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I felt the same way, right up until I started working on mobile apps myself. One of the first things I figured out after making that jump was that the constrai

I felt the same way, right up until I started working on mobile apps myself. One of the first things I figured out after making that jump was that the constraints involved in making an app run smoothly and be just as comfortable to use on something like a 1st gen SE - which is what I used myself, from 2016 through most of 2021 - can't be supported alongside the capabilities and display real estate provided by current models, without an indefinite expenditure of costly developer effort that just isn't economical in supporting a use case that's relevant to something like sixty users out of every thousand. We've been through this before, with the PC revolution. Things settled down on that front, GPUs excepted, right around the time smartphones became a thing. The complaints are more or less exactly the same, and so are the reasons they receive little of consequence by way of response. None of which is to say you should upgrade your phone if you don't really want to, but - speaking as one who has done so himself, prior to having discovered firsthand why things are the way they are - yelling at the entire industry to change how it functions at a fundamental level has much more of King Canute about it than of any really worthwhile expenditure of effort.

bb88 4y ago
> without an indefinite expenditure of costly developer effort that just isn't economical in supporting a use case... How much would it cost? $1B US? Okay. Apple reported a net income of $99.9 Billion dollars from $350B of revenue. That seems like a good use of $1B to keep electronics waste down and improve resale value. That, number btw is 1000 developers at a cost of $1M apiece per year. Honestly I don't think it would cost a $1B. I think the true cost is in loss of revenue from forced upgrades -- which might be $100B of Apple's revenue. My circa 2016 Dell XPS 15 still runs pretty good with Windows 10. Not sure why MS forces me to upgrade my hardware to go to Windows 11.
- golergka 4y ago
  > How much would it cost? $1B US? Okay. For a game developer that barely raised $1m for the first title?
  - throwanem 4y ago
    The assumption appears to be that all development of iOS apps is ultimately funded by Apple, or that Apple could somehow make all apps on its platform magically work equally well on all devices. But I admit I'm just guessing here: "I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such [an analysis]."
- throwanem 4y ago
  Apple's financials aren't relevant here. Every app developer faces this tradeoff.
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    If they actually care about the experience they should be relevant. Think of an analogue to how nvidia sends development help to companies that are making games. Your "confusion of ideas" comment elsewhere is pointed the wrong way.
    - throwanem 4y ago
      No, it isn't. You are demanding of App Store reviewers, and thus implicitly of app developers who have to satisfy review to publish, an equal level of concern with, and effort to support, the experience of the half a percent or so of users still on 4.7"-class devices, as with that of the 99.5% or so on everything else. This would require significant extra work in just about every app, 2x as much in some, probably averaging around 1.5x as much in most. That is not a reasonable expectation. I've been in that half a percent myself, and I realize those with an attachment to remaining in that cohort will not find such an argument convincing. But I'm also, in retrospect, not really sorry that the last of the five 1st gen SEs I'd been carefully maintaining - four of which I'd bought used, three of which I'd replaced screens and batteries on - landed on its corner when I dropped it a year and a half ago, wrecking the sleep/wake button integral to the mainboard