16 ms·

Forced to upgrade

184 points by SpookyChoice 2y ago

msephton 2y ago
I felt this way when I was forced to upgrade from IPhone 6s. That was a little different in that with that phone iOS had become too much for the device's limited RAM, and UI concepts meant for the edge-to-edge phones were being forced on phones on which they make no sense. In early 2023 I "upgraded" to an iPhone XS 256GB. It took a while to get used to FaceID from TouchID, but it's fine. Perhaps this will be its final year? I'm conscious iOS 19 might abandon support. Apple have replaced the battery once and replaced a speaker at the same time (I guess there know the go bad but it's not enough to do a recall). It's a great phone and I too will be a little bit when I'm forced to abandon it.
19911991 2y ago
[flagged]
Hard_Space 2y ago
This also counts for desktop Macs. Twice in the last 20 years I have had to explain to my elderly Dad that even though his expensive Mac could last another thirty years, it's now a paperweight, or something to be 'repurposed'. I have wondered sometimes if hardware manufacturers actively seek out significant road-mapped hardware changes (such as Intel>ARM, etc., in case of Apple) in order to keep sales rolling in and stop folks 'sitting on' their well-functioning tech.
- nextlevelwizard 2y ago
  You have to be quite cynical if you see Apple's transition to ARM only as a ploy to get people to replace their Intel based machines. I am sure it is a nice bonus, but performance and efficiency just went through the roof. With yearly iPhone releases it is harder to justify upgrades. Like for author - upgrading from working phone to newer model while not gaining anything significant is stupid.
  - IndrekR 2y ago
    If the computer here is 20 years old, then we are talking about PowerPC based Mac. So two transitions over this devices lifetime: PowerPC -> Intel -> ARM.
    - shepherdjerred 2y ago
      Yeah, it was really strange when Apple migrated to the niche x86 architecture. Definitely a money grab.
    - obmelvin 2y ago
      Apple had good reasons for both transitions. In the scheme of 'forced upgrades' these are about as good as you're going to get. Also, if the OPs dad is using the computer for so little that it would last another 30 years, they certainly have no need to upgrade computers. No reason one can't keep using an intel iMac to browse the web
  - Dalewyn 2y ago
    >With yearly iPhone releases it is harder to justify upgrades. It might be helpful to think of them like cars: New models every year, but customers only "upgrade" every 10 to 20 years.
    - tonyedgecombe 2y ago
      I don’t think it really matters if some people upgrade more frequently as long as the old devices enter the secondary market. What we don’t want is functional devices rotting in a drawer or landfill.
- derbOac 2y ago
  The blog post reminded me of my last laptop upgrade (Macbook Air) as well. I was perfectly happy with the old laptop, nothing wrong with the hardware for me, but software releases started depending on new OSes and then I couldn't install those any longer. No "graceful degradation", and as far as I could tell the limitation was just the size of the storage drive for the OS in particular — not the nature of the chip itself or drivers or anything like that. I don't necessarily attribute anything nefarious to anything, but collectively the whole thing seems like madness to me. What's ironic is I bet if I put linux on that machine, it (a) would be totally feasible to install recent versions, and (b) all the latest versions of the software I needed would be there for those versions. It seems like there needs to be some principled way of maintaining installs on older hardware... or I guess I just have to weigh this issue more heavily in my decision making about OSes in the future.
- esskay 2y ago
  Yup my dad bought an iMac back in 2014. It was that one model that didn't support targeted display mode. It broke about a month back (looks like drive failure) but had been having tons of issues before this due to newer software dropping support. He should be able to just buy a cheap mac mini second hand and plug it into that gorgious 5k imac display, but nope. Cant do that. Apple just like every other company could not give less of a crap about ewaste. There is absolutely zero reason why they couldn't relax the limits on older hardware to allow it to be repurposed. What's now going to happen in my dads case is he'll buy a cheap 4k monitor, probably a second hand mac mini and send the iMac to a charity for recycling. The whole Intel -> ARM thing though was absolutely about performance and Intel's utterly awful processors holding them back. The forced upgrades were just a bonus for Apple.
  - tonyedgecombe 2y ago
    There is a third party upgrade that will turn those retina iMacs into a monitor.
- obmelvin 2y ago
  Why can't your dad keep using his existing computer? Sure, if you make your living on the computer the new laptops are great. But if he's just checking email, photos, etc - I don't know why his computer needs to become a paperweight
  - nradov 2y ago
    At some point you no longer get security upgrades. Or new web browser versions aren't available and you're unable to access certain sites. In some cases there are workarounds like installing an open source OS but that's too much hassle for most consumers.
  - Hard_Space 2y ago
    Specifically because in each case, no updateable web browser was available any longer. To have your main machine increasingly unable to render web pages, and to suffer growing security vulnerabilities, pretty much bricks the machine for any purpose other than a scanning workstation, etc.
    - obmelvin 2y ago
      Fair :) I was overlooking that this latest computer could be an older intel machine that didn't receive the latest OS, thus won't still still have years of security only updates.
