the.com/upgrade
the same thing, now with a button you didn't ask to pay for
means To improve something to a higher, newer, or better version — whether a device, a service, your seat, or your situation.
from A straightforward English compound from 'up' plus 'grade,' where 'grade' descends from Latin 'gradus,' meaning a step or degree (the same root that walks through 'gradual' and 'progress'). So an upgrade is literally a step up the ladder — a 19th-century coinage that originally described raising the slope of a railway or road, later climbing into the world of breeding livestock, and finally settling comfortably into software and airline seats.
- origin
- Coined in 1920 for sloping uphill grades
- hidden cost
- New versions often slow older hardware to crawl
- sidegrade
- Industry term for changes that improve nothing
- upgrade culture
- Average phone replaced every two to three years
- reverse
- Some users now downgrade to escape bloated software
for instance
iphone 14 pro — apple's upgrade from iphone 13 in 2022 featuring dynamic island and a16 bionic chip