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Comment by someluccc | Hacker News Reader

I think as lawsuits keep coming, a possible alternative for Apple is to tie the app store to the free update cycle of iOS, essentially making iOS a SaaS product. Consumers and developers will be free to choose if the cost of iOS evens out with whatever fees they may save.

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This concept doesn't really work as the OS updates are required to interface with features of the new phones and support features of older phones. This would essentially force users to buy new devices every cycle, or cough up money for the updated OS. Also what about important security updates and bug fixes? Would Apple just allow these vulnerabilities to exist if people didn't pay? Either way this would be a terrible business decision on their part.

But isn’t this how OSs have been historically sold? You bought Windows XP and were entitled to a set number of years of support in terms of security parches, etc.

Similarly if you don’t like the terms of the App Store you could have the option to purchase an open iOS v.1X and install whichever store you please. The only difference would be that you would need to pay again for subsequent versions of the OS, just like ppl would pay to update windows from XP to Vista to 7, etc.

No, historically OS's haven't been linked to hardware like iOS is. Imagine if every time you got a new webcam, you had to buy a new version of Windows. XP was supported for 12 years, iOS 12 was officially discontinued after 1 year. You're talking about orders of magnitude difference in time.

> XP was supported for 12 years, iOS 12 was officially discontinued after 1 year.

Also a pretty false equivalence, though.

Windows 7 was a paid upgrade from Windows XP.

iOS 13 was a free upgrade from iOS 12.

Devices that shipped with iOS 10 got 11, 12, 13, and 14 for free.

(Some/many/most/all) will probably continue getting future iOS versions for free.

I didn't make the equivalence of iOS to XP, the commenter did. I did pick iOS 12 to make a point, but you're right it is apples to oranges, and that's also proving my original assertion.

The original comment was that Apple should charge for iOS versions, to which I was saying that is a bad idea. By your comment, (I think), you would agree with my statement.

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