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Forced to upgrade

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Re: Forced to upgrade

#71

Post by lifestyleguru »

nicolas_t wrote: post #58
solstice wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That could work (given sufficiently good build-out of the data network), but for the mid-term you'd still need to have a way to receive SMS for 2FA etc.

It gets worse, the banks I use have phased out sms for 2FA. Only using their app on a non-rooted phone is allowed. So getting a dumb phone doesn't work either.

What's even worse that these bank apps always force an update to the latest version, which also sometimes requires updating the OS of the device. Then you are captive audience so they don't care about UX or your experience, so e.g. at my bank confirming an action takes three taps: "confirm" button inside the app, then checkbox with some kind of consent they always sneak in (dark pattern), then the "yes" system popup.

Re: Forced to upgrade

#72

Post by 9x39 »

rubymamis wrote: post #18

> I also miss TouchID. I agree - Touch ID is far superior to Face ID.

What do you like about Touch ID? I think I'd switch platforms before going away from Face ID, it's so trivial to authenticate without even moving a muscle that I don't even think about it.

I have an older iPad with touch ID, and I simply turned it off because it felt like an anachronism in the experience.

Re: Forced to upgrade

#73

Post by coldtea »

dataflow wrote: post #8

When you make the decision to not support older hardware (whether directly or indirectly), you're making a decision that the maintenance burden you're trying to avoid is more important than the environmental impact of users disposing of & buying hardware. Which... maybe it is; who am I to suggest different priorities for other people. But it would be nice for engineers and businesses to at least think about this and…

>you're making a decision that the maintenance burden you're trying to avoid is more important than the environmental impact of users disposing of & buying hardware.

Companies don't care for the "environmental impact". When they pretend to, it's a token gesture to make certain customer demographics feel good. At best they will sacrifice a slither of their margins, but if there's a conflict between environmental impact and any bigger slice of their profit, they'll go for profit anytime.

>Which... maybe it is; who am I to suggest different priorities for other people

Environmental impact is about the commons, so it shouldn't be just about whatever personal priorities each has.

Re: Forced to upgrade

#74

Post by xorcist »

keiferski wrote: post #38

To play devil’s advocate here, I actually think iPhones have some of the best longevity and resale value, compared to virtually any other product or brand - except perhaps if we go back decades to appliances made near the middle of the century. The fact that a device can be perfectly usable for 5+ years is pretty good compared to most other things I find myself buying and replacing in less time. Otherwise I think the…

> The fact that a device can be perfectly usable for 5+ years is pretty good

No. No, it's not good at all. For almost every other product it would be deemed unacceptable. Beyond unacceptable even. We should not normalize this.

My car is > 10 years old. My desktop computer is > 10 years old. My laptop has had both the screen and battery changed. And the fan, multiple times. I don't know how old my laser printer is, probably twice as old, it doesn't see much use.

Users would never accept if Linux or Windows stopped supporting five year old architectures. It would be an uproar, and rightly so.

A phone no longer a toy, it is a tool among others. Five years is hardly enough to get to know a tool. You should just swap out the battery when it goes bad. You should not have to worry about software at all. That people accept this is a travesty.

Re: Forced to upgrade

#75

Post by coldtea »

harywilke wrote: post #66
thefz wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are talking about Apple, who is willing to chop off a feature from a product just to sell you the 39$ dongle later. The couldn't give less shits about the environment.

Ah yes, the company that famously designed their headquarters with zero regard to the environment. The company that included a leaflet titled 'Why the brown box?' back in the 90's when they switched to unbleached cardboard shipping boxes for their computers. Nope they have never given a though about the environment. It's just not in their corporate dna.

Wow, they changed bleached with unbleached cardboard! They made some token environmental changes to their $1B headquarter glass, metal, and concrete behemoth.

I'm pretty sure they have switched to paper straws on their cafeteria too!

Re: Forced to upgrade

#76

Post by xorcist »

epistasis wrote: post #23
thaumaturgy wrote: post #5

I'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…

Why is carbon emissions a suitable measurement of the environmental impact of electronic waste?

Re: Forced to upgrade

#77

Post by eesmith »

keiferski wrote: post #38

To play devil’s advocate here, I actually think iPhones have some of the best longevity and resale value, compared to virtually any other product or brand - except perhaps if we go back decades to appliances made near the middle of the century. The fact that a device can be perfectly usable for 5+ years is pretty good compared to most other things I find myself buying and replacing in less time. Otherwise I think the…

> iPhones have some of the best longevity

You can't really be playing devil's advocate when you agree with the author, who wrote "Apple seems the best at supporting older devices, and yet I don't actually expect them to support hardware for longer than that."

> except perhaps if we go back decades to appliances made near the middle of the century

Nokia made some very robust phones far more recently than that. The "Indestructible Nokia 3310" is a meme, http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/indestructible-nokia-3310 .

Re: Forced to upgrade

#78

Post by aswerty »

keiferski wrote: post #38

To play devil’s advocate here, I actually think iPhones have some of the best longevity and resale value, compared to virtually any other product or brand - except perhaps if we go back decades to appliances made near the middle of the century. The fact that a device can be perfectly usable for 5+ years is pretty good compared to most other things I find myself buying and replacing in less time. Otherwise I think the…

If you are saying his experience (which is bad) is the best experience you can get. Rather than playing devils advocate, I think you are supporting his argument.

If we were to play devils advocate, I think the best argument is that in an early technology cycle (which arguably smart phones still are). There is a reasonable expectation that the phone will move into obsolescence before the hardware expires.

How you square the concept of sustainable/long-lived products and technological advancement is of course the predicament we find ourselves in. The answer is of course modularity and repairability. So companies like Framework or Fair Phone is who you should be buying from (both with their own foibles). Whereas if you look at the philosophy of Apple you shouldn't ever think they value agency of the user/owner.

Re: Forced to upgrade

#79

Post by okanat »

chr15m wrote: post #26

This 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?

It is more about hardware / software bundling than the openness of the source code. Windows is as proprietary as it gets. I was able to upgrade my desktop PC from 2008 to Windows 10. It required removing quite a bit bloatware but it works.

Actually, I have a negative example for FOSS for you. I have a laptop with an Nvidia GPU on it from 2012. I cannot use it under Linux since Linux world is terrible at API / ABI stability. So Nvidia driver has stopped working. I can still use the laptop fully functional with Windows 11.

Re: Forced to upgrade

#80

Post by coldtea »

Dalewyn wrote: post #20
michaelsshaw wrote: post #13

Earlier 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/

>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.

This implies what people want to stick to is some inefficient BS workflow.

As opposed to what's usually the case: more stable, tested, and loved features, changed due to tech fads, to make the product appear new for marketing, to squeeze extra profit despite inconveniencing users, or just for change's sake.

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