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Among major companies, Apple did a better job with supporting old devices. Google Nexus devices become completely out of date after 2 years (too slow to run latest software, and too hard to get hardware repair support). Software wise, Apple could have done a better job as the newer version of iOS is indeed bloated and doesn't run well on old devices. On the other side, Microsoft did great job on supporting Windows XP for over a decade with wide variety of hardwares.

This is the same Microsoft that completely abandoned Windows Phone 7 users, saying phones such as the Nokia Lumia 800 would not be upgradable to Windows Phone 8. That announcement was made 2 months after I received my Lumia 800. I will never purchase another Windows phone. On the other hand, my parents iPad 2, purchased in 2011, has received dozens of software updates over the last four years from Apple.

My iPad 2 [edited] still able to get the latest update from Apple, although that iPad shows lags running the latest iOS (probably because of the new UI).

I think the major problem with Android is the unstoppable fragmentation. With low-end and high-end devices born every quarter, I find QA a nightmare. On the other end, if a bug can't be fixed after a year on a flagship device like Nexus 5 means there is something wrong with bug prioritization.

iPad 1 only supports iOS 5

Didn't it get iOS 6?

I know 7 and 8 aren't available, but I thought it got up to 6.

I have an iPad 1 and there are no updates beyond 5.1.1

Thanks! I forgot to check my model number!

My Nexus 4 (released Nov 2012) has officially received the Lollipop upgrade and is working very well. I barely have reasons to replace it.

Apple does indeed a better job at supporting older devices, however new iOS releases are basically unusable on devices older than 2 years. I have for example a 2-year old iPad 3 and iOS 8 is usable on it, but for iPhone 4S or IPad 2 the upgrade turned usable devices into unusable ones.

My ipad 2 is running ios 8.1 well and i'm posting with it right now.

iPad 2 is one beast device, live through so many updates and is actually very usable.

It's showing it's age.

The real problem is they're still selling it brand new (in the form of the non-retina Mini) and with Apple's policy of supporting devices for 2 or 3 years that means the device will get six years of updates, even though it's already aging badly at this point.

My Nexus 4 isn't working well and I regret getting it. The speakers pops, it lags when playing audio, and most importantly, the camera bug is still not fixed. I can't make video calls on my phone because it could reboot at any second.

Bduerst also mentionned updates that "almost bricked" his phone. I think the standards for "almost bricked" and "unusable" are incredibly low in this comment section.

I still have an iPhone4S in a drawer; it's visibly slower than when it was under iOS6 and even compared to a 5S it's night and day, but compared to other middle range android phones that's still decent. Side to side with a Moto G for instance, it's basically the same reactivity, but no one would call the Moto G an unusable device.

The moto g didn't cost over $1160 over the course of two years (partly for amortized monthly costs, plus higher costs for the plan)... moto g on, for example Simple Mobile is $40/month plus the cost of the phone. Pricing may be slightly different, but when I compared when I got my N4 a couple years ago, the plans I was looking at for my phone would have been around $70-90/month or more, with any iPhone, plus the initial out of pocket... compared to a moto g out of pocket today, that's a lot more.

That's quite a big difference. I've been pretty happy with my Nexus 4, and hoping to get a full third year out of it... since the Nexus 5 isn't a huge bump, and the N6 is way out of the ballpark on pricing imho. I've been recommending the Moto G LTE for most people lately... it's a usable phone without a lot of extra monthly expense.

Why does the data plan matter ?

The Moto G is under 250 unlocked and the first gen is one year old. The 4S went for a bit less than 700, is now 3 years old and resells for roughly 200. I don't think comparing the performances of the two under the most recent OSes available is biased.

One is a new device, the other is used. Comparing them when they were new would be where I was talking about.. even today I'd suggest a moto-g over a 4S unless you have other apple hardware already.

The primary reason Microsoft ever attained and kept its business is backwards and broad compatibility.

Yep. It became a real shit storm when they changed the driver system somewhere around Vista/7 and people found they could no longer use their old(-ish) printer with their new computer. Then again, that same backwards compatibility has been a major contributor to all the security issues over the years.

Wasn't that because of the switch to 64bit? A lot of older printers didn't have 64 bit drivers.

Only difference now is the rate of new technology adoption is 10x what it used to be.

