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Comment by badpun | Hacker News Reader

> it's not worth it to spend huge amounts of time to support a phone you're no longer selling

Unfortunately, without the newer versions of the iOS the phone loses functionalities pretty quickly (the apps will require newer versions of iOS), which, quite conveniently for Apple, will make you need to buy a new one. Aka planned obsolescence.

But kudos for getting at least one version of iOS to perform better than the last one (if that's true). That would be awesome if they actually kept this as a long-term trend.

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iOS support has steadily increased over time. "[iOS 12] covers five previous generations of iPhones, stretching back to the iPhone 5S."

https://www.fastcompany.com/90237242/take-apples-advice-dont...

Yes, as hardware improves and the OS and applications take advantage of this hardware, newer applications may run slower on older hardware. I'm not aware of any phone manufacturer or OS for which this isn't true. AFAIK, there is no other system that supports this level of backwards compatibility.

It shows that sustainability is not even an afterthought. Everybody is ok with throwing away perfectly working devices (i.e. devices that were blazing fast just a couple years ago and now, with some crippling os updates, take 10 seconds to open a PDF) just because they're 3-5 years old. Let's see if Apple really does change their policy on this. For premium, very expensive phones, it would be reasonable for them to be fully functional (with no slowdowns) for at least 5 years.

Would you care to provide information about how Apple compares with others in the industry?

I don't have this information. However, IMO the current Apple's approach suits a vendor of $300 phones, not $1000+ ones. If Apple really wanted to be the technologic leader in this field, the gigantic markup and the billions of dollars that they make on phones should be funneled into engineering excellence (stability, security, performance, device longevity) and not gimmicks (face recognition). Unfortunately, it seems that the market does not demand engineering excellence even from premium products.

I'm pretty sure the parent comment wanted you to talk about Android, where vendors ending software support and updates before the phone is even bought is the norm.

If they’re cheap, then it’s somewhat expected that they are crap. Not so for expensive phones (if what you described is the case for expensive Android phones as well, then of course they’re even worse than Apple).

Many flagships get one major update or so.

  > Everybody is ok with throwing away
  > perfectly working devices

People do that? All the iPhones I ever owned were passed on to someone. The oldest are not in the useable state right now I guess, but I hope they were given for recycling not just thrown away.

I don't know about throwing away, but I certainly know several people who have a drawer full of old smartphones they're never going to use again.

You might encourage them to reach out to a domestic violence shelter or something. Plenty of folks would be ecstatic to have an old smartphone.

You have no idea what you're talking about, or you're maliciously spreading a lie. Apple consistently keeps old devices running, and running well, on old hardware.

Of the competition, only some environments running on Linux/BSD kinda manages to do the same. Android is just laughable in comparison.

Apple has allowed users to download the “last compatible version” since 2012.

I reset my first generation iPad - last updated 2011 - last year and was able to load and run older versions of most of the apps for streaming services that were available back then - Netflix, Hulu, Crackle, Spotify, Plex, etc.

"Last compatible" means no more security updates, which basically means - we no longer care about the flaws we've made, go ahead and risk your privacy (including for example your life savings if you bank online).

Also, my experience with the last compatible version (for iPhone 4 IIRC) was that IIRC neither Skype nor Hangouts worked anymore. Plus the whole device was incredibly slow.

What security flaws do you expect in older versions of apps that were able to escape the iOS sandbox that were later fixed by updating the applications?

What exploit has there been in an app that let it exfiltrate data from another app or read your web browsing history for any version of iOS?

As far as Google, it’s no surprise that Google abandoned older protocols. That’s kind of their MO....

I'm talking about security fixes to non-newest versions of iOS. Apple just does not do them.

To nitpick actually they have.

IOS 6.1.2 came out 6 months after iOS 7

But what unpatched security flaws have been reported in older versions of iOS that would allow an attacker to install a keylogger or otherwise exfiltrate user data?

> But what unpatched security flaws have been reported in older versions of iOS that would allow an attacker to install a keylogger or otherwise exfiltrate user data?

I don't follow the field of iOS security. I only know that, like everyone whose computing devices handle sensitive data and/or money, I want my system to be patched ASAP if a vulnerability is detected. AFAIK, Apple makes no such guarantees.

The alternative is Android that has a much weaker security model and where the manufacturers don’t offer patches for more than two years if at all.

But as far as iOS, I am not aware of any unpatched security vulnerabilities that have been reported in over ten years that would allow an app to exfiltrate sensitive data from another app on a none jailbroken device.

> But what unpatched security flaws have been reported in older versions of iOS that would allow an attacker to install a keylogger or otherwise exfiltrate user data?

…a jailbreak?

I haven’t been able to find an untethered Jailbreak for iOS 5 - ie a method for an unsuspecting user to have his iOS device compromised.

A “tethered jailbreak” means the user purposefully went through a series of steps to jailbreak thier device or someone else physically got access to thier device.

I don't quite understand what you're trying to say here. The difference between an "untethered" and a "tethered" jailbreak is that an untethered one sticks around after you reboot your phone. So how exactly is this relevant here?

An untethered jailbreak is one that doesn’t required you to be connected to your computer. (http://osxdaily.com/2010/11/24/tethered-jailbreak-vs-untethe...). A tethered jailbreak requires you to be connected to a computer.

The difference is that an untethered jailbreak takes advantage of a security flaw in the OS that could be theoretically embedded into a website that you visit and your phone could be jail broken without your knowledge.

A tethered jailbreak means that you either intentionally took steps to bypass the security of the OS or someone who had access to your device did.

Wow the downvotes without comments are interesting. I can only guess that they are from people who are so used to getting f*cked by the tech industry that they don't see anything wrong in having to throw away a perfectly-functioning device only because it's 3-5 years old. Now imagine cars were made like that.

Maybe people just don't think your claim that everyone throws away perfectly-functioning devices is true.

Ok not neccesarily throw away then, but, as someone else said, put them in the drawer or give them some non-phone function. For example, my iPhone 4, still perfectly functional but crippled with iOS update that made it too slow to be usable, is now a white noise machine near my bed.

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