- curun1r 2y ago
  As someone who just upgraded from an intel to M4, I feel this. But I do wish I had known about OpenCore [0]. Ironically, I learned about it while on a bit of YouTube binge of Mac videos in preparation for my new one arriving. As much as the ecosystem has moved on from Intel, I think I'll be able to keep using my old MBP for a while longer if I can keep it on the latest version of MacOS. [0] https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/ https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/
thaumaturgy 2y ago
I'm still daily-driving an iPhone 7, so I sympathize. A few apps have complained about the older OS; so far I've been able to react by deleting the apps. Smartphones cause a truly astonishing amount of waste (https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2018/12/11/right-to-repair-nathan-proctor https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2018/12/11/right-to-repair-...: ~151 million phones discarded in the US each year, as of 2018), to say nothing of the various social follow-on effects that are being argued to death elsewhere. I was a very late smartphone adopter and I'm already trying to reduce the amount I depend on this thing; too much of their marketing always struck me as being more akin to new sneakers than life-improving tech. As a dev I understand the challenges of supporting older hardware. As a conscious consumer, I wish there were another option available in the market, and I haven't yet decided what I'll do when my current device finally needs to be retired.
- nextlevelwizard 2y ago
  Yearly phone upgrades are akin to new sneakers. People want the latest thing, they do not need it. Phones have not improved for years in significant ways. There has been no new features. Only improvement has been cameras, but really how good of a camera does your average person need in their daily lives?
  - adastra22 2y ago
    Do your sneakers last 7 years? Mine barely last 1.
    - mnky9800n 2y ago
      I feel like they used to last longer but now I get literal holes in them
    - nextlevelwizard 2y ago
      Time span is different, but people who like sneakers buy multiples per year.
- epistasis 2y ago
dataflow 2y ago
When you make the decision to not support older hardware (whether directly or indirectly), you're making a decision that the maintenance burden you're trying to avoid is more important than the environmental impact of users disposing of & buying hardware. Which... maybe it is; who am I to suggest different priorities for other people. But it would be nice for engineers and businesses to at least think about this and make such a decision consciously.
- michaelsshaw 2y ago
  >Which... maybe it is; who am I to suggest different priorities for other people I mean, I get the sentiment. But I live in this world too, and the E-Waste and forced obsolescence(or whatever you'd call it in this particular instance) does have an effect on me, personally. So yes, we should absolutely have a say, despite the fact that at this time we actively do not. In the US, our environmental policy is laughably inadequate, and with what happened in the election, we're about to be on a path of complete self-annihilation, environmentally speaking. It's a bit of a long-winded way of explaining myself here, but we definitely shouldn't refrain from serious issues because you feel you may be stepping on others' toes.
  - Dalewyn 2y ago
    Let's be real here: Most of us detest forced upgrades because it is Fucking Inconvenient(tm). We don't want to move away from Space Bar Heating[1] once we've gotten established, and screw everyone who tries taking it away. I'm sure a small minority might also have an environmental beef, but arguing green isn't going to grab peoples' hearts. [1]: https://xkcd.com/1172/ https://xkcd.com/1172/
    - michaelsshaw 2y ago
      >I'm sure a small minority might also have an environmental beef, but arguing green isn't going to grab peoples' hearts. That's kind of what it so disheartening about this whole issue. It's seriously urgent, and yet I routinely meet people who actively deny what is actual undeniable fact, claiming various sources of deception (deepstate, lizards, Nancy Pelosi, etc). A good amount of the rest don't care.
Klonoar 2y ago
If you were on an iPhone 8 and wanted to upgrade but keep TouchID, the SE3 is still a fine device. It's possible I'll grab one before the SE4 just to hold on to TouchID a bit longer.
- mrweasel 2y ago
  Upgrading to an iPhone 16 seems like a weird choice, given that the SE3 exists and it pretty much perfect. One argument that I can see it that the 16 is two years newer, and should get updates at least two year more. The price difference between the two phones however is much to big to justify getting the 16, unless there's some feature you really need.
  - HermanMartinus 2y ago
    Hey, author here. I decided on the 16 since its support lifetime started this year. If I'd gotten the SE (which I seriously considered since it has a more appealing form factor and touchID) I would only have a 4 year support lifetime as opposed to the full 6.
    - tzs 2y ago
      On the other hand the SE3 is 54% of the price of the 16 (assuming base models of both), so long term it could be cheaper to go with the SE3 even though you would have replace it sooner.
koliber 2y ago
I feel the same as the author. I also can’t come up with any satisfying solution. I empathize with apple and don’t expect them to support old hardware forever. The only solution I can think of is allowing people to support older hardware themselves. This is one of the strongest arguments for loosening the walled garden for older devices.
- michaelsshaw 2y ago
  It's completely ridiculous that these phones are as non-hackable as they are. When maintaining the illusion they sell of their stuff being "magic" (so therefore you can't hack on it) over the seriously big fucking issue of pollution and E-waste, I'd go a bit further than saying it's annoying. It's deeply immoral.
- maeil 2y ago
  > I also can’t come up with any satisfying solution. Laws. As someone else suggested here, the EU mandates 5 years of support. Make it 10. Too big of a barrier that cripples new entrants? Apply it only to megacorps, just like the DMA. Easy peasy. It's trivially easy to solve this, but late stage capitalism's resulting regulatory capture prevents it.
guessmyname 2y ago
If it makes you feel better, I work at Apple and I still use the iPhone 8 since 2017.
rubymamis 2y ago
> I also miss TouchID. I agree - Touch ID is far superior to Face ID.
