Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I don’t want a new phone, but I’m probably buying one

kooslooijesteijn.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 300 posts

Re: I don’t want a new phone, but I’m probably buying one

#41

Post by badpun »

terhechte wrote: post #8

If they want to use an old phone, they can just stop updating their apps and not installing new apps. I still own a iPad 3 with the same, old, software stack from 2013. It still works, I can do things. I just don't expect todays developers to make a herculean effort so that I can run their apps on my old device. It is not just the overhead of supporting multiple different OS versions with different technologies, it i…

Many apps connect to backends maintained by the developer. The developer usually doesn’t care about backward compatibility (they only support the latest version of their app), so your old version of the app will, at some point, stop working because it’s not compatible with the current release of the backend API.

Re: I don’t want a new phone, but I’m probably buying one

#42

Post by mnw21cam »

erk__ wrote: post #24
mnw21cam wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Must be some Javascript you're allowing the page to run, because it works fine for me.

I checked with Javascript disabled and it did not make any difference, so I think it is just Firefox being a big strange with the overflow parameter.

That's weird. For reference, I'm on Chromium.

Re: I don’t want a new phone, but I’m probably buying one

#43

Post by janandonly »

This hit home hard for me:

> You decided that you wanted to use some framework/feature/API and save developer time. Which is odd. Because consider how much time you spend trying to not harm the environment in your free time: shopping for sustainable products, bringing your reusable cup, recycling. And then think of the minutes you save with new programming stuff compared to the number of iPhones discarded because of that.

Re: I don’t want a new phone, but I’m probably buying one

#44

Post by drdec »

medstrom wrote: post #16
terhechte wrote: post #8

If they want to use an old phone, they can just stop updating their apps and not installing new apps. I still own a iPad 3 with the same, old, software stack from 2013. It still works, I can do things. I just don't expect todays developers to make a herculean effort so that I can run their apps on my old device. It is not just the overhead of supporting multiple different OS versions with different technologies, it i…

It's one thing if you already have the app and just stop updating it. My experience with the iOS App Store has been that if you only just now heard of the app and your phone's too old, you can't even download the version that works for your phone. That is what ends up forcing an upgrade. That people's phones can't run the newest version of an app, and aren't allowed to get an old version as a substitute.

Same issue with Android, FYI.

We have a Ring with the app installed on an old phone that we use as the "household" phone. I was going to "upgrade" the household phone to be an old tablet which while newer and running a later version of Android, is still old. Can't install the Ring app on the newer tablet because it is too old. So we are stuck with the even older phone unless we buy something new.

Re: I don’t want a new phone, but I’m probably buying one

#45

Post by gambiting »

Yeah I have an iPad Mini 2(from 2014!) Which works absolutely fine - it even still receives security updates from apple. I thought it would be a great tablet for my kid to watch cartoons on, but nope, even though you can download the latest version of Netflix and Disney+ both apps just crash after 5-10 minutes of playback. And I'm guessing there's no one at either company interested in fixing this. I've restored the tablet to factory settings and the same thing still happens. So I ended up buying the cheapest Amazon Fire tablet for like £50 which is probably the slowest computing device I've ever owned but it runs all streaming services without any trouble. I'd much rather use the iPad.

Re: I don’t want a new phone, but I’m probably buying one

#46

Post by londons_explore »

pch00 wrote: post #21
terhechte wrote: post #8

If they want to use an old phone, they can just stop updating their apps and not installing new apps. I still own a iPad 3 with the same, old, software stack from 2013. It still works, I can do things. I just don't expect todays developers to make a herculean effort so that I can run their apps on my old device. It is not just the overhead of supporting multiple different OS versions with different technologies, it i…

> I still own a iPad 3 with the same, old, software stack from 2013. It still works, I can do things. I just don't expect todays developers to make a herculean effort so that I can run their apps on my old device. The fact that "it still works" isn't the only consideration though - it's the security posture. There's plenty of remotely-exploitable flaws in that software stack from 2013.

Remember back in 2002 where if you connect an unpatched windows machine to the internet, it would only be a few minutes before it got infected?

Well running unpatched stuff is no longer like that. I bet you could use a 2013 iDevice for a whole year and not get exploited once.

Exploits are mostly against the rich and famous now, and not so much against regular joe.

Re: I don’t want a new phone, but I’m probably buying one

#47

Post by distcs »

erk__ wrote: post #18
terhechte wrote: post #8

If they want to use an old phone, they can just stop updating their apps and not installing new apps. I still own a iPad 3 with the same, old, software stack from 2013. It still works, I can do things. I just don't expect todays developers to make a herculean effort so that I can run their apps on my old device. It is not just the overhead of supporting multiple different OS versions with different technologies, it i…

That is just not always a possibility especially if you use apps that connect to online services, this is something that has quite recent come up again as Steam is ending support for Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 in nine months which have caused some uproar in that community. I am surprised that the post about that have not gained any traction on here [0] since to touches the same topic as this one [0]: https://news.ycombinat…

> I am surprised that the post about that have not gained any traction on here

Unfortunately which posts get traction is very much a game of luck on HN. Some good samaritans have to hang out on the 'New' page and upvote interesting stories for them to have a chance to come on the front page. Once on the front page, the interesting stories get voted rapidly but coming to the front page itself is 90% of the battle.

I like the Lobsters model here where every new post remains on the front page for sometime and then drops off if it does not get enough votes. Due to the volume of posts HN receives, naturally such a system won't work here! So it is all down to the good samaritans hanging out on the New tab.

Re: I don’t want a new phone, but I’m probably buying one

#48

Post by wiredfool »

terhechte wrote: post #8

If they want to use an old phone, they can just stop updating their apps and not installing new apps. I still own a iPad 3 with the same, old, software stack from 2013. It still works, I can do things. I just don't expect todays developers to make a herculean effort so that I can run their apps on my old device. It is not just the overhead of supporting multiple different OS versions with different technologies, it i…

Ipad Mini2 owner here.

Twitter doesn't work. Their app now shows _maybe_ 5% of tweets that my logged in user does. Safari is slow as crap on the website.

Google voice still rings and shows notifications, but can't function because no updates are available and something in the api is broken.

A non-zero number of sites show no-css warnings or just crash because it's an old JS interpreter. (HN though -- it's still rocking the 2000 era web design)

Apps that access the network are slowly dying. Though kindle and mail still work, and that's about all I use it for now.

This was a $300 device 8 years ago, and probably has my best $/usage of any tech I've ever had. The replacement is an 800eur ipad (edit: mini, with cell), because it's (the mini) now effectively a pro model rather than the cheap one, and I'm not sure I can justify that.

Re: I don’t want a new phone, but I’m probably buying one

#49

Post by mnw21cam »

andrekandre wrote: post #32

> Starting some apps takes really long, like 10–20 seconds. I think it’s because today’s apps require more RAM than their older versions. is it that? i seem to remember something about flash chips wearing down over time and get less and less performance... could it be that instead?

The flash chips in the SSD in my actual computer don't seem to have done this, and they're older and have had higher write traffic. If this is a thing, does this just indicate the phone manufacturers are saving a few pence on each unit at our expense?
Post reply on HN