I don’t want a new phone, but I’m probably buying one
kooslooijesteijn.net
kooslooijesteijn.net
I still own a iPad 3 with the same, old, software stack from 2013. It still works, I can do things. I just don't expect todays developers to make a herculean effort so that I can run their apps on my old device.
It is not just the overhead of supporting multiple different OS versions with different technologies, it is also that this support takes a lot of time while there's a tiny fraction of people that, like the author, use an old phone.
I've worked on apps with +1Mio users, and we did have users who were on very old devices using apps which were severely outdated. Those were maybe 1000-2000 of the one million. Adding a constant additional workload of up to 30% (you also have to run CI and everything on older devices) for 1000-2000 users is just not feasible.
If you want to continue to use older hardware, just accept that you also have to use older software.
I also don't expect to be able to run VSCode on a 1996 Pentium 60. I'd run Emacs instead, or Vim, or whatever else was en vogue in 1996
I also used my Samsung S2 way beyond reasonable terms, think maybe 6 years I have used that one and it was still perfectly usable when I switched to iPhone. It's my festival phone now.
Every one I personally owned since that was either janky or pulled some stupid tricks on system updates or something.
My experience with the iOS App Store has been that if you only just now heard of the app and your phone's too old, you can't even download the version that works for your phone.
That is what ends up forcing an upgrade. That people's phones can't run the newest version of an app, and aren't allowed to get an old version as a substitute.
The effect may be indirect - someone in a poor country with a 6 year old iDevice finds it becomes unusable, so they want to buy a 3 year old iDevice... And they're buying that from someone who has a 3 year old iDevice who sees that for not a lot of extra money they can buy the newest one.
We have a Ring with the app installed on an old phone that we use as the "household" phone. I was going to "upgrade" the household phone to be an old tablet which while newer and running a later version of Android, is still old. Can't install the Ring app on the newer tablet because it is too old. So we are stuck with the even older phone unless we buy something new.
Of course it's a viable solution only for an archivist/advanced users, not so for common users who just wish to keep their old device running smoothly.
Unfortunately which posts get traction is very much a game of luck on HN. Some good samaritans have to hang out on the 'New' page and upvote interesting stories for them to have a chance to come on the front page. Once on the front page, the interesting stories get voted rapidly but coming to the front page itself is 90% of the battle.
I like the Lobsters model here where every new post remains on the front page for sometime and then drops off if it does not get enough votes. Due to the volume of posts HN receives, naturally such a system won't work here! So it is all down to the good samaritans hanging out on the New tab.
I'm not sure what your gripe is here specifically, if you want to continue to run steam, you can upgrade your OS once a decade, or you can install steam for Linux if your device doesn't meet the requirements. That's about as good a set of options as I could imagine.
[0] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-10-syste...
[1] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-7-system...
it's not unreasonable until you realize that Valve offers no other method for audiences that may be stuck with older machines to play the games that they purchased, which at the time of purchase they had completely met all of the system requirements.
A basic game should not have a set of rolling requirements that are ever-increasing. Valve decided that they wanted to hold the keys to the kingdom with regards to the games that they sold; thus it's a bit more unreasonable when they decide to nix a part of the audience without any recourse available to them other than "download what you need now, and unplug.".
Leisure Suit Larry required a 286 and CGA graphics -- isn't it a bit ridiculous that a Steam purchased 'Leisure Suit Larry' is going to soon require an OS greater than Windows 8.1? Yeah; I get that it's only by virtue of requiring their portal to download the thing , but they offer no alternative to this .
1. https://www.protondb.com/search?q=Leisure%20Suit%20Larry
2. https://boilingsteam.com/75-of-the-top-100-most-played-games...
At any rate, most of these users would be far better off moving to a linux distro than staying on a decaying OS, that's how I've kept most of my old laptops and such alive.
They do - update to windows 10, for free, or install Ubuntu.
> A basic game should not have a set of rolling requirements that are ever-increasing.
They don't, but the platform that delivers those games can.
I don't see anything reasonable in turning perfectly good hardware into e-waste. I don't expect anybody to put effort into continued support for old stuff, but I do expect them to not break stuff that used to work. With Valve/Steam specifically you also run into paradoxical situations where they sell you old games on Steam, but those old games only run on old Windows version on which Steam itself does no longer runs.
That said, Valve is among the least problematic offender here, they put a ton of effort into Linux support for Windows games, they allow developers to keep selected older versions of games available and they have forums that make it easy to find workarounds. So most of the time, there is some way to get things to work, even if it's a bit more labor intensive than it should be.
But generally speaking, the whole software industry needs to get their shit together and figure out how to keep old stuff around and working. If I buy something digital, it should be at least available for as long as the company that sold to me exists. That's really not too much to expect. It's embarrassing how billion dollar companies are unable to just move their digital goods into a permanent archive once they lost interest in actively working on it.