and well beyond any soldering skill I can acquire, and thus effectively requiring a complete replacement that I decided was finally no longer worth it. The 12 mini turned out not to be meaningfully larger or less wieldy than the 1st gen SE had been, and it's a lot more pleasant to use. There's value in not being actively, constantly frustrated by the experience of using my phone - especially since I do that every day for work now, too. We aren't going to agree on this, I think, and that's fine with me. But I am going to say that I no longer have the sympathy for your perspective that I would have a couple of years ago. It's a perspective I shared for a long time, and one I put more effort into than most. I'm glad I did, not least because learning to fix phones has been useful. But I'm also glad for what I've learned since then, even though it's why I don't share that perspective any more.
- freeone3000 4y ago
  The reason for the breaking change was supposedly for TPM 2.0, to have a fully-attested chain from UEFI load to user login. This was lessened to a lower TPM version later, thus rendering the entire requirement moot.
- courgette 4y ago
  Exactly, the prices are just numbers. We could decide that electronic waste is too expensive to be carried this way.
  - downrightmike 4y ago
    Apple is requiring that recyclers shred perfectly fine M! laptops because they lock out the logic chips. E-Waste is cheap if it means you keep supply out of the secondary markets.
    - Godel_unicode 4y ago
      The stolen ones, sure. The legitimate ones are trivially easy to resell.
    - courgette 4y ago
      I mean the real price. In term of carbon emission and damage to our surroundings. Not some dollars or yen value.
- downrightmike 4y ago
  recyclers are literally having to shred M1 laptops because apple locks out the logic chips. They _deliberately_ will not do that until the government makes them. My next iphone will be usb c, I can wait until then, so they better hurry if they want sales.
  - msh 4y ago
    Only because the owners did not unlock them when they gave them up for recycling.
wackget 4y ago
One question I wish app developers would ask themselves is "does my app actually need to be an app"? I'd guess something like 90% of apps could actually be websites instead, in which case you automatically avoid the framework and multi-platform bullshit inherent to app-making.
- null0ranje 4y ago
  I'm guessing that in almost 100% of those cases, the decision to make an app vs a web site are not being made by the developers.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Other than games, or special hardware access, 99% of the apps can be done as mobile apps. Although I would rather do native, and Web is messy, not having to deal with Android whims, Android Studio stable releases that aren't, Android Java vs Kotlin, NDK experience that makes me miss Symbian C++,.... I am surely happier having gone back to Web. Here, try it on your phone, https://whatwebcando.today/ https://whatwebcando.today/
- cudgy 4y ago
  Sure, 90% of apps could be websites, but unfortunately 90% of websites are horrible Frankensteinish user experiences and 99% of websites require users to be online.
- yoz-y 4y ago
  Web apps are way heavier than native ones though. And for every person wanting a web app there is another one that would rather have a native one.
asdff 4y ago
On the other hand, I use some software on my modern sized iphone that's been scarcely updated since 2016 if at all. It was built for the SE form factor, but ios ui libraries can scale ios ui elements to the display size just fine. Developers just need to write performant code again like they don't have a modern iphone to work with. Performant code has benefits even when you have the latest iphone pro/max/whatever in your pocket, since it means the app will hardly be consuming battery life. Too many apps these days kill my battery life doing hardly anything at all, rendering some text and banner ads perhaps.

