4 ms·

If you are arguing for the environment it certainly does not make any sense that fully functional hardware becomes obsolete because of software. Android device

by qplex 9y ago

If you are arguing for the environment it certainly does not make any sense that fully functional hardware becomes obsolete because of software. Android devices at least have the option for 3rd party software. No such luck with iDevices. Also it's not a fair to comparison between _all_ of the Android vendors in one bucket and Apple.

innagadadavida 9y ago
You are being very creative with “obsolete”. I use an iPhone 4s and it is not obsolete by any means. It works just fine. Don’t blame the manufacturer if you want the latest shiny new gadget and expect all the bells and whistles to work on hardware >5yrs old.
- qplex 9y ago
  Let me quote the article I referred to: >"My attempt to install an alternative browser ended with this message: Firefox requires iOS 10.3 or later." A Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 2013 - same age as that iPad - has Android 7.1 with all the latest bells and whistles (Firefox). I expect to upgrade to Android 8.0 (LineageOS 15) later this year. Edit: The author tried to install Firefox because Safari had become so slow it was unusable.
  - coldtea 9y ago
    The hardware is not obsolete even without an "alternative browser".
  - innagadadavida 9y ago
    Please link to the benchmarks that show safari to be slower than Firefox. If an app developer choos s to stop supporting older iOS, that is something Apple has no control over. You are fundamentally at odds with what Apple provides. You have the freedom to choose android and lineagos and maintain all that yourself. If that works better, Good for you and no need to depend on Apple.
    - qplex 9y ago
      Obviously it's impossible to provide such metrics since you can not run Firefox on older iPads. It does not run on Android < 4.1 either, but the devices remain useful since you can update Android even if the vendor support is long gone. Thus an Android tablet with similar hardware as the iPad has potential for a longer lifespan. I've not yet seen any valid arguments to counter this.
      - innagadadavida 9y ago
        The argument agianst using some hobby OS is that of security and trustability and maintainability. If you are personally comfortable doing it - good. Not everyone does, though.
        qplex 9y ago
        Older iOS versions have multiple unfixed vulnerabilities. They will most likely never get fixed either. How exactly does that work for security, trustability?
    - Fnoord 9y ago
      > Please link to the benchmarks that show safari to be slower than Firefox. I thought this was common knowledge; at the very least it is common knowledge that Firefox is on par with Chrome right now and usually pulls ahead slightly with 57/58. [1] [2] [3] [4] and one benchmark where Safari came ahead [5]. So I consider my prejudice that this is common knowledge wrong (if anyone else got such benchmarks, by all means). Realistically, nobody cares about Safari. macOS has a low market share, and running Safari on it won't allow you to integrate with other browsers (if you stick to Apple ecosphere that's OK though). On iOS you got no choice; you'll always use WebKit, but running something like Firefox allows you to integrate it with your other devices. And on other devices, Safari doesn't run. > You have the freedom to choose android and lineagos and maintain all that yourself. Maintain all that yourself is a hyperbole. There is nothing to maintain if you run LineageOS. All you do is install the most recent version (for my port its ~every week). The only thing you need to maintain is your baseband. Contrast that to you running an iOS version from August 2016. Do you think there have been zero vulnerabilities in the software you're using for 1,5 years? Think again. [1] https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=firefox-quantum-bench&num=1 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=firefox-... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/7cymaz/quick_firefox_quantum_57_vs_chrome_62_benchmarks/ https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/7cymaz/quick_firef... [3] http://www.zdnet.com/article/just-how-fast-is-firefox-quantum// http://www.zdnet.com/article/just-how-fast-is-firefox-quantu... [4] https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/firefox-quantum-vs-chrome https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/firefox-quantum-vs-chrome [5] https://www.kaklabs.com/browser/benchmark-browser-safari-11-chrome-63-firefox-57 https://www.kaklabs.com/browser/benchmark-browser-safari-11-...
- Fnoord 9y ago
  > I use an iPhone 4s and it is not obsolete by any means. It works just fine. Which iOS version do you run? Does that iOS version still get security and reliability updates? If no, do you still consider your iPhone 4s unsupported? According to my source [1]: Original: iOS 5.0. Last: iOS 9.3.5, released August 25, 2016. The phone was available since October 2011/January 2012. So it was supported for 4,5 years which is very good for the standards of that period. But it seems that with 9.x being EOL the phone came to an end. With Android devices, it works different, because when those are EOL you can install firmware like LineageOS or PostmarketOS on it. Although those are not officially supported, it can give a device a second life. One disadvantage is that baseband updates don't occur anymore. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_4S https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_4S
  - innagadadavida 9y ago
    The 4s runs whatever latest it can be updated to. How can you be so sure lineageos has not been malwared by some Chinese/Russian/nsa folks? I can trust android and iOS, cannot get myself to trust others. Moreover, the base os is not your only choice. You are free to port Firefox to iOS 5.x and install it on your device. No one is stopping you from doing it. Just crying over not have lineageos available for iOS is silly and a red herring.
    - Fnoord 9y ago
      > The 4s runs whatever latest it can be updated to. Which is a 1,5 years old OS which received no further updates. Check all WebKit CVE from August 2016 till now (all of 2017 at least). I did a quick search, and found 2 RCEs with exploit available: CVE-2017-2471, CVE-2017-7089. > How can you be so sure lineageos has not been malwared by some Chinese/Russian/nsa folks? How can you be sure iOS is not malwared by some Chinese/Russian/NSA folks? At least in LineageOS you can publicly check all source code and commits. > I can trust android and iOS I actually advice against using Android; I suggest LineageOS for microG [1]. Not because of Chinese/Russian/NSA folks but because of Google folks. They spy on Android users. Not with microG though. [1] https://lineage.microg.org/ https://lineage.microg.org/

by qplex 9y ago

innagadadavida 9y ago

You are being very creative with “obsolete”. I use an iPhone 4s and it is not obsolete by any means. It works just fine. Don’t blame the manufacturer if you want the latest shiny new gadget and expect all the bells and whistles to work on hardware >5yrs old.

