[HN Gopher] Forced to upgrade
___________________________________________________________________
Forced to upgrade
Author : SpookyChoice
Score : 149 points
Date : 2024-11-27 07:37 UTC (5 days ago)
(HTM) web link (herman.bearblog.dev)
(TXT) w3m dump (herman.bearblog.dev)
| msephton wrote:
| I felt this way when I was forced to upgrade from IPhone 6s. That
| was a little different in that with that phone iOS had become too
| much for the device's limited RAM, and UI concepts meant for the
| edge-to-edge phones were being forced on phones on which they
| make no sense.
|
| In early 2023 I "upgraded" to an iPhone XS 256GB. It took a while
| to get used to FaceID from TouchID, but it's fine. Perhaps this
| will be its final year? I'm conscious iOS 19 might abandon
| support. Apple have replaced the battery once and replaced a
| speaker at the same time (I guess there know the go bad but it's
| not enough to do a recall). It's a great phone and I too will be
| a little bit when I'm forced to abandon it.
| Hard_Space wrote:
| This also counts for desktop Macs. Twice in the last 20 years I
| have had to explain to my elderly Dad that even though his
| expensive Mac could last another thirty years, it's now a
| paperweight, or something to be 'repurposed'.
|
| I have wondered sometimes if hardware manufacturers actively seek
| out significant road-mapped hardware changes (such as Intel>ARM,
| etc., in case of Apple) in order to keep sales rolling in and
| stop folks 'sitting on' their well-functioning tech.
| nextlevelwizard wrote:
| You have to be quite cynical if you see Apple's transition to
| ARM only as a ploy to get people to replace their Intel based
| machines. I am sure it is a nice bonus, but performance and
| efficiency just went through the roof.
|
| With yearly iPhone releases it is harder to justify upgrades.
| Like for author - upgrading from working phone to newer model
| while not gaining anything significant is stupid.
| IndrekR wrote:
| If the computer here is 20 years old, then we are talking
| about PowerPC based Mac. So two transitions over this devices
| lifetime: PowerPC -> Intel -> ARM.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| Yeah, it was really strange when Apple migrated to the
| niche x86 architecture. Definitely a money grab.
| obmelvin wrote:
| Apple had good reasons for both transitions. In the scheme
| of 'forced upgrades' these are about as good as you're
| going to get. Also, if the OPs dad is using the computer
| for so little that it would last another 30 years, they
| certainly have no need to upgrade computers. No reason one
| can't keep using an intel iMac to browse the web
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >With yearly iPhone releases it is harder to justify
| upgrades.
|
| It might be helpful to think of them like cars: New models
| every year, but customers only "upgrade" every 10 to 20
| years.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| I don't think it really matters if some people upgrade more
| frequently as long as the old devices enter the secondary
| market.
|
| What we don't want is functional devices rotting in a
| drawer or landfill.
| derbOac wrote:
| The blog post reminded me of my last laptop upgrade (Macbook
| Air) as well. I was perfectly happy with the old laptop,
| nothing wrong with the hardware for me, but software releases
| started depending on new OSes and then I couldn't install those
| any longer. No "graceful degradation", and as far as I could
| tell the limitation was just the size of the storage drive for
| the OS in particular -- not the nature of the chip itself or
| drivers or anything like that.
|
| I don't necessarily attribute anything nefarious to anything,
| but collectively the whole thing seems like madness to me.
| What's ironic is I bet if I put linux on that machine, it (a)
| would be totally feasible to install recent versions, and (b)
| all the latest versions of the software I needed would be there
| for those versions. It seems like there needs to be some
| principled way of maintaining installs on older hardware... or
| I guess I just have to weigh this issue more heavily in my
| decision making about OSes in the future.
| esskay wrote:
| Yup my dad bought an iMac back in 2014. It was that one model
| that didn't support targeted display mode. It broke about a
| month back (looks like drive failure) but had been having tons
| of issues before this due to newer software dropping support.
|
| He should be able to just buy a cheap mac mini second hand and
| plug it into that gorgious 5k imac display, but nope. Cant do
| that.
|
| Apple just like every other company could not give less of a
| crap about ewaste. There is absolutely zero reason why they
| couldn't relax the limits on older hardware to allow it to be
| repurposed.
|
| What's now going to happen in my dads case is he'll buy a cheap
| 4k monitor, probably a second hand mac mini and send the iMac
| to a charity for recycling.
|
| The whole Intel -> ARM thing though was absolutely about
| performance and Intel's utterly awful processors holding them
| back. The forced upgrades were just a bonus for Apple.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| There is a third party upgrade that will turn those retina
| iMacs into a monitor.
| obmelvin wrote:
| Why can't your dad keep using his existing computer? Sure, if
| you make your living on the computer the new laptops are great.
| But if he's just checking email, photos, etc - I don't know why
| his computer needs to become a paperweight
| nradov wrote:
| At some point you no longer get security upgrades. Or new web
| browser versions aren't available and you're unable to access
| certain sites. In some cases there are workarounds like
| installing an open source OS but that's too much hassle for
| most consumers.
| curun1r wrote:
| As someone who just upgraded from an intel to M4, I feel this.
| But I do wish I had known about OpenCore [0]. Ironically, I
| learned about it while on a bit of YouTube binge of Mac videos
| in preparation for my new one arriving. As much as the
| ecosystem has moved on from Intel, I think I'll be able to keep
| using my old MBP for a while longer if I can keep it on the
| latest version of MacOS.
|
| [0] https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/
| thaumaturgy wrote:
| I'm still daily-driving an iPhone 7, so I sympathize. A few apps
| have complained about the older OS; so far I've been able to
| react by deleting the apps.
|
| Smartphones cause a truly astonishing amount of waste
| (https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2018/12/11/right-to-repair-...:
| ~151 million phones discarded in the US each year, as of 2018),
| to say nothing of the various social follow-on effects that are
| being argued to death elsewhere. I was a very late smartphone
| adopter and I'm already trying to reduce the amount I depend on
| this thing; too much of their marketing always struck me as being
| more akin to new sneakers than life-improving tech.
|
| As a dev I understand the challenges of supporting older
| hardware. As a conscious consumer, I wish there were another
| option available in the market, and I haven't yet decided what
| I'll do when my current device finally needs to be retired.
| nextlevelwizard wrote:
| Yearly phone upgrades are akin to new sneakers. People want the
| latest thing, they do not need it. Phones have not improved for
| years in significant ways. There has been no new features. Only
| improvement has been cameras, but really how good of a camera
| does your average person need in their daily lives?
| adastra22 wrote:
| Do your sneakers last 7 years? Mine barely last 1.
| mnky9800n wrote:
| I feel like they used to last longer but now I get literal
| holes in them
| nextlevelwizard wrote:
| Time span is different, but people who like sneakers buy
| multiples per year.
| epistasis wrote:
| That article is awfully short on estimating environmental
| impact.
|
| Other sources on the web say that, including 4 years of
| electricity usage, an iPhone's total carbon impact is ~175
| pounds of CO2, or about 9 gallons of gasoline. Which is roughly
| 0.25% of emissions from driving a car the average amount for
| four years.
|
| Imperceptible changes to urban planning to shave off a few
| miles of driving would have a bigger impact than doubling the
| lifetimes of mobile phones.
| akie wrote:
| Of course the tragedy is that we're doing neither.
| epistasis wrote:
| I would argue that not lowering our car use drastically is
| a tragedy, and that our phone waste is a rounding error in
| comparison. And that the second tragedy is that so much
| media effort is spent focusing the public on rather
| meaningless phone waste rather than something meaningful
| like car use.
| conradfr wrote:
| Does it takes into account all the things that a smartphone
| replaces, in both usage and hardware?
| thaumaturgy wrote:
| Let's not define "environmental impact" solely in terms of
| carbon emissions and then do a trivial comparison to some
| mundane activity.
|
| Smartphones _may_ have a low carbon emission footprint
| relative to some other things (numbers I found varied widely)
| and that still wouldn 't be a good argument for discarding
| them unnecessarily.
|
| Their production and disposal has a great deal of other side
| effects that aren't defined by carbon emissions, including
| the mining and refining of rare metals. I would very much
| like to link a comprehensive examination of this here but I
| regret that I haven't got one in my bookmarks already and
| search results are being as useless as usual. If anyone else
| has a particularly great link to share I'd love to see it
| too.
| epistasis wrote:
| You're definitely helping me prove my point, what are those
| other environmental impacts?
|
| Let's imagine we can stop a single car from needing to be
| produced: that will dwarf all the mining impacts from
| probably thousands of phones! Cars are soooo much worse
| along any angle you can possibly imagine, yet people are
| misdirected from their use of cars to worrying about
| miniscuke rounding errors from their phones.
| immibis wrote:
| so let's stop unnecessary cars and unnecessary phones
| epistasis wrote:
| The first step when doing optimization is to measure, so
| that one knows where efforts have significant results.
|
| I am arguing that our efforts should be in proportion to
| their payoff for environmental efforts as well.
|
| Or more precisely, we should spend our environmental
| efforts in ways that maximize their returns.
|
| Thus, here I am spending lots of time commenting on how a
| tiny minor change in driving habits will have bigger
| effects than large changes in phone habits.
|
| Urban planning in the US responds to the demands of the
| residents. We should be asking all residents demand
| alternatives to driving.
| immibis wrote:
| Urban planning in the US was a result of the oil lobby.
| It has nothing to do with the demands of residents except
| insofar as they were also brainwashed by the oil lobby.
| epistasis wrote:
| It can't be limited to just the oil lobby, it was a
| general movement with lots of different proponents, not
| the least the car companies! In fact the car companies
| quite a bit more. But the urban planning establishment
| definitely adopted car-only infrastructure with gusto,
| without any direct oil or car money behind it.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Suppose (made up scenario) we can stop a million phones
| being discarded every week by mandating that camera
| modules have to be replaceable by third-parties.
|
| We can drop that legislation tomorrow, basically no
| problem.
|
| Are you gonna say, no we have to wait and do cars first
| because a car is equal in carbon to 20 phones (or
| whatever).
|
| Cars are one of the large container targets, but it takes
| years to change urban environments, to build
| transportation infrastructure, to change building zones,
| etc., to prepare the way for people using alternative
| transport (or none). Unless you can win over your
| citizens (and politicians who are in lobbies pockets) for
| a grand plan like 'no more new cars from now on'.
| epistasis wrote:
| That cars are such a slow mover is the reason that we
| need to focus on it now, rather than later.