Nobody's doing that. There's a free upgrade from both Windows 7 and Windows 8 to Windows 10, and the hardware specs from MS are the same for all three OS's. For anyone who doesn't want to install Windows 10 on their devices, Steam is officially supported on Ubuntu. If you want to continue to play games on your windows 7 device, you have the option to download those games right now, and archive them in whatever way you see fit to continue to play them on your device.
> If I buy something digital, it should be available for as long as the company that sold to me exists.
Hard disagree here. You spending $20 on something doesn't entitle you to a perpetual access to a version of something under your terms. You have the option to access the game still on your hardware.
The fact that "it still works" isn't the only consideration though - it's the security posture. There's plenty of remotely-exploitable flaws in that software stack from 2013.
Well running unpatched stuff is no longer like that. I bet you could use a 2013 iDevice for a whole year and not get exploited once.
Exploits are mostly against the rich and famous now, and not so much against regular joe.
Was that actually true, or just an urban legend? I've heard this a lot back then, but never actually saw it happen.
Also, some ISP's blocked ports which protected you somewhat.
It was certainly quick enough that there was no way to get the updates installed before the machine would bluescreen (many of these exploiters didn't care much for the stability of your machine...)
Not a big threat downstream.
Nowadays, most security features and upgrades are designed to protect the device against its owner.
This mentality is one of the reasons why there's only such much people with older phones.
> If you want to continue to use older hardware, just accept that you also have to use older software.
I don't think we should accept that easily, because after all there are physical (somewhat finite) resources and external costs such as green house gas emissions involved when new hardware gets produced.
Also, sometimes you don't have the choice. The app for the public transportation in my city is quite heavy but there is no alternatives except queuing for a paper tickets. And I would bet that most users would be absolutely fine with a leaner/faster app.
So sure, you have to keep up with the time but to me, it feels more and more like a wasteful flight forward anyway.
Twitter doesn't work. Their app now shows _maybe_ 5% of tweets that my logged in user does. Safari is slow as crap on the website.
Google voice still rings and shows notifications, but can't function because no updates are available and something in the api is broken.
A non-zero number of sites show no-css warnings or just crash because it's an old JS interpreter. (HN though -- it's still rocking the 2000 era web design)
Apps that access the network are slowly dying. Though kindle and mail still work, and that's about all I use it for now.
This was a $300 device 8 years ago, and probably has my best $/usage of any tech I've ever had. The replacement is an 800eur ipad (edit: mini, with cell), because it's (the mini) now effectively a pro model rather than the cheap one, and I'm not sure I can justify that.
I find this hard to believe. A $300 iPad mini 2 from 2015 is comparable in specs to an 800 Euro 2023 iPad Pro?
Edit: Actually, you can compare them directly on Apple’s website:
https://www.apple.com/ipad/compare/?modelList=ipad-mini-2,ip...
Even the current iPad mini (6th gen) blows the iPad mini 2 out of the water.
https://www.apple.com/ipad/compare/?modelList=ipad-mini-2,ip...
Mini 6 has regularly been on sale for $499 as well since it is now long in the tooth already.
If I want a mini with cell, it's 800 eur, which might be 600 moneys where you live, but VAT is included here.
Actually, 64GB mini with Wifi+Cellular is 869 eur in Ireland, just checked there. When I bought my original mini, it was the cheapest new iOS device with a cell radio.
Still have the invoice.
>Introductory price
>Wi-Fi: 16 GB: $399, 32 GB: $499, 64 GB: $599, 128 GB: $699
>Wi-Fi + Cellular: 16 GB: $529, 32 GB: $629, 64 GB: $729, 128 GB: $829
I have a Jan 7, 2015 receipt from Apple for a 16GB Wifi only iPad mini for $300, and that was for the first version of iPad mini.
Perhaps you bought it with a special promotional price.
There’s a lot to be said about software longevity but the gains made by Apple’s newer CPU/SOCs is really impressive and noticeable day-to-day.
You don't?
I can run VsCode on my laptop from 2005. I dont have anything older, but Debian does run on servers from 2005, and can probably run VsCode
Sure, mobile phones changes a lot between 2005 and 2015.
But in the past 5 years there hasn't been much progress
This sits with OS first and foremost, and we do this shit because we can get away with it.
We will have to change, this isnt sustainable
we didn’t even have multicore processing in 1996. 1995-2005 looks very different from 2005-2015.
We had a bunch of DECpc XL dual Pentiums a few years before that too.
I'm pretty sure it was on nt3.51 at that stage with exceed for remote X windows apps and a bunch of bespoke win32 stuff.
Also you’d want to avoid loading too many plugins all at once, due to limited RAM, but that should be obvious as well.
Nope - AppStore showed about 12 results for "interval timer", but none of them were installable on iOS 6. I thought then I will look for an online interval timer, and use it through wifi. After clicking through the first 3 pages of Google results, Safari could not make any of the pages usable. Either loaded a blank screen, or the interface didn't react to the touches - I guess some "fancy" new features that are too modern for the old Safari.
