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

kooslooijesteijn.net

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

#111

Post by rexreed »

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 so wish this was true. I'm a happy Android phone user with OS vintage 2016, but now all my banking apps are no longer working because they refuse to support my OS version. Many other apps from airline check-in apps to chat apps that used to work perfectly fine all refuse to work because upon running they say "This app no longer supported" and forces an OS upgrade, which is not possible on this version phone.

This is forced obsolescence in action.

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

#113

Post by andylynch »

graderjs wrote: post #71

Maybe one day there will be AI-optimized "emulation" apps that work on older hardware, but emulate newer hardware, making intelligent code path optimizations / branch prediction, etc with the help of AI-generated bytecode that lets you not have to upgrade your hardware, you just upgrade the emulator you use to run apps supposedly only supported on newer hardware. Also, whenever I hear "you're making me"--I instantly…

Well, you can already do things like this, eg emulating x86 on some microcontroller. But the problem tends to be that the emulation runs magnitudes slower than the new hardware, so it is impractical for almost every use case beside Doom ports to exotic hardware.

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

#114

Post by wtetzner »

serf wrote: post #88
maccard wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows 7 and 8 are both EOL by Microsoft. I don't think it's unreasonable of valve to drop support for OS's that Microsoft aren't maintaining, and the hardware requirements for 7 and 10 are the same today according to MS [0][1]. For a while you could officially upgrade to win10 for free, and it seems that even now, it still works 5 years after they stopped offering upgrades, and 3 years after win7's end of life. I'm…

>Windows 7 and 8 are both EOL by Microsoft. I don't think it's unreasonable of valve to drop support for OS's that Microsoft aren't maintaining it's not unreasonable until you realize that Valve offers no other method for audiences that may be stuck with older machines to play the games that they purchased, which at the time of purchase they had completely met all of the system requirements. A basic game should not h…

I haven’t been keeping up, but how many games on Steam still require Windows? I wonder if SteamOS (or another Linux distro) would be a reasonable option for people on older machines?

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

#115

Post by Hypergraphe »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #34

Apple is making you buy a new iphone. They decided not to support the old API or to create adapters so that the ecosystem can live on decades. Meanwhile, you can sill run apps from 20 years ago on Windows.

Can't agree more ! The levels of API backward compatibility of the Windows API is really impressive and should be taken as an example for everyone.

Some Opensource projects like OpenSSL do have the same philosophy.

This is harder for the developpers to maintain old APIs but it does develop a sense of trust on the products.

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

#116

Post by wruza »

LtWorf wrote: post #103
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…

> If they want to use an old phone, they can just stop updating their apps and not installing new apps. Here in Sweden taxi and public transport apps need to be kept up to date or they stop working.

This. You can live without basic apps or updates. Even without twitter, in non-pathological cases. But services like taxi, banking, e-stores, delivery apps just stop working due to API changes on their side, together with OS requirements. And there may be no useful alternative (e.g. a website doesn’t cut it).

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

#117

Post by bioemerl »

Gigachad wrote: post #64
bioemerl wrote: post #62

Apple is making you use a new phone by dropping support for it in their OS updates. The fact that this happens at all anywhere at any time at any place for any reason, and can't just install an update yourself should be unacceptable and legislated against

Apple supports the phones for 7 years, the current proposals floating around the EU are to mandate 4 years. They also don’t break anything, the apple services all continue to work forever, it’s 3rd party devs who drop support for older api versions. Nothing makes them do this.

I'm not talking about a mandate for operating system support, I'm talking about a mandate to allow the user to install operating systems if they want to.

It's not third party devs fault that the perfectly good hardware and an old iPhone is denied the ability to operate to a version of the operating system with the latest API support.

You don't see this on Windows. You see it on Android, and it shouldn't happen there either.

This wasn't a thing until mobile phones became a thing, and companies to seized the opportunity to be able to force all their hardware to be obsolete.

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

#118

Post by eviks »

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…

no you can't, some apps just stop working, some become vulnerable/unsafe to use. Then you can't install apps you haven't "purchased" before, then ...

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

#119

Post by lapcat »

I was quite satisfied with my iPhone 7 (2016) and didn't experience any problems with it, unlike the article author. However, iOS 16 doesn't support iPhone 7, so I had to buy a new iPhone SE (2022), which was the cheapest model available. The 2 phones are mostly identical, and indeed it's difficult to distinguish them if set side by side.

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

#120

Post by SCdF »

I've mentioned this on here before, but my otherwise perfectly functional Pixel 3A has been out of security-patch support for nearly a year.

It's disgusting honestly, my only options are to try to find some open source project keeping patches up to date, have my most important information on an unpatched device, or throw it in the trash.

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