4 ms·

It makes a big difference that Apple won't let you downgrade to a previous OS. Only sheer stubbornness kept me from upgrading my iPhone 4 (iOS 7) to an iPhone 6

by marvin 11y ago

It makes a big difference that Apple won't let you downgrade to a previous OS. Only sheer stubbornness kept me from upgrading my iPhone 4 (iOS 7) to an iPhone 6 when all I really wanted was a phone that didn't take half a second to respond to input. Downgrading to iOS 6 would have accomplished the same thing. It's hard not to believe that planned obsolesence isn't at least part of that strategy. It's certainly incidental. I don't hold a grudge against Apple for doing this, but not acknowledging it is turning a blind eye.

chillacy 11y ago
Think about it from the company/engineer's point of view: would you want to maintain the old version of the code (adding security fixes and the like) for years after it's current, for probably less than 1000 people per version? Remember that the old versions of code probably build with old versions of the compiler, old trains, etc. And you can't not maintain this code, since there will be bugs found, jailbreaks, etc. Every engineering team I know has more features than man-hours, it's hard to imagine them willingly making this tradeoff for such a small gain in their overall user happiness (people posting on HN are the exception, most people just update their devices for the shiniest new features)
- applecore 11y ago
  It's a near-universal practice for several versions of important system software (like operating systems and databases) to be maintained and supported simultaneously. It's unusual for updates to stop entirely as soon as the next major version is released.
  - chillacy 11y ago
    I see this as a necessity mainly for server software which you don't want to change too often. Ubuntu does a great job at this with their LTS releases. But in the consumer mobile OS space, there are really only a few big players. It looks like google does patch old versions of the OS, albeit up to a limit: http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/01/12/google-not-fixing-some-old-android-bugs/ http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/01/12/google-not-fixing-som... But on the other hand with the way the android adoption curve looks, that's still a lot of people. I just checked wikipedia right now, something like 35% of users are running a version which google stopped patching. So to have the same coverage of security updates, google has to support more OS versions. And even then, they're leaving a lot of people in the dust. I'm sure google would like people to upgrade too, less versions for them to maintain, but they've got the whole carrier situation to deal with in that ecosystem.

by marvin 11y ago

chillacy 11y ago

Think about it from the company/engineer's point of view: would you want to maintain the old version of the code (adding security fixes and the like) for years after it's current, for probably less than 1000 people per version? Remember that the old versions of code probably build with old versions of the compiler, old trains, etc. And you can't not maintain this code, since there will be bugs found, jailbreaks, etc. Every engineering team I know has more features than man-hours, it's hard to imagine them willingly making this tradeoff for such a small gain in their overall user happiness (people posting on HN are the exception, most people just update their devices for the shiniest new features)

applecore 11y ago
It's a near-universal practice for several versions of important system software (like operating systems and databases) to be maintained and supported simultaneously. It's unusual for updates to stop entirely as soon as the next major version is released.
- chillacy 11y ago
  I see this as a necessity mainly for server software which you don't want to change too often. Ubuntu does a great job at this with their LTS releases. But in the consumer mobile OS space, there are really only a few big players. It looks like google does patch old versions of the OS, albeit up to a limit: http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/01/12/google-not-fixing-some-old-android-bugs/ http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/01/12/google-not-fixing-som... But on the other hand with the way the android adoption curve looks, that's still a lot of people. I just checked wikipedia right now, something like 35% of users are running a version which google stopped patching. So to have the same coverage of security updates, google has to support more OS versions. And even then, they're leaving a lot of people in the dust. I'm sure google would like people to upgrade too, less versions for them to maintain, but they've got the whole carrier situation to deal with in that ecosystem.