The difference is that the browser is now the center of computing for most people; things are thrown away quickly if they're not actively updated and 20 year old web pages render (mostly) just fine. Compatibility for an OS isn't needed near as much for most people most of the time only need an OS to launch a web browser. Hence Chrome OS.

There's a reason Windows XP has stuck around for so long... most people don't need anything beyond XP. Sure they need security updates and new drivers, but these things are in the background. XP had, essentially, everything anybody will need for the next 50 years.

>Apple did a better job with supporting old devices.

Am I the only one who had the last iPhone 3 iOS update? It almost bricked the damn phone, making the interface impossibly slow.

What's your point of comparison regarding to android devices ? I had an iPhone 3G that I updated all the way up. And I also had a LG L7 bought new under android 4. I found the iPhone 3G more reactive and usable in every single aspect.

Why does it need to be a false dichotomy/comparison between Android and Apple?

The Apple phone I had became nigh unusable with a forced update. It's not contextual frame of reference - it just didn't work.

But people will say Google is cool and Microsoft isn't

This is sort of a weird complaint to have, since "cool" doesn't at all have the connotation of "robust long-term support"; in fact it's almost the opposite, since being "cool" is a more in line with things like "move fast and break things".

That doesn't mean that backwards compatibility and long-term support isn't a good thing for the consumer, but it really has nothing to do with the concept of "cool".

This is a common but completely unfair criticism of Apple. Plenty of people complained when iOS 7 was made available for the iPhone 4 (because the hardware was too slow to run it properly). And Apple still sells and supports relatively ancient hardware (the iPad mini) as a result of their current strategy of selling last year's model as the second-best option.

The reason people complain is because iOS updates are a horrible kind of bait and switch. You update the OS because you think its awesome, but are unable to downgrade when you find that in reality, its slow and bloated.

The most infuriating thing in all of this is that my iPhone 4S is STILL a fast device. The CPU hasn't shrunk since the time I bought it. Apple has decided that I am unworthy of restoring my phone to the state it was when I purchased it.

Wont a factory reset bring it back to iOS 5 or whatever it shipped with?

No. Doing a restore on an iOS device will always update it to the most recent version of iOS, not the one it shipped with.

It'll update it to the version you've installed, that is. In recent months I've restored and sold 2 iPhone4, one with ios7, one with ios6.

Yup. I had 1 iPhone, my first and last Apple product.

My mom just got an iPad mini, was infuriated when she discovered she can't buy Kindle books from the Kindle app like she could on Android.

The artificial restrictions Apple places on developers and users are ridiculous. And Android 5 is the first release where I can say that Android is unequivocally a nicer experience than iOS...

Just so you know, you can't buy kindle books from the Android app anymore either - main reason I use Aldiko to read epub now.

Agreed about Android 5 though, best yet!

Say what now? I just opened my Kindle app and the store hasn't gone anywhere.

Are you maybe thinking of Google blocking Amazon from including the Amazon Appstore in the Amazon shopping app? That's a different issue and, more importantly, that doesn't really affect what's possible on Android, just how convenient it is. After all, anyone who wants to can download the store Google blocked from Amazon directly.

Just like how if anyone wants to purchase a Kindle book on the iPad, they can do it via Safari (they could make it more convenient by pinning it to the home screen as well)

Actually, no. Being able to purchase a book over a web browser and installing a native application store on your device are very different things.

I think you can argue that a browser itself is an app store (you download and execute (web-)apps with it). But Apple does not allow the installation of different browser engines, so you can still not install an app store on your device.

To my mom, it comes down to this:

She has an Android phone, with which she can buy books through the Kindle app (without messing with a website).

She has an iPad, on which she can't buy books through the Kindle app, and she does have to go through a browser to their website.

To her, the Android experience is better because of this (she reads a lot).

I understand what you're saying, technically they are different things.

But not to my mother.

I would guess (and only guess, I haven't tried to look for any numbers) that the percentage of people who go out and install an alternative app store, let alone Amazon's, is quite small (especially once you take out the HN audience)

Most of the criticisms of brand-new OS updates being "slow and bloated" are from extremely impatient users (or professional clickbait critics) who don't even have the good sense to wait a few hours or a day or two for the processes that can make major upgrades a bit sluggish on ALL devices to complete, such as rebuilding databases, the fact that OS updates often result in dozens or even hundreds of app updates that have to download and install and in some cases update their own databases, etc.

