Forced to upgrade • Hacker News Board

Re: Forced to upgrade

#191

Post by andrewxdiamond » Mon, Dec 02, 2024, 8:00 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #183

StressedDev wrote: post #172

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 visi…

This kind of “security ransom” should not be acceptable. Oh I should throw away my perfectly working phone because the OS vendor just up and decided to stop fixing its security, leaving the device useless? Shouldn’t they compensate me for making my perfectly good hardware useless, since I should not be connecting it to the web now? This person is doing the right thing: complaining loudly about corporate practice that…

If I want to produce a device, am I required to put work in to maintaining it forever? An iPhone 8 is really old by this point, honestly I’m impressed it still works.

What timeline would you recommend that is fair to both consumers and producers?

Re: Forced to upgrade

#192

Post by bongodongobob » Mon, Dec 02, 2024, 8:00 PM UTC

bambax wrote: post #61

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…

> 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.

Yeah let's not compare daily driver computing devices with hardware appliances or even speakers.

Re: Forced to upgrade

#193

Post by ryandrake » Mon, Dec 02, 2024, 8:02 PM UTC

andrewxdiamond wrote: post #191

ryandrake wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of “security ransom” should not be acceptable. Oh I should throw away my perfectly working phone because the OS vendor just up and decided to stop fixing its security, leaving the device useless? Shouldn’t they compensate me for making my perfectly good hardware useless, since I should not be connecting it to the web now? This person is doing the right thing: complaining loudly about corporate practice that…

If I want to produce a device, am I required to put work in to maintaining it forever? An iPhone 8 is really old by this point, honestly I’m impressed it still works. What timeline would you recommend that is fair to both consumers and producers?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42299639

Re: Forced to upgrade

#194

Post by sunrunner » Mon, Dec 02, 2024, 8:02 PM UTC

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 would gladly pay a bit more for a phone with a more manageable form factor and if I could be so lucky a battery life that's more than two days. Sadly it seems like I have to pay more for a product I want _less_, just because the demand for large form factor phones is high enough for Apple to consider just not bothering with. I understand market supply and demand, but eh...

Funny how the German word for mobile phones exactly what most modern mobile phones aren't. Handy.

Re: Forced to upgrade

#195

Post by koito17 » Mon, Dec 02, 2024, 8:02 PM UTC

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.

> they are just bad customers who they will always have a hard time making money from

The iPhone 12 mini still ended as one of the top 10 smartphone models sold in January 2021.[0]

There was also a new iPhone SE model that was half the price and roughly the same size. I wouldn't be surprised that most decided the iPhone SE was a better deal at the time. In fact, the iPhone 11 and iPhone SE were the top-selling iPhone models of 2020.[1]

[0] https://www.patentlyapple.com/2021/04/in-january-iphones-cap...

[1] https://wccftech.com/iphone-11-iphone-se-top-selling-phones-...

Re: Forced to upgrade

#196

Post by hamdouni » Mon, Dec 02, 2024, 8:02 PM UTC

StressedDev wrote: post #184

ryandrake wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Software engineers are notorious for not wanting to support legacy devices and software. You see this all of the time on Hacker News. If you want more venders to support older devices, you need to change the culture. You also need to acknowledge the costs. Here are the costs: 1.Increased software development costs - Costs increase because software has to be designed to fallback to alternative implementations when the…

There is a little difference between not supporting any more and blocking the user.

Re: Forced to upgrade

#197

Post by dakiol » Mon, Dec 02, 2024, 8:06 PM UTC

andrewxdiamond wrote: post #191

ryandrake wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of “security ransom” should not be acceptable. Oh I should throw away my perfectly working phone because the OS vendor just up and decided to stop fixing its security, leaving the device useless? Shouldn’t they compensate me for making my perfectly good hardware useless, since I should not be connecting it to the web now? This person is doing the right thing: complaining loudly about corporate practice that…

If I want to produce a device, am I required to put work in to maintaining it forever? An iPhone 8 is really old by this point, honestly I’m impressed it still works. What timeline would you recommend that is fair to both consumers and producers?

I have been using an iphone6s (ios 15. Received an update 4 months ago). for some time already. It works fine. Granted, I don’t use it for “important” stuff, but it works fine for browsing, checking train timelines, Uber, radio, youtube, whatsapp, Slack, camera, maps…

Re: Forced to upgrade

#198

Post by iamwpj » Mon, Dec 02, 2024, 8:06 PM UTC

I think people forget how new and dynamic these devices are. Maybe in a couple of decades we can have evergreen devices, but for now the changes of the devices and capabilities is still driven by new releases and proliferation. These types of changes still require a ton of human effort and hardware restrictions. In the 60s and 70s car lifespans were much shorter (around 100k miles), but today those are much longer, double that of 50 years ago. You can already see this shift happening in smartphones -- as evidenced by consumers not recognizing improvements between devices that are 5 years newer, although if I'm going to be honest, I find it really odd that you wouldn't notice some of the improvements between iPhone 8 to 16.

It's wasteful, but also not really all at the same time. We're combining a lot of devices and functionality into one unit which can reduce waste, and there's not a lot of things in your life you use as much as a smartphone -- even if you cycle it out every 5 years. There are components of these that are easily recycled as well. For many households the costs of smartphones are cut down as the devices are passed down based on seniority or priority, this makes for a really functional reuse system.

Re: Forced to upgrade

#199

Post by FredPret » Mon, Dec 02, 2024, 8:06 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #193

andrewxdiamond wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I want to produce a device, am I required to put work in to maintaining it forever? An iPhone 8 is really old by this point, honestly I’m impressed it still works. What timeline would you recommend that is fair to both consumers and producers?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42299639

Tying software support to how long the hardware lasts will ensure that every hardware manufacturer builds in a time-based killswitch into every device they make.

Software engineers are expensive.

Re: Forced to upgrade

#200

Post by _petronius » Mon, Dec 02, 2024, 8:10 PM UTC

andrewxdiamond wrote: post #191

ryandrake wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of “security ransom” should not be acceptable. Oh I should throw away my perfectly working phone because the OS vendor just up and decided to stop fixing its security, leaving the device useless? Shouldn’t they compensate me for making my perfectly good hardware useless, since I should not be connecting it to the web now? This person is doing the right thing: complaining loudly about corporate practice that…

If I want to produce a device, am I required to put work in to maintaining it forever? An iPhone 8 is really old by this point, honestly I’m impressed it still works. What timeline would you recommend that is fair to both consumers and producers?

Maybe not forever, but we have really short timelines for product longevity in this industry, even at the hardware level. A washing machine or kitchen appliance that had to be replaced every Certainly there is a trend towards this in a lot of industries besides computers, but given how powerful and expensive these devices are now, the current upgrade cycles are crazy fast. I think consumers are souring on them a bit as well (both because of the price, and because the annual new models have really slowed down in the visible feature improvements they offer).

I know the economic incentives for the producers are aligned towards repeated purchases, and that's super tough to realign, but how long can the market and the environment support four-digit phone price tags that are upgraded every 1-3 years?