Unusability preservation law:
Whenever a technology gets into a state where it becomes usable, when it starts to suit you, you get into it and you are satisfied with it, something always happens that either completely impairs it or makes working with it significantly uncomfortable.
Forced to upgrade
21–30 of 303 posts
Re: Forced to upgrade
#22The real question, IMO, is why the need to release a new model every year? I think a lot of the churn of both hardware and software had nothing to do with technological progress, and everything to do with generating sales.
Re: Forced to upgrade
#23I'm still daily-driving an iPhone 7, so I sympathize. A few apps have complained about the older OS; so far I've been able to react by deleting the apps. Smartphones cause a truly astonishing amount of waste ( https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2018/12/11/right-to-repair-... : ~151 million phones discarded in the US each year, as of 2018), to say nothing of the various social follow-on effects that are being argued to…
That article is awfully short on estimating environmental impact.
Other sources on the web say that, including 4 years of electricity usage, an iPhone's total carbon impact is ~175 pounds of CO2, or about 9 gallons of gasoline. Which is roughly 0.25% of emissions from driving a car the average amount for four years.
Imperceptible changes to urban planning to shave off a few miles of driving would have a bigger impact than doubling the lifetimes of mobile phones.
Re: Forced to upgrade
#24If you were on an iPhone 8 and wanted to upgrade but keep TouchID, the SE3 is still a fine device. It's possible I'll grab one before the SE4 just to hold on to TouchID a bit longer.
Upgrading to an iPhone 16 seems like a weird choice, given that the SE3 exists and it pretty much perfect. One argument that I can see it that the 16 is two years newer, and should get updates at least two year more. The price difference between the two phones however is much to big to justify getting the 16, unless there's some feature you really need.
Re: Forced to upgrade
#25Just "upgraded" to a Pixel 8 from a 4a (it wasn't even my intention to do so, went to have my 4a battery replaced but the shop botched the job and I needed a working phone quickly), I agree with every point made by the author. It does the same things as the 4a did, just marginally faster. Screen is better but I don't really care, and using it with one hand is harder.
On top of that, I'm praying the dreaded green screen issue does not appear (it did on a coworker's Pixel 8).
Oh well, at least I got security updates now...
Re: Forced to upgrade
#26This situation doesn't happen with hardware running an open source OS. For example laptops running Linux can upgrade basically forever. Why are community maintained open source OSes better at this than commercially maintained proprietary OSes?
Re: Forced to upgrade
#27I'm still daily-driving an iPhone 7, so I sympathize. A few apps have complained about the older OS; so far I've been able to react by deleting the apps. Smartphones cause a truly astonishing amount of waste ( https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2018/12/11/right-to-repair-... : ~151 million phones discarded in the US each year, as of 2018), to say nothing of the various social follow-on effects that are being argued to…
Yearly phone upgrades are akin to new sneakers. People want the latest thing, they do not need it. Phones have not improved for years in significant ways. There has been no new features. Only improvement has been cameras, but really how good of a camera does your average person need in their daily lives?
Do your sneakers last 7 years? Mine barely last 1.
Re: Forced to upgrade
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Which... maybe it is; who am I to suggest different priorities for other people I mean, I get the sentiment. But I live in this world too, and the E-Waste and forced obsolescence(or whatever you'd call it in this particular instance) does have an effect on me, personally. So yes, we should absolutely have a say, despite the fact that at this time we actively do not. In the US, our environmental policy is laughably i…
Let's be real here: Most of us detest forced upgrades because it is Fucking Inconvenient(tm) . We don't want to move away from Space Bar Heating[1] once we've gotten established, and screw everyone who tries taking it away. I'm sure a small minority might also have an environmental beef, but arguing green isn't going to grab peoples' hearts. [1]: https://xkcd.com/1172/
>I'm sure a small minority might also have an environmental beef, but arguing green isn't going to grab peoples' hearts.
That's kind of what it so disheartening about this whole issue. It's seriously urgent, and yet I routinely meet people who actively deny what is actual undeniable fact, claiming various sources of deception (deepstate, lizards, Nancy Pelosi, etc). A good amount of the rest don't care.
Re: Forced to upgrade
#29What is to me frustrating is how artificial these lifecycles feel. Even more so on Android side. Just upstream your drivers and "support" should be pretty much free.
Re: Forced to upgrade
#30I'm still daily-driving an iPhone 7, so I sympathize. A few apps have complained about the older OS; so far I've been able to react by deleting the apps. Smartphones cause a truly astonishing amount of waste ( https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2018/12/11/right-to-repair-... : ~151 million phones discarded in the US each year, as of 2018), to say nothing of the various social follow-on effects that are being argued to…
I only replaced my iPhone 7 in 2021, with an SE, because it's a work phone and they didn't want to deal with battery replacement. It was (/is) is a perfectly capable phone for the vast majority of people.