|
| I don't think you hypothetical would change even a tiny
| fraction of phone replacements, but even if it did,
| legislative bandwidth in the US is _extremely_ low and
| should be reserved for the high impact changes. Anything
| that distracts from the must-do messages is quite likely
| to be harmful.
|
| We make people jump through all sorts of hoops for
| plastic straws and plastic bags that have approximately
| zero environmental win compared to far smaller changes to
| their car use.
|
| The real problem is the social attitude that cars can not
| be touched or criticized. That needs to start changing.
|
| Our phones are not the core of climate change, our cars
| and all the massive environmental damage from mining the
| necessary minerals for them really are.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Those rare metals are not gone, they are inside the
| discarded phones to be mined again.
| xorcist wrote:
| Why is carbon emissions a suitable measurement of the
| environmental impact of electronic waste?
| epistasis wrote:
| I am using it because it's the only impact that I see
| measured anywhere on electronic waste, and I have spent a
| fair amount of time trying to figure it out on my own.
|
| If you have a better quantification of species lost, of
| ecological diversity lost, of land lost, I would absolutely
| love to hear it, but I have not found anything better
| despite my research!
|
| Also, the environmental and ecological damage that we are
| facing from global warming is so utterly massive in
| comparison to all other ecological damage that we do, that
| any other avoided damage needs to be placed in the context
| of halting global warming. Humans will survive climate
| change, and a lot of other species will survive too, but
| the dieoff of species from it is so shocking that focusing
| on the small amounts of mining for phones in comparison to
| the massive amounts of mining and e-waste from cars seems,
| well, at best misguided. And if I'm being more honest, I
| think it's actually quite harmful to environmental action
| to focus any attention on phones when action on cars is so
| much more impactful.
| eesmith wrote:
| "The use phase of a smartphone is not the most significant in
| the life cycle, in terms of [greenhouse gas] emissions",
| https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11367-015-0909-4 ,
| from 10 years ago.
|
| From https://eeb.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Coolproducts-
| repo... (2019):
|
| "Our analysis shows that a 1-year lifetime extension of all
| smartphones in the EU would save 2.1 Mt CO2 per year by 2030,
| the equivalent of taking over a million cars off the roads. A
| lifetime extension of 3 years would save around 4.3 MtCO2.
| And a 5-year extension would correspond to about 5.5 MtCO2."
|
| The extra global warming contributions come from
| "manufacturing, transportation and end-of-life phases", and
| the increasing dependency on remote servers.
| epistasis wrote:
| Exactly, it's the production of the phones where most of
| the carbon is generated.
|
| As for the comparisons there, it's hard to make head or
| tails of the meaning, because the "context" provided is
| apples to oranges. A million cars versus how many phones?
| Or a million cars versus how many cars in Europe? Citing a
| big number does not mean much unless we have something to
| compare that big number to, and I question the intentions
| of such "bald big numbers" because I see it so often used
| to muddy the waters and confuse people on many topics. For
| example, nuclear advocates will often disparage solar,
| talking about X million square kilometers without giving
| any context on whether that's actually a big number or not.
|
| 2.1Mt CO2 (over how many years with that "by 2030") versus
| how many Gt Co2 per year? Seems to be 2.5-3.1Gt/year based
| on a web search..
|
| And what percentage of total EU emissions are from cars?
|
| These numbers also make the argument that phones are a
| small rounding error compared to other much bigger actions.
|
| Should we mandate repairability? Of course! It's good! But
| getting bent out of shape on the impact of phones compared
| to far more common and wasteful practices is a bad use of
| our limited amount of time to make drastic action.
|
| And the EU is far better on cars than the US, so perhaps it
| makes more sense for them to take action on phones, but in
| the US, our car addiction makes for far better and
| practical environmental action.
| keybored wrote:
| > Imperceptible changes to urban planning to shave off a few
| miles of driving would have a bigger impact than doubling the
| lifetimes of mobile phones.
|
| Urban planning too obviously cannot be pinned on consumer
| choices. Which is why it would never become the locus of
| attention.
|
| I don't know if you are right or wrong about this point. But
| nonetheless.
| epistasis wrote:
| > cannot be pinned on consumer choices. Which is why it
| would never become the locus of attention.
|
| Can you explain your reasoning here? I think you are saying
| that we focus all of our environmental action through the
| lens of consumer choice, which is something that I also
| think is true.
|
| We can encourage the public to make better individual
| choices, but a far better approach is to change the system
| so that the default choice is the best choice.
|
| But when it comes to phones, a lot of the policy action
| seems to be set on forcing companies to behave in a certain
| way, which IMHO is perfectly cromulent if the environmental
| payoff is proprotionate to the effort.
|
| My focus has been on changing the attitudes towards policy
| changes that broaden the choices of individuals, to allow
| them to even choose a better path that is not currently
| available, because urban planning has banned walkable
| neighborhoods in nearly every part of every city.
| antasvara wrote:
| There are a lot of carbon emissions from a variety of
| sources. Coal fired power generates more CO2 in the US than
| all US automobiles combined. Does that mean we should
| completely ignore automobiles and focus on coal power?
|
| Focusing on the "smallest" problem at the expense of the
| "biggest" is the wrong approach. But ignoring small problems
| that are easier to fix is also the wrong approach. The author
| is using a phone that is more than 6 years old and still
| functions; making it easier to continue using it feels like
| an easier problem than changing urban planning.
| epistasis wrote:
| Coal is a dead man walking, not just in the US, but around
| the world. Systematic market forces have eliminated any
| financial advantage to coal. China uses it to fill in for
| gaps in renewables, but has very low capacity factors for
| their plants.
|
| IMHO we should spend lobbying efforts on the things that
| will have greater effects, like approving apartment
| buildings in walkable areas.
|
| I agree with your assessment that we should change what we
| can and should optimize how we spend our time creating
| change, but IMHO the best possible outcome of advocating
| for phone change is that people think "hey yeah let's
| change this," but then get told "oh so you are OK with that
| change, how about something far far bigger for small
| effort?"
|
| We seriously only need to do very small changes to urban
| planning to effect massive change compared to phones. And
| those small changes have the effect of growing. And they
| are necessary urban planning changes, and the longer we put
| them off the less likely we can have the snowball rolling
| where we need it to be.
| mrweasel wrote:
| I only replaced my iPhone 7 in 2021, with an SE, because it's a
| work phone and they didn't want to deal with battery
| replacement. It was (/is) is a perfectly capable phone for the
| vast majority of people.
| selykg wrote:
| I always trade my phones in to Apple, who reuse/recycle large
| portions of it.
|
| https://abcnews.go.com/Business/recycled-iphones-apple-produ...
|
| Not sure if there's a better document that talks more about it,
| that was just what I could quickly find.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| I love that Apple locks other people out of using even
| genuine parts for repairs and servicing, but is happy to
| collect them from people to reuse, themselves.
| dataflow wrote:
| When you make the decision to not support older hardware (whether
| directly or indirectly), you're making a decision that the
| maintenance burden you're trying to avoid is more important than
| the environmental impact of users disposing of & buying hardware.
|
| Which... maybe it is; who am I to suggest different priorities
| for other people. But it would be nice for engineers and
| businesses to at least think about this and make such a decision
| consciously.
| michaelsshaw wrote:
| >Which... maybe it is; who am I to suggest different priorities
| for other people
|
| I mean, I get the sentiment. But I live in this world too, and
| the E-Waste and forced obsolescence(or whatever you'd call it
| in this particular instance) does have an effect on me,
| personally. So yes, we should absolutely have a say, despite
| the fact that at this time we actively do not. In the US, our
| environmental policy is laughably inadequate, and with what
| happened in the election, we're about to be on a path of
| complete self-annihilation, environmentally speaking.
|
| It's a bit of a long-winded way of explaining myself here, but
| we definitely shouldn't refrain from serious issues because you
| feel you may be stepping on others' toes.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Let's be real here: Most of us detest forced upgrades because
| it is _Fucking Inconvenient(tm)_. We don 't want to move away
| from Space Bar Heating[1] once we've gotten established, and
| screw everyone who tries taking it away.
|
| I'm sure a small minority might also have an environmental
| beef, but arguing green isn't going to grab peoples' hearts.
|
| [1]: https://xkcd.com/1172/
| michaelsshaw wrote:
| >I'm sure a small minority might also have an environmental
| beef, but arguing green isn't going to grab peoples'
| hearts.
|
| That's kind of what it so disheartening about this whole
| issue. It's seriously urgent, and yet I routinely meet
| people who actively deny what is actual undeniable fact,
| claiming various sources of deception (deepstate, lizards,
| Nancy Pelosi, etc). A good amount of the rest don't care.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _We don 't want to move away from Space Bar Heating[1]
| once we've gotten established, and screw everyone who tries
| taking it away._
|
| This implies what people want to stick to is some
| inefficient BS workflow.
|
| As opposed to what's usually the case: more stable, tested,
| and loved features, changed due to tech fads, to make the
| product appear new for marketing, to squeeze extra profit
| despite inconveniencing users, or just for change's sake.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| As far as the rest of the tech world moving ever forward
| is concerned, it is "some inefficient bullshit workflow".
|
| I don't necessarily agree with it, but that's certainly
| the wider consensus.
| persnickety wrote:
| The environmental impact grows a lot more with the number of
| sold product than the maintenance burden.
|
| For a business that sold a thousand units with a handful
| remaining, the calculation is going to be a lot less dominated
| by impact than for a giant who sold millions and has thousands
| still in use.
|
| And if there's a giant in this industry, that's Apple.
| thefz wrote:
| We are talking about Apple, who is willing to chop off a
| feature from a product just to sell you the 39$ dongle later.
|
| The couldn't give less shits about the environment.
| harywilke wrote:
| Ah yes, the company that famously designed their headquarters
| with zero regard to the environment. The company that
| included a leaflet titled 'Why the brown box?' back in the
| 90's when they switched to unbleached cardboard shipping
| boxes for their computers. Nope they have never given a
| though about the environment. It's just not in their
| corporate dna.
| coldtea wrote:
| Wow, they changed bleached with unbleached cardboard! They
| made some token environmental changes to their $1B
| headquarter glass, metal, and concrete behemoth.
|
| I'm pretty sure they have switched to paper straws on their
| cafeteria too!
| thescriptkiddie wrote:
| You're being sarcastic but they actually did design their
| new headquarters with zero regard for the environment. They
| built it in an area where there is not enough housing for
| their employees and public transportation is non-existent.
| The parking structure is larger than the office building.
| The building itself is like a giant greenhouse requiring
| cooling even in the winter.
| thefz wrote:
| Same company against right to repair, I wonder how many
| broken parts thrown away it took to offset some hundred
| carbon boxes.
