10 ms·
Yep, 45 years old hardware, still getting software updates. Hey Apple, JPL is close to you, can you get someone to bike over and see how they do it? Thanks!
by AstroJetson 2y ago
Yep, 45 years old hardware, still getting software updates. Hey Apple, JPL is close to you, can you get someone to bike over and see how they do it? Thanks!
- MadnessASAP 2y agoMaybe some notes on how to handle degrading power supplies while they're at it.
- jonathankoren 2y agoThey turn stuff off. It's not a secret. The vast majority of the sensors are off. They're simply not needed in interstellar space.
- tnmom 2y agoGood lord could you imagine the meltdown HN would have if Apple had taken this option to solve the old-batteries-support-lower-peak-current physics problem? “Your device battery no longer supports the camera. Or the backlight on the top third of the screen. But it runs at full speed otherwise!”
- cjk2 2y agoMeh just buy a new Voyager!
- wkat4242 2y agoIf this happened after 45 years, I don't think people would mind.
- wongarsu 2y agoVoyager's cameras were shut off after only 13 years to conserve power. Still a long time, but some people might mind if their phone did that.
- wkat4242 2y agoTrue but their phones aren't a billion kms away so they can just get the battery replaced :P 13 years is really excellent for lithium batteries.
- MadnessASAP 2y agoI mean yeah, it was just a little bit of humor at Apples expense. Obviously the Voyager plan of turning stuff off wouldn't be applicable to an iPhone.
- Salgat 2y agoI bet for a billion they could make a single device that lasts decades too.
- dylan604 2y agoand a nuclear battery to last decades. oh, and stagnant software that doesn't get updates meant to work for other hardware
- dx4100 2y agoThe average vape has more processing power than Voyager, and the iPhone is orders of magnitude more complex. With that said, it takes skilled engineers to squeeze perfectly crafted code into such a tiny platform from the 70s.
- treesknees 2y agoI understand what you're getting at, but the 'average' vape pen is essentially a disposable battery and temperature sensor with no additional inputs or features. After reading some details about the Voyager, I have my doubts that a disposable vape has more computation power [1]. Maybe the higher end devices with programable displays and temperature settings? [1] https://www.eejournal.com/article/voyagers-1-and-2-take-embedded-computers-into-interstellar-space/ https://www.eejournal.com/article/voyagers-1-and-2-take-embe...
- nojvek 2y agoNew vapes have Bluetooth on a small chip that tracks # of puffs remaining. Being sold for $40 bucks a at store. Crazy that we have disposable one use electronics now.
- wkat4242 2y agoWell it IS crazy. This silicon and lithium could be used for much much better things and recycled as well, than a few puffs of a substance only meant to make people addicted.
- its_ethan 2y agoThe current iOS 17 is compatible with the iPhone XS, which is from 2018. That's 6 years for a piece of tech that the majority of people replace after < 4 years... Also to nit pick, Apple is based in Cupertino (northern CA) and JPL is in Los Angeles - so it'd be quite a bike ride lol
- AstroJetson 2y agoI have an iPad Air from 2014 that hasn’t been able to get updates since iOS 12.5, so 2019. The electronics are fine, a browser update would be awesome. Would people not replace phones in < 4 years if they could have current software? 4 years on a $800 thing doesn’t seem to be a good deal for the majority of us. Sorry about the distance thing. I’m from Philadelphia, so all of that (vaguely waving west) has got to be bikeable. But I’ll remember the /s for next time.
- olabyne 2y agoI have an Ipad Air 2 from 2014, running Ios15 (not too old yet) with security updates.
- karmakaze 2y agoI drove the route on the Pacific Coast Highway and wished I was on my bike instead (motorbike that is).
