Italy consumer association sues Apple for planned iPhone obsolescence

you can turn that off now

I think they could’ve messaged better around that, but some people seem to have the fairly ridiculous notion that Apple purposefully made the batteries degrade. Which is a bit like suing Nike for the rubber on your shoes wearing down.

That being said, Italian courts are a bit notorious for doing insane things. Italy ended up jailing some seismologists for failing to predict a deadly earthquake, which is both ridiculous and obviously has done nothing to make Italians safer.

But that is specifically meant to preserve the battery longer, and at any rate can be fixed with a new battery, just like my car needed new breakpads.

> And Apple pioneered this business model with the original iPhone.

Oh come on, your perspective is ridiculously short. This practice goes back decades and predates Apple's founding.

At least one can flash LineageOS on Google's phones. With Apple you're dead in the water.

> Microsoft provided security patches for Windows XP for 14 years.

Yes, business vs. consumer. Microsoft had, I imagine, powerful clients that were still on Windows XP.

The consumer space is a much more dynamic space. As it would happen, it has been about 15 years since the first iPhone. I would be surprised if there were someone still wanting to use that device. (I mean, un-ironically.)

Also too, the smart phone was a new market and the "Cold War" between Android and Apple meant change was harried (is that the proper use of that word?). "Move fast and break things" was certainly evident on both sides.

Now though, as the market has matured, I would hope all players slow down a bit and look to extend the lifetime of their hardware/software.

Claiming an argument is disingenuous because you don't like it is an extremely cheap retort. They clearly were sincere in their statement, and given that the 6S was released in 2015, everyone who bought one at a later date knew that it was an older device, and it's still supported and will continue to be supported.

Another way to put it is that no one does better than Apple at keeping their devices useful and valuable (easily demonstrated in resale values). Maybe Apple could do even better, but it's in a market where it is far and away the standout.

As an aside, people say "well look I can put some completely unsupported, random ROM on my old device!" is not a counterpoint. iPhones and iPads continue on as our kid's devices, resolve for a handsome resale price, etc. Competitor devices collect dust in a drawer. This is empirical truth.

The 6s is still getting updates. The user meant they got an ios 14 upgrade. But it continues to get security updates now. Rumour is it will get support dropped in september for ios 15, though Apple has been issuing security updates for older devices so remains to be seen.

Ongoing support has to be seem in the context of the market. Every phone manufacturer bases support on both original sale date and ongoing sale date. So you can’t just ignore original sale date when considering longevity.

It wasn't the case on the original iPad (only started with the iPad 2), but iOS will show you the last version compatible for this iOS (even if this is not the most recent version available on the App Store). Assuming of course that all the APIs being used by this app are still functional.

iPad 2 launch date was 2011.

Interesting. Imagine if Apple sent an update to EOL hardware that effectively "jailbroke" them for you.

"Out of the garden! Go free!"

If you kept your receipts you can get refunds on the apps you bought that no longer work.

Same experience here.

I have an iPhone which got a security update a few months ago. I think the phone is seven years old now.

Meanwhile, the Android supplied by my job is done with security updates after a little under two years.

It's not guaranteed to get software updates, but Pixel 2 is able to run Android 11, and so I believe it will continue to get security updates so long as Android 11 receives them. But it won't get access to Android 12 whenever that comes out and I agree overall that the support period for smartphone software is way too short nowadays.

I finally switched to iPhone after my perfectly functional Pixel XL was effectively made useless by Google discontinuing security updates. Perhaps I could have flashed a custom ROM on the Pixel, but I want a device that works with minimal fuss (I'd rather tinker on other things).

And google is praised for having 3 years of support when most other Android phones have 2 or less.

I get not giving full OS updates for longer, but it seem like security updates for an expensive, important device that most people rely heavily on should be for 10 years at least.

Google, though, specifically introduced Project Treble for the exact purpose of making the hardware-dependent portions of Android separate from the rest of it. It worked so well that there are now custom ROMs in the form of one system image that runs on a wide variety of devices using different SoCs. Yet Google themselves act as if there are insurmountable difficulties in supporting old devices. No there are not. They act as if they still need Qualcomm to keep older devices up to date, but they don't.

If folks over at xda-developers could do it in their free time, Google could too — if they wanted.

But besides, Android is feature-complete. It's done as a product. There's nothing more to be added. You really only need security updates.

Going against Apple on this case also makes it more likely that they’ll lose, and make the opposite precedent. For all of its faults, Apple is very good at supporting old phones; they’re probably the hardest manufacturer to sue on this dimension.

In Europe, iPhones are less common than the US. Italy has between 23-27% market share [0], in Germany it is at about 20% [1]. Just FYI

[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/622758/apple-ios-market-... [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/462009/iphone-sales-mark...

Samsung is dominant in the EU (around 40%, followed by Apple and Huawei around 20% each): https://www.statista.com/statistics/632599/smartphone-market...

I can’t seem to get numbers for Italy (without a pay wall), but I’d expect Huawei and Samsung to be stronger than in the EU overall because of their phones’ lower average price.