Reminds me of the bricked Nexus 7...
Forced to upgrade
201–210 of 303 posts
Re: Forced to upgrade
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. Woa. Nearly every other device in my house lasts for 10+ years. Coffee machine, printer, laundry machine, oven, TV, every single one of those is over 10 years old. Our car isn't yet but I very much expect it to last at least that long. The only device I replace ab…
I don’t think this is the correct comparison. The iphone doesn’t just die after 5 years. I still have a 10 year iPhone 6 and a 8 years old iPhone 7 both still working just fine. Apple stopped releasing OS upgrades with NEW features, but they are still releasing security updates. (In this aspect it’s better than most (all?) modern TVs. Those iphone are still working the same way as when they were released. The only is…
I still have an O.G. iPad 1 stuck on iOS 5.1. It’s essentially useless. The App Store is a ghost town. No software even exists that runs on it anymore, and the App Store doesn’t even let you download the last working version of third party apps. It’s just totally useless.
If I fired up my vacuum cleaner one day and it said “sorry, this device is just too old and the manufacturer just doesn’t want it to function as it did when you bought it” we’d have regulators jumping down their throats. But it’s a-ok to do with devices that rely on a software ecosystem…
Re: Forced to upgrade
#203The 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.
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Re: Forced to upgrade
#204Once 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…
I see this statement all the time. And it's frequently a universally-applied authoritative statement like this comment. I think it's incorrect and short-sighted to unilaterally decree things like this.
Instead, I think the correct way to approach this is on a case-by-case basis that takes into consideration the function of the computer, the needs/priorities/legal obligations of the users, and importantly their risk tolerance and risk appetite. A security policy that is not in some way modulated by risk is a policy that does not account for the real-world complexity of its systems. There is an increased risk to using out-of-date software, but without knowing this person's risk tolerance or priorities, we are not in a good place to advise a security policy.
Re: Forced to upgrade
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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).
Re: Forced to upgrade
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
My wife’s Thinkpad which is less than five years old won’t run Windows 11.
Is that because of IBM, or Microsoft? Or both?
Re: Forced to upgrade
#207I'm running an iPhone SE that's probably older. Love it, it's perfect for me, I dread the day it stops working. I've been forced to use various newer models over the years, and they just keep getting worse to me.
Agreed. The original iPhone SE was peak form factor and ergonomics. Everything after has been a regression.
Re: Forced to upgrade
#208I'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…
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 sometimes. iOS bakes a lot of support into the OS (so does Android, though increasingly because of slow uptake of new versions Google baking everything into the Play API), and iOS 16 is necessary for a variety of APIs, and even a lot of SwiftUI functionality if they went down that route. And then your APIs start changing so you end up invariably doing breaking changes so you can't just ignore the old versioned apps in the wild.
Re: Forced to upgrade
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't like these things on my phone either.
Where do you handle that stuff? Doing them on a desktop seems like the same thing but less secure and less convenient, and sometimes with fewer features (mobile deposit from a laptop camera would be... awkward at best). Do you instead avoid using computers for things like banking? [EDIT] FWIW I'm in the so-called "Oregon Trail" mini-generation, so have definitely lived in and remember a world far more low-tech and co…
For banking specifically, I use the bank's website. I always prefer websites to apps, because they aren't tied to a particular platform or device. Mobile deposit isn't something I really need, though if I had to deal with a lot of paper checks I could see that being convenient.
I could lose my phone tomorrow and it would be a bit of an inconvenience but (by intention) nothing approaching "half my life" is tied to my phone.
Re: Forced to upgrade
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. Woa. Nearly every other device in my house lasts for 10+ years. Coffee machine, printer, laundry machine, oven, TV, every single one of those is over 10 years old. Our car isn't yet but I very much expect it to last at least that long. The only device I replace ab…
I think you’re probably buying higher quality items, yes? Because there’s no way a $50-100 coffee machine or printer is lasting a decade. This can probably be explained by the fact that an iPhone is a “cheaper” (comparatively) high end item. In other words, it’s one of the few high end items that many middle and low income people own. And thus compared to the coffee machines, printers, and other cheap electronics tha…
The idea that an iPhone (any computer, really) is a high end item is pretty ridiculous.
I would like a good phone that was not made out of glass to require future replacement purchases, and I’d be thrilled to pay for it. Up front, in cash.
This rental economy’s final destination is the same in all categories: cheap junk.