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

kooslooijesteijn.net

221–230 of 300 posts

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

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple does not give you the freedom to use old versions of software This is not true and hasn’t been true since around the time that iOS 7 came out. About two years ago, I dusted off an old first gen iPad (circa 2010). I reset it and I was able to download “the last compatible version”. It’s option given to you by the App Store. I was able to use Netflix, Hulu, Crackle, Spotify, Google Drive to read PDFs.

It's an option given to you if the app is already in your purchase history for your AppleID. If not, then you have to find a newer device, sign in to it with your AppleID, download the app and then return to the old device and hope that a compatible older version is a) available and b) still functional and that the devs haven't turned off any server-side stuff that the older versions relied on.

You can still “buy” iOS apps on older (still available for download) versions of iTunes using the same Apple ID and then downloading an older version on your device.

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

#223
post #10

> Feel free to skip this aside, unless you’re stingy like me. [...] If I’d buy a new phone today, I’d consider these options: It goes on to list only Apple devices. That's a bit dubious when being self-proclaimed stingy. One might recommend an off-brand device for a fifth of the price that will last half as long, or a competing brand for half the price that lasts just as long. Perhaps longer if you're interested in d…

Also they don’t list the 2022 iPhone SE with the lowest storage space (64GB) in that table. they’re “stingy”, but not stingy enough to consider the entry level model?

Overall I find this article incoherent.

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

#225
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…

> 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.

They do - update to windows 10, for free, or install Ubuntu.

> A basic game should not have a set of rolling requirements that are ever-increasing.

They don't, but the platform that delivers those games can.

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

#226

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…

par for the course? I’ve literally never had this happen and I always keep the OS updated, this is certainly a confusing one.

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

#227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The distinction here is choosing which version you want, not "the latest / maximum version the developer allows to be used for my device". For example I just got an update to an app I've been using for a while. The update will sunset the app despite there being no online component to it. I'd kinda like to downgrade now, but the latest version compatible with my phone would be his sunsetted one.

What app are you talking about? I've never seen a developer set the "last compatible version" to something that intentionally breaks the app.

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

#228

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 you want to continue to use older hardware, just accept that you also have to use older software.

This sounds like making an excuse for completely unnecessarily obsoleting hardware and ignorantly continuing to make hardware that is completely fine spec-wise obsolete. It all be damned, as long as we can make software how we want. No need to see beyond one's own nose, as long as the rare earths can be mined. The planet be damned.

If at least we kept supporting older client side software, I guess people could live with that, but without a doubt, software businesses are a driving force behind the need felt by many people to have a new phone every 1-2 years. Another driving force are manufacturers that try to convince us, that we need their newest ever more dystopian products.

I personally keep using my now more than 12y old phone as a music player and my phone with broken display (not worth the repair costs) which is approximately 8 years old. Some software like Signal or Syncthing can still be installed (some from Fdroid) and I am not using iPhones, but older Android phones. Some day I might have to look into rooting them and install another OS, because I dread the day, when they will stop working and I have the choice of buying an even more dystopian spyware device.

But you know what I could not install, or even find in the app store? The Covid warn app! So these idiots made the app only for newer phones, creating a huge incentive for people to get newer phones and again wasting perfectly fine hardware. All that of course without proper justification. Even my old phones have WLAN and bluetooth and whatever. So I ended up not being able to use the Covid warn app at all, just because I do not like to trash perfectly fine hardware or unnecessarily buy a new phone every year. Great. Just great.

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

#229

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 also don't expect to be able to run VSCode on a 1996 Pentium 60. You don't? I can run VsCode on my laptop from 2005. I dont have anything older, but Debian does run on servers from 2005, and can probably run VsCode Sure, mobile phones changes a lot between 2005 and 2015. But in the past 5 years there hasn't been much progress This sits with OS first and foremost, and we do this shit because we can get away with i…

No, you don’t…

we didn’t even have multicore processing in 1996. 1995-2005 looks very different from 2005-2015.

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

#230

On a similar note, I have a Motorola G8+, Android 10. It has 4GB of RAM, plenty of free space in storage, and the CPU isn't actually that bad still. The battery is in good condition. A brand new phone doesn't necessarily have any better stats. For some reason, it is slow . As in, it will still usually run apps at full speed, the framerate in a flight sim is just as high as before etc, but then it will just freeze up…

Especially during something like gaming, this could be overheating. Very common with gaming on phones.
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