|
| Don't fall for the marketing.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _you 're making a decision that the maintenance burden you're
| trying to avoid is more important than the environmental impact
| of users disposing of & buying hardware._
|
| Companies don't care for the "environmental impact". When they
| pretend to, it's a token gesture to make certain customer
| demographics feel good. At best they will sacrifice a slither
| of their margins, but if there's a conflict between
| environmental impact and any bigger slice of their profit,
| they'll go for profit anytime.
|
| > _Which... maybe it is; who am I to suggest different
| priorities for other people_
|
| Environmental impact is about the commons, so it shouldn't be
| just about whatever personal priorities each has.
| thescriptkiddie wrote:
| This is an example of the difficult (politically not
| technically) problem of companies externalizing costs. Apple
| washing their hands of the burden of maintaining software for
| old hardware is no different than Exxon washing their hands of
| the burden of capping abandoned oil wells. In both cases the
| company saves money by costing society more.
| Klonoar wrote:
| If you were on an iPhone 8 and wanted to upgrade but keep
| TouchID, the SE3 is still a fine device.
|
| It's possible I'll grab one before the SE4 just to hold on to
| TouchID a bit longer.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Upgrading to an iPhone 16 seems like a weird choice, given that
| the SE3 exists and it pretty much perfect. One argument that I
| can see it that the 16 is two years newer, and should get
| updates at least two year more. The price difference between
| the two phones however is much to big to justify getting the
| 16, unless there's some feature you really need.
| HermanMartinus wrote:
| Hey, author here. I decided on the 16 since its support
| lifetime started this year. If I'd gotten the SE (which I
| seriously considered since it has a more appealing form
| factor and touchID) I would only have a 4 year support
| lifetime as opposed to the full 6.
| koliber wrote:
| I feel the same as the author. I also can't come up with any
| satisfying solution. I empathize with apple and don't expect them
| to support old hardware forever. The only solution I can think of
| is allowing people to support older hardware themselves. This is
| one of the strongest arguments for loosening the walled garden
| for older devices.
| michaelsshaw wrote:
| It's completely ridiculous that these phones are as non-
| hackable as they are. When maintaining the illusion they sell
| of their stuff being "magic" (so therefore you can't hack on
| it) over the seriously big fucking issue of pollution and
| E-waste, I'd go a bit further than saying it's annoying. It's
| deeply immoral.
| maeil wrote:
| > I also can't come up with any satisfying solution.
|
| Laws. As someone else suggested here, the EU mandates 5 years
| of support. Make it 10.
|
| Too big of a barrier that cripples new entrants? Apply it only
| to megacorps, just like the DMA. Easy peasy.
|
| It's trivially easy to solve this, but late stage capitalism's
| resulting regulatory capture prevents it.
| guessmyname wrote:
| If it makes you feel better, I work at Apple and I still use the
| iPhone 8 since 2017.
| rubymamis wrote:
| > I also miss TouchID.
|
| I agree - Touch ID is far superior to Face ID.
| walterbell wrote:
| It works well on iPad Air power button. Apple should include
| TouchID on all Pro device power buttons.
| 9x39 wrote:
| What do you like about Touch ID? I think I'd switch platforms
| before going away from Face ID, it's so trivial to authenticate
| without even moving a muscle that I don't even think about it.
|
| I have an older iPad with touch ID, and I simply turned it off
| because it felt like an anachronism in the experience.
| Cheezmeister wrote:
| Fingerprint vs Face shines while (for instance) having a
| conversation and, because you have manners, want to maintain
| eye contact while pulling up a photo of that thing you are
| describing, or to make sure that's just a robocall and not
| your wife with an emergency.
|
| It also shines first thing in the morning where your hair and
| eyes are so disheveled that even Siri didn't recognize you.
| Your thumb is probably still the same shape.
| kstrauser wrote:
| > want to maintain eye contact while pulling up a photo of
| that thing you are describing
|
| Unless your eyes point in markedly different directions,
| I'm having a hard time imagining how you'd manage that
| anyway.
| grishka wrote:
| Android phones are kinda better in this regard because if you
| really insist, you can take matters into your own hands and
| install a custom ROM. Especially now that GSIs (generic system
| images) are a thing.
|
| Really though, why do we keep updating OSes? I understand
| security updates, but why do these major yearly releases have to
| keep happening? What do they solve? Why can't we for once just
| settle for something in this cursed industry? Why can't we
| release finished products?
| lentil wrote:
| True for the OS, but you won't get firmware updates/security
| patches once the upstream vendor stops support.
| xkriva11 wrote:
| Unusability preservation law: Whenever a technology gets into a
| state where it becomes usable, when it starts to suit you, you
| get into it and you are satisfied with it, something always
| happens that either completely impairs it or makes working with
| it significantly uncomfortable.
| genpfault wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME#GNOME_3
| ciconia wrote:
| The real question, IMO, is why the need to release a new model
| every year? I think a lot of the churn of both hardware and
| software had nothing to do with technological progress, and
| everything to do with generating sales.
| Shank wrote:
| Well, it does obviously have to do with generating sales. But
| to play devil's advocate, I never have enough battery life,
| even with a fresh battery. There are incremental improvements,
| year-over-year, in terms of processor efficiency. I take a lot
| of photos, and I definitely notice having a 5x optical zoom
| now. There _are_ details that some people would say are worth
| upgrading. But it is not the case that all people fit this
| template.
| lloeki wrote:
| > Well, it does obviously have to do with generating sales.
|
| I don't think it's that obvious, and I don't think
| manufacturers count on it ("it" being short length updates)
|
| Instead I think it's about handling competition: say a
| manufacturer updates their product line every 3 years, should
| a user that kept their phone for a while need to buy in the
| middle to last bout, they'll look at the market and see "oh
| that other manufacturer has released an update to their
| product line a month ago, so I'm going to buy that instead of
| a 2yo product from my current manufacturer". The comparison
| may be done on any kind of metric but it ultimately comes
| down to what's state of the art at a given point in time.
|
| It doesn't mean the user hasn't kept their previous phone a
| long time. But to be competitive _across the time continuum_
| the product line needs to be fresh enough.
|
| In that sense it generates sale, or rather, helps with
| retention, not by having one update every year or other year,
| but by creating the opportunity to stay within one's current
| brand.
|
| I think leading manufacturers have realised a long time ago
| that satisfied customers are what generates reliable sales
| and growth long term. Even Samsung, king of the shiny
| "innovative"-but-useless bullet-point feature list have
| somewhat gotten their act together.
| keiferski wrote:
| You kind of answered your own question there. These are
| businesses, not research labs. Sales comes first, as is to be
| expected.
| toast0 wrote:
| I don't think it's unreasonable to release new hardware every
| year. Apple is iterating on CPUs on an annual basis, and the
| new CPUs make for a better phone. It probably doesn't often
| make sense for a user to upgrade a single step (anymore), but
| if you're buying, the newer one has a better cpu, so it's worth
| considering.
|
| That'a separate from software churn though. Desktop OSes tend
| to support hardware for much longer than mobile OSes. Apple
| does better than Android here, but they both should do better.
| My perception is that most android apps support much older
| versions of Android than iOS apps support of iOS, but I don't
| know how that ends up looking for age of device supported.
| lloeki wrote:
| > That'a separate from software churn though.
|
| I'd say that is correct. In a sense it's like part
| availability for cars or washing machines, and is similarly
| quite an outrageous situation too: around here law mandates
| 10y of parts availability; trouble is, reliability has
| progressively improved to the point that this becomes
| ludicrously insufficient.
|
| An example: I bought a car five years ago, it's well tended
| and shows no sign of being anywhere close to the scrape yard
| five years from now, yet parts will become hard to come by;
| case in point my other car is turning 16 (sixteen!) and
| barring the need for a full body paint job because the
| varnish is gradually peeling away (which is kinda expected),
| is equally in such good order as to most probably be in
| similar condition for another 10-15 years with proper
| maintenance; but will I be able to? Parts are getting rarer
| as they've been in a stock-remainder only basis for five
| years.
|
| Another example: my washing machine had a part fail at the 7
| year mark. Fine, parts are supposed to be available, so just
| repair? Well, the part moved out of production to stock-basis
| because they evaluated statistically that they have enough
| stock to cover the 10y mark. Problem: the stock is a sort of
| archival with glacial operation speeds, the time quoted for
| part shipping was shy of 6 months, and I couldn't find a
| replacement. So I bought a new machine out of sheer
| necessity.
|
| 10y is way too short for parts. Software, notably OS and its
| compatibility primitives for third party software, should be
| counted as parts. 7y for software is better than before but
| still way too short.
|
| > Desktop OSes tend to support hardware for much longer than
| mobile OSes.
|
| I feel like this is increasingly less true, at least to the
| point that the difference becomes immaterial to the problem.
| toast0 wrote:
| Windows 11 needs an SSE4.2, which limits to Intel Nehalem
| and newer (2008+), although I don't know what revision
| Atoms are needed, and AMD Bulldozer and newer (2011+).
|
| You'll most likely need to bypass the cpu model check, and
| the tpm check for an older machine, but otherwise should
| work. Windows 10 support's more hardware, of course. I
| forget where Linux cuts off now, I think it's somewhere
| between a 486 and a Pentium Pro/II. Although I'd expect you
| do need a 64-bit CPU to run modern software.
| mrweasel wrote:
| > I don't think it's unreasonable to release new hardware
| every year.
|
| It wasn't ten years ago, but now they seem to be struggling
| to give you an actual reason for the new models to exist. The
| argument that not everyone upgrades at the same pace is not
| unreasonable, but still, it makes absolutely no difference if
| you get the iPhone 13, 14, 15 or 16. The number of people who
| needs the 16 for something in particular is so small that it
| wouldn't be a market in it's own right.
| bmicraft wrote:
| > Apple does better than Android here
|
| Google is supporting their current models until at least Q2
| 2031.
| lloeki wrote:
| If you consider one person in isolation it sure does not make
| sense to release a new phone every year.
|
| If you consider all users though, they most certainly do not
| buy/upgrade _at the same time_. So let 's say a new generation
| is released every three years, for a given user when buy-time
| comes they'd be buying a brand new phone that is 1.5 years old
| tech on average, 2.9 worst case. Releasing a new phone each
| year means there is the _opportunity_ to buy the up-to-date
| technology (whether it 's a flagship or an economic version) at
| any particular point in time.
|
| Opportunity does not mean necessity. By and large once people
| buy a phone and are happy with it they don't change it til it's
| dead or slow. Most I've seen keep it even way beyond the major
| version support threshold, or even security update threshold
| (which can happen faster than expected when people buy refurbs
| or older models, which they do). They're appliances. There are
| new models of cars or TVs or washing machines every year, yet
| virtually nobody changes those every year. One just buys the
| best one within their budget x identified use case at a given
| point in time.
|
| In my experience the persona that buys a new phone every year
| used to exist in the early smartphone days, but today is by and
| large an outlier figure.
|
| Not that mobile carriers like that, instead they try to keep
| the churn alive against the tide, because they want customers
| locked in so they have you buy carrier-locked phones at a
| rebate under a 1y contract and dearly want you to renew at the
| end, which means enticing you to get a new, carrier-locked
| phone.
|
| The only ones I see changing phones regularly are the ones
| buying phones as consumables instead of appliances - less
| "washing machine", more "toilet paper", the kind of phone that
| is cheap and underpowered, borderlining on unusable (or
| outright so, which I consider to be defective by design)
| e-waste right out of the assembly line. They don't care about
| the device, so they don't pay attention, so they break it every
| rand(0..6) mo, and then the cost to repair is barely lower than
| the price new plus "it was so slow anyway", so they buy a new
| cheap one and the circle starts again; which doesn't quite work
| out financially of course, they'd be better off buying a good
| phone and paying attention to it (which they would simply
| because it's not cheap). But back to the point, this kind of
| persona doesn't care at all about the device "newness".
