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Comment by woolion | Hacker News Reader

Although it's always good news to have Linux on more device, in the case of Apple I find it a bit problematic. That means you encourage Apple getting a huge cut on device sale. Or further justify the high prices of second-hand device because now you can 'give them a second-life' (to counter Apple's in-house planned obsolescence program).

It's not just about freedom. Apple's walled-garden means you need in every company some "Apple guy" that owns an iPhone, iPad, etc to test Safari quirks. It really feels like an under-handed racket.

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There will be millions of no-longer-supported Apple units out there, it makes sense to give them a second life with Linux rather than throwing them in a landfill.

And linux on it would not run Apple apps, it would run Firefox or Chromium.

I think they are just saying if you buy an Apple device to install Linux on it, you are still supporting Apple (including their walled garden approach). Not to mention Apple is constantly fighting against these sorts of hacks so you'll always be playing mouse in their cat-and-mouse game

I'm all for open hardware, but objectively, it's either landfill or Linux, I'd rather see it come to use than become useless.

I completely agree with this line of thinking. That would almost makes me against this kind of projects. However, thinking about the consequences completely flips the coin for me:

- without these projects, Apple will still continue doing whatever they are doing

- I don't expect many people to actually buy a new iThing because of these projects. Maybe they'd buy second hand iThings on which Linux is guaranteed to work. So Apple is not making new money with this

- Yes, they may save some devices from the landfill

- it might show Apple that yes, opening their devices a bit may actually increase their sales (but I would not count on it)

If I ever need a tablet and these projects work out without too many drawbacks, I'd actually probably consider getting a second hand iPad and install Linux on it. At this point I'd rather avoid both Android and iOS. I'd probably look into Pine64's (and other such manufacturers) devices first though.

I hope these projects will help save 2 old iPad 2 sleeping somewhere in my family. These otherwise perfectly capable devices are worthless now just because of one thing: the old version of Safari combined with the fact that Apple forbids browsers with alternative browser engines on these devices. That's so dumb.

And I'd probably prefer using existing devices than buying new ones if possible.

So, yes please, port Linux to the Apple devices!

So loads of people have testified that using old Androids as long term computing devices just doesn't work cuz the machines can't deal with being on all the time.

I wonder if iPhones and the like are any different on this front. Would you be able to build up a little serve farm of these things?

That's kind of weird, since phones are generally on all the time when being actively used. I guess it depends on what active/sleep "modes" are available - ie can Linux on Apple run processes with the screen asleep or whatever. As long as it's plugged in, it should be workable, maybe.

But, in my mind, you wouldn't try to build a server farm out of 5+ year old iPads. Instead, you'd continue to use them as consumption devices. Read books, browse web, ie all the things most iPads are doing when new.

I believe what people have said is that the components can’t handle continuous use (instead of basically idling on user input). Even when being in use for the most part these machines just are rendering some textures onto the screen and the cpu is not doing much

> I believe what people have said is that the components can’t handle continuous use

That could be worked around by using the existing Linux featureset to manage hardware utilization. Especially if CPU/GPU use turns out to be the main issue (as opposed to, e.g. powering the display and radio components).

Oh damn. That sort of explains why my phone gets super hot when I try to solve a project euler problems on it. I never thought about this.

That wouldn't surprise me. Could still be fun for tinkering and light consumption.

The Android userspace is absolutely god awful and makes those projects hard. This would be running straight GNU/Xorg/wayland.

> (to counter Apple's in-house planned obsolescence program)

iPhones are famous for being supported A LOT longer than almost any other phone. There are manufacturers which abandon you after the 2nd year, and if you buy a model near the end of its sale period, that can mean as little as 13-14 months on a brand new phone.

Some iPhones have been, are, or will be supported for 6, 7, even 8 years - which is ridiculously good in comparison, and often the reasons for dropping a model are quite clear (only 1G of RAM, would swap/OOMkill like crazy, or lack of a 64-bit CPU).

You could debate some of these reasons, you could debate when none are provided, you could argue about why a certain model had so little RAM to begin with, and of course there have been poorly handled issues like batterygate or certain iOS versions being brutally slow on old models (though it's been years since it last happened).... but frankly, this is an odd choice of a hill to die on.

I am still using my 2012 ipad with iOS 9 to watch youtube and Plex

Running iOS8 on my iPad 2 to read books and comics.

The iPad 2 is a perfect example.

It is good some people still find use for it. However, it is a device that would be perfectly capable of being used to surf the web… but Apple stopped releasing updates for Safari and forbids alternative browser engines for iOS. The web is essentially broken on it, and I'm not even talking about the security issues that it probably has as a consequence..