I could rant about loading 10MB JS on a typical lightweight site that has the same visuals and functionality as 15 years ago, but now it makes Chrome cry on a modern machine... but I won't do that.
Anyway this is how I gave up having an interval timer on my iPod. Maybe my plan was too grandiose to begin with. Neither new software, nor old software.
It could definitely do more than what it currently can, but I don’t think it is reasonable to expect such a long support period, especially that mobile hardware underwent a complete metamorphosis in the meanwhile.
It is reasonable to expect an iphone 14 to be usable as a general purpose device until the next major breakthrough, because year-to-year upgrades are mostly incremental nowadays, but say the first iphone is incomparable on the hardware front to a modern smartphone.
Frankly, there hasn't been a revolutionary breakthrough in the field of interval timers' technical design in the past decade that would warrant such a ridiculous obsolescence. We are literally talking about "hello world" level applications, that can't run on the device - not because the hardware or software isn't capable.
At the same time, speaking beyond Apple, how long is too long to keep various code, infrastructure, etc around and supported?
Apple dropped support for 32-bit apps being published awhile back because they dropped 32-bit executable support from the OS. Should they keep the binaries around and available forever?
Eventually the old stuff becomes something you have to engineer around. And eventually that becomes too costly to justify.
Again, I agree with you, but businesses have to justify their spend [insert quippy VC jokes here].
I’d like to see a non-commercial approach to solve issues like this very broadly. For example you could legislate that device manufacturers over a certain size retain device software and firmware, and that it all be open sourced after a certain duration. If you go out of business, you transfer it to a trust setup to maintain access to such things. (I admit this is a simplistic example, but it’s not intended to be a full solution.)
(I do work on complex embedded operating systems, with decades long support contracts. We are far from Apple size, I must admit, but I do know what this work involves. Keeping the lights on for such systems is not such a huge expense as everyone pretends it to be. RPi4 is an exaggeration, but not a huge one.)
I don't expect new stuff to work on old systems, I'm not crazy.
I remember, many years ago, someone complained Steve Jobs via email about some iOS update, that he didn't like. And Steve's response was along the lines of "Does the system still do everything what it did when you bought it? Yes? Then have a nice day."
Apple does not give such responses anymore. They avoid answering these. With a reason.
But don't get me completely wrong. I bought my iPod 11 or 12 years ago (I don't even remember), and this is literally my oldest tech that I still use every day. This tells a lot. But my blood boils when I think about how much better it used to be, and how much better it could be... only if Apple wanted it to be.
For the App Store specifically, that very mentality works against keeping apps available. From Apple’s (or for that matter Google’s) perspective, a production App Store has the front end, sure. Also the CDN, the entitlements, DRM, and code signing, payments and IAPs, interfaces to developer tooling/upload/analytics, scanning for the use of private APIs, and so on.
To make such a system function more like FTP for old apps, they’d have to build that in or at least build paths that serve to exempt classes of apps from some or all of that.
I can absolutely understand why their perspective is that if they’re spending effort to remove or deprecate old apps or features, it would appear crazy to introduce new features or services simply to serve up the old. Even if they could do it at cost, that’s developer time at least, and “why spend that on old stuff?” Apple is the company that razed its own corporate museum under Jobs because he thought the past was irrelevant or would hold them back.
I would LOVE if they did that though. They see the dollar signs involved in preservation, not the value. Sadly, the day may come when App Stores share the fate if the game stores like the Wii U storefront, and entire generations of software will be lost.
that isn't supposed to be a herculean effort -- if it is then you should question those that provide the software stack, and question why you're beholden to those decision-makers.
Apple does not give you the freedom to use old versions of software. You can't downgrade your iOS version. You can only upgrade apps, and iOS only lets you download the latest available version of an app for your version of iOS.
Need to do a device reset? If you have managed to keep any apps on old versions, you'll get upgraded now. And you can't even save APKs and sideload because of Apple's developer signatured and certs.
Old versions of iOS get some, but certainly not all security updates.
And most importantly... so, so, so many apps, from banking to navigation to music, insist on checking your app version and blocking usage with a massive dialog box if you're a couple of weeks out of date. It's incredibly obnoxious, especially when some of these apps update 2-3 times a week and each update is >100MB. I try to use those services from a web browser these days, but Safari is so limiting you can't even reliably block ironic "download the app" banners.
And that's to say nothing of actual cellular advancements, like new LTE bands and 5G and voLTE, which older phones understandably can't get... but which certain phone providers use to kick old phones off the network. For instance, AT&T no longer allows any activations for phones not on their (very limited) voLTE whitelist, since they shut down 3G.
Like OP, really wish I could just use the 2016 SE for the next 10 years. But even though the hardware is capable the software industry has pushed it into the "legacy" bin.
The last thing they cannot take away and cannot control is offline physical goods, like books for example.
Not really. E.g. can download mp3 music and mp4 movies on my own HD and so far Microsoft Defender hasn't deleted them.
