Hacker News Reader

Comment by jerkstate | Hacker News Reader

I also don't like how much they are pushing for me to install IOS 11 on my 5S. I know it's going to be unbearably slow but I intend to keep this phone for another year, so I want to stay on IOS 10

View on HN

I have a 5S and iOS11 actually improved my phone's performance. The biggest hurdle for me was adjusting to the UI/UX changes.

I actually had issues with iOS10 where my phone was consistently full no matter how much I removed from it. I had to remove almost everything to upgrade, but once I did it had cleared up most of the memory on my phone. The OS took up more space, but it seemed to have optimized whatever excesses were consuming everything before.

Were you on 10.3 before? The most likely explanation of what you saw is the APFS migration, but you should have already gotten that in the 10.3 update.

Interesting point. I was, but not for very long. I was on 10.2 for the longest time. In the process of upgrading to 11, I upgraded to 10.3 for a few hours and didn't notice, but I didn't clear out as much from my phone until I moved to upgrade to 11, so I can't confirm one way or the other.

I can say I've noticed an improvement in performance overall, though. And at the very least, it hasn't slowed down or run into any major bugs.

You intend to use your phone for a year without installing any security updates?

Some people like living dangerously, I guess. For the rest, it's a good thing iOS strongly encourages people to keep up to date.

What about folks who continue to use older hardware?

This is a problem with the manufacturer, that doesn’t backport security fixes to older OS versions.

It’s a sign that we are still in the software dark ages when security is so poor that a continuous stream of patches is the only way to stay safe.

It will only change when all software vendors become liable for security failures.

So... what's the alternative? How do you address security vulnerabilities without pushing out a change in the code that patches the vulnerability?

It's also good for Apple's pocket. It's really good for them when people have to buy a new phone just because the old phone is extremely laggy after a mandatory update.

Apple should be legally required to maintain the same level of functionality as before then.

I don't agree with that but they shouldn't be allowed to stop signing the old versions. People should be able to downgrade if they have a need or desire to do so.

There has to be a middle ground. If I want to run iOS 10, I should get a set number of years (3? I'd be happy with 3) Apple will back port security fixes to it instead of being forced to run the dumpster fire that is iOS 11. Simply continuing to sign old versions or make them available isn't enough.

Hopefully the EU takes this up, as they’re far more pro consumer than the US.

I have a 6s and regret upgrading to 11. Slow and unstable. Frankly I don’t do enough sketchy crap on the phone to care about security updates as much as I’m supposed to.

Sketchy crap like checking your mail?

Or like using Wi-Fi, given that iOS 10 will not be patched for the KRACK vulnerability.

It always amazes me how subjective adjectives like "slow" and "unstable" are when referring to software. I too have a 6s (plus), and iOS 11 has been just as fast and stable as iOS 10 in my experience.

This kind of disparity makes a lot of sense in the PC world, where everyone has slightly different hardware. I can't quite figure out why it's still common on a platform where there is relatively no hardware variation.

I keep screenshots of battery use in iOS. I went from 10.3.3 to iOS 11 when it was available. Gave it the obligatory 3 days to "stabilize" and was amazed at how crappy it was. Given my usage I was seeing about 4.5 hours Usage at the 50% mark on 10.3.3. On iOS 11 it was down to 3.25 hours. I tried all the Public betas up to 11.2B1. I DFU'd. I set up as new. I ran without my usual assortment of apps and just used the stock ones. I jumped through every single hoop I could and iOS 11 was just a downgrade for me.

I mean if I had devices side by side of different OSes, I’m confident I could measure it. Time to open applications, like the phone dialer and messages, is noticeably slower than ever before for me. Another issue is that now when I open my recent calls, it shows a cached image of its last state for a few seconds before it refreshes with the most recent state. Unfortunately, in those few seconds, I usually already clicked the contact I wanted to call back, only to see the screen refresh after my click and find out I’m calling someone I did not mean to call. This is the same annoying way that Safari treats the back button, but I’m sad to see that pattern creep into other apps. I’d rather see a loading screen than a false view.

It would be a good thing if iOS was stable as it should be. iOS 11 is a buggy mess that I regret updating to.

I'd rather miss out on few security updates for a year, than have my phone completely freeze, require reboots, etc quite often - and this isn't even an old phone, it's 7+. And let's be honest, the security issues aren't even that easily exploitable or can be mitigated some other way.

I will never again update macOS and iOS until at least few months, and newer fix versions, after release - I've had nothing but problems with both.

> I know it's going to be unbearably slow…

It's apparently a bit slower[1], but fine. And iOS 11 will see more optimization love in subsequent update.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/09/ios-11-on-the-iphone...

It's still completely illogical to install an update just to wait for another update to fix the problems introduced by the first update.

For sure, and I don't personally recommend that anyone jump on a dot-0 release of anything. But Apple aggressively attacks dot-0 bugs — iOS 11 is already at 11.1.2[1], and I'm running an 11.2 dev release that's been nicely boring for me.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_11#Updates

I have a 5S and recently had to upgrade so that a vendor would provide technical support. They stated they only provide support for their application running on the latest version of iOS that Apple supports for your device.

I had held off and finally upgraded as the app is fairly important to me and I wanted to get the issue resolved.

Now input is 10+ seconds lagged, everything is significantly slower and apps frequently run out of memory and I end up at the home screen.

Unfortunately the iOS upgrade didn’t fix the issue and I’m still dealing with the vendor.

If you keep enough media on your phone so that free space < space required for iOS update, it won't be able to download the update or nag you about it. If it has already downloaded an update, delete it manually, then copy more media to your device.

But that would be detrimental to the performance of an SSD, no?

Not sure, does Apple overprovision iDevice SSDs to save the user from manually managing free space? iOS11 update is around 2GB, so 1.9GB free space will be enough to block the download.

The sibling posts seem to have had a better experience, but iOS 11 slowed down my beloved 5s to the point where I had to give up and order an iPhone SE. Apple wins again... Maybe that won't be enough though, as opening the camera can take 10+ seconds even on my iPad Pro.

I haven't been unpleasantly surprised by an iOS upgrades in the past, despite what I've heard. This one does sound particularly warty though, so while I'll install 11 eventually i'm waiting for them to advance a few minor versions.

Funny, my 5S still insists that the latest version is 10.3.3 when I check for updates.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com