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| > everything to do with generating sales
|
| You say this like it's a bad thing, and maybe it is, but it's
| hardly a surprising thing.
|
| Literally everything Apple does is entirely about generating
| sales. They're not running a charity for the benefit of their
| fans. The only reason to come up with designs that people like
| is to sell them.
| nekobrain wrote:
| Just "upgraded" to a Pixel 8 from a 4a (it wasn't even my
| intention to do so, went to have my 4a battery replaced but the
| shop botched the job and I needed a working phone quickly), I
| agree with every point made by the author. It does the same
| things as the 4a did, just marginally faster. Screen is better
| but I don't really care, and using it with one hand is harder. On
| top of that, I'm praying the dreaded green screen issue does not
| appear (it did on a coworker's Pixel 8). Oh well, at least I got
| security updates now...
| chr15m wrote:
| This situation doesn't happen with hardware running an open
| source OS. For example laptops running Linux can upgrade
| basically forever. Why are community maintained open source OSes
| better at this than commercially maintained proprietary OSes?
| amatecha wrote:
| Yup, I use computers from 2012 which are still running the
| absolute latest software just fine. Linux, OpenBSD, FreeBSD,
| etc. :)
| TheDong wrote:
| The richest company in the world became the richest company in
| the world in part by forcing its users to buy new hardware
| regularly.
|
| Linux doesn't have a financial incentive to delete the code
| that supports 5 year old processors, but Apple does have such a
| financial incentive.
| 9x39 wrote:
| Open source OS's also don't do anything for the typical person
| in a feature sense so there's way less to go wrong and way
| fewer users to ever discover/report issues. Non-technical users
| want to run specific hardware like new displays or accessories
| or use apps like a game or a specific commercial program, not
| run an OS. Without those users, there's no need to grow the
| feature set as aggressively.
| coldtea wrote:
| Because community maintained open source OSes don't need to
| make money.
| okanat wrote:
| It is more about hardware / software bundling than the openness
| of the source code. Windows is as proprietary as it gets. I was
| able to upgrade my desktop PC from 2008 to Windows 10. It
| required removing quite a bit bloatware but it works.
|
| Actually, I have a negative example for FOSS for you. I have a
| laptop with an Nvidia GPU on it from 2012. I cannot use it
| under Linux since Linux world is terrible at API / ABI
| stability. So Nvidia driver has stopped working. I can still
| use the laptop fully functional with Windows 11.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > Actually, I have a negative example for FOSS for you. I
| have a laptop with an Nvidia GPU on it from 2012. I cannot
| use it under Linux since Linux world is terrible at API / ABI
| stability. So Nvidia driver has stopped working.
|
| Your example of FOSS not working... is the proprietary nvidia
| driver breaking? Even though it would almost certainly work
| if your card were supported by the open source drivers?
| immibis wrote:
| The proprietary Nvidia driver works fine. Linux from this
| decade refuses to work with it. Linux broke it, not Nvidia.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Linux is very explicit (and always has been) about not
| having a stable driver API or ABI; if nvidia tries to
| target that unstable interface, they are absolutely
| responsible for the result.
| immibis wrote:
| If I upgrade Windows, and it breaks my line-of-business
| program, whose fault is it?
|
| Hint: It's the one that changed.
| zokier wrote:
| What is to me frustrating is how artificial these lifecycles
| feel. Even more so on Android side. Just upstream your drivers
| and "support" should be pretty much free.
| genpfault wrote:
| Recently upgraded to a Pixel 8 from a different aarch64 phone
| (OnePlus Nord N100) and discovered that I can't run 32-bit apps
| anymore :(
| immibis wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42038139
| ndriscoll wrote:
| "Just" is a fine word to use when a solution is not
| technically complicated, and it's important that people with
| technical understanding express that it really is "just" that
| simple. That way, if the reason they don't do that is that
| they and their business partners don't _want_ to, citizens
| know it 's reasonable to ask their governments to _make_
| those companies release driver /firmware source code and/or
| hardware documentation as part of consumer protection laws.
| immibis wrote:
| Upstreaming stuff _is_ complicated. You can 't just throw
| your barely working driver over the wall at Linus. You have
| to put effort into it, and keep putting effort into it.
| thefz wrote:
| Wasn't EU's right to repair law also mandating at least 5 years
| of updates? Just make 10.
|
| With all the money these companies make, they can dedicate some
| people to taking care of legacy hardware.
| esskay wrote:
| It's sad that we consider 5-10 years to be "legacy" in any way
| shape or form. It does seem to very much just be at the
| consumer level. We've still got servers chugging away in
| datacenters that are pushing 15 years old and still have
| several years of life left in them.
| objclxt wrote:
| > It does seem to very much just be at the consumer level.
| We've still got servers chugging away in datacenters that are
| pushing 15 years old and still have several years of life
| left in them.
|
| The datacenter is temperature controlled and the air is
| filtered. The server is locked in the rack and never moves.
| By comparison, your laptop or your phone go through hell on a
| daily basis.
| rini17 wrote:
| Speak for yourself. Some people prefer to handle their
| devices with care and expect to get longevity in return.
| objclxt wrote:
| > Some people prefer to handle their devices with care
| and expect to get longevity in return
|
| I guarantee you however carefully you are handling your
| device it is a world apart from a datacenter.
| rini17 wrote:
| So? Refurbished ThinkPads with added 10+yr life
| expectance don't exist?
| zerd wrote:
| How does that impact software support lifetime?
| lars_francke wrote:
| An additional regulation that will come into effect soon (fully
| only in 2027) is the Cyber Resilience Act which will require
| all manufacturers to provide at least security updates for
| however long a "reasonable user" expects to get security
| updates.
|
| The recitals say: "In determining a support period, a
| manufacturer should take into account in particular reasonable
| user expectations, the nature of the product, as well as
| relevant Union law determining the lifetime of products with
| digital elements."
|
| and
|
| "The support period for which the manufacturer ensures the
| effective handling of vulnerabilities should be no less than
| five years, unless the lifetime of the product with digital
| elements is less than five years[...]"
|
| So....it's a bit up to us to ask vendors for updates for older
| devices so that we can maybe slowly move the baseline of what a
| "reasonable user expectation" is.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| > _As far as I can tell Apple has the longest support lifetime of
| 6 years, followed closely by Samsung with 4 years of major
| Android OS upgrades and 5 years of security updates._
|
| Anecdote of Samsung support from a few years ago on a decidedly-
| not-flagship phone (just straight-up copying from a comment I
| wrote a couple of years ago--):
|
| In April 2019, I needed to rapidly obtain a device, and purchased
| a Samsung Galaxy J1 (2016) from a major retailer in Australia. I
| later discovered that this model had already been EOL for _over a
| year_ when I purchased it. (It was released with 5.1.1, got its
| last security patch in November 2017, and was actively
| unsupported no later than March 2018. The handset should very
| obviously have been updated to Android 6, if not released with it
| --Android 6 was announced and in beta 71/2 months before, and was
| the stable release 31/2 months before, the handset's January 2016
| release.)
| Hawxy wrote:
| That device very much predates Samsung's long-term support
| policy. I'm surprised it was even being sold at that point.
| keiferski wrote:
| To play devil's advocate here, I actually think iPhones have some
| of the best longevity and resale value, compared to virtually any
| other product or brand - except perhaps if we go back decades to
| appliances made near the middle of the century. The fact that a
| device can be perfectly usable for 5+ years is pretty good
| compared to most other things I find myself buying and replacing
| in less time.
|
| Otherwise I think the only real "solution" to this is to rethink
| your notion of a phone. Personally I tend to use WhatsApp, email,
| and other non-phone-specific applications, and don't use the
| actual phone feature very often. So theoretically I could use any
| small computing device and upgrade its components as needed, and
| not need to have a phone at all.
| solstice wrote:
| That could work (given sufficiently good build-out of the data
| network), but for the mid-term you'd still need to have a way
| to receive SMS for 2FA etc.
| keiferski wrote:
| Google Voice or Twilio could solve this, I think?
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| Their phone number ranges and oftentimes gray or
| blacklisted.
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| I want "2FA device in a drawer". Always on, on a mute,
| receiving SMS, and forwarding them to the system of my choice
| (CalDAV, email, etc).
| nicolas_t wrote:
| It gets worse, the banks I use have phased out sms for 2FA.
| Only using their app on a non-rooted phone is allowed. So
| getting a dumb phone doesn't work either.