bb88 4y ago

> without an indefinite expenditure of costly developer effort that just isn't economical in supporting a use case... How much would it cost? $1B US? Okay. Apple reported a net income of $99.9 Billion dollars from $350B of revenue. That seems like a good use of $1B to keep electronics waste down and improve resale value. That, number btw is 1000 developers at a cost of $1M apiece per year. Honestly I don't think it would cost a $1B. I think the true cost is in loss of revenue from forced upgrades -- which might be $100B of Apple's revenue. My circa 2016 Dell XPS 15 still runs pretty good with Windows 10. Not sure why MS forces me to upgrade my hardware to go to Windows 11.

golergka 4y ago
> How much would it cost? $1B US? Okay. For a game developer that barely raised $1m for the first title?
- throwanem 4y ago
  The assumption appears to be that all development of iOS apps is ultimately funded by Apple, or that Apple could somehow make all apps on its platform magically work equally well on all devices. But I admit I'm just guessing here: "I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such [an analysis]."
throwanem 4y ago
Apple's financials aren't relevant here. Every app developer faces this tradeoff.
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  If they actually care about the experience they should be relevant. Think of an analogue to how nvidia sends development help to companies that are making games. Your "confusion of ideas" comment elsewhere is pointed the wrong way.
  - throwanem 4y ago
    No, it isn't. You are demanding of App Store reviewers, and thus implicitly of app developers who have to satisfy review to publish, an equal level of concern with, and effort to support, the experience of the half a percent or so of users still on 4.7"-class devices, as with that of the 99.5% or so on everything else. This would require significant extra work in just about every app, 2x as much in some, probably averaging around 1.5x as much in most. That is not a reasonable expectation. I've been in that half a percent myself, and I realize those with an attachment to remaining in that cohort will not find such an argument convincing. But I'm also, in retrospect, not really sorry that the last of the five 1st gen SEs I'd been carefully maintaining - four of which I'd bought used, three of which I'd replaced screens and batteries on - landed on its corner when I dropped it a year and a half ago, wrecking the sleep/wake button integral to the mainboard and well beyond any soldering skill I can acquire, and thus effectively requiring a complete replacement that I decided was finally no longer worth it. The 12 mini turned out not to be meaningfully larger or less wieldy than the 1st gen SE had been, and it's a lot more pleasant to use. There's value in not being actively, constantly frustrated by the experience of using my phone - especially since I do that every day for work now, too. We aren't going to agree on this, I think, and that's fine with me. But I am going to say that I no longer have the sympathy for your perspective that I would have a couple of years ago. It's a perspective I shared for a long time, and one I put more effort into than most. I'm glad I did, not least because learning to fix phones has been useful. But I'm also glad for what I've learned since then, even though it's why I don't share that perspective any more.
freeone3000 4y ago
The reason for the breaking change was supposedly for TPM 2.0, to have a fully-attested chain from UEFI load to user login. This was lessened to a lower TPM version later, thus rendering the entire requirement moot.
courgette 4y ago
Exactly, the prices are just numbers. We could decide that electronic waste is too expensive to be carried this way.
- downrightmike 4y ago
  Apple is requiring that recyclers shred perfectly fine M! laptops because they lock out the logic chips. E-Waste is cheap if it means you keep supply out of the secondary markets.
  - Godel_unicode 4y ago
    The stolen ones, sure. The legitimate ones are trivially easy to resell.
  - courgette 4y ago
    I mean the real price. In term of carbon emission and damage to our surroundings. Not some dollars or yen value.
downrightmike 4y ago
recyclers are literally having to shred M1 laptops because apple locks out the logic chips. They _deliberately_ will not do that until the government makes them. My next iphone will be usb c, I can wait until then, so they better hurry if they want sales.
- msh 4y ago
  Only because the owners did not unlock them when they gave them up for recycling.

wackget 4y ago

One question I wish app developers would ask themselves is "does my app actually need to be an app"? I'd guess something like 90% of apps could actually be websites instead, in which case you automatically avoid the framework and multi-platform bullshit inherent to app-making.

null0ranje 4y ago
I'm guessing that in almost 100% of those cases, the decision to make an app vs a web site are not being made by the developers.
pjmlp 4y ago
Other than games, or special hardware access, 99% of the apps can be done as mobile apps. Although I would rather do native, and Web is messy, not having to deal with Android whims, Android Studio stable releases that aren't, Android Java vs Kotlin, NDK experience that makes me miss Symbian C++,.... I am surely happier having gone back to Web. Here, try it on your phone, https://whatwebcando.today/ https://whatwebcando.today/
cudgy 4y ago
Sure, 90% of apps could be websites, but unfortunately 90% of websites are horrible Frankensteinish user experiences and 99% of websites require users to be online.
yoz-y 4y ago
Web apps are way heavier than native ones though. And for every person wanting a web app there is another one that would rather have a native one.

asdff 4y ago

On the other hand, I use some software on my modern sized iphone that's been scarcely updated since 2016 if at all. It was built for the SE form factor, but ios ui libraries can scale ios ui elements to the display size just fine. Developers just need to write performant code again like they don't have a modern iphone to work with. Performant code has benefits even when you have the latest iphone pro/max/whatever in your pocket, since it means the app will hardly be consuming battery life. Too many apps these days kill my battery life doing hardly anything at all, rendering some text and banner ads perhaps.