Terry Myerson, the new head of Microsoft's mobile terminal division, accused Apple of intentionally reducing the performance of old iDevices when releasing new versions of iOS. He refers to the fact that a two-year-old iDevice works very hard with the latest version of iOS, and he is partly right. The iPhone 3GS launched in 2009, more than two and a half years ago, has much poorer performance than an iPhone 4S launched in 2011, but we are talking about completely different hardware and an operating system that runs within the limits of what can be supported on that device . It was normal for iOS 5 not to work very well on the iPhone 3GS, but here it is not entirely the fault of the Apple company, but of the device, which is very old and contains hardware that cannot run in excellent conditions the software developed by the company from Cupertino.
I think Apple ‑‑ you're right, you can download iOS 5 for iPhone 3G, and it won't be usable, but it's possible to install.... It's a great hardware sales tool as far as I can tell. Install this OS which makes your hardware unusably slow, so then you feel compelled to go back to the store and buy a new piece of hardware.
In the interview for BusinessInsider Terry Myerson referred to the iPhone 3G when he talked about iOS 5, but we will assume that the man is informed and he made a mistake by saying iPhone 3G instead of iPhone 3GS because the first device is not even compatible with iOS 5. Coming back to the problem, yes , every major version of iOS works harder on the old generation of iDevices, but this is something that probably everyone is already used to because this is the "normal" course of things. Old generation devices have old hardware that will not run the operating system as well as a new generation device and here of course the manufacturers have their share of "blame" because the new terminals must run perfectly to record good sales.
In conclusion, the guys from Microsoft don't really know how to attack Apple anymore considering that their own mobile terminals don't do so well on the market, but that doesn't mean they aren't right.
