atlantic
A decade ago, an Apple executive named Phil Schiller had a message for people using computers that were more than five years old. “This is really sad,” he said, with apparent sincerity, to scattered applause during an iPad Pro launch event. The remark was meant, seemingly, to encourage those poor souls to toss their obsolete devices aside and upgrade their way toward the future. (In other words: buy more Apple products.)
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That was 2016, during the era when Apple announced new products to great fanfare, the average iPhone user traded in their device about every 23 months, and releases came with promises that buyers would “never want to go back to old technology again.” Over the years, more and more Americans have begun to rethink this upgrade formula. Some of them are turning to secondhand-tech marketplaces; others are combing eBay to pick up obsolete gadgets that remind them of a more offline time. But there exists another segment of the population that’s taken a different approach: They’ve refused to replace their devices at all.
[Read: There’s no reason to buy a new phone anymore]
Call them legacy users, or upgrade holdouts. They’ve clung to iPhones with home buttons, Bush-era computers, and headphones older than some tech CEOs, even when doing so impedes their ability to complete everyday tasks like emailing or navigation. The holdouts I spoke with don’t necessarily reject technology. Instead, they told me, they just want to use it on their own terms.
Some members of this community are older and put off by the prospect of learning a new interface. Others are minimalists who appreciate the simplicity of older technology, or anti-consumerism advocates looking to retain a sense of autonomy. Many aren’t driven by any sort of principle at all besides mere practicality: When I asked Larye Parkins—the proud user of a Compaq computer released in 2007, the same year that Superbad hit the box office and Myspace dominated social media—what he would call himself, he came back with a simple reply: “I’m just cheap.”
In some cases, their devices are old enough to now be on display in museums. Mike Tyran, a 66-year-old nurse, has long jammed out to ’80s glam bands on his 2003 iPod, a subsequent model of which can be found in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. Tyran also uses a smartphone, computer, and television that are all nearly a decade old and goes by “Old Turkey” on iFixit, a website dedicated to tech repairs. There, he dispenses and gathers tips on maintaining aging gadgets. Like many other holdouts, Tyran has no interest in contributing to e-waste heaps or shelling out five figures for gadgets with AI capabilities. “I have ‘NI’—natural intelligence,” he told me. “I’m good with that.”
The common enemy of upgrade holdouts is planned obsolescence, or deliberately designing products to have short lifespans. The term was coined nearly a century ago by the real-estate broker Bernard London. “There is little demand for new goods when people make their old and worn-out things do, by keeping them longer than they should,” London wrote. Today, no industry is more closely associated with the practice than Big Tech. Take Apple, which in 2020 agreed to settle lawsuits alleging that it was secretly slowing down older iPhones. Beyond “batterygate,” the company has also long engaged in “parts pairing,” the practice of preventing certain third-party parts from working in a repaired device, and discontinued hardware service for hundreds of its products over the years.
When it comes to continuing to use early smartphone models, just getting them to connect can be a problem. The 2G and 3G cellular networks they ran on have been largely phased out across North America (the latter can be found only in certain geographic enclaves). One of those pockets is in Saint John, New Brunswick, where Gary Flanagan—among the 2.3 percent of customers still using Koodo Mobile’s “legacy” network—managed to call me from his iPhone 5S, first released in 2013. Flanagan, a 54-year-old nonprofit consultant, occasionally finds himself unable to download apps or watch YouTube videos, and his younger coworkers rib him. But for the most part, he’s content. “If it works, it works—and I still use it,” Flanagan, who also still wears a pair of Radio Shack headphones he was gifted in 1983, told me.
Nathan Proctor, the right-to-repair campaign director for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, told me that some devices are made obsolete overnight, while others die a slow death as software updates are gradually halted. In order to keep using them, holdouts must contend with constraints in their day-to-day lives. Mark Turner, the owner of a nearly 10-year-old smartphone, told me he’s prolonged buying a newer version of his hearing aids because their pairing app isn’t able to run on his device. Others, such as Kentaro Toyama, a computer scientist and University of Michigan professor who uses an AT&T flip phone, find workarounds to navigate a world powered by QR codes—for Toyama, that means borrowing his wife’s old smartphone.
Such trade-offs can be a small price to pay for maintaining a sense of control over one’s digital presence. As a freelance copywriter and editor, laptops are essential for Josh Fredman. But the 44-year-old has put off replacing his computers—a 16-year-old Toshiba and a 13-year-old HP model—because they serve as an oasis from today’s digital spaces, free from the constant notifications and update alerts of modern operating systems. One of Fredman’s laptops can no longer connect to the internet and has become his “art computer,” used for writing fiction and composing music. He’s replaced faulty fans and hard drives on the other laptop, and installed a gaming package from 2009 that allows him to play Solitaire without the interruption of advertisements.
Keeping old hardware alive is often a communal effort. Last year, iFixit helped host several “install parties” of Linux, an open-source operating system that can breathe new life into obsolete computers, at cafés and libraries across the country. A simple search on YouTube brings up numerous how-to guides on jailbreaking Kindles in order to free older models from Amazon’s software restrictions. And a decade ago, fans of the discontinued smartwatch brand Pebble grouped together to create Rebble, a platform of web services that reinvigorated technically defunct smartwatches. Wayne Seltzer, who got his Pebble watch as a Father’s Day gift in 2015, told me he appreciates the “kindred spirits” nature of the project.
Similar sentiments against tech consumerism are materializing—albeit in a less radical manner—in broader movements toward refurbished gadgets, and in a resurgence in retro electronic devices led by younger generations fatigued by today’s digital overload. But keeping up the lifestyle is a challenge. Most of the people I spoke with either have tech and engineering backgrounds that primed them for implementing complex hardware and software fixes, or are retired and able to put time and effort into learning them.
In some cases, even the most ardent holdouts have been forced to give up. Seltzer eventually sold his Pebble watch after struggling to download certain medical features on it. Flanagan recently discovered that he will have to finally give up the iPhone 5S when the 3G network it runs on is dismantled next spring. And Tyran, or “Old Turkey,” is feeling pressure from his family to upgrade. His daughter, in particular, get frustrated when he can’t see the emojis they send him. But he’d rather live in a world with some inconveniences than have a new one imposed on him. So, for now, he’s still holding out.