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Forced to upgrade

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Re: Forced to upgrade

#241

Post by eikenberry »

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?

The problem will not be solved by laws requiring corporations to act ethically. That will never work as long as their incentives are what they are. IMO the only way to address these issues is to have a free software phone-OS alternative that users can have control of.. that is to say if you want the government involved, it would be best served by funding an free software project along these lines.

Re: Forced to upgrade

#242

Post by zitterbewegung »

fragmede wrote: post #232
sunrunner wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 for the 13 mini if form factor is your primary concern (and given the sizes of even the 'small' mobile phone offerings of recent years I completely understand why that would be). I upgraded an eight year old SE (first generation) to an SE3 thinking it would be the obvious choice, then promptly replaced it with the 13 mini within a week (fortunately still available at the time). The difference is small on paper but…

The problem with the 13 mini is it's lack of touchid. it's fine otherwise and I'd pick one up in a heartbeat if it did, but it doesn't, so I won't. really waiting to see how the SE4 goes. I'm. envious of some of android's devices and features, the main thing keeping me locked into apple's ecosystem is iMessage.

Yea I really want the iPad Air 4th gen TouchID on the power button which would keep the screen layout and size but still have the security of a fingerprint.

Re: Forced to upgrade

#243

Post by ozim »

ryandrake wrote: post #179
stouset wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But who is going to pay for that?

Pushing people to get new devices is pushing people to pay for the updates.

Other way would be an iPhone would have to cost idk somewhere in range of $10000 a piece to support it fully until last device hardware fails.

Re: Forced to upgrade

#244

Post by Pfeil »

creole_wither wrote: post #128
Contortion wrote: post #118

Fairphone guarantees 8 years of updates for the Fairphone 5.

From looking at their website, that is 8 years of software updates. Not 8 years of Android version updates. Apple has released security updates for 10 year old devices such as iOS 12.5.7 which released in 2023 and runs on iPhone 5s.

FP5 owner here. IIRC, this is a guarantee for security updates at least, yes. There was some promise on how many major android updates they guarantee I think, but I forgot the details. I also wonder if and how far the promised minimum will be exceeded.

That said, I am just glad Fairphones are usually relatively well covered by open source versions of android and other operating systems. Even if I may need another phone for banking apps and all that annoying stuff in 2030 or so, I can at least safely re-use it for other purposes. My "old" Android is now nothing more than an offline mp3 player, which is kinda sad.

Re: Forced to upgrade

#245

Post by elvongray »

dilap wrote: post #144
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 was going thru a box of old things the other day and came upon an old iPhone 4. God, what a beautiful device. In my opinion, the peak of iPhone design. I would love to have a phone that small again.

The iPhone SE first generation, perfected that design. I really miss it :(

Re: Forced to upgrade

#246

Post by amatecha »

dilap wrote: post #144
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 was going thru a box of old things the other day and came upon an old iPhone 4. God, what a beautiful device. In my opinion, the peak of iPhone design. I would love to have a phone that small again.

I felt like 3GS was the best form-factor. Fits so nicely in the hand and you can reach almost the entire screen with your thumb while holding it (more or less). I wish I could have just kept using that forever.

Re: Forced to upgrade

#247

Post by red369 »

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 agree that this area is more complicated than simple statements will be able to cover, but at first thought I like the idea of some sort of rule for opening up any device that is not being maintained. That when a company decides a device will no longer receive updates, some amount of source code/documentation needs to be released to allow third parties to take over.

Re: Forced to upgrade

#248

Post by dilap »

ahmedfromtunis wrote: post #163
dilap wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going thru a box of old things the other day and came upon an old iPhone 4. God, what a beautiful device. In my opinion, the peak of iPhone design. I would love to have a phone that small again.

That was also peak iphone hype era—Gizmodo-style and all.

Yeah, the devices were still new enough that they seemed kind of magical.

I think it may all have been a terrible mistake though -- the world is more fun when people aren't glued to their phones.

Re: Forced to upgrade

#249

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

immibis wrote: post #237
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux is very explicit (and always has been) about not having a stable driver API or ABI; if nvidia tries to target that unstable interface, they are absolutely responsible for the result.

If I upgrade Windows, and it breaks my line-of-business program, whose fault is it? Hint: It's the one that changed.

If your application uses raw NT syscall (which Microsoft explicitly says is an unstable interface) and an upgrade breaks it, then the application certainly is at fault. Like, this isn't some incidental case where you accidentally depended on unspecified behavior or an official interface broke; if there's a big warning on an interface that says this thing is unstable and will break your code, and it breaks your code, that's definitely on you.

Re: Forced to upgrade

#250

Post by sunrunner »

fragmede wrote: post #232
sunrunner wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 for the 13 mini if form factor is your primary concern (and given the sizes of even the 'small' mobile phone offerings of recent years I completely understand why that would be). I upgraded an eight year old SE (first generation) to an SE3 thinking it would be the obvious choice, then promptly replaced it with the 13 mini within a week (fortunately still available at the time). The difference is small on paper but…

The problem with the 13 mini is it's lack of touchid. it's fine otherwise and I'd pick one up in a heartbeat if it did, but it doesn't, so I won't. really waiting to see how the SE4 goes. I'm. envious of some of android's devices and features, the main thing keeping me locked into apple's ecosystem is iMessage.

Agree, Touch ID is the one thing I still really miss from the SE. Face ID is usually not an issue, but there are always cases that result in more friction than with Touch ID.

Sometimes you don't quite catch it at the right angle (and sometimes it sees you when you're not even looking), and other times you just don't quite have enough fave visible for it to work (for me usually when I'm doomscrolling in bed with my face squished into a pillow, so maybe that's a sign).

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