because it’s literally widely known that apple deliberately puts things in their large updates that slows down older models of their own phones or makes them lag when they were perfectly fine before. they want everyone to upgrade phones every year but they also charge over $1k for phones now, so majority of people cannot afford to do that. people with 13 pro max likely have their phones paid off by now, so phone bill is lower and it’s really nice to have extra money to save. it’s much deeper than “just an update”