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| What's even worse that these bank apps always force an
| update to the latest version, which also sometimes requires
| updating the OS of the device. Then you are captive
| audience so they don't care about UX or your experience, so
| e.g. at my bank confirming an action takes three taps:
| "confirm" button inside the app, then checkbox with some
| kind of consent they always sneak in (dark pattern), then
| the "yes" system popup.
| mrweasel wrote:
| SMS for 2FA is being phased out due to security concerns,
| but I don't get why they aren't using plain TOTP, so you
| can use any authenticator app you'd like.
|
| My bank did solve the issue in a pretty clever way
| though. Their phone app is so terrible that I refuse to
| use it. Sadly there new web version is also terrible,
| e.g. you can't copy paste when doing a transfer, so
| rather than being 100% sure the amount is correct, you
| get to type it in and double check it.
| skrebbel wrote:
| > The fact that a device can be perfectly usable for 5+ years
| is pretty good compared to most other things I find myself
| buying and replacing in less time.
|
| Woa. Nearly every other device in my house lasts for 10+ years.
| Coffee machine, printer, laundry machine, oven, TV, every
| single one of those is over 10 years old. Our car isn't yet but
| I very much expect it to last at least that long. The only
| device I replace about as often as a phone is my laptop. At
| least the laptop is noticeably better. I concur with the author
| that phones haven't gotten meaningfully better at all over the
| last years, yet we're forced to upgrade. It's all planned
| obsolescence.
| keiferski wrote:
| I think you're probably buying higher quality items, yes?
| Because there's no way a $50-100 coffee machine or printer is
| lasting a decade.
|
| This can probably be explained by the fact that an iPhone is
| a "cheaper" (comparatively) high end item. In other words,
| it's one of the few high end items that many middle and low
| income people own. And thus compared to the coffee machines,
| printers, and other cheap electronics that break after a
| couple years, the iPhone seems rather durable.
| Cheezmeister wrote:
| > Because there's no way a $50-100 coffee machine or
| printer is lasting a decade.
|
| There absolutely is.
|
| Viz. the no-name drip machine I picked up at Goodwill for
| $10 and is probably older than me. The heating element
| makes the water boil, and it trickles over the grounds and
| becomes my morning salvation.
|
| Viz. the Brother laser printer ca. 2013 for $99 (in,
| admittedly, 2013 dollars). I had to replace the toner once,
| it was slightly annoying.
|
| Neither of these items has an app.
|
| Longevity [?] Quality / Complexity where Quality [?] Price
| keiferski wrote:
| Your experience is different than mine, then. At least
| 50% of the cheap electronic devices I've purchased end up
| breaking in a year or two.
| lsaferite wrote:
| I'm using the same $9 (yes, 9) drip coffee machine to make
| my daily coffee for more than 10 years currently. It has an
| on/off switch and no 'smarts'. It works fine, why should I
| change it? It's plugged into a smart outlet that I use to
| make sure it's turned off after an hour. That plug is
| getting close to 10 years old as well.
| singleshot_ wrote:
| The idea that an iPhone (any computer, really) is a high
| end item is pretty ridiculous.
|
| I would like a good phone that was not made out of glass to
| require future replacement purchases, and I'd be thrilled
| to pay for it. Up front, in cash.
|
| This rental economy's final destination is the same in all
| categories: cheap junk.
| curiousguy wrote:
| I don't think this is the correct comparison.
|
| The iphone doesn't just die after 5 years.
|
| I still have a 10 year iPhone 6 and a 8 years old iPhone 7
| both still working just fine.
|
| Apple stopped releasing OS upgrades with NEW features, but
| they are still releasing security updates. (In this aspect
| it's better than most (all?) modern TVs.
|
| Those iphone are still working the same way as when they were
| released. The only issue is that some apps doesn't works
| anymore.
|
| So part of the blame is on app developers.
|
| Sure, maybe the app needs some feature which the old phone
| doesn't have, but more likely is that the company just can't
| bother to maintain their app in older OS versions.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I still have an O.G. iPad 1 stuck on iOS 5.1. It's
| essentially useless. The App Store is a ghost town. No
| software even exists that runs on it anymore, and the App
| Store doesn't even let you download the last working
| version of third party apps. It's just totally useless.
|
| If I fired up my vacuum cleaner one day and it said "sorry,
| this device is just too old and the manufacturer just
| doesn't want it to function as it did when you bought it"
| we'd have regulators jumping down their throats. But it's
| a-ok to do with devices that rely on a software
| ecosystem...
| bambax wrote:
| > _compared to most other things_
|
| What other things? In my home most appliances are 15+ years old
| -- ovens, washing machines, even most Sonos things are around
| 20 years old. My Yamaha PF-P 100, bought in 1994, still works
| perfectly well.
|
| A smartphone is certainly more complex than a MIDI keyboard,
| but why would we need to upgrade the OS constantly.
| mplewis wrote:
| Security.
| pbmonster wrote:
| Nothing inherent makes security on 7 year old hardware any
| more difficult than on 2 year old hardware.
|
| Also, we're getting into the differences between upgrades
| (what OP said) and updates (the thing necessary to keep up
| with security) here. I'm having a really hard time coming
| up with an OS feature introduced in a full OS upgrade
| within the last 10 years that I actually want. I would have
| been perfectly content with only getting security updates
| since.
| frackintoaster wrote:
| This is.. not true. A lot of hardware change is involved
| in modern mobile device security. Apple has come a long
| way from the iPhone 7 in hardware security and no amount
| of patching software is going to introduce a new
| cryptographic coprocessor.
| vundercind wrote:
| > I'm having a really hard time coming up with an OS
| feature introduced in a full OS upgrade within the last
| 10 years that I actually want.
|
| - Live Photos. I won't consider any device that doesn't
| have something analogous, now. They're magical. Non-kid-
| havers may feel otherwise, but making every photo I snap
| of my kids a "Live Photo" is one of the most important
| improvements any technology _thingy_ has provided in my
| entire life. (I think these are under the 10-year line?
| Very close, if not)
|
| - Transparent OCR and text selection in images. The first
| time I used an image for a couple full minutes, copying
| text out of it, before realizing only when I went to
| share it with someone that it wasn't a PDF but a PNG, was
| when I knew this had to be a table-stakes your-OS-is-
| incomplete-without-it feature for me. Sure it _could_
| just be a feature of some program I 've got installed,
| but having it in any native image view is way better than
| having to open some specific program to use it, a thing I
| could long have done, but never did. Making it first-
| class, fast, and transparent to the user, makes all the
| difference. I rely on it all the time now.
|
| A couple off the top of my head.
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| Those are very nice to have, but if the device still can
| do basic web and phone things do you really need to
| upgrade?
| vundercind wrote:
| Well, no, but I was working with a bar of:
|
| > I'm having a really hard time coming up with an OS
| feature introduced in a full OS upgrade within the last
| 10 years that I actually want.
|
| which both of those easily clear for me. I bet I could
| come up with a few more if I read over some OS release
| notes from the last few years--"oh yeah, that! I use it
| so much I'd kinda forgotten it was _a thing_ " sort of
| stuff.
| Cheezmeister wrote:
| Against which threats?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42293962
| pjmlp wrote:
| Nothing in security prevents updating existing systems with
| newer code.
| bzzzt wrote:
| Sometimes newer code is not enough. Older versions of the
| secure enclave hardware had security leaks and are not
| software patchable.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Still better than not providing any updates at all.
| stouset wrote:
| How far back is reasonable to go?
|
| How much additional complexity do we tolerate in order to
| target hardware with diverging feature sets?
|
| How much should we hold new software back in order to
| target older hardware that can't do the same things
| without chewing through battery?
|
| Frankly I think it's fucking _amazing_ what Apple has
| done here, especially when you compare against the
| Windows ecosystem (at least as of the last time I used it
| ages ago). The rate of adoption of OS upgrades is such
| that app developers can actually reasonably target new OS
| APIs without having to wait a decade for a critical mass
| of users.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I think we should expect basic software security updates
| and third party app compatibility to continue until the
| last device's hardware fails. This idea that a device
| that millions of people still use is "old and icky and we
| just don't wanna support it anymore" is user-hostile and
| should not be tolerated.
| ozim wrote:
| But who is going to pay for that?
|
| Pushing people to get new devices is pushing people to
| pay for the updates.
|
| Other way would be an iPhone would have to cost idk
| somewhere in range of $10000 a piece to support it fully
| until last device hardware fails.
| pjmlp wrote:
| As far as in other society products.
|
| When not available from original source, repair shops.
| ozim wrote:
| Totally - like people don't have banking apps on their
| ovens or midi keyboards and are not keeping like half of
| their lives on a washing machine.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I don't like these things on my phone either.
| vundercind wrote:
| Where _do_ you handle that stuff? Doing them on a desktop
| seems like the same thing but less secure and less
| convenient, and sometimes with fewer features (mobile
| deposit from a laptop camera would be... awkward at
| best). Do you instead avoid using computers for things
| like banking?
|
| [EDIT] FWIW I'm in the so-called "Oregon Trail" mini-
| generation, so have definitely lived in and remember a
| world far more low-tech and connected than the current
| one, was a very late smartphone adopter, and have only
| reluctantly and recently come to admit that my phone is
| basically the _only_ really useful computer I own for my
| personal life, and the "real" computers are mostly just
| toys for me that, at best, can replace only part of my
| phone's useful-in-my-ordinary-life functionality, in its
| absence. A high-quality internet-connected sensor and I/O
| suite in a pocket-sized package is just too damn useful,
| I've found.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| For banking specifically, I use the bank's website. I
| always prefer websites to apps, because they aren't tied
| to a particular platform or device. Mobile deposit isn't
| something I really need, though if I had to deal with a
| lot of paper checks I could see that being convenient.
|
| I could lose my phone tomorrow and it would be a bit of
| an inconvenience but (by intention) nothing approaching
| "half my life" is tied to my phone.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Yeah let's not compare daily driver computing devices with
| hardware appliances or even speakers.
| ahmedfromtunis wrote:
| I'm typing this on my 5-year old Samsung A30 that, aside from a
| screen crack I take full responsibility for, is still in
| perfect working conditions.
|
| I never encountered any app that refuses to install despite my
| device being stuck on Android 11. The only reason this
| sometimes happen is because of geofencing, or apps built for
| Pixel phones.
|
| I only started to look for acquiring a new device because
| telecom operators are readying for a 5G launch next year, for
| which my current device is incompatible _hardware-wise_.
|
| And unless something unexpected is happening, I'm going to get
| the A35, ie the latest version of the same lineage.
| abtinf wrote:
| Just out of curiosity (I'm not familiar with the current
| state of android software support) does your phone still get
| security updates and, assuming it does, how much longer do
| you expect them to continue?
| marsovo wrote:
| Samsung is top-tier by Android standards. 4 years of
| security updates and 3 years of OS upgrades (minimum - some
| devices, such as the premium models, get more than that).
|
| Better than Google themselves when last I checked, which is
| shameful.
| lynndotpy wrote:
| Google now promises seven years of OS and security
| updates. The latest Pixels should be supported until
| August or September 2031.
|
| That said, I don't trust Google, and would recommend
| filling out the arbitration optout form when you receive
| the device.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| It's crazy that they don't put a scare screen for
| arbitration before checkout.
| ahmedfromtunis wrote:
| There's no such a thing as "the current state of android".
| Each manufacturer has its rules and priorities. Heck even
| within the same manufacturer there are different rules for
| different tiers; and obviously, pricier devices get more
| updates.
|
| Samsung is however among the best in that regard. The last
| security update received on my phone was in February of
| last year, so almost 4 years after the release of the
| device. However I forgot how many os updates the device
| got, but there's at least one received during the first
| year.
|
| But the company improved its updates policy since. I
| purchased a galaxy tablet 3 years ago (iirc) and it already
| received 4 os updates so far. The latest such update,
| received last month, was just 6 months or so after the
| previous os update.
|
| But again, this varies from company to the other. I bought
| phones from Motorola and Nokia that they claimed would
| receive 2 or 3 os updates, but never delivered even a
| single one.