- walterbell 2y ago
  It works well on iPad Air power button. Apple should include TouchID on all Pro device power buttons.
- 9x39 2y ago
  What do you like about Touch ID? I think I'd switch platforms before going away from Face ID, it's so trivial to authenticate without even moving a muscle that I don't even think about it. I have an older iPad with touch ID, and I simply turned it off because it felt like an anachronism in the experience.
  - Cheezmeister 2y ago
    Fingerprint vs Face shines while (for instance) having a conversation and, because you have manners, want to maintain eye contact while pulling up a photo of that thing you are describing, or to make sure that's just a robocall and not your wife with an emergency. It also shines first thing in the morning where your hair and eyes are so disheveled that even Siri didn't recognize you. Your thumb is probably still the same shape.
    - kstrauser 2y ago
      > want to maintain eye contact while pulling up a photo of that thing you are describing Unless your eyes point in markedly different directions, I'm having a hard time imagining how you'd manage that anyway.
  - apple4ever 2y ago
    It doesn't fail as often as Face ID - you can touch the phone on table and don't have move your head to get it right (especially on the iPad). Its more secure because it requires an active action (touching) vs passive (looking).
grishka 2y ago
Android phones are kinda better in this regard because if you really insist, you can take matters into your own hands and install a custom ROM. Especially now that GSIs (generic system images) are a thing. Really though, why do we keep updating OSes? I understand security updates, but why do these major yearly releases have to keep happening? What do they solve? Why can't we for once just settle for something in this cursed industry? Why can't we release finished products?
- lentil 2y ago
  True for the OS, but you won’t get firmware updates/security patches once the upstream vendor stops support.
- mcoliver 2y ago
  Yeah I don't know....custom ROMs feel less trustworthy than a publicly traded corporations locked down OS. Things like Graphene can't run some bank apps because of security concerns from the banks. I would rather run a pixel missing a few security updates than a custom rom. I also don't visit shady sites or install non mainstream apps.
xkriva11 2y ago
Unusability preservation law: Whenever a technology gets into a state where it becomes usable, when it starts to suit you, you get into it and you are satisfied with it, something always happens that either completely impairs it or makes working with it significantly uncomfortable.
- genpfault 2y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME#GNOME_3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME#GNOME_3
ciconia 2y ago
The real question, IMO, is why the need to release a new model every year? I think a lot of the churn of both hardware and software had nothing to do with technological progress, and everything to do with generating sales.
- Shank 2y ago
  Well, it does obviously have to do with generating sales. But to play devil's advocate, I never have enough battery life, even with a fresh battery. There are incremental improvements, year-over-year, in terms of processor efficiency. I take a lot of photos, and I definitely notice having a 5x optical zoom now. There are details that some people would say are worth upgrading. But it is not the case that all people fit this template.
  - lloeki 2y ago
    > Well, it does obviously have to do with generating sales. I don't think it's that obvious, and I don't think manufacturers count on it ("it" being short length updates) Instead I think it's about handling competition: say a manufacturer updates their product line every 3 years, should a user that kept their phone for a while need to buy in the middle to last bout, they'll look at the market and see "oh that other manufacturer has released an update to their product line a month ago, so I'm going to buy that instead of a 2yo product from my current manufacturer". The comparison may be done on any kind of metric but it ultimately comes down to what's state of the art at a given point in time. It doesn't mean the user hasn't kept their previous phone a long time. But to be competitive across the time continuum the product line needs to be fresh enough. In that sense it generates sale, or rather, helps with retention, not by having one update every year or other year, but by creating the opportunity to stay within one's current brand. I think leading manufacturers have realised a long time ago that satisfied customers are what generates reliable sales and growth long term. Even Samsung, king of the shiny "innovative"-but-useless bullet-point feature list have somewhat gotten their act together.
- keiferski 2y ago
  You kind of answered your own question there. These are businesses, not research labs. Sales comes first, as is to be expected.
nekobrain 2y ago
Just "upgraded" to a Pixel 8 from a 4a (it wasn't even my intention to do so, went to have my 4a battery replaced but the shop botched the job and I needed a working phone quickly), I agree with every point made by the author. It does the same things as the 4a did, just marginally faster. Screen is better but I don't really care, and using it with one hand is harder. On top of that, I'm praying the dreaded green screen issue does not appear (it did on a coworker's Pixel 8). Oh well, at least I got security updates now...
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- mcoliver 2y ago
  Same here. Pixel 5 has been amazing and would love to keep it but the arbitrary stopping of OS and security updates is forcing my hand. I have searched long and far for the technical reasons (some security chip, ram requirements, processor features, etc) but can't seem to come up with anything. Makes it hard to reason about this in any other way than they want to sell more things.
chr15m 2y ago
This situation doesn't happen with hardware running an open source OS. For example laptops running Linux can upgrade basically forever. Why are community maintained open source OSes better at this than commercially maintained proprietary OSes?
- amatecha 2y ago
  Yup, I use computers from 2012 which are still running the absolute latest software just fine. Linux, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, etc. :)
- TheDong 2y ago
  The richest company in the world became the richest company in the world in part by forcing its users to buy new hardware regularly. Linux doesn't have a financial incentive to delete the code that supports 5 year old processors, but Apple does have such a financial incentive.
