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Comment by scoot | Hacker News Reader

There's a trade-off. Either your device becomes obsolete because it doesn't have the hardware capacity to support the requirements of a newer OS so you are stuck at an older version, or it becomes obsolete because the vendor allowed an upgrade that was detrimental to performance.

For the vendor: damned if you do, damned if you don't.

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There's no problem with having an older iOS that still runs as fast as the day you bought the phone. Many people I know purposely hold off the upgrades just to retain the same speed, and are satisfied with it

There is a very fundamental problem to it, namely the lack of security patches. They really shouldn't browse the web anymore, then.

Unless the vendor also makes the OS and can choose the minimum hardware requirements they target.

Which was exactly the point.

Or a third option: invest in software that doesn't have strict absolute hardware requirements. A lot of the hardware requirement inflation is due to unoptimized software. Which is not a quality failing as much as a deliberate choice. Apple could absolutely include older device performance in their QA testing.

Mobile CPUs have quadrupled since 3.5 years when the 6 came out. Most normal people want cool new features. If you are in the minority, don’t expect it to be fixed just for you — especially since the old OS is optimized for you and you can use it just fine.

This is not true. Apple does not let you install old versions of iOS and if you try to avoid upgrading you’re bombarded multiple times per day with pop ups asking you to either upgrade now, or install overnight. There’s no option to skip the new os. You can only click install overnight, then cancel out of the passcode prompt.

It's a simular situation on the mac os. I remember reading a post here a little while back about some security flaw in the new mac os that allowed unauthorized access to root. The fact that i have to go through the process you deacribed evry day is very frustrating.

They push way to hard to be constantly updating os versions, especially given the serious bugs that people seem to be finding.

> […] especially since the old OS is optimized for you and you can use it just fine.

This is inaccurate. The fundamental issue is that Apple doesn’t backport security fixes to old iOS versions. This makes it untenable to use older iOS versions, unless you don’t care about the security of your data/device. If Apple changed their policy on backporting security fixes, they’d be able to offer iOS downgrades without compromising user security.

> Most normal people want cool new features.

The problem is not new features, but bloat. Look at stack traces on recent versions of iOS, or at the view hierarchy, or at the method table of NSObject. Apple is rushing out junk software by adding another fat layer of duct tape every year.

iOS 11 is just as terrible on the 5s as iOS 9 was on the iPhone 4s. Within two years, the OS has caught up with a 4.5x increase in CPU performance! I'm not talking about 3D games, just unlocking the phone, taking pictures, launching apps, chatting on iMessage/WhatsApp. And iOS 11 should actually be more lightweight since it has dropped support for 32-bit apps.

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