4 ms·

This bug touches nothing hardware specific. In alternative timeline where mobile OSes arent fisher price parodies of proper operating systems, they could push t

This bug touches nothing hardware specific. In alternative timeline where mobile OSes arent fisher price parodies of proper operating systems, they could push the same image to all iphones and have a proper hardware abstraction layer take care of the specific details. There is nothing fundamentally incompatible about the last couple of generation of iphones. ARMv8 CPU, PowerVR derived GPU. If the mobile computing space weren't driven by greed, this would be a non issue. A Sandy Bridge era intel machine deployed in 2011 is easily capable of running the latest Linux, BSD or win10. And in the case of the first two, I'd wager it will continue to be viable for the foreseeable future.

nindalf 3y ago
It’s not economical to support devices used by less than 1% of the user base. Linux only manages it because community members step up to support older architectures. And sometimes when no one steps up the architectures are removed. - Linux dropping support for old graphics drivers (Nov 2023) - https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-Drop-Old-UMS-DRM-Infra https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-Drop-Old-UMS-DRM-Infra - Linux Kernel Developers Discuss Dropping A Bunch Of Old CPUs (Jan 2021) - https://www.phoronix.com/news/2021-Linux-Drop-Old-CPUs https://www.phoronix.com/news/2021-Linux-Drop-Old-CPUs Supporting all of these is work. It makes development of new features harder, because it has to account for quirks of older hardware. Older hardware is also harder to get in the hands of developers and harder to test on. That’s why Linux has dropped support for 386, 486, IA-64 and other architectures. There’s no point saying trillion dollar corporation etc. It comes down to some basic fact - phones must be built with SoCs, that’s the easiest way. The PC way doesn’t work at scale. Now that we are on SoCs you have to draw the line on support somewhere. Just because the costs imposed on future development aren’t obvious to us doesn’t mean they don’t exist. I think 5 years minimum (and sometimes more) of OS updates is pretty good, FWIW.
- beeboobaa 3y ago
  Shrug. That's their problem. Or it should be, at least. Don't sell crap you can't support for a decent amount of time. Stop ruining this planet we live on by creating immense amounts of e-waste every few years. We both know your argument is dishonest or at least naive, though. They could easily support updates if they want to. But it's about money. This way they are forcing people to buy a new phone every few years. It's clever, shame about the planet.
  - nindalf 3y ago
    > dishonest Dishonest? You're saying I'm lying to support a trillion dollar corporation I have no financial stake in and never have? Is such an accusation really in the spirit of this forum? I suggest you review the guidelines - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Don't be snarky. Don't sneer. Assume good faith.
    - smoldesu 3y ago
      I will say that certain comparisons (eg. "The PC way doesn’t work at scale") are objectively wrong. Even Apple uses the PC model internally, despite not having an open bootloader or really supporting UEFI anymore. AFAIK, the XNU kernel even uses the same DeviceTree layout as Linux for supporting ARM SOCs. Apple hasn't really broken any new ground that can't be re-covered by modern operating systems. Also, your claim that it's "not economical" is entirely unproven and arguably false. iPhones are still architecturally supported by Linux and will continue to be for a while (even longer on BSD). Other Apple products (eg. Apple Silicon) received community driver support entirely from donations and volunteer time. There's no reason to assume that iPhones lack community interest, especially since Apple has never given the iPhone community the same leverage they had on Mac. If that's the sum of both arguments, then you're mostly just leveraging FOMO to support an unproven concept. At best you're jumping the gun, at worst you're twisting the facts to preclude discussion of open iPhone software alternatives.