- 9x39 2y ago
  Open source OS's also don't do anything for the typical person in a feature sense so there's way less to go wrong and way fewer users to ever discover/report issues. Non-technical users want to run specific hardware like new displays or accessories or use apps like a game or a specific commercial program, not run an OS. Without those users, there's no need to grow the feature set as aggressively.
- coldtea 2y ago
  Because community maintained open source OSes don't need to make money.
- okanat 2y ago
  It is more about hardware / software bundling than the openness of the source code. Windows is as proprietary as it gets. I was able to upgrade my desktop PC from 2008 to Windows 10. It required removing quite a bit bloatware but it works. Actually, I have a negative example for FOSS for you. I have a laptop with an Nvidia GPU on it from 2012. I cannot use it under Linux since Linux world is terrible at API / ABI stability. So Nvidia driver has stopped working. I can still use the laptop fully functional with Windows 11.
zokier 2y ago
What is to me frustrating is how artificial these lifecycles feel. Even more so on Android side. Just upstream your drivers and "support" should be pretty much free.
- genpfault 2y ago
  Recently upgraded to a Pixel 8 from a different aarch64 phone (OnePlus Nord N100) and discovered that I can't run 32-bit apps anymore :(
  - daghamm 2y ago
    How was your experience with the Nord?
- immibis 2y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42038139 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42038139
  - ndriscoll 2y ago
    "Just" is a fine word to use when a solution is not technically complicated, and it's important that people with technical understanding express that it really is "just" that simple. That way, if the reason they don't do that is that they and their business partners don't want to, citizens know it's reasonable to ask their governments to make those companies release driver/firmware source code and/or hardware documentation as part of consumer protection laws.
    - immibis 2y ago
      Upstreaming stuff is complicated. You can't just throw your barely working driver over the wall at Linus. You have to put effort into it, and keep putting effort into it.
      - ndriscoll 2y ago
thefz 2y ago
Wasn't EU's right to repair law also mandating at least 5 years of updates? Just make 10. With all the money these companies make, they can dedicate some people to taking care of legacy hardware.
- esskay 2y ago
  It's sad that we consider 5-10 years to be "legacy" in any way shape or form. It does seem to very much just be at the consumer level. We've still got servers chugging away in datacenters that are pushing 15 years old and still have several years of life left in them.
  - objclxt 2y ago
    > It does seem to very much just be at the consumer level. We've still got servers chugging away in datacenters that are pushing 15 years old and still have several years of life left in them. The datacenter is temperature controlled and the air is filtered. The server is locked in the rack and never moves. By comparison, your laptop or your phone go through hell on a daily basis.
    - rini17 2y ago
      Speak for yourself. Some people prefer to handle their devices with care and expect to get longevity in return.
      - objclxt 2y ago
        > Some people prefer to handle their devices with care and expect to get longevity in return I guarantee you however carefully you are handling your device it is a world apart from a datacenter.
        rini17 2y ago
        So? Refurbished ThinkPads with added 10+yr life expectance don't exist?
chrismorgan 2y ago
> As far as I can tell Apple has the longest support lifetime of 6 years, followed closely by Samsung with 4 years of major Android OS upgrades and 5 years of security updates. Anecdote of Samsung support from a few years ago on a decidedly-not-flagship phone (just straight-up copying from a comment I wrote a couple of years ago—): In April 2019, I needed to rapidly obtain a device, and purchased a Samsung Galaxy J1 (2016) from a major retailer in Australia. I later discovered that this model had already been EOL for over a year when I purchased it. (It was released with 5.1.1, got its last security patch in November 2017, and was actively unsupported no later than March 2018. The handset should very obviously have been updated to Android 6, if not released with it—Android 6 was announced and in beta 7½ months before, and was the stable release 3½ months before, the handset’s January 2016 release.)
- Hawxy 2y ago
  That device very much predates Samsung's long-term support policy. I'm surprised it was even being sold at that point.
- daghamm 2y ago
  J1 was introduced in February 2015, and cost not much more than a burner phone. I am surprised you could buy one in 2019. Anyway, the Samsung update program did not exist in 2015.
keiferski 2y ago
To play devil’s advocate here, I actually think iPhones have some of the best longevity and resale value, compared to virtually any other product or brand - except perhaps if we go back decades to appliances made near the middle of the century. The fact that a device can be perfectly usable for 5+ years is pretty good compared to most other things I find myself buying and replacing in less time. Otherwise I think the only real “solution” to this is to rethink your notion of a phone. Personally I tend to use WhatsApp, email, and other non-phone-specific applications, and don’t use the actual phone feature very often. So theoretically I could use any small computing device and upgrade its components as needed, and not need to have a phone at all.
- solstice 2y ago
  That could work (given sufficiently good build-out of the data network), but for the mid-term you'd still need to have a way to receive SMS for 2FA etc.
  - keiferski 2y ago
    Google Voice or Twilio could solve this, I think?
    - lifestyleguru 2y ago
      Their phone number ranges and oftentimes gray or blacklisted.
  - lifestyleguru 2y ago
    I want "2FA device in a drawer". Always on, on a mute, receiving SMS, and forwarding them to the system of my choice (CalDAV, email, etc).
