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Comment by jwr | Hacker News Reader

Actually, iPhone 4 should never have received iOS 7. The update crippled people's phones: the software ran so slow, that in some cases I was unable to answer the call before it timed out! Subsequent updates made the situation slightly more bearable, but still bad.

I would much rather have Apple flat-out refuse to provide updates for devices which are unable to handle the new bloated software.

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I'm unable to do that on my iPhone 5c sometimes. The screen just doesn't respond when I try to pick up. And it was made for iOS7.

As an iPhone 5 user, I have experienced the same thing. A reboot fixes it. More than likely the problem is more frequent/pronounced the slower the device is.

The initial release was pretty bad, but subsequent ones are fine. Safari, for example, is at least as fast as before. More annoying are third party developers testing only on new hardware. A phone that can run "Infinity Blade" should not take two minutes to start "Threes".

>> The initial release was pretty bad, but subsequent ones are fine.

Well, it seems there is some variability on this, so the better response may be "YMMV".

iOS7 on my iPhone 4 (including the latest updates) -- just made it unusable -- and keep in mind, most of what I do are just the core apps, Safari, RSS and Read Later. I basically had the same issues with the last supported iOS versions on the original iPad and iPhone 3G.

The pattern I notice is that Apple tends to offer one OS upgrade too many on older devices, which is basically what led me to leave iOS.

The refreshing pattern I've experienced on Android is that most of the upgrades have featured performance improvements.

Apple can't win here. They don't release the update, and people bash them for not supporting expensive devices. They release the update, and people bash them for some kind of forced-planned-obsolescence.

They could release the update and make sure it actually runs well.

Note that it's not a given that a new OS release must run slower. Mac OS X had many releases that got successively faster. The trend only stopped with 10.7 or so.

It's also not a given that older hardware has the ability to support whatever changes and new features were made in the new OS.

Possible, but that stuff is mostly artificial and performance-targeted. To take another example from the Mac world, Apple's hardware requirements have almost always been artificially inflated, with people having great success in applying gentle tweaks to make them run on older computers.

Anyway, you certainly could build something that really can't run on older stuff, or can't run well. My point is merely that the dilemma you propose is wrong: there are at least three options (don't support old stuff, support old stuff badly, support old stuff well), not just two.

They could just let ios 6 continue to be installed on the iPhone 4, or let you restore from your own back-ups. I think this was actually possible for the first few weeks of ios 7 release, but then they "unsigned" the older versions.

There are reasons for their heavy-handed update policy that have nothing to do with malfeasance. Look at the world distribution of Android OS versions in the world for a case study in what happens when you don't force people to upgrade.

So I guess they have three options:

* Release upgrade, people complain

* Don't release upgrade, people complain

* Allow any random OS release to be installed, people complain

Every single one of these options have their own pros and cons. Apple seems to have just selected the first one.

Apple doesn't force people to upgrade. They just don't allow people to downgrade.

Android's fractured version numbers have nothing to do with forced upgrades or any inability to downgrade. They're simply a result of Android upgrades being the responsibility of individual phone manufacturers, and those manufacturers having little incentive to ship upgrades.

At this point, I'd wager that iOS would see better uptake of new versions if they allowed downgrading. As it stands, if you merely suspect that the new version will make your phone suck, you need to stay with the old version, because once you upgrade there's no going back. If they let people downgrade, then you could try the new version with no worries.

Not directly they don't, but once they stop signing requests for the older releases, the old OS version dies from attrition as full backups can't be restored from that rev anymore.

I don't imagine that rate is even remotely significant. Restores (aside from buying a new phone) are extremely rare from what I see.

...what would you call constant prompts to upgrade coupled with the inability to restore backups if you don't, if not coercive?

I said I doubt it's significant. I said nothing about "coercive."

iOS 4 on the iPhone 3G and iOS 5 on the first iPad have been the same. They could come out of it looking generous if they would allow us to downgrade our devices again...but all I hear is "your device is practically bricked, where's your credit card?"

>> iOS 5 on the first iPad have been the same

Man, I would pay a small fee to Apple to be able to do that. I bought a maxed out iPad 1 when it was released and it was basically unusable in 24 months. I expected to be able to use it for 3y.

i have an old 3gs that i used for testing and now it's my Pandora client permanently attached to my receiver. i never update it past 6.

when friends with 4 and 4s with ios7 show up i like to ridicule then on how they have a phone worse and 10x shower then the previous generation. oh apple. you're so funny when you try to nickel and dime your customers.

they take some 2min to load the first screen on maps. it's hilarious.

My iPhone 4 is still on iOS 6.1.3; I only had to upgrade to the 4 when my 3g stopped working after some OS updates. I learned my lesson there and didn't bother to move up to iOS 7 for my current phone; I'll probably get a new one soon just because my phone is now ~4 years old and starting to slow down on its own anyways.

I see same problem on my 3GS with iOS6 (updated from 4 to 5 then to 6). Once every 30 calls or so.

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