What happens when those CDNs go down? A mad scramble to find out who still has the files? This same thing keeps happening and nobody pushes back. There may be zero impact to users now but accepting this hostage situation is ridiculous.
Thankfully, that hasn't happened for any platforms and you can still download the OS for and perform authorization for all Apple devices going back to the iPhone 2G (3GS for auth, since it's the first one with that requirement), so I'm not too worried.
Here's the latest firmware available for the original iPhone:
http://appldnld.apple.com.edgesuite.net/content.info.apple.c...
And you can download not just the latest version, but all prior versions, for every device, ever released. https://ipsw.me/ has all the links.
Of course, this is merely a practical argument; Apple have shown that they will continue to support all their old devices as far as this process is concerned, but this cannot be proven. If you're the kind of person who worries about any and all external dependencies and doesn't want to trust the vendor for anything, then I would advise you to not buy one of these machines; they are not for you. These machines value a rather sophisticated security paradigm (that has real benefits for users, especially the average user) over not having vendor dependencies; that is a trade-off that you need to be aware of.
I expect if Apple ever decide to retire the signing server for older platforms, they'll just publish a signed global ticket for them to remove the phone home dependency. It would be stupid not to do that. And plenty of people have OS images lying around. Just download one and keep it safe if you're worried about that. Though you'd still be screwed if you lose your Flash contents including platform config data, but nothing Apple does can save you from that; at that point you'd better have a backup yourself, since you wouldn't be able to rely on Apple's service to fetch their copy.
(Please don't reply with a tirade about freedom and evil vendors and boiling frogs; I'm really, really tired of those, and the people who write them invariably refuse to listen to any explanation about the security rationale behind why things are this way, and I've given up trying to explain it to them. Please just go buy a Pinebook instead.)
>and the people who write them invariably refuse to listen to any explanation ...
Actually I was listening very carefully and I was ready to continue listening even after you've took discussion toward being personal and disrespectful ( let's assume by mistake/misunderstanding)[1]. Due to my forgiving nature I even tried not to take personally what you wrote because all people can make mistakes with the hope that you can also forgive to other people certain mistakes and keep being respectful. I even apologized in details for my possible misuse of English words to make it easier for you to continue[2].
Still you didn't provide your arguments even after apology and it's hard to listen when arguments are not delivered.
I prefer to give people chance to fix their possible mistake before attacking them and I hope you can do the same. I hope that I didn't waste my time second time.
[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29691816 [2]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29693634
Can you please just drop it? You didn't listen with your original reply; nothing I say will change your opinion. I don't need more gratuitous comparisons to dictatorships and ad hominem attacks, thanks. It's always like this whenever I try to explain things calmly to people like you.