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The six-year-old iPhone 6S will get iOS 15

theverge.com

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Re: The six-year-old iPhone 6S will get iOS 15

#11

Post by gambiting »

sandworm101 wrote: post #6

Big deal. I just installed ubuntu 21.04 on a ten-year-old machine. There is no non-evil reason why the latest OS cannot run on yesterday's hardware.

I'm not an Apple user, so I couldn't possibly care any less, but like....come on. Maintaining old hardware platforms costs time and money.

"There is no non-evil reason"

The reason is that someone needs to sit down, open up Xcode, and compile it for the old hardware, fix all the compilation issues that crop up, and then that OS needs to be tested on every variation of that hardware that was ever released anywhere in the world.

If you don't want to do that because the userbase is dwindling and you aren't running a charity and/or open source project.....how is that evil??? Cheap, maybe even greedy - but evil??

Re: The six-year-old iPhone 6S will get iOS 15

#12

Post by mmastrac »

danaris wrote: post #8
sandworm101 wrote: post #6

Big deal. I just installed ubuntu 21.04 on a ten-year-old machine. There is no non-evil reason why the latest OS cannot run on yesterday's hardware.

There is a huge difference between a ten-year-old laptop/desktop and a ten-year-old phone—or, more accurately, laptops and desktops have advanced a lot less in the past ten years than phones have. It would be a much better analogy if you were to say you'd installed the latest Ubuntu on a machine from twenty years ago (though even that may be generous, given that the iPhone was only 4 years old 10 years ago, while the…

Or maybe installing the latest upcoming version of OSX on a mid-2014 Macbook Pro, which if I'm not mistaken, will not work.

Re: The six-year-old iPhone 6S will get iOS 15

#13

Post by addison-lee »

ajfjrbfbf wrote: post #9
solidangle wrote: post #4

This is why I bought an iPhone 12. I had a Samsung Galaxy S8 before it and I was perfectly happy with it, except for the fact that it had reached the end of its scheduled security updates. The battery life was still good enough for my light usage, it still ran my apps without a hitch, and the OLED screen still looked great, but it had not received a proper software update in over a year and it had just received its f…

Why not just unlock the bootloader and install a custom ROM? As you describe it your phone still worked perfectly fine.

I can’t speak for who you’re replying to but having to maintain my phone like that sounds awful. I have my computer that I can endlessly tinker with—I want my phone to be a phone and just work.

Re: The six-year-old iPhone 6S will get iOS 15

#14

Post by nazgulsenpai »

ajfjrbfbf wrote: post #9
solidangle wrote: post #4

This is why I bought an iPhone 12. I had a Samsung Galaxy S8 before it and I was perfectly happy with it, except for the fact that it had reached the end of its scheduled security updates. The battery life was still good enough for my light usage, it still ran my apps without a hitch, and the OLED screen still looked great, but it had not received a proper software update in over a year and it had just received its f…

Why not just unlock the bootloader and install a custom ROM? As you describe it your phone still worked perfectly fine.

I'm an Android user for the ability to do this exact thing, but there's a huge difference in unofficial vs official software support. While you can certainly flash a custom ROM to an Android phone when software update support ends, clearly first party updates would be preferred, at least from a security perspective.

Re: The six-year-old iPhone 6S will get iOS 15

#16

Post by nazgulsenpai »

addison-lee wrote: post #13
ajfjrbfbf wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just unlock the bootloader and install a custom ROM? As you describe it your phone still worked perfectly fine.

I can’t speak for who you’re replying to but having to maintain my phone like that sounds awful. I have my computer that I can endlessly tinker with—I want my phone to be a phone and just work.

This is one of the main reasons I used Windows Phone 7 phone for so many years. All of the phone features, enough smart features to make it great for work, and none of the distractions -- ironically, the things that made it a commercial failure.

Re: The six-year-old iPhone 6S will get iOS 15

#17

Post by Someone »

gambiting wrote: post #11
sandworm101 wrote: post #6

Big deal. I just installed ubuntu 21.04 on a ten-year-old machine. There is no non-evil reason why the latest OS cannot run on yesterday's hardware.

I'm not an Apple user, so I couldn't possibly care any less, but like....come on. Maintaining old hardware platforms costs time and money. "There is no non-evil reason" The reason is that someone needs to sit down, open up Xcode, and compile it for the old hardware, fix all the compilation issues that crop up, and then that OS needs to be tested on every variation of that hardware that was ever released anywhere in t…

Also, that hardware may be able to walk the new code, but not run it.

So, you’ll have to choose between cutting some features and releasing underperforming software (likely severely underperforming, for older devices)

Hacking on the code for months or even years may alleviate that somewhat (look at what the hacker scene can get out of computers from the 1980’s), but that isn’t a certainty and if you do that, you either have to release later, or release later for so devices.

Either way, your users won’t be happy. They’ll get less, get it later, and/or it won’t perform.

Re: The six-year-old iPhone 6S will get iOS 15

#20

Post by throwaaskjdfh »

cbmuser wrote: post #18

iPhone 5s (2013 IIRC) is also still receiving security updates for iOS 12.5.x.

This is good to know. I don't care at all about using the latest iOS; if my iPhone 6S was still running the original version it shipped with, I'd never know the difference.

But I do care about security updates.

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