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Forced to upgrade

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Re: Forced to upgrade

#221

Post by llm_nerd »

ryandrake wrote: post #211
llm_nerd wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can find some recent internet posts noting that FlightAware dropped iOS 15 support, but at present it claims to support iOS 16.4 or later devices, which would include the 7 and 8 if updated. I don't use iOS 16 or FlightAware, so it's possible that they allow you to install it from the store and then do some runtime check and refuse to actually run, but that would be super weird behaviour. I get why devs do this som…

iPhone 7 is stuck on iOS 15.8.3[1]. > I don't use iOS 16 or FlightAware, so it's possible that they allow you to install it from the store and then do some runtime check and refuse to actually run, but that would be super weird behaviour. This is exactly what they appear to be doing. It should be against Apple’s guidelines to release an app that simply says “go away until you buy a new phone.” 1: https://en.wikipedia…

Ah, sorry, mea culpa I thought the 7 and 8 were getting the same updates.

So the 7 is stuck on 15, and it is the one being left out courtesy of 15. Still doesn't address the submission though that is claiming this about the 8 and 16, which as of now is still very widely supported. I assume the author is just reading the tea leaves and predicting what is ahead. Eventually 16 will be deprecated too, though it isn't right now.

FlightAware on the App Store likely works perfectly, though it would require 16.4+ on devices like the 8 or newer. The "you can't use this anymore" is likely a startup API check on previously installed and no longer updatable versions.

Re: Forced to upgrade

#222

Post by epistasis »

immibis wrote: post #114
epistasis wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're definitely helping me prove my point, what are those other environmental impacts? Let's imagine we can stop a single car from needing to be produced: that will dwarf all the mining impacts from probably thousands of phones! Cars are soooo much worse along any angle you can possibly imagine, yet people are misdirected from their use of cars to worrying about miniscuke rounding errors from their phones.

so let's stop unnecessary cars and unnecessary phones

The first step when doing optimization is to measure, so that one knows where efforts have significant results.

I am arguing that our efforts should be in proportion to their payoff for environmental efforts as well.

Or more precisely, we should spend our environmental efforts in ways that maximize their returns.

Thus, here I am spending lots of time commenting on how a tiny minor change in driving habits will have bigger effects than large changes in phone habits.

Urban planning in the US responds to the demands of the residents. We should be asking all residents demand alternatives to driving.

Re: Forced to upgrade

#223

Post by FireBeyond »

selykg wrote: post #117
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…

I always trade my phones in to Apple, who reuse/recycle large portions of it. https://abcnews.go.com/Business/recycled-iphones-apple-produ... Not sure if there's a better document that talks more about it, that was just what I could quickly find.

I love that Apple locks other people out of using even genuine parts for repairs and servicing, but is happy to collect them from people to reuse, themselves.

Re: Forced to upgrade

#224

Post by epistasis »

antasvara wrote: post #134
epistasis wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There are a lot of carbon emissions from a variety of sources. Coal fired power generates more CO2 in the US than all US automobiles combined. Does that mean we should completely ignore automobiles and focus on coal power? Focusing on the "smallest" problem at the expense of the "biggest" is the wrong approach. But ignoring small problems that are easier to fix is also the wrong approach. The author is using a phone…

Coal is a dead man walking, not just in the US, but around the world. Systematic market forces have eliminated any financial advantage to coal. China uses it to fill in for gaps in renewables, but has very low capacity factors for their plants.

IMHO we should spend lobbying efforts on the things that will have greater effects, like approving apartment buildings in walkable areas.

I agree with your assessment that we should change what we can and should optimize how we spend our time creating change, but IMHO the best possible outcome of advocating for phone change is that people think "hey yeah let's change this," but then get told "oh so you are OK with that change, how about something far far bigger for small effort?"

We seriously only need to do very small changes to urban planning to effect massive change compared to phones. And those small changes have the effect of growing. And they are necessary urban planning changes, and the longer we put them off the less likely we can have the snowball rolling where we need it to be.

Re: Forced to upgrade

#225

Post by pjmlp »

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…

As far as in other society products.

When not available from original source, repair shops.