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| You're lucky not using a bank app that enforce minimum
| version check.
| xorcist wrote:
| > The fact that a device can be perfectly usable for 5+ years
| is pretty good
|
| No. No, it's not good at all. For almost every other product it
| would be deemed unacceptable. Beyond unacceptable even. We
| should not normalize this.
|
| My car is > 10 years old. My desktop computer is > 10 years
| old. My laptop has had both the screen and battery changed. And
| the fan, multiple times. I don't know how old my laser printer
| is, probably twice as old, it doesn't see much use.
|
| Users would never accept if Linux or Windows stopped supporting
| five year old architectures. It would be an uproar, and rightly
| so.
|
| A phone no longer a toy, it is a tool among others. Five years
| is hardly enough to get to know a tool. You should just swap
| out the battery when it goes bad. You should not have to worry
| about software at all. That people accept this is a travesty.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| For most people a phone is a monthly payment. One of the
| rewards that keeps them paying is that every few years they
| get an "upgrade." The phone companies and the mobile carriers
| very smartly followed the car model of selling: they sell a
| payment, and when the balance is paid off they offer a trade-
| in/upgrade (and a new loan). If you resist, you eventually
| stop getting support.
|
| For the same reason, many car dealerships don't work on cars
| more than 10 years old. They keep their techs focused on the
| newer stuff, and increasingly pressure owners of older cars
| to trade them in.
|
| Fortunately for car owners, there is a robust market of, and
| legal requirements to allow, parts and independent service
| shops for older cars. We don't have nearly that kind of
| support for older phones.
| int_19h wrote:
| This is very country-specific. I can think of quite a few
| countries where the norm is to just buy the phone, or at
| least finance it through a regular personal loan, not
| something tied to your operator.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yeah, you _can_ do that here, and it 's what I do. I do
| the same with cars. But most people in the USA have a car
| payment and a phone payment that is just a perpetual part
| of their monthly budget.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| My wife's Thinkpad which is less than five years old won't
| run Windows 11.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Is that because of IBM, or Microsoft? Or both?
| ryandrake wrote:
| The big travesty is third party software developers. They
| just give up after the OS vendor releases a new major version
| and they stop working on older major versions. This should be
| totally unacceptable. The software works on iOS N one day,
| and then the next day when iOS N+1 comes out, the developers
| give their users the big "up yours" and stop caring about iOS
| N.
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| This is something that Apple should also be held
| accountable for.
| eesmith wrote:
| > iPhones have some of the best longevity
|
| You can't really be playing devil's advocate when you agree
| with the author, who wrote "Apple seems the best at supporting
| older devices, and yet I don't actually expect them to support
| hardware for longer than that."
|
| > except perhaps if we go back decades to appliances made near
| the middle of the century
|
| Nokia made some very robust phones far more recently than that.
| The "Indestructible Nokia 3310" is a meme,
| http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/indestructible-nokia-3310 .
| aswerty wrote:
| If you are saying his experience (which is bad) is the best
| experience you can get. Rather than playing devils advocate, I
| think you are supporting his argument.
|
| If we were to play devils advocate, I think the best argument
| is that in an early technology cycle (which arguably smart
| phones still are). There is a reasonable expectation that the
| phone will move into obsolescence before the hardware expires.
|
| How you square the concept of sustainable/long-lived products
| and technological advancement is of course the predicament we
| find ourselves in. The answer is of course modularity and
| repairability. So companies like Framework or Fair Phone is who
| you should be buying from (both with their own foibles).
| Whereas if you look at the philosophy of Apple you shouldn't
| ever think they value agency of the user/owner.
| ctenb wrote:
| This is one of the reasons I decided to buy a fairphone, because
| I noticed the effort that company was putting in supporting older
| devices with android updates, even though the hardware vendors
| like qualcomm don't support it anymore.
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| The supply and demand optimizes for cost extraction, ignoring
| customer preferences, health, and sanity. So here we are sitting
| in our crossovers scrolling our phablets with unlimited data for
| tiktok and instagram.
| genericspammer wrote:
| The authors frustrations are shared by many.
|
| I used an iPhone 6 way past its expiry date. It also became
| slower over time for no reason until it was essentially unusable.
|
| Finally I bought a refurbished iPhone SE 2020 for 200 euros in
| 2022. It felt almost like going back to a brand new iPhone 6 in
| both performance and features.
|
| I hope to keep it until the inevitable performance drop makes it
| annoyingly slow, then buy a refurbished iPhone SE 2022 and
| repeat.
|
| After the SE 2022 becomes unusable there will be no good
| alternative left in the market for someone who only wants a
| small, simple phone without an abundance of stupid features, then
| I guess I'll just stop using smartphones.
| Retr0id wrote:
| iPhone SE3 might've been a better upgrade path. Substantially
| cheaper (than the 16), still has a good few years of updates
| left, still has touch ID, and the exact same form factor as the
| iPhone 8.
| fmajid wrote:
| You will get longer support with alternative firmware like
| GrapheneOS or LineageOS, which both support some phones abandoned
| by their manufacturers.
| genpfault wrote:
| Subject to device maintainer interest.
| sumuyuda wrote:
| Still rocking an iPhone 7. I've encountered a few apps that have
| dropped iOS 15, but surprisingly not that many.
|
| I feel the same way the author does. With a new battery the phone
| works fairly well and I don't need to upgrade.
|
| With the exception of the SE models, all newer models are too
| big, have a notch, and Face ID. There's just no compelling reason
| to upgrade other than being forced by the company.
| bb101 wrote:
| I tried to go back to using an old but trusty iPhone 5 in 2018. I
| found that I couldn't get a signal in half the locations I used
| to get signals fine previously. Technology had marched on, and so
| had the mix of 2G, 3G and 4G bands.
|
| Given that our beige computing boxes used to be out of date
| within two years, I'd say six years for a phone is good going.
| Time to get a new iPhone.
| soerxpso wrote:
| The feeling of upgrading to something worse has always been my
| gripe. I think the last time a phone upgrade was purely positive
| for me was the switch from flippy phones to touchscreens. I don't
| need whatever new gimmick they're pushing that year, which
| usually just serves to get in the way. I certainly don't see how
| I benefit from this new "feature" where my old earbuds don't work
| without a dongle.
|
| I use Android, and I agree that the Android ecosystem is worse
| about this, although neither option is acceptable. At this point
| I would pay more for a newly-manufactured model from 2010 than
| for the current model, if it could still support modern apps
| (even though it alludes me how the price keeps going up and not
| down).
| Contortion wrote:
| Fairphone guarantees 8 years of updates for the Fairphone 5.
| Derbasti wrote:
| Not to diminish Fairphone's accomplishments here, but beginning
| in 2025, the EU mandates five years of software updates for all
| phones sold in the EU.
| creole_wither wrote:
| From looking at their website, that is 8 years of software
| updates. Not 8 years of Android version updates. Apple has
| released security updates for 10 year old devices such as iOS
| 12.5.7 which released in 2023 and runs on iPhone 5s.
| Pfeil wrote:
| FP5 owner here. IIRC, this is a guarantee for security
| updates at least, yes. There was some promise on how many
| major android updates they guarantee I think, but I forgot
| the details. I also wonder if and how far the promised
| minimum will be exceeded.
|
| That said, I am just glad Fairphones are usually relatively
| well covered by open source versions of android and other
| operating systems. Even if I may need another phone for
| banking apps and all that annoying stuff in 2030 or so, I can
| at least safely re-use it for other purposes. My "old"
| Android is now nothing more than an offline mp3 player, which
| is kinda sad.
| frackintoaster wrote:
| Look, we live in a capitalist world. (Most of us)
|
| Companies have a need to make money, for better or worse, that's
| how it is. Companies like Apple have to balance the economic
| viability of maintaining developers on software - for them to
| keep being updated - with keeping users happy.
|
| Modern smartphones are not analogous to gas cookers. They're
| about 100 times more complex, with third party, hardware,
| software, security and economic interplay.
|
| Reducing it to "My fridge worked for 20 years why doesn't my
| iPhone?" is just a stupid argument. Your phone is not a banana.
| putzdown wrote:
| The main message I take from this story is that a decent quorum
| of consumers want Apple to offer a smaller phone in each
| generation. The OP seems not to have minded having to upgrade
| eventually, just not to a "virtual tablet." I've heard others
| express the same desire.
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| And Apple did this for two generations and not enough of people
| one bought it but it is still available used .
|
| https://www.apple.com/by/iphone-12/specs/ (12 mini)
|
| https://support.apple.com/en-us/111873
|
| I would recommend to return the phone and get the 13 mini which
| should last awhile
| gregoriol wrote:
| The SE3 is good enough and not too big
| vundercind wrote:
| The only, _only_ reason I ever buy anything but the
| smallest phone they offer is because the best cameras are
| never on the smallest devices. The extra size is pure down-
| side for me, and I don 't really give a shit about slightly
| faster processors or what have you (I hardly burden the
| low-end ones), but I do find when looking back at older
| photos I always appreciate when I've had better cameras, so
| I hesitate to go too low-end on those.
|
| I'd pay about the same (or maybe even _exactly_ the same,
| but feel a little annoyed about it) for a small Apple phone
| with the same camera as the expensive big models.
| gregoriol wrote:
| I choose the cheapest technically up-to-date one. I
| really don't care about the camera, the gap between
| generation is mostly not interesting. Actually the only
| reason I had to replace the last one is that Apple
| stopped supporting it with the latest iOS...
| yumraj wrote:
| I love SE3, had SE2 before it. I love the phone and the
| size, but I do NOT love the battery life.. It's manageable
| though.