But to your point, even on a 1st gen iPad - at least the last time I tried a couple of years ago - you can still play music you bought from Apple using the Music app. As far as I know, iTunes still supports every iPod and iOS device ever made.
You can always download the app version that works for your phone using the Purchased section... the only real phone I have yet to be able to do this for is the iPhone 4 which did not have 64-bit apps.
My iPhone 5S and beyond all have access to every app that is available for 64-bit OS. It's often an older version of the app but that's kinda the Apple burden.
Older iOS versions have other problems as well. Safari is not an app that you can update, it's part of the OS. A lot of websites will simply stop working for you if your version is too old.
Sounds like a lot of hoop jumping and a lot of caveats. Even I, a pretty tech-savvy individual, wouldn't want to bother with that on my primary phone. Let alone ask a non-technical friend or family member to do so.
However, it's not realistic to say "it's impossible"
As I said, I'm still sporting a 11 year old iPad and using it for what it can do. It works for me. But I'm not expecting to use it like a modern iPad with modern software.
I agree with the device reset, that sucks. I never had to do that so I hadn't thought about this.
This is not true and hasn’t been true since around the time that iOS 7 came out.
About two years ago, I dusted off an old first gen iPad (circa 2010). I reset it and I was able to download “the last compatible version”. It’s option given to you by the App Store. I was able to use Netflix, Hulu, Crackle, Spotify, Google Drive to read PDFs.
Not only can you use old versions of software, you can download them again if you reset your device.
Visit the purchased tab in the App Store and select the app you wish to download again, and you will receive the last compatible version for that particular device.
For example I just got an update to an app I've been using for a while. The update will sunset the app despite there being no online component to it. I'd kinda like to downgrade now, but the latest version compatible with my phone would be his sunsetted one.
The latest version tacks on so many ads and “free to play” IAPs that it’s an entirely different game (and tbh one that’s no longer usable). It’s good enough and holds enough nostalgia for me that I would pay $2-5/yr to keep it clean but that’s not an option any more.
Thankfully I have been keeping backups over the years (iMazing) and so I was able to spend some time going through old versions to find a good one, but that is only a solution if you’re planning ahead or if you have a time machine.
In that case, you borrow a newer device, sign in with your Apple ID, and download the app onto that device. Now that app will be in your purchase history and you can download the last compatible version for your older device.
At least I can still load PDFs onto it.
The old apps still install just fine and we’ve never had to make any effort to maintain it, or fiddle with operating systems or software or anything.
It’s hard to imagine a better value from a device like this, especially when you take into account the amount of time you would have to spend managing something that had more software freedom to it.
1) Anything that requires MFA via Apple.
2) Full backup/restore will not restore old versions of the apps. New versions are either unavailable or don't work.
3) Any popular streaming service such as Netflix/Amazon Prime/AppleTV.
2. You can manually go in and download “the last compatible version”
3. Netflix is usually good about supporting old devices. Amazon disabled an older auth protocol. Apple TV+ videos can be accessed via the web (tv.apple.com). While Safari seems to always redirect you to the app, Chrome for iOS doesn’t.
If I use LTE at least I have some usable bandwidth.
Not enough of a problem for me to start using 5G yet. But eventually it'll force my hand.
I am an android / windows user. After several years I splurged for an expensive brand new iPad specifically to run music apps such as behringer deepmind (which integrates with their synth).
Couple of weeks later iPad silently installed some os update. Half my apps stopped working! They were apparently incompatible with the current OS and I needed to "contact app developer for an update". Which as you point out isn't going to happen.
This is extreme user-unfriendly BS, but apparently par for the course in Apple Land. Eventually I gave the now-useless iPad to my wife. Lesson learned, though not sure what lesson it was. It's hard to run apps?
Or do you mean that when the user specifically enables “automatic iOS updates”, Apple shouldn’t automatically do iOS updates?
If we don’t “blame the victim” for explicitly making a choice , who is at fault?
To be fair, it also obviously happens on Android, and every other platform, though for me on Android it was far more common that device itself stops getting new OS updates and new devices might not run old apps. I was caught by surprise that what seemed to me a small OS security patch or whatever, had an unanticipated and immediate effect on already installed apps.
I have no idea if "Automatic OS updates" was the default setting or if I clicked it at some point when I got the new iPad. I will take the responsibility for that choice, obviously, but my point was that "You can run old apps indefinitely on existing hardware" is not perfect advice.
Here in Sweden taxi and public transport apps need to be kept up to date or they stop working.
This is forced obsolescence in action.
And if the app developer has updated the app and sunsetted certain functions of the old version such that the old app no longer works right despite being installed?
I've had banking apps, which I haven't updated, completely lock me out until I moved to the newer version.
I then thought I would use my ipad as a Shopify POS terminal for my side business when I do pop-ups. I obviously didn't want any of my personal information on _that_, so I reset it and created a new apple id. Except, you can't download any apps! Apple only allows you to download the latest support version of an app IF you had already downloaded it.
