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Comment by peterburkimsher | Hacker News Reader

Of iPhone 4S users, 85% have upgraded to the latest version available for the platform, iOS 9. There are 9% still using iOS 6. That's the largest percentage of users running a version that is not the latest. I'm one of them.

My reason for not updating is because I use iTunes 10.6.3, which has USB sync for contacts & calendars, and even PowerPC. I was using iOS 5.1.1 for a long time, until a broken Cydia package forced me to restore, and then I had to downgrade using OdysseusOTA.

Software rot is a daily problem. LINE is discontinuing support this week. It's like the software is forcing me to upgrade my hardware.

The day will come when my phone will break. Unless Apple dramatically changes course and brings back their ecosystem, that will probably be the day when I leave iOS altogether.

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From what you describe they probably won’t miss you.

I don’t say that to be mean but you’re literally promoting what would be a regressive agenda as far as they (or hell, even Google) are concerned.

What are you going to change to? Android has software rot too, are you just going to rock an old 8210 for the rest of your days?

What about Apple's services and 3rd party apps? I remember upgrading things like Notes with warning that they'll be unusable on old operating systems. I agree with you that for old devices like iPhone 4S, iOS 6 was the most usable iOS. I'm using iPhone 4S and it's a huge pain with iOS 9, so I'm thinking about trying to downgrade it, but I'm worried about ecosystem.

That said, I played with new iPhones at store and they are quite fast even with latest iOS. I guess I'll finally upgrade to 8, I hope that it'll last longer than 4S which became obsolete just a two years after release, when iOS 7 was released.

How do you upgrade to 8 and not 9.3.5 (the latest one)?

There's some thing called Odysseus OTA. It required jailbreak and allows to downgrade to iOS 6. I'm not sure how to downgrade to iOS 8, may be it's not possible at all.

My old iPhone 6+ is still holding strong, though it's been demoted to a wifi-only game device for my daughter - I probably would have held onto it instead of upgrading to the 7+ but the GPU was a little on the anemic side to handle the upped screen resolution. On that same note though, my iPhone 7+ has been buttery smooth and considering the obscene amount of horsepower it has under the hood I can easily see me using it for 2-4 years (I'm skipping upgrading my phone for the first time in 7 years).

I'm using a 4S as well, but have stuck with iOS 7. I've been pretty happy with my "outdated" apps until recently, when Skype (whom I may for a subscription) told me I need to upgrade my app to continue using the service. Unfortunately, there is no update available for iOS 7... Shame.

Props to those companies that continue to support older iOS versions. Notably Spotify.

Spotify is basically a wrapped webapp, so that makes their life a little easier.

I know that is the case for the desktop apps (Electron I think), but is that also true of the mobile apps?

AFAIK all of it. Based on their talks anyhow

> It's like the software is forcing me to upgrade my hardware.

As former gamer, and someone that did Symbian/J2ME in the past, that was always like that for me

I have an (old?) iPad 2 still running iOS6. I don't use it a lot anymore, because updating generally slows down the device and it already is pretty slow.

However, Safari can't even load newspaper sites anymore, because Webkit is out of date so much. Hurray! Time to buy a new one I guess?

They're cheap nowadays and still have great mileage

Just replaced my kid's first gen Minis, which have iPad 2 internals, yesterday as it was my eldest's birthday. They still used them every day for Youtube, WeChat, Wattpad, Tapas (online web comics) and a few games.

They were still usable on iOS 8 but they were having increasing problems with apps crashing from time to time, probably due to running out of memory. Still, 5 years is a fairly good run.

I still have a iPad 2 with iOS6. Its battery lasts days, with the same duration for 6 years. All the old apps work fine.

Only some ad-ladden websites crash the browser from time to time - but the same is true for all 512MB memory devices incl Android phones/tablets.

The big mistake that many iPad 2-4 and iPad Mini 1 owners made was to upgrade to iOS7 (or newer) - well than it's game over, the UI speed degenerated a lot, and I know of no one of those early iOS7 upgraders that are still on their old device, many regretted "bricking" their device and bought a new device to replace the laggy thing.

ios9 runs fine on these. I have one, and the browser is adequate. Some sites do crash it. Generally things with 15,000 ads like the weather channel.

Youtube app is perfect though.

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