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You said that you'd be happy to get security updates beyond 3-4 years, this is what I was referring to. This is HN, so I assume you're involved in tech, so sure
by brap 5y ago
You said that you'd be happy to get security updates beyond 3-4 years, this is what I was referring to. This is HN, so I assume you're involved in tech, so surely you understand that releasing security patches for legacy devices requires more engineers and therefore more money. Who's paying?
- mopsi 5y agoIt does not have to cost more, if it results in greater commonality between different generations of a device and allows backporting without significant overhead.
- blagie 5y agoI don't think maintaining security beyond 3-4 years involves more money. It just involves having a clean abstraction between lower layers and higher layers, much as we have in any desktop OS. At this point, cell phone hardware is generations ahead of the 80386, where this model worked just fine. This might involve fewer synergies occasionally and more standardization, as we have in x86 computers. This might slow progress a little bit or lead to a slight decrease in performance. Or it might not. If my device is 10% slower, I'm fine with it; I don't think I'd notice. The primary "cost" is in number of units sold. If phones don't obsolete, you'll sell less phones. This means Apple/Samsung/Sony/... make lower revenues selling phones. R&D costs are roughly fixed, while economies-of-scale are reduced, so per-unit costs are a little bit higher. I do pay a little bit more for my phone, which I'm glad to do, since I'm doing it less often. On the whole though, society is more efficient, and so an average, everyone is better off.