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

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

#271

Post by eviks »

D13Fd wrote: post #187
vanilla_nut wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, espe…

It seems the other way around: you haven't tried it for the regular use, only as an entertainment platform for kids No, old apps don't work just fine, for example, one of the most popular messaging apps in the world drops support for old devices

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

#272

Post by V1ndaar »

timvisee wrote: post #96
V1ndaar wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny. I'm still on a OnePlus 6 and I see similar bizarre freezes as OP when I open the photo gallery. Or just when starting the camera often I have to wait 15-20s before the phone realizes that I have pictures. Sometimes when swiping through the gallery it will become excessively slow and stop reacting to panning / swiping / zooming. It's what is driving me close to grabbing a new phone at some point this year.

Not fun! Using a custom ROM? I'm running LineageOS with minimal Google Apps.

No. The OnePlus 6 was my first phone where I really didn't feel like bothering with the hassle of custom ROMs. Back in the HTC Desire and HTC OneX days, while fun, it was always such a gamble what feature might not be working on each ROM. I just wanted to not have to worry about working camera, bluetooth or GPS any longer.

I'm not sure, but does the OnePlus 6 even have good LineageOS support nowadays?

edit: Apparently yes it seems. Wow, maybe I'll give that a try one of these days and see what it's like.

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

#273

Post by eviks »

GeekyBear wrote: post #181
vanilla_nut wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You forgot the tiny universe of all the new apps you might want to try on an older device, what you describe only works for the apps you've already purchased

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

#274

Post by ryandrake »

janandonly wrote: post #43

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…

These days, everything eventually gets sacrificed at the altar of "developer comfort". Backward compatibility gets thrown under the bus so code can be "cleaned up" and to reduce the testing scope. Software performance gets thrown under the bust so we can all program in Javascript. Platform-specific features get thrown under the bus in favor of a cross-platform framework so we only have to target one API. Download sizes get thrown under the bus so we can ship containers because it's hard to get programs to work on other people's computers. Less-frequently used features get thrown under the bus because it's hard to maintain all that old code.

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

#275

Post by ryandrake »

SamBorick wrote: post #191
Reason077 wrote: post #74

C’mon, he’s still using a phone from 2016 (which was the low-end model even in 2016), and by his own admission it’s still pretty usable for most things. I think that’s a pretty good run. All the Android users I know have been through at least 3 or 4 phones in that period. And so have some of the iPhone users who obsessively upgrade every 2 years even though they don’t need to! (Typing this on an iPhone X from 2017…)

The hardware is still working. I think it's reasonable that the software should continue to work until the hardware is physically incapable of booting. An entire industry deciding that hardware "should" only last 6 years is shameful. (Typing this on a macbook pro 2012)

The problem here is that software appears to be "wearing out" faster than the hardware it's running on, which is utterly ridiculous. Bits don't wear out. Removing backward compatibility is a deliberate decision being made by developers to make their own jobs more comfortable.

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

#277

Post by scarface74 »

anonymousiam wrote: post #259
D13Fd wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, espe…

I've tried it with the two iPad2 devices that I still have. Here are a few things that you cannot do: 1) Anything that requires MFA via Apple. 2) Full backup/restore will not restore old versions of the apps. New versions are either unavailable or don't work. 3) Any popular streaming service such as Netflix/Amazon Prime/AppleTV.

1. If it requires you to enter a code from another device on an older iPad, it tells you to enter your password + MFA code in the password field.

2. You can manually go in and download “the last compatible version”

3. Netflix is usually good about supporting old devices. Amazon disabled an older auth protocol. Apple TV+ videos can be accessed via the web (tv.apple.com). While Safari seems to always redirect you to the app, Chrome for iOS doesn’t.

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

#278

Post by muyuu »

creshal wrote: post #101
ericabiz wrote: post #55

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…

> Apple is horribly stingy with RAM even on the Pro models. 6 gigabytes of RAM on a phone is hardly stingy, when laptops with 8 gigabytes are still considered reasonable.

i think by stingy she means that they are not using the best memory chips to save money, so ram modules go bad often

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

#279

Post by TheNewsIsHere »

not_your_vase wrote: post #251
kaba0 wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That device is 13 years old. It could definitely do more than what it currently can, but I don’t think it is reasonable to expect such a long support period, especially that mobile hardware underwent a complete metamorphosis in the meanwhile. It is reasonable to expect an iphone 14 to be usable as a general purpose device until the next major breakthrough, because year-to-year upgrades are mostly incremental nowadays…

Support? It doesn't need any action to let a 13 years old timer run on it. But removing the applications from the AppStore, it does need action, and investment of money and time. Keeping the support would be easier for Apple... but they don't want. Frankly, there hasn't been a revolutionary breakthrough in the field of interval timers' technical design in the past decade that would warrant such a ridiculous obsolesce…

I don’t disagree with anything you said.

At the same time, speaking beyond Apple, how long is too long to keep various code, infrastructure, etc around and supported?

Apple dropped support for 32-bit apps being published awhile back because they dropped 32-bit executable support from the OS. Should they keep the binaries around and available forever?

Eventually the old stuff becomes something you have to engineer around. And eventually that becomes too costly to justify.

Again, I agree with you, but businesses have to justify their spend [insert quippy VC jokes here].

I’d like to see a non-commercial approach to solve issues like this very broadly. For example you could legislate that device manufacturers over a certain size retain device software and firmware, and that it all be open sourced after a certain duration. If you go out of business, you transfer it to a trust setup to maintain access to such things. (I admit this is a simplistic example, but it’s not intended to be a full solution.)

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

#280

Post by not_your_vase »

TheNewsIsHere wrote: post #279
not_your_vase wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Support? It doesn't need any action to let a 13 years old timer run on it. But removing the applications from the AppStore, it does need action, and investment of money and time. Keeping the support would be easier for Apple... but they don't want. Frankly, there hasn't been a revolutionary breakthrough in the field of interval timers' technical design in the past decade that would warrant such a ridiculous obsolesce…

I don’t disagree with anything you said. At the same time, speaking beyond Apple, how long is too long to keep various code, infrastructure, etc around and supported? Apple dropped support for 32-bit apps being published awhile back because they dropped 32-bit executable support from the OS. Should they keep the binaries around and available forever? Eventually the old stuff becomes something you have to engineer aro…

The AppStore is a glorified FTP server, with a slow html frontend. It's not exactly the marvel of engineering, and not an awful lot to keep around. Jailbreak community keeps online respositories for free (minus a handful of ads)... but Apple, the world's most cash-padded company, can't afford to keep a RPi4 running in the corner, serving old iOS apps? Give me a break.

(I do work on complex embedded operating systems, with decades long support contracts. We are far from Apple size, I must admit, but I do know what this work involves. Keeping the lights on for such systems is not such a huge expense as everyone pretends it to be. RPi4 is an exaggeration, but not a huge one.)

I don't expect new stuff to work on old systems, I'm not crazy.

I remember, many years ago, someone complained Steve Jobs via email about some iOS update, that he didn't like. And Steve's response was along the lines of "Does the system still do everything what it did when you bought it? Yes? Then have a nice day."

Apple does not give such responses anymore. They avoid answering these. With a reason.

But don't get me completely wrong. I bought my iPod 11 or 12 years ago (I don't even remember), and this is literally my oldest tech that I still use every day. This tells a lot. But my blood boils when I think about how much better it used to be, and how much better it could be... only if Apple wanted it to be.

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