This meant first installing on a device with the latest version of iOS. So I began backing up my iPhone 12, resetting it, signing in with the new business apple id, downloading the apps I needed, resetting it, and restoring it with my personal account.
THEN I was allowed to download the latest supported app on my ipad. Success!! Well, no, because the latest supported version of the Shopify POS says I have to upgrade to a new version to use it, which my ipad doesn't support...
So, back to e-waste...
The article is right. Blame us developers for:
1. Requiring the latest OS instead of lastest-2.
2. Cutting off older versions of our software from our services.Otherwise that's 50+ steps of fun to change the battery yourself: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iPad+3+Wi-Fi+Battery+Replacemen...
[0] at least before the latest models ? Did they stop doing that ?
How old is very old here? If you're talking about devices that are under ten years old adding 30% to your workload, I would argue that something is wrong on the operating system end of the deal. Part of the reason why we have operating systems is to provide a layer of abstraction so that software is not tied to particular hardware.
> I also don't expect to be able to run VSCode on a 1996 Pentium 60. I'd run Emacs instead, or Vim, or whatever else was en vogue in 1996
I think that most people would agree that expecting support 25+ year old hardware is not reasonable. When you're talking about hardware that is less than 10 years old, people's opinions are going to vary. Those who feel as though they are upgrading without seeing tangible improvements in functionality are likely to be more adamant about longer support periods.
For what it's worth, I have run recent versions of VSCode on my 10+ year old PC. There is absolutely nothing wrong with it's performance of the editor itself, or the associated extensions. I would imagine that it supports much older hardware than what I have simply on the merit that the operating system supports much older hardware.
I've got an iPad 2 which I purchased on the day of release! It's still in great shape and runs well. The original battery still holds a good charge. Still connects fine to modern WiFi networks and my Bluetooth devices.
I still use it for classic iPad gaming, but besides that unfortunately it increasingly struggles to "do things" because the ancient Safari is losing its ability to load/render modern websites properly. If only there was a way to get a more modern web browser on it (maybe there is, with jailbreaking?) then it'd be way more useful.
Side note: I like my iPad 2 but I've long since vowed to never buy another iPad until Apple supports multiple user accounts in iPadOS.
This sounds like making an excuse for completely unnecessarily obsoleting hardware and ignorantly continuing to make hardware that is completely fine spec-wise obsolete. It all be damned, as long as we can make software how we want. No need to see beyond one's own nose, as long as the rare earths can be mined. The planet be damned.
If at least we kept supporting older client side software, I guess people could live with that, but without a doubt, software businesses are a driving force behind the need felt by many people to have a new phone every 1-2 years. Another driving force are manufacturers that try to convince us, that we need their newest ever more dystopian products.
I personally keep using my now more than 12y old phone as a music player and my phone with broken display (not worth the repair costs) which is approximately 8 years old. Some software like Signal or Syncthing can still be installed (some from Fdroid) and I am not using iPhones, but older Android phones. Some day I might have to look into rooting them and install another OS, because I dread the day, when they will stop working and I have the choice of buying an even more dystopian spyware device.
But you know what I could not install, or even find in the app store? The Covid warn app! So these idiots made the app only for newer phones, creating a huge incentive for people to get newer phones and again wasting perfectly fine hardware. All that of course without proper justification. Even my old phones have WLAN and bluetooth and whatever. So I ended up not being able to use the Covid warn app at all, just because I do not like to trash perfectly fine hardware or unnecessarily buy a new phone every year. Great. Just great.
In fact, at our shops, on older iPhones, I can test the battery state by opening the camera app. If it takes 10-20 seconds to open, it’s usually the battery causing it. (The other cause is storage being close to full.)
This won’t help the app resetting issue, which the author correctly identifies as a RAM problem (that I also encounter on my personal iPhone 13 Pro. Apple is horribly stingy with RAM even on the Pro models.)
In general, if you use your phone daily, I recommend getting the battery replaced every 2-2.5 years.
6 gigabytes of RAM on a phone is hardly stingy, when laptops with 8 gigabytes are still considered reasonable.
Another thing that people forget to do... please restart in once in a while.
Remember how people laughed at Windows users and the Windows OS? That you have to reboot daily or else it slows down?
Well, these days, my Samsung flagship actually pops up a notification every once in a while, reminding me to please reboot the phone to ensure smooth operation. There's even an option you can turn on to make it automatically reboot every night!
(I imagine that option doesn't automagically skip the SIM card lock and the Android security lock, so IMHO running it is insane, as it would make the phone unreachable until you wake up and unlock it properly.)
> You decided that you wanted to use some framework/feature/API and save developer time. Which is odd. Because consider how much time you spend trying to not harm the environment in your free time: shopping for sustainable products, bringing your reusable cup, recycling. And then think of the minutes you save with new programming stuff compared to the number of iPhones discarded because of that.
It's like a positive feedback-loop (though I guess morally negative) between manufacturers, developers, and users, all three dragging/pushing on the other to roll down the hill of faster hardware and heavier apps, none of them really in control or able to stop, and therefore also not directly to blame. The upgrade-train to Waste City has no breaks. Still, it seems to me at least that the manufacturers are the only ones strictly happy about the situation.