Certainly, they do not wait for the first x.0.1 release, or for the release that usually closely follows the initial release and which is specifically intended to optimize performance on the oldest devices that can still support the latest OS. This was seen for iOS 7 and once again for iOS 8.

I don't think it's a valid comment, or a comment made in good faith, to say that iOS updates are a "bait and switch". That's just silliness and flies in the face of all the facts. The facts say, very loudly, that Apple supports its older devices MUCH better and for much longer than any competitor. It's not even close.

Now, if you are unable to acknowledge reality, and expect that a brand-new OS, designed to take advantage of devices that are about 10x as fast as three-year-old or four-year-old devices, isn't going to be quite as snappy on older devices, then in my opinion, that is on you as a user. Blaming Apple for trying to give more features to users on new hardware is ludicrous. Apple expends considerable engineering effort keeping those devices working as well as possible. The iPhone has been out for seven years. There's now more than enough history out there for users to know that if you install major iOS updates, you cannot easily downgrade. (It's not impossible, it's just a huge pain.)

I'm sorry but this is simply untrue. Every time I have hardware 1-1.5 generations behind (which is not always, I've done it both ways) the OS upgrade makes it somewhere between noticeably slower and painfully slow. I've recently used an identical model side-by-side that was not upgraded and it is vastly snappier. this has nothing to do with waiting for x.0.1 or app updates. In this case we are talking about iOS 7 on 4S, I'm refusing the iOS 8 upgrade for obvious reasons. I've seen others have similar problems in previous iterations whilst my newer hardware was fine.

People are fond of overstating Apple problems and I'm grateful that the opportunity to upgrade exists at all. However it is a fact that it often destroys the performance so the ability to revert seems very reasonable. I also find the extent of the degradation puzzling.

>There's now more than enough history out there for users to know that if you install major iOS updates, you cannot easily downgrade.

Certainly, that is your version of reality. Only a small minority of users have any clue about downgrading.

>I don't think it's a valid comment, or a comment made in good faith, to say that iOS updates are a "bait and switch".

>that Apple supports its older devices MUCH better and for much longer than any competitor.

Well, it depends on your viewpoint. How can you 'support' a device by incrementally making it slower with each passing release? If all they were releasing was bug fixes and patches, and features which didn't adversely impact performance then YES I would agree with you. Or hell, I'd even agree with you with the current situation if Apple allowed downgrades.

Seriously, I mean don't you think its totally messed up that Apple has to give its permission before you're able to downgrade the OS to speed it up when its their own update that slowed it down ? Its ridiculous and should not be accepted as the norm.

> you cannot easily downgrade. (It's not impossible, it's just a huge pain.)

Cool, please point the entire world to a working bootrom exploit for the 4s. We've been waiting for a while :)

My iPhone 5 is <2 years old. Since the update to iOS8 (and even now, running 8.1.2):

- the UI crashes several times per day, rendering the phone unusable for 20-40 seconds

- the phone is really sluggish, sometimes freezing for 5-10 seconds, with keystrokes entered during that time sometimes buffered and sometimes lost

- every couple of days, the phone freezes so badly I have to force it to reboot by holding power+home for a few seconds

> The facts say, very loudly, that Apple supports its older devices MUCH better and for much longer than any competitor. It's not even close.

Which facts? These? http://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/09/ios-8-on-the-iphone-4s-...

With updates like Yosemite you now get a almost daily crash thanks to Apple.

Maverick was perfectly fine.

On old hardware right? No crashes so far here on a new air.

Nope MBP is one year old.

I wouldn't say it's completely unfair. Using proprietary data/charging cables and changing the design every so often, obsoleting whole generations of products seems like behavior consistent with my criticism.

Apple introduced the Dock connector on the iPod in 2001. The same connector was used for over ten years, before it was replaced with the lightning connector in 2012.

The MagSafe connector was replaced after 6 years by the MagSafe 2 connector, also in 2012.

Both of these connectors where replaced for good reasons. The Dock connector was not reversible, prone to break, and was easily clogged with dust. It was also too big for smaller form factors. The MagSafe connector was often confused with USB and also too thick for thinner devices, and it used a low charging voltage (less efficient).

Switching to a new design is often inconvenient, but also often necessary. To ease the transition, Apple even provided adaptors for compatibility with older chargers.

When it comes right down to it, people hate change. "It still works, so why change it!?" is a popular saying among most users.

You're right, though. In this case, there definitely had to be an update to Apple's charging cables. Now that we're 3 generations into the new Lightning Connector, it's less of an issue for most people.