  - nicolas_t 2y ago
    It gets worse, the banks I use have phased out sms for 2FA. Only using their app on a non-rooted phone is allowed. So getting a dumb phone doesn't work either.
ctenb 2y ago
This is one of the reasons I decided to buy a fairphone, because I noticed the effort that company was putting in supporting older devices with android updates, even though the hardware vendors like qualcomm don't support it anymore.
lifestyleguru 2y ago
The supply and demand optimizes for cost extraction, ignoring customer preferences, health, and sanity. So here we are sitting in our crossovers scrolling our phablets with unlimited data for tiktok and instagram.
genericspammer 2y ago
The authors frustrations are shared by many. I used an iPhone 6 way past its expiry date. It also became slower over time for no reason until it was essentially unusable. Finally I bought a refurbished iPhone SE 2020 for 200 euros in 2022. It felt almost like going back to a brand new iPhone 6 in both performance and features. I hope to keep it until the inevitable performance drop makes it annoyingly slow, then buy a refurbished iPhone SE 2022 and repeat. After the SE 2022 becomes unusable there will be no good alternative left in the market for someone who only wants a small, simple phone without an abundance of stupid features, then I guess I’ll just stop using smartphones.
Retr0id 2y ago
iPhone SE3 might've been a better upgrade path. Substantially cheaper (than the 16), still has a good few years of updates left, still has touch ID, and the exact same form factor as the iPhone 8.
fmajid 2y ago
You will get longer support with alternative firmware like GrapheneOS or LineageOS, which both support some phones abandoned by their manufacturers.
- genpfault 2y ago
  Subject to device maintainer interest.
sumuyuda 2y ago
Still rocking an iPhone 7. I’ve encountered a few apps that have dropped iOS 15, but surprisingly not that many. I feel the same way the author does. With a new battery the phone works fairly well and I don’t need to upgrade. With the exception of the SE models, all newer models are too big, have a notch, and Face ID. There’s just no compelling reason to upgrade other than being forced by the company.
bb101 2y ago
I tried to go back to using an old but trusty iPhone 5 in 2018. I found that I couldn't get a signal in half the locations I used to get signals fine previously. Technology had marched on, and so had the mix of 2G, 3G and 4G bands. Given that our beige computing boxes used to be out of date within two years, I'd say six years for a phone is good going. Time to get a new iPhone.
soerxpso 2y ago
The feeling of upgrading to something worse has always been my gripe. I think the last time a phone upgrade was purely positive for me was the switch from flippy phones to touchscreens. I don't need whatever new gimmick they're pushing that year, which usually just serves to get in the way. I certainly don't see how I benefit from this new "feature" where my old earbuds don't work without a dongle. I use Android, and I agree that the Android ecosystem is worse about this, although neither option is acceptable. At this point I would pay more for a newly-manufactured model from 2010 than for the current model, if it could still support modern apps (even though it alludes me how the price keeps going up and not down).
Contortion 2y ago
Fairphone guarantees 8 years of updates for the Fairphone 5.
- Derbasti 2y ago
  Not to diminish Fairphone's accomplishments here, but beginning in 2025, the EU mandates five years of software updates for all phones sold in the EU.
- creole_wither 2y ago
  From looking at their website, that is 8 years of software updates. Not 8 years of Android version updates. Apple has released security updates for 10 year old devices such as iOS 12.5.7 which released in 2023 and runs on iPhone 5s.
  - Pfeil 2y ago
    FP5 owner here. IIRC, this is a guarantee for security updates at least, yes. There was some promise on how many major android updates they guarantee I think, but I forgot the details. I also wonder if and how far the promised minimum will be exceeded. That said, I am just glad Fairphones are usually relatively well covered by open source versions of android and other operating systems. Even if I may need another phone for banking apps and all that annoying stuff in 2030 or so, I can at least safely re-use it for other purposes. My "old" Android is now nothing more than an offline mp3 player, which is kinda sad.
frackintoaster 2y ago
Look, we live in a capitalist world. (Most of us) Companies have a need to make money, for better or worse, that’s how it is. Companies like Apple have to balance the economic viability of maintaining developers on software - for them to keep being updated - with keeping users happy. Modern smartphones are not analogous to gas cookers. They’re about 100 times more complex, with third party, hardware, software, security and economic interplay. Reducing it to “My fridge worked for 20 years why doesn’t my iPhone?” is just a stupid argument. Your phone is not a banana.
putzdown 2y ago
The main message I take from this story is that a decent quorum of consumers want Apple to offer a smaller phone in each generation. The OP seems not to have minded having to upgrade eventually, just not to a “virtual tablet.” I’ve heard others express the same desire.
- zitterbewegung 2y ago
  And Apple did this for two generations and not enough of people one bought it but it is still available used . https://www.apple.com/by/iphone-12/specs/ https://www.apple.com/by/iphone-12/specs/ (12 mini) https://support.apple.com/en-us/111873 https://support.apple.com/en-us/111873 I would recommend to return the phone and get the 13 mini which should last awhile
  - gregoriol 2y ago
    The SE3 is good enough and not too big
    - vundercind 2y ago
      The only, only reason I ever buy anything but the smallest phone they offer is because the best cameras are never on the smallest devices. The extra size is pure down-side for me, and I don't really give a shit about slightly faster processors or what have you (I hardly burden the low-end ones), but I do find when looking back at older photos I always appreciate when I've had better cameras, so I hesitate to go too low-end on those. I'd pay about the same (or maybe even exactly the same, but feel a little annoyed about it) for a small Apple phone with the same camera as the expensive big models.
