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Forced to upgrade

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171–180 of 303 posts

Re: Forced to upgrade

#171

Post by zerd »

objclxt wrote: post #50
esskay wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's sad that we consider 5-10 years to be "legacy" in any way shape or form. 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.

> 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.

How does that impact software support lifetime?

Re: Forced to upgrade

#172

Post by StressedDev »

Once a computer (a smart phone is a computer) stops getting security updates, it should not be connected to a network. The reason is that device will get hacked and that is not good.

This person should have upgraded his iPhone 8 as soon as Apple stopped offering security updates. He either already got hacked or would have eventually got hacked if he continued to use an insecure phone. Note that not all hacks are visible. For example, information stealers (malware which steals passwords and data) are designed to run silently in the background. They don't want to victim to know they have been hacked.

Re: Forced to upgrade

#173

Post by [deleted] »

xorcist wrote: post #74
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, pr…

[deleted]

Re: Forced to upgrade

#174

Post by ryandrake »

llm_nerd wrote: post #166

I'm curious which apps were the purported problem. Apple's recommendation for app developers is targeting 16.1 as the min device, which the 7 and 8 support (devices that are 7+ and 8+ years old, fwiw), and doing a quick check of the app store, every top app I looked at required 16.1 or earlier. And FWIW, while Apple offers no specific guarantees, they're still providing security updates when necessary. There was one…

I can give you an egregious example: FlightAware. Not only do they not offer updates that support 16.x (fine, I’d just use the last version that still works on my phone) but instead, their last update puts a full screen modal dialog up, telling me the app will no longer run and that I need to buy a new phone that supports the latest iOS. You can’t even dismiss the modal, so the app effectively no longer works. Total “fuck you” to users!

I’d love 5 minutes in a room alone with the bonehead PM or eng lead who decided this was a good way to treat your users.

Re: Forced to upgrade

#175

Post by aucisson_masque »

ahmedfromtunis wrote: post #63
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…

I'm typing this on my 5-year old Samsung A30 that, aside from a screen crack I take full responsibility for, is still in perfect working conditions. I never encountered any app that refuses to install despite my device being stuck on Android 11. The only reason this sometimes happen is because of geofencing, or apps built for Pixel phones. I only started to look for acquiring a new device because telecom operators ar…

You’re lucky not using a bank app that enforce minimum version check.

Re: Forced to upgrade

#176

Post by woah »

dnissley wrote: post #154
putzdown wrote: post #126

The main message I take from this story is that a decent quorum of consumers want Apple to offer a smaller phone in each generation. The OP seems not to have minded having to upgrade eventually, just not to a “virtual tablet.” I’ve heard others express the same desire.

The impression I get is that these consumers who want a smaller phone are a very loud minority. They also often seem to overlap with the set of consumers who are extremely cheap. To Apple they are just bad customers who they will always have a hard time making money from -- not super worth catering to.

I also suspect that (at least on HN), the loud minority are heavy users of laptops and desktops. For the average person who has an old laptop for writing reports for school, or a crappy locked down laptop from their job, the phone is their main computing interface, so they want it to be bigger and nicer.

Re: Forced to upgrade

#177

Post by thr0w »

gregoriol wrote: post #138
zitterbewegung wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Apple did this for two generations and not enough of people one bought it but it is still available used . https://www.apple.com/by/iphone-12/specs/ (12 mini) https://support.apple.com/en-us/111873 I would recommend to return the phone and get the 13 mini which should last awhile

The SE3 is good enough and not too big

It is rounded and slippery and big enough that it exposes double-tap to make the screen slide down.

Re: Forced to upgrade

#178

Post by StressedDev »

taeric wrote: post #160
putzdown wrote: post #126

The main message I take from this story is that a decent quorum of consumers want Apple to offer a smaller phone in each generation. The OP seems not to have minded having to upgrade eventually, just not to a “virtual tablet.” I’ve heard others express the same desire.

I'm not clear where that read comes from? There is a single mention of "veritable tablets" in this post, and I'm not at all seeing this backed up with any evidence of latent demand?

The author appears to be someone who gets angry or very annoyed when he does not get his way. The author may also just not like change. Basically, he is upset he had to buy a new phone after 6 years and the new phone was different from his old phone. I do not think his behavior is productive or helpful.

Re: Forced to upgrade

#179

Post by ryandrake »

stouset wrote: post #135
pjmlp wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still better than not providing any updates at all.

How far back is reasonable to go? How much additional complexity do we tolerate in order to target hardware with diverging feature sets? How much should we hold new software back in order to target older hardware that can’t do the same things without chewing through battery? Frankly I think it’s fucking amazing what Apple has done here, especially when you compare against the Windows ecosystem (at least as of the las…

I think we should expect basic software security updates and third party app compatibility to continue until the last device’s hardware fails. This idea that a device that millions of people still use is “old and icky and we just don’t wanna support it anymore” is user-hostile and should not be tolerated.

Re: Forced to upgrade

#180

Post by ttepasse »

I'm currently in the same position, upgrading from an iPhone 6s (2015) to an iPhone 16.

The thing is, it is mostly not the apps which forced me to upgrade. I can't get newer ones, of course, but the old ones still work. (Except a supermarket app which practically deactivated its current app and asks me to update to a newer version which I can't install. There is no need, no new APIs except maybe developer convenience.)

But the real villain is the web.

Browsing simple websites becomes a chore, Safari becomes unresponsive for minutes at a time. Sometimes it feels worse web experience than the one an iPhone 1 with the checkerboard background.

I blame React for having to pay money just to stand still.

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