I think that’s a pretty good run.
All the Android users I know have been through at least 3 or 4 phones in that period. And so have some of the iPhone users who obsessively upgrade every 2 years even though they don’t need to!
(Typing this on an iPhone X from 2017…)
(Typing this on a macbook pro 2012)
How is this any different to the phone in question?
Nor a car with a flat tire.
Nor a road when a pothole appears.
The point I’m making is that when the devices are made there are future issue that are both known and reasonable (battery will wear out, network-based security vulnerabilities will be uncovered, etc), but we all recognize that those can be solved (user-replaceable battery, the ability to selectively block network access, etc).
What’s particularly frustrating are the “unreasonable problems”. For example: running photo recognition in the background on a device that does not have the resources to do it without affecting the user. Or gatekeeping old (perfectly functional) applications. Or any of the other cases that are outlined in these threads. In those cases it’s companies intentionally choosing to restrict our ability to use “their” devices and typically because there’s more profit in pushing “their users” to update.
If I'd used that hammer every day for many years and it had finally given out? If re-attaching the head wasn't going to give as good result as buying a new hammer? Sure I would.
> "For example: running photo recognition in the background on a device that does not have the resources to do it without affecting the user"
Yeah. Apple shouldn't have enabled that by default on older devices, but it can be turned off (Settings -> Siri & Search -> Photos).
The way hammers have been made in the past, you could almost trivially make a new wooden handle and attach the head to it bringing it to just as good as new or even better (if you sourced stronger wood).
I think we took a dark turn when Apple started signing the legal agreements needed to distribute copyright media to people who bought Apple hardware.
For some reason, it is slow. As in, it will still usually run apps at full speed, the framerate in a flight sim is just as high as before etc, but then it will just freeze up for seconds at a time, or suddenly do something really slowly for a while. Sometimes it will fail to respond to the power button short-press to turn the screen on, but if I try again a minute later it will be fine.
I have experienced this with multiple Androids over time. My previous phone got so bad that it sometimes wouldn't actually respond quickly enough to be able to answer a phone call, which is when I got the new one.
What causes this? Is there some build-up of junk lying around in the system that I could press a magic button and clear out, without having to reinstall all my stuff from scratch?
I could buy a new phone. But given a new one wouldn't have much more resources than my current one, it very much feels like the wrong workaround for a problem that shouldn't exist.
It's still faster than some phones that are released today.
I agree though that some apps are extremely resource intensive for the sometimes seemingly things they have to do.
It's what is driving me close to grabbing a new phone at some point this year.
Using a custom ROM? I'm running LineageOS with minimal Google Apps.
I'm not sure, but does the OnePlus 6 even have good LineageOS support nowadays?
edit: Apparently yes it seems. Wow, maybe I'll give that a try one of these days and see what it's like.
I've not had anything quite that drastic, but there are definitely a few small niggles I think I'll notice once they're not there. Main reason I think I'll upgrade is the usb port is becoming quite sensitive, it's 50/50 if it likes a particular cable now
The effect is compounded by the fact that modern apps are larger, taking up more RAM and flash storage. That in turn means the emmc has to work much harder - since there will be less free RAM for caching, there will be far more random reads.
The overall effect is a huge storage slowdown that makes the device unusable.
You might be able to get it from a rooted device - although if it is emmc based storage, then there isn't even a standard way for the OS to know - it depends on the manufacturer of the device using proprietary calls (if it collects stats at all).
Writing would be harder of course.
More actionable though: Settings > Developer Options > Running Services on your device likely has lots of things running, all with their own interrupts. Worse, unless you keep a close eye on what else is allowed to run all the time, and *especially accessibility services*, the exact type of power-user apps people here are likely to install are the most likely to kill performance due to system hooks - though I will always blame Google Services first.
It goes on to list only Apple devices. That's a bit dubious when being self-proclaimed stingy.
One might recommend an off-brand device for a fifth of the price that will last half as long, or a competing brand for half the price that lasts just as long. Perhaps longer if you're interested in doing the upgrades yourself, something which isn't possible on a device that you don't actually get access to from the manufacturer.
Overall I find this article incoherent.
I don't even take pictures.
But the performance is awesome!
It's disgusting honestly, my only options are to try to find some open source project keeping patches up to date, have my most important information on an unpatched device, or throw it in the trash.
(I know the original article I'm commenting on _is about iPhones_, but their phone is from 2016, and mine is from 2019, which from the perspective of losing support in 2022 is basically twice as good)
If you do switch to OSS, let me know how it goes -- I've considered switching to Replicant or PureOS for freedom/privacy reasons, but haven't had a good enough reason to put in the effort yet.
Edit: looking at the release date, it looks like I've had my phone for ~5.5 years, and luckily I've had zero of the problems of the person who wrote the original article. All my apps still work as expected, and I've never noticed issues with new apps I download. I'm not saying their problems aren't real, just that they're not usiversal.