- zarzavat 3y ago
  It’s absolutely economical. Apple only has to support a tiny number of devices that they themselves manufactured, they have the easiest job in the world. Think about how many devices Microsoft has to support in Windows, it’s orders of magnitude more. Apple doesn’t want to support older devices because they don’t see a benefit to themselves. 5 years of support is pitifully short. Pretty much everything I own lasts longer than 5 years, my phone is one of the things I have to replace most often, not because the hardware is broken, but because it stops receiving updates.
  - traceroute66 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - krisoft 3y ago
      > New devices = New components = New Firmware = The updates have to stop sometime So how does microsoft do it? My PC is about the same age yet it is still supported. And not even barely, but without a hitch. > Apple is an OEM for most parts on their board, if upstream support ends for the components on the board then its game over as far as firmware updates goes. But this is not an issue with a chip's firmware. Do you believe apple can't compile code for their 10 year old hardware or how do you think this happens?
    - CorrectHorseBat 3y ago
      >And its certainly NOT economical to keep stuff running forever. Look at OpenBSD and Theo famously begging for money to keep his basement of antique equipment running at enormous expense ! If OpenBSD can do it on a budget that's pocket change for Apple, with much more diverse hardware which they have no control over, then Apple definitely can do it.
    - smoldesu 3y ago
      Is it really bullshit? Lenovo manages hundreds of laptop models via fwupd, and those work just fine after they lose OEM support. I've got a Thinkpad from 2009 that still gets modern Linux patches (to say nothing of my 2006 PowerBook running Arch/Plasma 5). Compared to what Apple makes off hardware and service revenue, the cost of opening iBoot and providing basic firmware support would be almost nothing. It's so economical that the volunteers at Asahi were capable of replacing the missing bits via black-box reverse engineering. You want to tell me that Apple is incapable of releasing that firmware themselves? On a technical forum?
- no_time 3y ago
  >It’s not economical to support devices used by less than 1% of the user base. Linux only manages it because community members step up to support older architectures. And sometimes when no one steps up the architectures are removed. Again, bugs are this are not hardware specific. You are not supporting "devices". You are supporting the OS which all of them run. Ideally (I'm not familiar with OSX/iOS internals) all they have to do is push out an update that contains the newly fixed libwebkit.so or whatever. They control everything on their own platform so they don't even have to deal with glibc breaking backcompat like we have to in the GNU/Linux world. If they can't figure out a way to make changes like this universal across devices, it's either deliberate negligence or incompetence.
- tesdinger 3y ago
  You're a special kind of clown claiming that it is not economical white Apple profits are somewhere between 20% and 26%. They could build an update, they just prefer making more money.