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| battery life is great for moderate use in my experience.
| Won't support watching videos all day, but I usually get
| almost two days of life out of it.
| gregoriol wrote:
| Battery life is not excellent indeed. I have cables and
| extra battery most of the time when out for a day.
| fragmede wrote:
| I have https://iwalkmall.com/products/cute-portable-
| charger-4500mah to extend the battery life when I'm on
| the go
| thr0w wrote:
| It is rounded and slippery and big enough that it exposes
| double-tap to make the screen slide down.
| gregoriol wrote:
| I preferred the 4 and 5 size and shape. Hate the double-
| tap too...
| jamager wrote:
| If I get a 13 mini today, updates will last 3 years. That is
| not much for what it is still a fairly expensive phone
| sunrunner wrote:
| +1 for the 13 mini if form factor is your primary concern
| (and given the sizes of even the 'small' mobile phone
| offerings of recent years I completely understand why that
| would be).
|
| I upgraded an eight year old SE (first generation) to an SE3
| thinking it would be the obvious choice, then promptly
| replaced it with the 13 mini within a week (fortunately still
| available at the time).
|
| The difference is small on paper but noticable in your hands,
| and I honestly feel like the 13 mini is the spiritual
| successor to the SE series while the SE3 is a weird relative
| that you don't really want to have to interact with.
|
| For some reason the slightly more boxy and grip friendly
| design of the SE1 and SE2 was changed in the SE3 to have the
| curves that were introduced in (I think?) the iPhone 6,
| despite the SE series having a slightly more square design up
| to that point. But the SE3 also inherited the lower raw
| technical specs that were expected from the SE series.
|
| So somehow the 13 mini wins in terms of both form factor
| _and_ tech capabilities/new Apple features (such as Face ID
| over Touch ID).
| fragmede wrote:
| The _problem_ with the 13 mini is it 's lack of touchid.
| it's fine otherwise and I'd pick one up in a heartbeat if
| it did, but it doesn't, so I won't. really waiting to see
| how the SE4 goes. I'm. envious of some of android's devices
| and features, the main thing keeping me locked into apple's
| ecosystem is iMessage.
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| Yea I really want the iPad Air 4th gen TouchID on the
| power button which would keep the screen layout and size
| but still have the security of a fingerprint.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| Yet when Apple offer those devices they don't sell enough to
| warrant Apple keeping them in the lineup.
|
| Having said that I wonder if the article's author would have
| been better off buying the SE. It is smaller, has Touch ID and
| will run his apps.
| dilap wrote:
| I was going thru a box of old things the other day and came
| upon an old iPhone 4. God, what a beautiful device. In my
| opinion, the peak of iPhone design. I would love to have a
| phone that small again.
| ahmedfromtunis wrote:
| That was also peak iphone hype era--Gizmodo-style and all.
| dnissley wrote:
| The impression I get is that these consumers who want a smaller
| phone are a very loud minority. They also often seem to overlap
| with the set of consumers who are extremely cheap. To Apple
| they are just bad customers who they will always have a hard
| time making money from -- not super worth catering to.
| woah wrote:
| I also suspect that (at least on HN), the loud minority are
| heavy users of laptops and desktops. For the average person
| who has an old laptop for writing reports for school, or a
| crappy locked down laptop from their job, the phone is their
| main computing interface, so they want it to be bigger and
| nicer.
| sunrunner wrote:
| I would gladly pay a bit more for a phone with a more
| manageable form factor and if I could be so lucky a battery
| life that's more than two days. Sadly it seems like I have to
| pay more for a product I want _less_, just because the demand
| for large form factor phones is high enough for Apple to
| consider just not bothering with. I understand market supply
| and demand, but eh...
|
| Funny how the German word for mobile phones exactly what most
| modern mobile phones aren't. Handy.
| koito17 wrote:
| > they are just bad customers who they will always have a
| hard time making money from
|
| The iPhone 12 mini still ended as one of the top 10
| smartphone models sold in January 2021.[0]
|
| There was also a new iPhone SE model that was half the price
| and roughly the same size. I wouldn't be surprised that most
| decided the iPhone SE was a better deal at the time. In fact,
| the iPhone 11 and iPhone SE were the top-selling iPhone
| models of 2020.[1]
|
| [0] https://www.patentlyapple.com/2021/04/in-january-iphones-
| cap...
|
| [1] https://wccftech.com/iphone-11-iphone-se-top-selling-
| phones-...
| zamadatix wrote:
| Both of those sources paint the picture GP was telling. For
| 2020 the iPhone SE sells 2nd place in unit count... nearly
| tied with a unit that was out for 6 fewer months that year
| with twice the ASP. Nearly 1/3 the sales of the previous
| generation model that year. Same for the top 10 best
| selling models in Jan 2021, combine both the iPhone SE 2020
| and iPhone 12 Mini and you've got the monthly sale volume
| of the previous generation iPhone 11 at half the sale price
| and 2 models worth of R&D. This data for a the year after a
| slump of smaller models not being available.
|
| If this was OnePlus or someone those would be decent
| numbers. The problem is they are Apple, they already held
| the top 4 spots by significantly larger margin with premium
| devices. Building low cost devices to only make 8th and
| 10th place with them isn't necessarily a win for them. They
| can just cut margin on the older versions of the popular
| models if they want to capture that price point without
| stifling their focus on their new products each year.
|
| The way people talk about smaller phones around here you'd
| expect the 2020 model was outselling new models through
| this day and the masses were waiting with bated breath for
| updates. Truth is there is just a smaller portion of the
| market that actually wants such phones when it comes time
| to upgrade but you here from them more often because they
| are one of the least common and least valuable segments of
| the market to try to service.
| taeric wrote:
| I'm not clear where that read comes from? There is a single
| mention of "veritable tablets" in this post, and I'm not at all
| seeing this backed up with any evidence of latent demand?
| StressedDev wrote:
| The author appears to be someone who gets angry or very
| annoyed when he does not get his way. The author may also
| just not like change. Basically, he is upset he had to buy a
| new phone after 6 years and the new phone was different from
| his old phone. I do not think his behavior is productive or
| helpful.
| taeric wrote:
| Which, to be fair and clear, there is nothing wrong with
| getting upset about having to upgrade. Nothing wrong with
| complaining. Sometimes, can probably be good?
|
| I'm just confused as this article doesn't even try to
| present this as a latent demand from others. Such that I
| don't understand the opening comment. Reminds me hearing
| folks complain about bad pockets in formal wear. Is largely
| a true statement, but I think it is also clear that the
| demand does not exist for it. Despite how vocal some people
| can be.
| EdJiang wrote:
| Isn't the iPhone SE basically that? Why didn't OP get the SE?
|
| https://www.apple.com/iphone-se/
| creer wrote:
| And really "every other generation" would be pretty nice too.
| An actually small phone, actually supported for a few years
| (included in the guidelines for app writers and to remind web
| page designers that this exists). We could live with "every
| other generation".
|
| That would be better than "Eh, we don't believe in it anyway"
| kind of reluctance.
| devops99 wrote:
| The older iPhones are nice products. It's a shame there are so
| many gaps in driver support for these devices. A lot of people
| would be happy to run something like GrapheneOS on them.
| xmprt wrote:
| I think a big part of this is that upgrading from iPhone 8 to 16
| is such a huge jump that all the muscle memory that you've built
| up has changed. You might as well switch to an Android phone. I
| wonder how OP's opinion would change in a few months once they're
| used to the phone.
| LeafItAlone wrote:
| I went from an 8 to a 15. My muscle memory adapted in about a
| day or two. I'm not old, but I'm also not young.
|
| I love the 15 and still keep the 8 around for music and other
| things. For me, Face ID is superior and I get confused when I
| look at my 8 and it doesn't immediately unlock. And I was super
| worried about losing Touch ID.
| codr7 wrote:
| I'm running an iPhone SE that's probably older.
|
| Love it, it's perfect for me, I dread the day it stops working.
|
| I've been forced to use various newer models over the years, and
| they just keep getting worse to me.
| zupa-hu wrote:
| Same here.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| Agreed. The original iPhone SE was peak form factor and
| ergonomics. Everything after has been a regression.
| halemmor wrote:
| I'm in a similar situation with my iPhone 8. The battery
| currently shows 81% capacity, so needs changing, but it doesn't
| make much sense considering it's not getting anymore software
| updates. It sucks, because outside of that, the phone is fine!
| Really wish that we got updates for longer; feels as though
| companies are forcing you into upgrades just to sell more
| devices.
| llm_nerd wrote:
| I'm curious which apps were the purported problem. Apple's
| recommendation for app developers is targeting 16.1 as the min
| device, which the 7 and 8 support (devices that are 7+ and 8+
| years old, fwiw), and doing a quick check of the app store, every
| top app I looked at required 16.1 or earlier. And FWIW, while
| Apple offers no specific guarantees, they're still providing
| security updates when necessary. There was one a few months ago.
|
| Could there be a specific app that used some super new API or
| just wanted to force users to have recent devices? Sure, there
| absolutely are. But a simple survey demonstrates they're the
| fringe. For most people, iOS being stuck on iOS 16.x will remain
| irrelevant for a few more years.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I can give you an egregious example: FlightAware. Not only do
| they not offer updates that support 16.x (fine, I'd just use
| the last version that still works on my phone) but instead,
| their last update puts a full screen modal dialog up, telling
| me the app will no longer run and that I need to buy a new
| phone that supports the latest iOS. You can't even dismiss the
| modal, so the app effectively no longer works. Total "fuck you"
| to users!
|
| I'd love 5 minutes in a room alone with the bonehead PM or eng
| lead who decided this was a good way to treat your users.
| StressedDev wrote:
| Software engineers are notorious for not wanting to support
| legacy devices and software. You see this all of the time on
| Hacker News. If you want more venders to support older
| devices, you need to change the culture. You also need to
| acknowledge the costs. Here are the costs:
|
| 1.Increased software development costs - Costs increase
| because software has to be designed to fallback to
| alternative implementations when the newest OS, browser,
| database, etc. features are not available.
|
| 2. Increased performance optimization costs. Older devices
| tend to be slower and this means software engineers will have
| to spend more time optimizing programs.
|
| 3. Increased testing costs - You need to test all features on
| older and newer devices.
|
| The other problem is it might not be worth it to support
| older devices. Basically, supporting older devices may not be
| profitable (i.e. too few users who do not generate enough
| revenue to justify the increased costs).
| ryandrake wrote:
| None of those points incentivise software developers to
| deliberately block me from using the "last working
| version". That last version already exists: it was already
| tested, already performed well, and had all of its
| engineering costs already spent. Suddenly stopping me from
| using it does not impact their profit in the slightest.
|
| I was an iOS developer in a past life. It doesn't take that
| much effort to keep the lights on on the older OS. But even
| if it did, it makes zero sense to suddenly make that
| already working older version stop working.
| hamdouni wrote:
| There is a little difference between not supporting any
| more and blocking the user.
| llm_nerd wrote:
| I can find some recent internet posts noting that FlightAware
| dropped iOS 15 support, but at present it claims to support
| iOS 16.4 or later devices, which would include the 7 and 8 if
| updated. I don't use iOS 16 or FlightAware, so it's possible
| that they allow you to install it from the store and then do
| some runtime check and refuse to actually run, but that would
| be super weird behaviour.
|
| I get why devs do this sometimes. iOS bakes a lot of support
| into the OS (so does Android, though increasingly because of
| slow uptake of new versions Google baking everything into the
| Play API), and iOS 16 is necessary for a variety of APIs, and
| even a lot of SwiftUI functionality if they went down that
| route. And then your APIs start changing so you end up
| invariably doing breaking changes so you can't just ignore
| the old versioned apps in the wild.
| ryandrake wrote:
| iPhone 7 is stuck on iOS 15.8.3[1].
|
| > I don't use iOS 16 or FlightAware, so it's possible that
| they allow you to install it from the store and then do
| some runtime check and refuse to actually run, but that
| would be super weird behaviour.
|
| This is exactly what they appear to be doing. It should be
| against Apple's guidelines to release an app that simply
| says "go away until you buy a new phone."