For system images, it's a bit harder. I don't really have a good solution that would downgrade the OS without also restoring an old app state.
Do every rule has to be written, or does writing them into law makes it logical every time? App owners can add "we only support client versions which is max 6 months older than current stable version" to their EULA and it is also fine (while being worse than current situation) then?
One should, however, be able to download old software and install it.
This is not currently possible.
Corporate profits aren't an acceptable excuse for negligent business practices that push a forced culture of wasteful consumption. Apple needs to pull their head in along with many others in the tech world.
I consider being able to exploit security issues in older firmware revisions an absolute win for software freedom.
Try it then come back to us. 99% of the time its only slow because of battery throttling.
...
> Starting some apps takes really long, like 10–20 seconds.
...
> Some apps get slow and unresponsive Resetting my phone helped, but then within a week or two, the same apps are slow again.
Rather contradictory article.
Generally, this article is apple hate on steroids!! Apple is still releasing security updates for a 7-year-old device; name a mainstream android phone that’s doing that.
The author should get a refurbished 12 mini. $350 right now and will probably get 5+ years of updates.
You can blame it on the developer for not supporting that, but it's in response to things that Apple and Google are doing, and I'd argue that they're really the ones at fault.
https://endoflife.date/samsung-mobile
https://support.apple.com/en-ie/guide/iphone/iphe3fa5df43/io...
I have in my lifetime spent less than 10% of one iPhone on phones total.
It runs maybe half as fast as a current phone. At 3% of the price.
Making this comment to push back on the idea that somehow iPhones are insanely expensive; the SE is not.
And yes they are insanely expensive.
And the SE is half the phone the most expensive iPhone is. About the same phone I have. So there's then no reason at all to buy it over a $29 phone. At least not from my point of view
>Shocked at cost of keeping up with normal industry progress
I always think I'll never be surprised again by the sheer scale of compartmentalization of knowledge some people in this industry are capable of.
I use a laptop from 2016 with no problem at all really for programming for example
I think the ram growth has stagnated now? I kinda stopped caring.
My next wish is for Siri to be faster (no latency please) and smarter. With LLMs become mainstream, I can finally see a day this may happen. I'm more that happy to upgrade my phone every 2 or 3 generations to fund improvements of Apple silicon.
Meanwhile, you can sill run apps from 20 years ago on Windows.
Some Opensource projects like OpenSSL do have the same philosophy.
This is harder for the developpers to maintain old APIs but it does develop a sense of trust on the products.
every app is an added dependency and a possible headache if you incorporate it in your workflow
perhaps paradoxically, if only superficially, the only apps that make sense to install are games and simple tools with immediate replacement in your computer or web - and even that comes with caveats regarding security and privacy preservation
This is an issue I've been having too (iphone XR), since this didn't use to be the case and the apps I use aren't significantly different from the ones I used a few years ago, it makes me think this is some kind of forced obsolescence or an OS bug. It also highlights that many apps don't implement a suspend very well.
I really don’t want to get a new phone. I’m considering just going with a feature phone to cut down on screen time…but I’ll need something that supports Authenticator or MFA one time code gen.
I’m in the denial phase of the 6 stages of grief with this thing.
Apple has a significant part in this.
To keep an app on the app store, the dev has to pay the yearly fee, and keep up to date with Apple’s requirements (which they legally agree to do through agreeing to the updated TOS).
To keep up to date with Apple’s requirements they must (sometimes) make a minor edit to their code and upload the new version.
To upload the new version they must use the latest version of XCode.
To use the latest version of XCode they must also be running the latest version of macOS (and sometimes must update their dev device(s) to the latest version of iOS).
If they use the latest version of XCode their code must compile on it.
To compile their code they must (most times) use Apple’s new internal APIs and remove references to old Apple APIs.
Apple treats devs like consumers. The ever-advancing wall of “progress” pushes devs forward just like it pushes users forward. No one has the choice to stay behind peacefully.
Should they make that extra effort? Sure, arguably they should. Apple's philosophy has always been to look forward, not back, though, and things like supporting 32-bit code on 64-bit architectures require a lot of effort for little perceived gain.
Then again, that effort means people can jump off of the circular treadmill, so maybe it's worth it.
In this case Apple says they want their products to be completely sustainable, and yet they are choosing profit over sustainability by putting fences on either side of the circular treadmill.
I bought a iPhone SE 2020 and swapped it out a little over a year later for an iPhone 14Pro because of the app reset issue (granted I bought the phone when it already had been on the market for a while). Before that I had my iPhone 6S for over 5 years and had expected to keep the SE for much longer as well. I now also wish memory numbers were more of a focus when Apple releases a new phone. We keep hearing about storage, cameras neutral processors and yet lack of memory makes the device a pain to use shortly after release. I only now looked up memory for these devices on Wikipedia and the 2020 SE has only 2Gb of memory, just like the iPhone 6SE had! I'm honestly shocked that the SE still had the same memory as a phone 5 years earlier and also by how low the absolute numbers are.
