Live data from Hacker News

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

kooslooijesteijn.net

181–190 of 300 posts

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

#181

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 cannot. Apple does not give you the freedom to use old versions of software. You can't downgrade your iOS version. You can only upgrade apps, and iOS only lets you download the latest available version of an app for your version of iOS. Need to do a device reset? If you have managed to keep any apps on old versions, you'll get upgraded now. And you can't even save APKs and sideload because of Apple's develope…

> Apple does not give you the freedom to use old versions of software.

Not only can you use old versions of software, you can download them again if you reset your device.

Visit the purchased tab in the App Store and select the app you wish to download again, and you will receive the last compatible version for that particular device.

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

#182
post #128

I run phone repair shops and the app starting up slowness is often caused by a failing battery. In fact, at our shops, on older iPhones, I can test the battery state by opening the camera app. If it takes 10-20 seconds to open, it’s usually the battery causing it. (The other cause is storage being close to full.) This won’t help the app resetting issue, which the author correctly identifies as a RAM problem (that I a…

> In general, if you use your phone daily, I recommend getting the battery replaced every 2-2.5 years. Another thing that people forget to do... please restart in once in a while.

How silly is that?

Remember how people laughed at Windows users and the Windows OS? That you have to reboot daily or else it slows down?

Well, these days, my Samsung flagship actually pops up a notification every once in a while, reminding me to please reboot the phone to ensure smooth operation. There's even an option you can turn on to make it automatically reboot every night!

(I imagine that option doesn't automagically skip the SIM card lock and the Android security lock, so IMHO running it is insane, as it would make the phone unreachable until you wake up and unlock it properly.)

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

#183
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I tried to see if this info was available in SteamDB (and it probably is somewhere — I’m just not finding it in an easily-accessible way), but my feeling is that most games on Steam are still Windows-only.

Your feeling is wrong. Here[1] are all the LSL games as supported on Linux via Proton, they are all playable (yes, even the red/borked one as that's actually Linux native). Most games are usually pretty well supported by Proton[2], for example all the big releases from Playstation games (God of War, Spideman, etc.) have had day 1 support as well as a lot of other big games Cyberpubnk 2077 had day 1 support as well. The main exception being multiplayer games with anticheat is the biggest roadblock right now. Though progress is being made with all the big AC engines (EAC, Battleye, etc.) working in Proton but needs to be enabled by each individual developer.

1. https://www.protondb.com/search?q=Leisure%20Suit%20Larry

2. https://boilingsteam.com/75-of-the-top-100-most-played-games...

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

#184

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 agree in principle but reality is more complex. I am an android / windows user. After several years I splurged for an expensive brand new iPad specifically to run music apps such as behringer deepmind (which integrates with their synth). Couple of weeks later iPad silently installed some os update. Half my apps stopped working! They were apparently incompatible with the current OS and I needed to "contact app devel…

Unless you specifically enabled it, iOS does not get automatically updated.

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

#185

the whole planet upgrade their electronics at least every decade is just an obviously stupid thing and not enough people talk about it This is so true! How can we developers make this a bigger thing? Isn't there a market for this by now?

I do not understand how it is an "obviously stupid thing". Technology advances quite a bit in 10 years, or at least it did from 1990s to 2010s. Not to mention that the newer devices yield considerable utility and efficiencies that make older devices redundant.

> Technology advances quite a bit in 10 years

It certainly hasn't for mundane tasks like browsing the web or playing simple games. I recently bought a 10 year old 21,5 inch iMac for my kids for around the price that a same sized, also full hd, brand new screen would cost. Only that screen doesn't come with built-in i5 CPU, SSD, Gigabit and AC networking. It replaces a 2011 Macbook Pro only because I want something stationary for them and not something they get tempted to lug around and drop on the floor. Apple doesn't allow the latest OS's to be installed (though there are ways around that[0]) but I haven't felt the need for it.

So unless you need raw performance or extreme power savings because you run your device 24/7 there should be no need to get the latest and "greatest".

[0] https://github.com/dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/

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

#186

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 cannot. Apple does not give you the freedom to use old versions of software. You can't downgrade your iOS version. You can only upgrade apps, and iOS only lets you download the latest available version of an app for your version of iOS. Need to do a device reset? If you have managed to keep any apps on old versions, you'll get upgraded now. And you can't even save APKs and sideload because of Apple's develope…

I purchased a used iPad for reading sheet music and it turns out it's so old none of the apps on the appstore will install and most web pages won't even load because it doesn't recognize the SSL certificates.

At least I can still load PDFs onto it.

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

#187

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 cannot. Apple does not give you the freedom to use old versions of software. You can't downgrade your iOS version. You can only upgrade apps, and iOS only lets you download the latest available version of an app for your version of iOS. Need to do a device reset? If you have managed to keep any apps on old versions, you'll get upgraded now. And you can't even save APKs and sideload because of Apple's develope…

You clearly haven’t tried it. My kids still use an 11 year old gen four iPad every day. It’s absolutely incredible for the $500 or so that we paid for it. We’ve gotten 11 years of entertainment out of it.

The old apps still install just fine and we’ve never had to make any effort to maintain it, or fiddle with operating systems or software or anything.

It’s hard to imagine a better value from a device like this, especially when you take into account the amount of time you would have to spend managing something that had more software freedom to it.

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

#188

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…

> Adding a constant additional workload of up to 30% (you also have to run CI and everything on older devices) for 1000-2000 users is just not feasible.

How old is very old here? If you're talking about devices that are under ten years old adding 30% to your workload, I would argue that something is wrong on the operating system end of the deal. Part of the reason why we have operating systems is to provide a layer of abstraction so that software is not tied to particular hardware.

> I also don't expect to be able to run VSCode on a 1996 Pentium 60. I'd run Emacs instead, or Vim, or whatever else was en vogue in 1996

I think that most people would agree that expecting support 25+ year old hardware is not reasonable. When you're talking about hardware that is less than 10 years old, people's opinions are going to vary. Those who feel as though they are upgrading without seeing tangible improvements in functionality are likely to be more adamant about longer support periods.

For what it's worth, I have run recent versions of VSCode on my 10+ year old PC. There is absolutely nothing wrong with it's performance of the editor itself, or the associated extensions. I would imagine that it supports much older hardware than what I have simply on the merit that the operating system supports much older hardware.

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

#189
post #88
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…

You willingly bought games on a drm service.

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

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This ship has sailed when people accepted that everything lives in the cloud and companies can dictate what you can, can't and must do with your own property. The last thing they cannot take away and cannot control is offline physical goods, like books for example.

>> The last thing they cannot take away and cannot control is offline physical goods, like books for example. Not really. E.g. can download mp3 music and mp4 movies on my own HD and so far Microsoft Defender hasn't deleted them.

Really does like going after cracks though :P
Post reply on HN