I'd say it is exactly the example of a device that is today unusable for many things its hardware could handle just fine for no good reason, and therefore obsolete for many people.

Obsolete because of its closed nature. This obsolescence was planned. Maybe not intentionally to make you buy a new one, but still bad and the consequences are the same. Many people probably replaced their iPad 2 with a new tablet for exactly this reason. Or bought a new tablet even if they still use their iPad 2 for the uses cases the iPad 2 is not capable of handling anymore. Apple should be legally forced to enable third parties to support this hardware.

Next time you consider buying closed hardware (not just Apple, and Android tablets are certainly problematic too), think about the iPad 2. Closed => Waste.

I won it as a prize, and considering how it's still being used a decade later - it's certainly not a waste yet.

I'm hoping to get Postmarket running on it, if this Linux port works out.

To be clear, I find it pleasant to read your comments about still finding use for such devices and I was not specifically writing to you personally. That was a you for the random reader of my comment. Actually, you specifically are not even in the target of my comment, since you still use your old device.

I'm still using iPad 2 for ebooks too.

> to counter Apple's in-house planned obsolescence program

Apple does not do planned obsolescence. iPhone 6S is going to be be supported for 8 years total. (It's not going to receive feature updates anymore, as iOS 16 won't support it, but it also means that iOS 15 gets another year of support)

I'm hoping for two years since that's what the iPhone 5s got with iOS 12 after 13 dropped support for it, but it may just be a matter of policy for them to target 8 years since it was the 8 year mark when the final update for 12 went out last September.

This topic has become an amusing barometer for people who don't actually know anything about Apple products but love to knock on them.. there's plenty Apple does to get upset over, but this is always the one topic ignorant people bring up.

When the battery went bad on my 6s which was already several years old Apple replaced it for free. That's above and beyond the $30 program they started after their misshap handling the CPU throttling to prevent power loss on worn batteries.

The updates that downgrade the battery life without having user replaceable batteries is planned obsolescence.

It's hardly like updates are being released deliberately to worsen battery life. The more features that get added, the more CPU cycles are used therefore battery power is consumed more quickly. This should be a surprise to no one, little less a technical audience like HN. Even the battery throttling saga a couple years ago was largely with good intentions (in that it's better to run the phone a bit slower than it is for it to power off at random due to voltage drops).

Apple can be accused of an awful lot but their support story for older devices is better than any other phone or tablet manufacturer out there bar none.

They were sued and lost for exactly this reason.

https://www.npr.org/2020/11/18/936268845/apple-agrees-to-pay...

The technical explanation was that CPU speed scaling spikes would exceed the old battery’s ability to supply power, causing the phone to reset. Apple’s decision was that a slower phone was a better user experience than a phone that randomly reset when you tried to do something that required a high CPU frequency.

The upshot of that is that, yes, your phone got slower as it aged due to a software update. The battery life certainly didn’t suffer (if anything it would have improved it slightly). But it’s a little bit more nuanced than “planned obselescence”.

And any way you look at it, it's clear that Apple wasn't just trying to cripple old phones in an attempt to sell the newer models. They were doing their best to prolong the life and/or maintain a decent experience for the phones that had become outdated.

Which is why they were sued and _lost_?

The mental gymnastics you people use is nuts. I guess this is part of Apples PR, is it? Deny history?

They didn’t say that’s what they were doing. Now they do. The feature still exists today on brand new phones.

That 'feature' is planned obsolescence. They're degrading your phone, without an easy way to fix it (user replaceable batteries). You will dislike the experience and be encouraged indirectly to buy a new one. Planned obsolescence.

When they originally brought out the feature, it supported the new phones but the OS update was also made available for older models that were outside of warranty since Apple continue to support their hardware years after release. Simply doing nothing and letting the batteries in the older models degrade further would cause them to reboot more and become unusable. Surely this would drive sales more? Isn’t supporting device that are out of warranty the opposite of planned obsolescence?

My wife and I both had iPhones when batterygate happened. Turns out her battery was degraded and mine was fine. She never did get her battery replaced, she was quite happy with the (reduced) performance she had. If it had been randomly rebooting it would have forced her to buy a new model. Instead she just waited until her next upgrade cycle and didn’t care, despite me telling her to get it replaced.

The battery is a consumable part. For my (second hand) iPhone 11 Pro Max it’s a £69 charge to get a new battery. After multiple years of use and two owners this isn’t unreasonable, not that it needs it of course (yet). I’ll still get years more of use out of this phone, and multiple more OS upgrades, all while other manufacturers pump and dump the next version of their handsets. We should be forcing every manufacturer to support handsets for 5 years minimum to save on e-waste.