Apple has a huge majority of users who are basically into fashion. I usually buy the newest things and give away the old stuff, even if its just charging cables or an extra monitor.

The connector for iPods, iPads, and iPhones has only changed once. And the old 30-pin dock connector was in use for 11 years. 11 years now counts as “every so often”?

As for macs, the original MagSafe connector was in production for 6 years, before it was replaced by MagSafe 2 in 2012…

There have only been two apple charging interfaces for iPods, iPhones and iPads (excluding the shuffle), and the new one was necessary (if I understood correctly) to take advantage of faster USB3 data transfer rates.

Lightning doesn't currently support USB3, unfortunately. It did get rid of a lot of obsolete old interfaces that were present in the 30-pin dock connector pinout, though, and opened up possibilities for new devices (like the HDMI adapter).

FYI, the HDMI adapter existed for 30-pin devices too, so that's not a good example.

Thanks, I wasn't really sure.

It's not a choice between no software updates for old hardware, and bad software updates for no hardware. At least in theory, Apple could have made an iOS 7 update for the iPhone 4 that actually worked well on that hardware. It's not "unfair" to complain that Apple does a bad job of supporting hardware after only a couple of years, when your counter is that they release OS updates that don't work well on them.

The saying used to be that something was designed for obsolescence. I no longer believe that's the case, I believe new devices are programmed for obsolescence. That is to say, the device used to work, but with new "updates," the device becomes more decrepit, and less useful, not better and more useful. I've had Apple devices that worked fine until the "update" (which was mainly targeted at the latest and greatest, not my 1 to 2 year old model) came out, at which point the device that was still quite useable, becomes almost unusable. I don't recall which software update it was, but my iPhone 3g was a great example of this. I've recently noticed the same thing (rather my completely non-technical mother has) on her 2 year old iPad and iOS 8.

The joys of software. They can now be used to artificially shorten a products life cycle, without having to even design in obsolescence from the get go.

> I don't recall which software update it was, but my iPhone 3g was a great example of this.

Do you recall if it was a major or minor update?

For me, latest iOS+older iPad completely killed it. It was the last major upgrade, which added the animations. My iPad was the first gen with retina, and the animations were slow and jerky. I eventually enabled some accessibility mode which killed them, but other aspects of the user experience are less than stellar. Wifi is now intermittent.

My Nexus 4 is growing a little decrepit, but not nearly as bad. I was considering a Sony, but they seem to lag on support for newer OSes as well, so now I'm thinking about a newer Nexus, but I'm really not sure.

My new litmus test is to look at 2-5 year old devices from the brand, and see how they work before buying a new one.

Yes, this is exactly what is occurring with my mothers iPad (and I think her's is the same first gen retina). And frankly I can't do anything about it. But ever since she's installed iOS 8, wifi has been incredibly flakey. Of course, it's not Apple's fault, she just needs to buy a new iPad.

I'm not a gadget geek at all. I'm more of a cheap bastard/ "if it ain't broke.." and basically buy and use technology until it breaks or it won't do the job anymore. My Linksys WRT-54G I've had for at least 8 years just died the other day. For me it was good enough, no reason to change. My iPhone was good enough (until the updates made it unpleasant, I still used it, and eventually the hardware itself did die).

I really don't recall, but I'm guessing it was a major update. I believe this because I think I remember it being for the newer phones (iphones 4/5?) and that the update didn't include certain features on the 3g (this was a while ago for me, so I don't recall many details, sorry)

But at the same time, there was no "Warning: This will actually slow down your phone and make the user experience suck." I'm okay if a phone can't support certain features that the latest model includes. But the fact that an update actually made my older phone worse off, was quite the disappointment.

where on earth did this comment originate. I have a iPad2 which was "born" in 2011, show me any equivalent tablet appliance that is still running the latest OS ... ? i hate these sort of bile loaded responses, stay with the article and drop the hardly clothed bias. We are all consumers, don't let the marketeers trick you into thinking you have to choose one over the other. Poor device update support remains much more of a problem for google and android than it ever did for apple regardless of what your favoured tech Inc. is ..

This was the standard practice since before Apple. eg I used to upgrade my Sony Erricson handset every 12 months.

In fact ironically, these days many people upgrade less frequently because network providers are only selling contracts for 18/24 months rather than the 12 months they were 10 years previously.