Re: Forced to upgrade

#226

Post by ndriscoll »

immibis wrote: post #122
zokier wrote: post #29

What 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.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42038139

"Just" is a fine word to use when a solution is not technically complicated, and it's important that people with technical understanding express that it really is "just" that simple. That way, if the reason they don't do that is that they and their business partners don't want to, citizens know it's reasonable to ask their governments to make those companies release driver/firmware source code and/or hardware documentation as part of consumer protection laws.

Re: Forced to upgrade

#227

Post by epistasis »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #120
epistasis wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're definitely helping me prove my point, what are those other environmental impacts? Let's imagine we can stop a single car from needing to be produced: that will dwarf all the mining impacts from probably thousands of phones! Cars are soooo much worse along any angle you can possibly imagine, yet people are misdirected from their use of cars to worrying about miniscuke rounding errors from their phones.

Suppose (made up scenario) we can stop a million phones being discarded every week by mandating that camera modules have to be replaceable by third-parties. We can drop that legislation tomorrow, basically no problem. Are you gonna say, no we have to wait and do cars first because a car is equal in carbon to 20 phones (or whatever). Cars are one of the large container targets, but it takes years to change urban envir…

That cars are such a slow mover is the reason that we need to focus on it now, rather than later.

I don't think you hypothetical would change even a tiny fraction of phone replacements, but even if it did, legislative bandwidth in the US is extremely low and should be reserved for the high impact changes. Anything that distracts from the must-do messages is quite likely to be harmful.

We make people jump through all sorts of hoops for plastic straws and plastic bags that have approximately zero environmental win compared to far smaller changes to their car use.

The real problem is the social attitude that cars can not be touched or criticized. That needs to start changing.

Our phones are not the core of climate change, our cars and all the massive environmental damage from mining the necessary minerals for them really are.

Re: Forced to upgrade

#228

Post by SoftTalker »

int_19h wrote: post #167
SoftTalker wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For most people a phone is a monthly payment. One of the rewards that keeps them paying is that every few years they get an "upgrade." The phone companies and the mobile carriers very smartly followed the car model of selling: they sell a payment, and when the balance is paid off they offer a trade-in/upgrade (and a new loan). If you resist, you eventually stop getting support. For the same reason, many car dealershi…

This is very country-specific. I can think of quite a few countries where the norm is to just buy the phone, or at least finance it through a regular personal loan, not something tied to your operator.

Yeah, you can do that here, and it's what I do. I do the same with cars. But most people in the USA have a car payment and a phone payment that is just a perpetual part of their monthly budget.

Re: Forced to upgrade

#229

Post by FredPret »

ryandrake wrote: post #205
FredPret wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Then users should be compensated when the manufacturer decides to remotely kill their devices (whether by a kill switch or by stopping maintaining the software).

Then we will simply see fewer and more expensive models available for sale as some manufacturers and investors decide these regulations are too much and exit; others will raise prices to pay for the compensation and extended software support.

Every action has a reaction.

Re: Forced to upgrade

#230

Post by zamadatix »

koito17 wrote: post #195
dnissley wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Both of those sources paint the picture GP was telling. For 2020 the iPhone SE sells 2nd place in unit count... nearly tied with a unit that was out for 6 fewer months that year with twice the ASP. Nearly 1/3 the sales of the previous generation model that year. Same for the top 10 best selling models in Jan 2021, combine both the iPhone SE 2020 and iPhone 12 Mini and you've got the monthly sale volume of the previous generation iPhone 11 at half the sale price and 2 models worth of R&D. This data for a the year after a slump of smaller models not being available.

If this was OnePlus or someone those would be decent numbers. The problem is they are Apple, they already held the top 4 spots by significantly larger margin with premium devices. Building low cost devices to only make 8th and 10th place with them isn't necessarily a win for them. They can just cut margin on the older versions of the popular models if they want to capture that price point without stifling their focus on their new products each year.

The way people talk about smaller phones around here you'd expect the 2020 model was outselling new models through this day and the masses were waiting with bated breath for updates. Truth is there is just a smaller portion of the market that actually wants such phones when it comes time to upgrade but you here from them more often because they are one of the least common and least valuable segments of the market to try to service.

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