Its a circle of planned obsolescence. Battery gets old, so they degrade phone performance. There's no way for you to change that. They get sued, lose, and maliciously comply by making a switch that maybe causes your phone to reboot randomly. Its all formulated to think, 'I need to replace this'.

Phone manufacturers should be forced to unlock their phones, release drivers and provide user replaceable batteries. Then you can say Apple isn't trying to force you to upgrade.

I don’t follow this logic at all. If they had simply done nothing the phones would have rebooted randomly when the batteries degraded. Why go through the whole process at all if they wanted you to replace the phone? The random brownouts would be annoying enough to make you do that anyway.

There’s a reason this whole thing was dubbed “batterygate” - it was to do with one thing - the battery.

Without this feature an old phone can crash when the battery gets down to 30% capacity

Hacker News in 2022 is a strange place, it's hard to engage with people who already have their opinion of Apple decided before they've heard how they've messed up this time. The notch was particularly funny, watching everyone's incredulous reaction while people immediately went to damage control with the "but it's still 16:10!!!" addendum.

This goes to everyone: Give up. All of these companies suck, the only thing their money buys them is better marketing. It's not worth your time being their PR lackey for them.

Microsoft's CEO admitted that they have been gaming Hackernews for a while, so it's highly likely the other big brands do the same.

Citation on that admission?

I was intrigued by that as well, so I did some digging and turned up the transcript of the “Microsoft Fiscal Year 2019 First Quarter Earnings Conference Call”: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/events/FY-2019/earn... . If you search through that for “Hacker News” you’ll find Satya saying:

In fact this morning I was reading a news article in Hacker News, which is a community where we have been working hard to make sure that Azure is growing in popularity and I was pleasantly surprised to see that we have made a lot of progress. In some sense that at least basically said that we’re neck to neck with Amazon when it comes to even elite developers as represented in that community.

Hmm... I don't take from this that they're "gaming" HN, moreso that they understand that the product has to be well-regarded here.

The comment that started this chain has a tone that implies otherwise, which is why I asked. Seems like a nothing-burger to me.

Edit: "ton" -> "tone"

No, its clear they are trying to be tricky with their planned obsolecense. They lost a lawsuit about it. They were found guilty of doing exactly that.

If they made the batteries easily user replaceable, then you'd have a point. But they don't, and you couldn't disable that function so it falls under planned obsolescence.

You keep parroting the term “planned obsolescence” over and over again in every comment but I do not think you understand what it actually means. Planned obsolescence is when the device becomes useless after a given amount of time. So to use the battery example, arguably a phone that ends up misbehaving or shutting down unexpectedly due to a failing battery without any mitigations is “useless” — it ceases to function as a useful phone or emergency device if that happens.

That’s not a trait specific to iPhones though — the same thing will happen on most battery-powered devices these days. It’s just that someone decided to pick a fight with Apple about it, hence a lawsuit was born. There’s nothing remarkable about this case otherwise — it could have just as easily been any other phone manufacturer.

In this example, the mitigation Apple chose (and admittedly very badly communicated at the time) was to reduce the frequency with which these shutdowns happen by dropping peak performance a bit and reducing the peak power draw as a result. That action actually prolonged the device’s “usefulness” for its intended purpose as a phone and emergency device, even if it negatively affected auxiliary functions.

In any case, if the phone slows down a bit, you might think “okay, it may be time to replace the phone soon” and you like to use this as your excuse for it being planned obsolescence. What you’re conveniently ignoring is that if the phone shuts down at random, you are probably going to think “well, damn, I need to replace the phone _now_” because a non-technical person will not likely to draw the conclusion that the battery was at fault, they’re much more likely to believe there’s a much deeper and unfixable fault.

Finally, while the batteries indeed are not user-replaceable, they are still replaceable. Any Apple Store will do it for you (many even on a walk-in basis) and it’s not even expensive to have done. Many other third-party shops and service centres also have the capability to do the same.

They lost a lawsuit about it. They were engaging in planned obsolescence.

Yep. Law == fact. Always. 100% of the time. If the ruling says it's so. It's 100% so. Let it be written.

Yeah. They were engaging in planned obsolescence by prolonging the lifespan of their devices.

Epic.

At this point I’m convinced you are merely trolling, so I’m engaging no further.

Apple was intentionally and silently slowing down aging iDevices to make it seem like they had just become obsolete under the higher requirements of newer software, rather than just having dying batteries. While the person you're responding to is mischaracterizing what happened to some extent and implying that it is still happening (they may still be throttled to protect from sudden shutoffs, but everybody knows now), you're propagandizing about it.

