91–100 of 303 posts
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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.
The 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.
I don't think it's unreasonable to release new hardware every year. Apple is iterating on CPUs on an annual basis, and the new CPUs make for a better phone. It probably doesn't often make sense for a user to upgrade a single step (anymore), but if you're buying, the newer one has a better cpu, so it's worth considering. That'a separate from software churn though. Desktop OSes tend to support hardware for much longer…
I'd say that is correct. In a sense it's like part availability for cars or washing machines, and is similarly quite an outrageous situation too: around here law mandates 10y of parts availability; trouble is, reliability has progressively improved to the point that this becomes ludicrously insufficient.
An example: I bought a car five years ago, it's well tended and shows no sign of being anywhere close to the scrape yard five years from now, yet parts will become hard to come by; case in point my other car is turning 16 (sixteen!) and barring the need for a full body paint job because the varnish is gradually peeling away (which is kinda expected), is equally in such good order as to most probably be in similar condition for another 10-15 years with proper maintenance; but will I be able to? Parts are getting rarer as they've been in a stock-remainder only basis for five years.
Another example: my washing machine had a part fail at the 7 year mark. Fine, parts are supposed to be available, so just repair? Well, the part moved out of production to stock-basis because they evaluated statistically that they have enough stock to cover the 10y mark. Problem: the stock is a sort of archival with glacial operation speeds, the time quoted for part shipping was shy of 6 months, and I couldn't find a replacement. So I bought a new machine out of sheer necessity.
10y is way too short for parts. Software, notably OS and its compatibility primitives for third party software, should be counted as parts. 7y for software is better than before but still way too short.
> Desktop OSes tend to support hardware for much longer than mobile OSes.
I feel like this is increasingly less true, at least to the point that the difference becomes immaterial to the problem.
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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.
My bank did solve the issue in a pretty clever way though. Their phone app is so terrible that I refuse to use it. Sadly there new web version is also terrible, e.g. you can't copy paste when doing a transfer, so rather than being 100% sure the amount is correct, you get to type it in and double check it.
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> compared to most other things What other things? In my home most appliances are 15+ years old -- ovens, washing machines, even most Sonos things are around 20 years old. My Yamaha PF-P 100, bought in 1994, still works perfectly well. A smartphone is certainly more complex than a MIDI keyboard, but why would we need to upgrade the OS constantly.
Security.
The 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.
I don't think it's unreasonable to release new hardware every year. Apple is iterating on CPUs on an annual basis, and the new CPUs make for a better phone. It probably doesn't often make sense for a user to upgrade a single step (anymore), but if you're buying, the newer one has a better cpu, so it's worth considering. That'a separate from software churn though. Desktop OSes tend to support hardware for much longer…
It wasn't ten years ago, but now they seem to be struggling to give you an actual reason for the new models to exist. The argument that not everyone upgrades at the same pace is not unreasonable, but still, it makes absolutely no difference if you get the iPhone 13, 14, 15 or 16. The number of people who needs the 16 for something in particular is so small that it wouldn't be a market in it's own right.
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> It does seem to very much just be at the consumer level. We've still got servers chugging away in datacenters that are pushing 15 years old and still have several years of life left in them. The datacenter is temperature controlled and the air is filtered. The server is locked in the rack and never moves. By comparison, your laptop or your phone go through hell on a daily basis.
Speak for yourself. Some people prefer to handle their devices with care and expect to get longevity in return.
I guarantee you however carefully you are handling your device it is a world apart from a datacenter.
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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…
I don't necessarily agree with it, but that's certainly the wider consensus.
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Nothing in security prevents updating existing systems with newer code.
Sometimes newer code is not enough. Older versions of the secure enclave hardware had security leaks and are not software patchable.
Given that our beige computing boxes used to be out of date within two years, I'd say six years for a phone is good going. Time to get a new iPhone.