I’m just thinking out loud… Not necessarily to “damage” the device, but what if those updates were intentionally designed to work just beyond the hardware limitations of the ‘older model’. Those same updates would be in-line with the capability of the new model. I mean, hell, we all click ‘accept terms & conditions’, so the end user doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on from a legal perspective. Seems like a pretty straight-forward way to make people fall out of love with their current device…
Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I’ve thought this way since the iPhone 4/4S came out…