If they had the users' interests in heart at all, they could have thrown a modal that explained that the batteries were dying, and asked if the user wanted the phone to be throttled to avoid incidents of sudden power loss. If Apple had done this, they would have immediately lost sales and had complaints about expensive and inconvenient battery replacement, so they chose not to. This was the result of nothing but greed.

They weren’t slowing down ageing devices, only handsets that had degraded batteries. It’s an important distinction. The change that they made is now when your battery degrades you can choose to get peak performance at the risk of reboots.

If you could easily change the battery, there'd be no problem with this function. As it stands, the glued in battery is also planned obsolescence.

There's quite a bit of it, isn't there? If your battery doesn't die, the software will cripple your phone. If you choose not to let it, you'll exepreince random reboots.

Its all a big elaborate plan to make you upgrade.

They're smart folks at Apple. They'll try something even more sneaky next time.

I can easily change it. I simply pay them £69 and get it changed. Maybe I’ve found the loophole? Or maybe they’re really bad at planning obsolescence?

To me this is no different than when I pay for new parts for my car. Could I do it myself? Maybe, but I’ll happily pay someone who knows what they’re doing to do it properly. If a bush wears down is that planned obsolescence? Should I be outraged after 60,000 miles that I have to replace it?

I’m actually old enough to have owned phones with removable batteries. Guess how many times I changed a battery? 0. All the way from the 3210, t68i, P900, Note II and a bunch I’ve forgotten and I’ve never needed to change a battery. I’ve had maybe 4 Apple phones with non removable batteries and never needed to either.

That 69 dollars happened AFTER the lawsuit (a petty reaponse) and is yet further example of planned obsolescence! Pay 70 bucks, or put 70 bucks towards a new phone.

A quick Google shows you that the price of battery replacements has always been around the same price:

https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/apples-iphone-battery-repl...

“In the US, for example, the battery replacement price went from $80 to $30.”

https://support.apple.com/iphone/repair/service/battery-powe...

Price now in the US: $69

I think I’ve come to the conclusion that you use the term “planned obsolescence” incorrectly.

No, it was pretty straight forward. Which is why they lost the suit.

Sure. They should have been upfront about it, and they should have offered a switch to disable the behaviour. They were rightly punished for it.

But if we’re going to be correct about things, it was phone speed that took a hit, not battery life.

Sure, still, planned obsolescence.

I’d probably agree with you were it not for the fact that the “planned obsolescence” happened 18 months after the release of the iPhone 6S, but they then went on to give it a further 5.5 years of software updates. Maybe someone at Apple didn’t get the message?

Well they got sued for using planned obsolescence and lost. So theres not much to argue about, is there?

A cursory search would tell you that they didn’t lose anything.

Batteries are consumable, and there's not a shred of evidence that Apple is purposefully downgrading battery life with updates.

The only thing I could imagine Apple doing with regards to seeing Linux running on their mobile hardware is further engineer ways to prevent it.

I'm personally hoping Apple A5 devices are able to run Linux too as my iPad 2 is 11 years old, has a great battery and is in good condition but hasn't seen a software update in years.

Let's say I have an iPhone 6 that stopped receiving updates. What do you suggest I do with it:

- landfill

- install Linux

- something else?

- The back camera is probably better than your current webcam

- It can make a good pet or baby monitor (several apps that do this have extremely long support schedules because they know people will reuse old phones)

- If you’re going to dispose of it, return it to Apple for recycling rather than landfill

Recycle it with Apple.

I don’t understand this desire to keep arbitrary old devices around. I only do it for as long as I need a device for testing (iOS dev).

They simply have no value past this.

Use as an iPod, it's got a headphone jack which is rather nifty, also still works fine as a basic phone, you can have the battery replaced quite cheaply.

And what do I do with my new phone? Just leave it there while I use the older iPhone? No. Realistically you'll use the new phone. The old iPhone is still not going to be used. So what do we do with them now? We install Linux or we just trash it?

Sell it or repurpose it, just like anything that gets replaced (fridge, blender, car, etc..)?

Just because your old device doesn't support linux doesn't mean it's a brick. (Surely you were aware before you bought the device that it doesn't support linux).

> - something else?

Recycling it would benefit the planet more right?

It beats devices going into the landfill or being scrapped, this gives millions of machines a second lease on life. For people who for instance can't afford anything else.

What? These devices would be running Firefox not Safari.

You need a lot more “Android guys” to keep Android usable on old phones when the manufacturer drops support in a year..

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