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_7
| llm_nerd wrote:
| Ah, sorry, mea culpa I thought the 7 and 8 were getting
| the same updates.
|
| So the 7 is stuck on 15, and _it_ is the one being left
| out courtesy of 15. Still doesn 't address the submission
| though that is claiming this about the 8 and 16, which as
| of now is still very widely supported. I assume the
| author is just reading the tea leaves and predicting what
| is ahead. Eventually 16 will be deprecated too, though it
| isn't right now.
|
| FlightAware on the App Store likely works perfectly,
| though it would require 16.4+ on devices like the 8 or
| newer. The "you can't use this anymore" is likely a
| startup API check on previously installed and no longer
| updatable versions.
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| Yeah that sucks but it's already the best out there. Some would
| say that you can use lineageos indefinitely on Android when the
| boot loaders is unlocked but the cold truth is that app requiring
| minimum os version also require the phone not to be unlocked and
| pass Google safetynet, which lineageos (even with magisk) can't.
| StressedDev wrote:
| Once a computer (a smart phone is a computer) stops getting
| security updates, it should not be connected to a network. The
| reason is that device will get hacked and that is not good.
|
| This person should have upgraded his iPhone 8 as soon as Apple
| stopped offering security updates. He either already got hacked
| or would have eventually got hacked if he continued to use an
| insecure phone. Note that not all hacks are visible. For example,
| information stealers (malware which steals passwords and data)
| are designed to run silently in the background. They don't want
| to victim to know they have been hacked.
| ryandrake wrote:
| This kind of "security ransom" should not be acceptable. Oh I
| should throw away my perfectly working phone because the OS
| vendor just _up and decided_ to stop fixing its security,
| leaving the device useless? Shouldn't they compensate me for
| making my perfectly good hardware useless, since I should not
| be connecting it to the web now?
|
| This person is doing the right thing: complaining loudly about
| corporate practice that should not be accepted by consumers.
| andrewxdiamond wrote:
| If I want to produce a device, am I required to put work in
| to maintaining it forever? An iPhone 8 is really old by this
| point, honestly I'm impressed it still works.
|
| What timeline would you recommend that is fair to both
| consumers and producers?
| ryandrake wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42299639
| FredPret wrote:
| Tying software support to how long the hardware lasts
| will ensure that every hardware manufacturer builds in a
| time-based killswitch into every device they make.
|
| Software engineers are expensive.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Then users should be compensated when the manufacturer
| decides to remotely kill their devices (whether by a kill
| switch or by stopping maintaining the software).
| FredPret wrote:
| Then we will simply see fewer and more expensive models
| available for sale as some manufacturers and investors
| decide these regulations are too much and exit; others
| will raise prices to pay for the compensation and
| extended software support.
|
| Every action has a reaction.
| dakiol wrote:
| I have been using an iphone6s (ios 15. Received an update 4
| months ago). for some time already. It works fine. Granted,
| I don't use it for "important" stuff, but it works fine for
| browsing, checking train timelines, Uber, radio, youtube,
| whatsapp, Slack, camera, maps...
| _petronius wrote:
| Maybe not forever, but we have _really_ short timelines for
| product longevity in this industry, even at the hardware
| level. A washing machine or kitchen appliance that had to
| be replaced every <7 years (taking the timeframe from the
| post) would be considered low quality; furniture that can't
| last 10-15 years is considered nearly disposable. Cars --
| maybe the thing closest in comparison in terms of
| complexity and engineering required to build, even if
| several orders of magnitude more expensive -- are expected
| to last decades with proper maitenance.
|
| Certainly there is a trend towards this in a lot of
| industries besides computers, but given how powerful and
| expensive these devices are now, the current upgrade cycles
| are crazy fast. I think consumers are souring on them a bit
| as well (both because of the price, and because the annual
| new models have really slowed down in the visible feature
| improvements they offer).
|
| I know the economic incentives for the producers are
| aligned towards repeated purchases, and that's super tough
| to realign, but how long can the market and the environment
| support four-digit phone price tags that are upgraded every
| 1-3 years?
| eikenberry wrote:
| The problem will not be solved by laws requiring
| corporations to act ethically. That will never work as long
| as their incentives are what they are. IMO the only way to
| address these issues is to have a free software phone-OS
| alternative that users can have control of.. that is to say
| if you want the government involved, it would be best
| served by funding an free software project along these
| lines.
| RadiozRadioz wrote:
| I see this statement all the time. And it's frequently a
| universally-applied authoritative statement like this comment.
| I think it's incorrect and short-sighted to unilaterally decree
| things like this.
|
| Instead, I think the correct way to approach this is on a case-
| by-case basis that takes into consideration the function of the
| computer, the needs/priorities/legal obligations of the users,
| and importantly their risk tolerance and risk appetite. A
| security policy that is not in some way modulated by risk is a
| policy that does not account for the real-world complexity of
| its systems. There is an increased risk to using out-of-date
| software, but without knowing this person's risk tolerance or
| priorities, we are not in a good place to advise a security
| policy.
| ttepasse wrote:
| I'm currently in the same position, upgrading from an iPhone 6s
| (2015) to an iPhone 16.
|
| The thing is, it is mostly not the apps which forced me to
| upgrade. I can't get newer ones, of course, but the old ones
| still work. (Except a supermarket app which practically
| deactivated its current app and asks me to update to a newer
| version which I can't install. There is no need, no new APIs
| except maybe developer convenience.)
|
| But the real villain is the web.
|
| Browsing simple websites becomes a chore, Safari becomes
| unresponsive for minutes at a time. Sometimes it feels worse web
| experience than the one an iPhone 1 with the checkerboard
| background.
|
| I blame React for having to pay money just to stand still.
| iamwpj wrote:
| I think people forget how new and dynamic these devices are.
| Maybe in a couple of decades we can have evergreen devices, but
| for now the changes of the devices and capabilities is still
| driven by new releases and proliferation. These types of changes
| still require a ton of human effort and hardware restrictions. In
| the 60s and 70s car lifespans were much shorter (around 100k
| miles), but today those are much longer, double that of 50 years
| ago. You can already see this shift happening in smartphones --
| as evidenced by consumers not recognizing improvements between
| devices that are 5 years newer, although if I'm going to be
| honest, I find it really odd that you wouldn't notice some of the
| improvements between iPhone 8 to 16.
|
| It's wasteful, but also not really all at the same time. We're
| combining a lot of devices and functionality into one unit which
| can reduce waste, and there's not a lot of things in your life
| you use as much as a smartphone -- even if you cycle it out every
| 5 years. There are components of these that are easily recycled
| as well. For many households the costs of smartphones are cut
| down as the devices are passed down based on seniority or
| priority, this makes for a really functional reuse system.
| aranelsurion wrote:
| > I find it really odd that you wouldn't notice some of the
| improvements between iPhone 8 to 16.
|
| I'm sure they notice _some_ improvements, when I was out
| shopping for a new phone I could tell the then-flagship iPhone
| 13 having a slightly better display and a slightly better
| camera than 11 even by playing with it at the store.
|
| But then, I've upgraded from an iPhone 6S+ to iPhone 11, and
| even 11 was unnecessary to me. I just had to because I bought
| the 16GB model back then, the lowest storage option, and with
| ever larger iOS updates my phone wasn't usable anymore.
|
| With that a perfectly usable iPhone 6S became electronic waste,
| and I was out 600 euros, to do exactly what I've been doing on
| 6S: browsing, instant messaging, Uber and Uber-likes. Now the
| fonts look a little nicer, and camera is so much better, and
| that's.. about it for noticeable features for me. I wouldn't
| pay that much for either of those if I could.
|
| My point is, I think smartphones hit a ceiling of useful
| features a long time ago. The big features, all the important
| stuff, the GPS, camera, browser, IM and a few other things have
| been figured out since a decade now. There are some smartphone
| "power users" who don't have a computer or maybe a TV and use
| it for watching movies, playing games or they are amateur
| photographers/influencers and such, for them maybe these new
| models still offer something. For everyone else an iPhone 16
| does what an iPhone 6 does, just a little fancier.
| hamdouni wrote:
| Reminds me of the bricked Nexus 7...
| RadiozRadioz wrote:
| I still target Android JellyBean as the minimum version with my
| apps. I have never increased the minimum version since I created
| the app. Google makes it difficult, but I refuse to give into
| their quest to annoy users. I love my 3 JellyBean users as much
| as the rest of my users and they deserve to not have their
| software break for no reason.
| ryandrake wrote:
| From your lips to all software developers' ears!
|
| Thank You.
| RadiozRadioz wrote:
| Personally I keep two phones. I keep a very old Android phone
| that I like to use, then a new iPhone that I keep "normal". I use
| the Android phone for as much as possible, but bank apps don't
| work any more and many apps dropped support for my version years
| ago. In these cases, when required, I drop down to the iPhone and
| pretend to be a "normal" user; I install all my updates, use the
| stock browser, sign into all the cloud crap, pick the easy sign-
| in options to everything. The most expected, everage user that
| everybody is catering towards.
|
| Using the iPhone sucks, but owning it lets me mostly use the
| Android phone I actually like, while still being able to do
| everything I would otherwise be arbitrarily restricted from
| doing.
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