      - gregoriol 2y ago
        I choose the cheapest technically up-to-date one. I really don't care about the camera, the gap between generation is mostly not interesting. Actually the only reason I had to replace the last one is that Apple stopped supporting it with the latest iOS...
devops99 2y ago
The older iPhones are nice products. It's a shame there are so many gaps in driver support for these devices. A lot of people would be happy to run something like GrapheneOS on them.
xmprt 2y ago
I think a big part of this is that upgrading from iPhone 8 to 16 is such a huge jump that all the muscle memory that you've built up has changed. You might as well switch to an Android phone. I wonder how OP's opinion would change in a few months once they're used to the phone.
- LeafItAlone 2y ago
  I went from an 8 to a 15. My muscle memory adapted in about a day or two. I’m not old, but I’m also not young. I love the 15 and still keep the 8 around for music and other things. For me, Face ID is superior and I get confused when I look at my 8 and it doesn’t immediately unlock. And I was super worried about losing Touch ID.
codr7 2y ago
I'm running an iPhone SE that's probably older. Love it, it's perfect for me, I dread the day it stops working. I've been forced to use various newer models over the years, and they just keep getting worse to me.
- zupa-hu 2y ago
  Same here.
- EvanAnderson 2y ago
  Agreed. The original iPhone SE was peak form factor and ergonomics. Everything after has been a regression.
halemmor 2y ago
I’m in a similar situation with my iPhone 8. The battery currently shows 81% capacity, so needs changing, but it doesn’t make much sense considering it’s not getting anymore software updates. It sucks, because outside of that, the phone is fine! Really wish that we got updates for longer; feels as though companies are forcing you into upgrades just to sell more devices.
llm_nerd 2y ago
I'm curious which apps were the purported problem. Apple's recommendation for app developers is targeting 16.1 as the min device, which the 7 and 8 support (devices that are 7+ and 8+ years old, fwiw), and doing a quick check of the app store, every top app I looked at required 16.1 or earlier. And FWIW, while Apple offers no specific guarantees, they're still providing security updates when necessary. There was one a few months ago. Could there be a specific app that used some super new API or just wanted to force users to have recent devices? Sure, there absolutely are. But a simple survey demonstrates they're the fringe. For most people, iOS being stuck on iOS 16.x will remain irrelevant for a few more years.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  I can give you an egregious example: FlightAware. Not only do they not offer updates that support 16.x (fine, I’d just use the last version that still works on my phone) but instead, their last update puts a full screen modal dialog up, telling me the app will no longer run and that I need to buy a new phone that supports the latest iOS. You can’t even dismiss the modal, so the app effectively no longer works. Total “fuck you” to users! I’d love 5 minutes in a room alone with the bonehead PM or eng lead who decided this was a good way to treat your users.
  - StressedDev 2y ago
    Software engineers are notorious for not wanting to support legacy devices and software. You see this all of the time on Hacker News. If you want more venders to support older devices, you need to change the culture. You also need to acknowledge the costs. Here are the costs: 1.Increased software development costs - Costs increase because software has to be designed to fallback to alternative implementations when the newest OS, browser, database, etc. features are not available. 2. Increased performance optimization costs. Older devices tend to be slower and this means software engineers will have to spend more time optimizing programs. 3. Increased testing costs - You need to test all features on older and newer devices. The other problem is it might not be worth it to support older devices. Basically, supporting older devices may not be profitable (i.e. too few users who do not generate enough revenue to justify the increased costs).
aucisson_masque 2y ago
Yeah that sucks but it’s already the best out there. Some would say that you can use lineageos indefinitely on Android when the boot loaders is unlocked but the cold truth is that app requiring minimum os version also require the phone not to be unlocked and pass Google safetynet, which lineageos (even with magisk) can’t.
StressedDev 2y ago
Once a computer (a smart phone is a computer) stops getting security updates, it should not be connected to a network. The reason is that device will get hacked and that is not good. This person should have upgraded his iPhone 8 as soon as Apple stopped offering security updates. He either already got hacked or would have eventually got hacked if he continued to use an insecure phone. Note that not all hacks are visible. For example, information stealers (malware which steals passwords and data) are designed to run silently in the background. They don't want to victim to know they have been hacked.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  This kind of “security ransom” should not be acceptable. Oh I should throw away my perfectly working phone because the OS vendor just up and decided to stop fixing its security, leaving the device useless? Shouldn’t they compensate me for making my perfectly good hardware useless, since I should not be connecting it to the web now? This person is doing the right thing: complaining loudly about corporate practice that should not be accepted by consumers.
  - andrewxdiamond 2y ago
    If I want to produce a device, am I required to put work in to maintaining it forever? An iPhone 8 is really old by this point, honestly I’m impressed it still works. What timeline would you recommend that is fair to both consumers and producers?