qplex 9y ago
Let me quote the article I referred to: >"My attempt to install an alternative browser ended with this message: Firefox requires iOS 10.3 or later." A Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 2013 - same age as that iPad - has Android 7.1 with all the latest bells and whistles (Firefox). I expect to upgrade to Android 8.0 (LineageOS 15) later this year. Edit: The author tried to install Firefox because Safari had become so slow it was unusable.
- coldtea 9y ago
  The hardware is not obsolete even without an "alternative browser".
- innagadadavida 9y ago
  Please link to the benchmarks that show safari to be slower than Firefox. If an app developer choos s to stop supporting older iOS, that is something Apple has no control over. You are fundamentally at odds with what Apple provides. You have the freedom to choose android and lineagos and maintain all that yourself. If that works better, Good for you and no need to depend on Apple.
  - qplex 9y ago
    Obviously it's impossible to provide such metrics since you can not run Firefox on older iPads. It does not run on Android < 4.1 either, but the devices remain useful since you can update Android even if the vendor support is long gone. Thus an Android tablet with similar hardware as the iPad has potential for a longer lifespan. I've not yet seen any valid arguments to counter this.
    - innagadadavida 9y ago
      The argument agianst using some hobby OS is that of security and trustability and maintainability. If you are personally comfortable doing it - good. Not everyone does, though.
      - qplex 9y ago
        Older iOS versions have multiple unfixed vulnerabilities. They will most likely never get fixed either. How exactly does that work for security, trustability?
  - Fnoord 9y ago
    > Please link to the benchmarks that show safari to be slower than Firefox. I thought this was common knowledge; at the very least it is common knowledge that Firefox is on par with Chrome right now and usually pulls ahead slightly with 57/58. [1] [2] [3] [4] and one benchmark where Safari came ahead [5]. So I consider my prejudice that this is common knowledge wrong (if anyone else got such benchmarks, by all means). Realistically, nobody cares about Safari. macOS has a low market share, and running Safari on it won't allow you to integrate with other browsers (if you stick to Apple ecosphere that's OK though). On iOS you got no choice; you'll always use WebKit, but running something like Firefox allows you to integrate it with your other devices. And on other devices, Safari doesn't run. > You have the freedom to choose android and lineagos and maintain all that yourself. Maintain all that yourself is a hyperbole. There is nothing to maintain if you run LineageOS. All you do is install the most recent version (for my port its ~every week). The only thing you need to maintain is your baseband. Contrast that to you running an iOS version from August 2016. Do you think there have been zero vulnerabilities in the software you're using for 1,5 years? Think again. [1] https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=firefox-quantum-bench&num=1 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=firefox-... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/7cymaz/quick_firefox_quantum_57_vs_chrome_62_benchmarks/ https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/7cymaz/quick_firef... [3] http://www.zdnet.com/article/just-how-fast-is-firefox-quantum// http://www.zdnet.com/article/just-how-fast-is-firefox-quantu... [4] https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/firefox-quantum-vs-chrome https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/firefox-quantum-vs-chrome [5] https://www.kaklabs.com/browser/benchmark-browser-safari-11-chrome-63-firefox-57 https://www.kaklabs.com/browser/benchmark-browser-safari-11-...
Fnoord 9y ago
> I use an iPhone 4s and it is not obsolete by any means. It works just fine. Which iOS version do you run? Does that iOS version still get security and reliability updates? If no, do you still consider your iPhone 4s unsupported? According to my source [1]: Original: iOS 5.0. Last: iOS 9.3.5, released August 25, 2016. The phone was available since October 2011/January 2012. So it was supported for 4,5 years which is very good for the standards of that period. But it seems that with 9.x being EOL the phone came to an end. With Android devices, it works different, because when those are EOL you can install firmware like LineageOS or PostmarketOS on it. Although those are not officially supported, it can give a device a second life. One disadvantage is that baseband updates don't occur anymore. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_4S https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_4S
- innagadadavida 9y ago
  The 4s runs whatever latest it can be updated to. How can you be so sure lineageos has not been malwared by some Chinese/Russian/nsa folks? I can trust android and iOS, cannot get myself to trust others. Moreover, the base os is not your only choice. You are free to port Firefox to iOS 5.x and install it on your device. No one is stopping you from doing it. Just crying over not have lineageos available for iOS is silly and a red herring.
  - Fnoord 9y ago
    > The 4s runs whatever latest it can be updated to. Which is a 1,5 years old OS which received no further updates. Check all WebKit CVE from August 2016 till now (all of 2017 at least). I did a quick search, and found 2 RCEs with exploit available: CVE-2017-2471, CVE-2017-7089. > How can you be so sure lineageos has not been malwared by some Chinese/Russian/nsa folks? How can you be sure iOS is not malwared by some Chinese/Russian/NSA folks? At least in LineageOS you can publicly check all source code and commits. > I can trust android and iOS I actually advice against using Android; I suggest LineageOS for microG [1]. Not because of Chinese/Russian/NSA folks but because of Google folks. They spy on Android users. Not with microG though. [1] https://lineage.microg.org/ https://lineage.microg.org/