"Not worth it." "This work will have to be redone every few years now."
I still use 10+ year old software and hardware for getting very cool things done, and it really put things into perspective.
> Starting some apps takes really long, like 10–20 seconds. I think it’s because today’s apps require more RAM than their older versions.
Would this surprise you? If, before I bought a phone, I would have some insight into how long the storage chips will last that would definitely factor into my purchasing decision. This is not something reviews cover, or are even able to cover.
Hope LTT Labs sets something up here.
Certainly true in Europe, but remember that the Euro has declined in value significantly relative to the USD in the past few years. If you convert the € prices back into USD at the time of introduction, I bet they haven’t increased any faster than inflation.
It's no longer receiving updates to the latest iOS, and only gets limited security update backports. Sadly, it won't be long before certain crappy-but-necessary-apps like banking and 2FA auth insist on you installing an update that doesn't exist on iOS 15.
Apps increasingly don't bother testing for the 4" screen dimensions, and if you report that a button or something renders off screen, app devs dismiss your device as "legacy".
I finally got fed up jumping through hoops to make Safari bearable.
I ultimately ended up upgrading to an Xperia XZ1 Compact running Lineage 20. It's the last small android phone with a headphone jack andna flagship processor. Runs beautifully and it's actually a bit smaller than the iPhone 12/13 Minis.
Yes that is actually an issue. Websites also seem to think people with small screens don't exist.
I don't recognise the other problems. But you might be right that banking apps at some point will stop working.
Alternative browsers on iOS can't come soon enough.
Umm if they assume everyone has a huge ass screen, why don't they actually put more info on it? I'm tired of sites with 5 words per screen.
If that 1% of customers are as stingy as you are, they are probably right on ignoring you
the whole planet upgrade their electronics at least every decade is just an obviously stupid thing and not enough people talk about it
Not to mention that the newer devices yield considerable utility and efficiencies that make older devices redundant.
You write it yourself. Up to the 2010s.
The majority of phone users use zero features - with the possible exception of the camera sensor - that where not also available at very high quality in 2013.
For phones, I currently see zero reason for further hardware upgrades.
It certainly hasn't for mundane tasks like browsing the web or playing simple games. I recently bought a 10 year old 21,5 inch iMac for my kids for around the price that a same sized, also full hd, brand new screen would cost. Only that screen doesn't come with built-in i5 CPU, SSD, Gigabit and AC networking. It replaces a 2011 Macbook Pro only because I want something stationary for them and not something they get tempted to lug around and drop on the floor. Apple doesn't allow the latest OS's to be installed (though there are ways around that[0]) but I haven't felt the need for it.
So unless you need raw performance or extreme power savings because you run your device 24/7 there should be no need to get the latest and "greatest".
Also, whenever I hear "you're making me"--I instantly think of those Hollywood action/thriller movies, where in the climax, the villain often says, "You're making me do this" or something to that effect--and instantly distrust the speaker!
Also SSD wear and tear after years of use can cause a device to become sluggish.
before the pixel 6, qualcomm pixels capped out at 3 years.
it should be a legal requirement to unlock bootloaders and possibly even open source the software when a company chooses to stop providing security updates for embedded computers. either that or there should be a fine for every device for every year it is unsupported in the first ten years after manufacture.
My iPhone 13 Pro does this all the time when I'm not on Wifi. Time to visit the Apple store and make them give me a free phone. Is it actually a phone problem? Doubtful. But they should pay. Oh yes, they will pay (by providing a replacement under their silly-expensive replacement plan).
The vast majority of these apps would’ve run fine on a computer from the 1980’s running at a handful of MHz in mere kilobytes of RAM, if they were optimized. But they use the trendiest frameworks and require gigabytes of RAM and gigahertz of clock cycles to run their todo-list (or whatever it is they do).
I wish there would be more effort put into making more basic smartphones, less running full blown OS and just have a few basic functions, like a decent camera, internet access, messaging and maps, but because they are mini computers they are bloated as hell.
The fact that this happens at all anywhere at any time at any place for any reason, and can't just install an update yourself should be unacceptable and legislated against
It's not third party devs fault that the perfectly good hardware and an old iPhone is denied the ability to operate to a version of the operating system with the latest API support.
You don't see this on Windows. You see it on Android, and it shouldn't happen there either.
This wasn't a thing until mobile phones became a thing, and companies to seized the opportunity to be able to force all their hardware to be obsolete.
The only change we really need there is for things like support for older chipsets, and to end carrier OS locks
For the record I am running gapps free Lineage with Android 8.1 on my phone from 2018 without any issues, I can hardly find app which would not run on 5 years old Android 8.1, if something (rarely) doesn't work it's because of relying on gapps.
That's saying that people should share your views on politics, which is not rational.
Edit: After having a look it seems to be because of the use of `overflow: auto` which seems to default to `overflow: scroll` on Firefox.