    - ryandrake 2y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42299639 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42299639
      - FredPret 2y ago
        Tying software support to how long the hardware lasts will ensure that every hardware manufacturer builds in a time-based killswitch into every device they make. Software engineers are expensive.
ttepasse 2y ago
I'm currently in the same position, upgrading from an iPhone 6s (2015) to an iPhone 16. The thing is, it is mostly not the apps which forced me to upgrade. I can't get newer ones, of course, but the old ones still work. (Except a supermarket app which practically deactivated its current app and asks me to update to a newer version which I can't install. There is no need, no new APIs except maybe developer convenience.) But the real villain is the web. Browsing simple websites becomes a chore, Safari becomes unresponsive for minutes at a time. Sometimes it feels worse web experience than the one an iPhone 1 with the checkerboard background. I blame React for having to pay money just to stand still.
iamwpj 2y ago
I think people forget how new and dynamic these devices are. Maybe in a couple of decades we can have evergreen devices, but for now the changes of the devices and capabilities is still driven by new releases and proliferation. These types of changes still require a ton of human effort and hardware restrictions. In the 60s and 70s car lifespans were much shorter (around 100k miles), but today those are much longer, double that of 50 years ago. You can already see this shift happening in smartphones -- as evidenced by consumers not recognizing improvements between devices that are 5 years newer, although if I'm going to be honest, I find it really odd that you wouldn't notice some of the improvements between iPhone 8 to 16. It's wasteful, but also not really all at the same time. We're combining a lot of devices and functionality into one unit which can reduce waste, and there's not a lot of things in your life you use as much as a smartphone -- even if you cycle it out every 5 years. There are components of these that are easily recycled as well. For many households the costs of smartphones are cut down as the devices are passed down based on seniority or priority, this makes for a really functional reuse system.
- aranelsurion 2y ago
  > I find it really odd that you wouldn't notice some of the improvements between iPhone 8 to 16. I'm sure they notice some improvements, when I was out shopping for a new phone I could tell the then-flagship iPhone 13 having a slightly better display and a slightly better camera than 11 even by playing with it at the store. But then, I've upgraded from an iPhone 6S+ to iPhone 11, and even 11 was unnecessary to me. I just had to because I bought the 16GB model back then, the lowest storage option, and with ever larger iOS updates my phone wasn't usable anymore. With that a perfectly usable iPhone 6S became electronic waste, and I was out 600 euros, to do exactly what I've been doing on 6S: browsing, instant messaging, Uber and Uber-likes. Now the fonts look a little nicer, and camera is so much better, and that's.. about it for noticeable features for me. I wouldn't pay that much for either of those if I could. My point is, I think smartphones hit a ceiling of useful features a long time ago. The big features, all the important stuff, the GPS, camera, browser, IM and a few other things have been figured out since a decade now. There are some smartphone "power users" who don't have a computer or maybe a TV and use it for watching movies, playing games or they are amateur photographers/influencers and such, for them maybe these new models still offer something. For everyone else an iPhone 16 does what an iPhone 6 does, just a little fancier.
hamdouni 2y ago
Reminds me of the bricked Nexus 7...
RadiozRadioz 2y ago
I still target Android JellyBean as the minimum version with my apps. I have never increased the minimum version since I created the app. Google makes it difficult, but I refuse to give into their quest to annoy users. I love my 3 JellyBean users as much as the rest of my users and they deserve to not have their software break for no reason.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  From your lips to all software developers’ ears! Thank You.
RadiozRadioz 2y ago
Personally I keep two phones. I keep a very old Android phone that I like to use, then a new iPhone that I keep "normal". I use the Android phone for as much as possible, but bank apps don't work any more and many apps dropped support for my version years ago. In these cases, when required, I drop down to the iPhone and pretend to be a "normal" user; I install all my updates, use the stock browser, sign into all the cloud crap, pick the easy sign-in options to everything. The most expected, everage user that everybody is catering towards. Using the iPhone sucks, but owning it lets me mostly use the Android phone I actually like, while still being able to do everything I would otherwise be arbitrarily restricted from doing.
Havoc 2y ago
Noticeable change has definitely slowed down. Personally I don’t mind their cadence. 3-4 year cycle is good for me and well within apples window. I can understand OPs irritation though. Throwing working hardware out is not nice
TomMasz 2y ago
I'm in the same boat. I need to update my Apple Watch but can't because I can't update my iPhone 8. I love Apple stuff but there's no ignoring the costs (beyond the purchase price).
meisel 2y ago
I refuse to believe they didn’t notice a key difference in the phones - the iPhone 16 will feel much, much snappier. Games aside, just opening any old app will be much faster. I notice this every time I upgrade, even when it’s just going up 3 versions, not 8.
mrgoldenbrown 2y ago
My ancient MacBook air is also working perfectly well except for the lack of OS support. I finally got a newer model this weekend and my wife asked me what new features the new one had, and I struggled to explain that it had no new features (useful to me) really, except OS updates.
methuselah_in 2y ago
Welcome to pixel

184 points by SpookyChoice 2y ago

I felt this way when I was forced to upgrade from IPhone 6s. That was a little different in that with that phone iOS had become too much for the device's limited RAM, and UI concepts meant for the edge-to-edge phones were being forced on phones on which they make no sense. In early 2023 I "upgraded" to an iPhone XS 256GB. It took a while to get used to FaceID from TouchID, but it's fine. Perhaps this will be its final year? I'm conscious iOS 19 might abandon support. Apple have replaced the battery once and replaced a speaker at the same time (I guess there know the go bad but it's not enough to do a recall). It's a great phone and I too will be a little bit when I'm forced to abandon it.