- cdelsolar 2y agoJPL is in Altadena and Apple is in the sf Bay Area
- somenameforme 2y agoPlanned obsolescence [1] in the problem. Apple could certainly create modular devices designed to be used and piecemeal modified/updated indefinitely. But it's way more profitable to sell you a brand new phone every couple of years than it is to sell you a modular device that you could update as desired, especially if the parts/connections are standardized meaning you could foster a [normalized] third party market for batteries, screens, etc. Devices would last way longer, prices would be much lower, and it'd be unimaginably better for the environment. But Apple wouldn't make as much money, and the government's GDP growth figures wouldn't be as high. So clearly it's a terrible idea. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence
- vlovich123 2y agoModular devices aren't free in terms of engineering tradeoffs. Those interconnects to support modularity add their own unreliability (connectors that can fail more easily), weight (connectors) & increased size. Additionally, the connectors themselves have obsolescence anyway & at some point really expensive components start to be bottlenecks (e.g. upgrading the display uses a new connector or requires processing power/bandwidth that the CPU/RAM/GPU don't have etc). You see this in desktops where modularity is still fairly limited in terms of extending the lifespan of your machine - most people will buy a new computer anyway after 5 years vs trying to upgrade some components piecemeal because the new computer is cheaper / unit of performance than doing piecemeal upgrades. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modular_smartphone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modular_smartphone, the modularity of the FairPhone helps it live 5-7 years. Notably that's not different from the 6-8 years that an iPhone is supported for. It's easy to blame it as planned obsolescence on the part of a single party instead of viewing it as a consequence of natural marketplace dynamics. You may of course adjust those dynamics by having the government impose a different set of constraints to have a different outcome. Politically that can be difficult though, especially in America, & it's not primarily because of the GDP but because people here generally distrust the government.
- somenameforme 2y agoRight to Repair is a reasonable proxy for this entire topic, and it's overwhelmingly supported - 74.5% of people being in favor, 1.9% opposing. [1] The reason the government is distrusted is specifically because of issues like this. It's good for society, good for the environment, extremely widely supported, but companies like Apple lobby actively and aggressively against such progress. And they generally win. There's been some glacially slow progress at the state level, but Federal support is unsurprisingly nowhere to be seen. And you're dramatically understating the benefits of modularity. PCs are indeed the perfect example, and no - people are not replacing them every 5 years. You can see a Steam hardware survey here [2]. And that's for gamers, who are going to iterate their hardware faster than average! Even for video cards, one of the most likely to fail and most likely to be upgraded parts, the GTX 1060 (released in 2016) is the 6th most popular card, making up about 4% of all players (contrasted against 7% for the #1 card)! Without planned obsolescence, most things can last for extremely long periods of time. And those that do have, more or less, inescapably high failure rates (like old hard disk drives) can and should be standardized and able to be replaced/upgraded. [1] - https://www.waveform.com/pages/right-to-repair-april-2020-report https://www.waveform.com/pages/right-to-repair-april-2020-re... [2] - https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...
- GeekyBear 2y ago[flagged]
- nolist_policy 2y agoThe Google Pixel 8 series receives 7 years of updates. And unlike Apple they are upfront about it, which is important. Maybe your iPhone gets 8 years of updates, maybe 6 noone knows.
- GeekyBear 2y agoI'm not sure why anyone would take Google seriously when it comes to sticking to their word, but Google is merely promising to deliver in the future what Apple has already been doing in the past, since that iPhone SE is already in it's eighth year of support. Remember Google promising to never link your advertising profile with the other data they had about you when they bought DoubleClick?
- nolist_policy 2y agoGoogle certainly delivered on 8 (now even 10) years of updates for Chromebooks. And advertising n years of updates is legally binding in a way. Apple can stop updating tomorrow if they feel like it. Google can't.
- GeekyBear 2y agoGoogle literally testified before Congress that they wouldn't link their user data with advertising profiles when they bought DoubleClick. That didn't stop them from doing it anyway. I think the fact that Apple started delivering long term support over a decade ago is much more compelling.
- talldayo 2y agoI think the fact that Apple has refused to unlock iPhone bootloaders for over a decade suggests that they can't naturally compel hardware upgrades without artificially depreciating software.