Not just lack of ambition, lack of vision or taste. Liquid Glass is a step back in almost every way, that it got out the door is an indictment of the entire leadership chain.

Recently upgraded. Ughhh...it's just so god-awful terrible.

I think, then, the correct term would be "updated".

Not if the idea is to tank old phone performance to sell new phone hardware!

That’s never a good, long term business model and people are willing to pay more for Apple hardware because it tends to last longer than others. We’ve heard this cynical take for years, but I don’t think that it is really convincing.