nindalf 3y ago

It’s not economical to support devices used by less than 1% of the user base. Linux only manages it because community members step up to support older architectures. And sometimes when no one steps up the architectures are removed. - Linux dropping support for old graphics drivers (Nov 2023) - https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-Drop-Old-UMS-DRM-Infra https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-Drop-Old-UMS-DRM-Infra - Linux Kernel Developers Discuss Dropping A Bunch Of Old CPUs (Jan 2021) - https://www.phoronix.com/news/2021-Linux-Drop-Old-CPUs https://www.phoronix.com/news/2021-Linux-Drop-Old-CPUs Supporting all of these is work. It makes development of new features harder, because it has to account for quirks of older hardware. Older hardware is also harder to get in the hands of developers and harder to test on. That’s why Linux has dropped support for 386, 486, IA-64 and other architectures. There’s no point saying trillion dollar corporation etc. It comes down to some basic fact - phones must be built with SoCs, that’s the easiest way. The PC way doesn’t work at scale. Now that we are on SoCs you have to draw the line on support somewhere. Just because the costs imposed on future development aren’t obvious to us doesn’t mean they don’t exist. I think 5 years minimum (and sometimes more) of OS updates is pretty good, FWIW.

beeboobaa 3y ago
Shrug. That's their problem. Or it should be, at least. Don't sell crap you can't support for a decent amount of time. Stop ruining this planet we live on by creating immense amounts of e-waste every few years. We both know your argument is dishonest or at least naive, though. They could easily support updates if they want to. But it's about money. This way they are forcing people to buy a new phone every few years. It's clever, shame about the planet.
- nindalf 3y ago
  > dishonest Dishonest? You're saying I'm lying to support a trillion dollar corporation I have no financial stake in and never have? Is such an accusation really in the spirit of this forum? I suggest you review the guidelines - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Don't be snarky. Don't sneer. Assume good faith.
  - smoldesu 3y ago
    I will say that certain comparisons (eg. "The PC way doesn’t work at scale") are objectively wrong. Even Apple uses the PC model internally, despite not having an open bootloader or really supporting UEFI anymore. AFAIK, the XNU kernel even uses the same DeviceTree layout as Linux for supporting ARM SOCs. Apple hasn't really broken any new ground that can't be re-covered by modern operating systems. Also, your claim that it's "not economical" is entirely unproven and arguably false. iPhones are still architecturally supported by Linux and will continue to be for a while (even longer on BSD). Other Apple products (eg. Apple Silicon) received community driver support entirely from donations and volunteer time. There's no reason to assume that iPhones lack community interest, especially since Apple has never given the iPhone community the same leverage they had on Mac. If that's the sum of both arguments, then you're mostly just leveraging FOMO to support an unproven concept. At best you're jumping the gun, at worst you're twisting the facts to preclude discussion of open iPhone software alternatives.
zarzavat 3y ago
It’s absolutely economical. Apple only has to support a tiny number of devices that they themselves manufactured, they have the easiest job in the world. Think about how many devices Microsoft has to support in Windows, it’s orders of magnitude more. Apple doesn’t want to support older devices because they don’t see a benefit to themselves. 5 years of support is pitifully short. Pretty much everything I own lasts longer than 5 years, my phone is one of the things I have to replace most often, not because the hardware is broken, but because it stops receiving updates.
- traceroute66 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - krisoft 3y ago
    > New devices = New components = New Firmware = The updates have to stop sometime So how does microsoft do it? My PC is about the same age yet it is still supported. And not even barely, but without a hitch. > Apple is an OEM for most parts on their board, if upstream support ends for the components on the board then its game over as far as firmware updates goes. But this is not an issue with a chip's firmware. Do you believe apple can't compile code for their 10 year old hardware or how do you think this happens?
  - CorrectHorseBat 3y ago
    >And its certainly NOT economical to keep stuff running forever. Look at OpenBSD and Theo famously begging for money to keep his basement of antique equipment running at enormous expense ! If OpenBSD can do it on a budget that's pocket change for Apple, with much more diverse hardware which they have no control over, then Apple definitely can do it.
  - smoldesu 3y ago
    Is it really bullshit? Lenovo manages hundreds of laptop models via fwupd, and those work just fine after they lose OEM support. I've got a Thinkpad from 2009 that still gets modern Linux patches (to say nothing of my 2006 PowerBook running Arch/Plasma 5). Compared to what Apple makes off hardware and service revenue, the cost of opening iBoot and providing basic firmware support would be almost nothing. It's so economical that the volunteers at Asahi were capable of replacing the missing bits via black-box reverse engineering. You want to tell me that Apple is incapable of releasing that firmware themselves? On a technical forum?
no_time 3y ago
>It’s not economical to support devices used by less than 1% of the user base. Linux only manages it because community members step up to support older architectures. And sometimes when no one steps up the architectures are removed. Again, bugs are this are not hardware specific. You are not supporting "devices". You are supporting the OS which all of them run. Ideally (I'm not familiar with OSX/iOS internals) all they have to do is push out an update that contains the newly fixed libwebkit.so or whatever. They control everything on their own platform so they don't even have to deal with glibc breaking backcompat like we have to in the GNU/Linux world. If they can't figure out a way to make changes like this universal across devices, it's either deliberate negligence or incompetence.
tesdinger 3y ago
You're a special kind of clown claiming that it is not economical white Apple profits are somewhere between 20% and 26%. They could build an update, they just prefer making more money.