19911991 2y ago

[flagged]

Hard_Space 2y ago

This also counts for desktop Macs. Twice in the last 20 years I have had to explain to my elderly Dad that even though his expensive Mac could last another thirty years, it's now a paperweight, or something to be 'repurposed'. I have wondered sometimes if hardware manufacturers actively seek out significant road-mapped hardware changes (such as Intel>ARM, etc., in case of Apple) in order to keep sales rolling in and stop folks 'sitting on' their well-functioning tech.

nextlevelwizard 2y ago
You have to be quite cynical if you see Apple's transition to ARM only as a ploy to get people to replace their Intel based machines. I am sure it is a nice bonus, but performance and efficiency just went through the roof. With yearly iPhone releases it is harder to justify upgrades. Like for author - upgrading from working phone to newer model while not gaining anything significant is stupid.
- IndrekR 2y ago
  If the computer here is 20 years old, then we are talking about PowerPC based Mac. So two transitions over this devices lifetime: PowerPC -> Intel -> ARM.
  - shepherdjerred 2y ago
    Yeah, it was really strange when Apple migrated to the niche x86 architecture. Definitely a money grab.
  - obmelvin 2y ago
    Apple had good reasons for both transitions. In the scheme of 'forced upgrades' these are about as good as you're going to get. Also, if the OPs dad is using the computer for so little that it would last another 30 years, they certainly have no need to upgrade computers. No reason one can't keep using an intel iMac to browse the web
- Dalewyn 2y ago
  >With yearly iPhone releases it is harder to justify upgrades. It might be helpful to think of them like cars: New models every year, but customers only "upgrade" every 10 to 20 years.
  - tonyedgecombe 2y ago
    I don’t think it really matters if some people upgrade more frequently as long as the old devices enter the secondary market. What we don’t want is functional devices rotting in a drawer or landfill.
derbOac 2y ago
The blog post reminded me of my last laptop upgrade (Macbook Air) as well. I was perfectly happy with the old laptop, nothing wrong with the hardware for me, but software releases started depending on new OSes and then I couldn't install those any longer. No "graceful degradation", and as far as I could tell the limitation was just the size of the storage drive for the OS in particular — not the nature of the chip itself or drivers or anything like that. I don't necessarily attribute anything nefarious to anything, but collectively the whole thing seems like madness to me. What's ironic is I bet if I put linux on that machine, it (a) would be totally feasible to install recent versions, and (b) all the latest versions of the software I needed would be there for those versions. It seems like there needs to be some principled way of maintaining installs on older hardware... or I guess I just have to weigh this issue more heavily in my decision making about OSes in the future.
esskay 2y ago
Yup my dad bought an iMac back in 2014. It was that one model that didn't support targeted display mode. It broke about a month back (looks like drive failure) but had been having tons of issues before this due to newer software dropping support. He should be able to just buy a cheap mac mini second hand and plug it into that gorgious 5k imac display, but nope. Cant do that. Apple just like every other company could not give less of a crap about ewaste. There is absolutely zero reason why they couldn't relax the limits on older hardware to allow it to be repurposed. What's now going to happen in my dads case is he'll buy a cheap 4k monitor, probably a second hand mac mini and send the iMac to a charity for recycling. The whole Intel -> ARM thing though was absolutely about performance and Intel's utterly awful processors holding them back. The forced upgrades were just a bonus for Apple.
- tonyedgecombe 2y ago
  There is a third party upgrade that will turn those retina iMacs into a monitor.
obmelvin 2y ago
Why can't your dad keep using his existing computer? Sure, if you make your living on the computer the new laptops are great. But if he's just checking email, photos, etc - I don't know why his computer needs to become a paperweight
- nradov 2y ago
  At some point you no longer get security upgrades. Or new web browser versions aren't available and you're unable to access certain sites. In some cases there are workarounds like installing an open source OS but that's too much hassle for most consumers.
- Hard_Space 2y ago
  Specifically because in each case, no updateable web browser was available any longer. To have your main machine increasingly unable to render web pages, and to suffer growing security vulnerabilities, pretty much bricks the machine for any purpose other than a scanning workstation, etc.
  - obmelvin 2y ago
    Fair :) I was overlooking that this latest computer could be an older intel machine that didn't receive the latest OS, thus won't still still have years of security only updates.
curun1r 2y ago
As someone who just upgraded from an intel to M4, I feel this. But I do wish I had known about OpenCore [0]. Ironically, I learned about it while on a bit of YouTube binge of Mac videos in preparation for my new one arriving. As much as the ecosystem has moved on from Intel, I think I'll be able to keep using my old MBP for a while longer if I can keep it on the latest version of MacOS. [0] https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/ https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/

thaumaturgy 2y ago

I'm still daily-driving an iPhone 7, so I sympathize. A few apps have complained about the older OS; so far I've been able to react by deleting the apps. Smartphones cause a truly astonishing amount of waste (https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2018/12/11/right-to-repair-nathan-proctor https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2018/12/11/right-to-repair-...: ~151 million phones discarded in the US each year, as of 2018), to say nothing of the various social follow-on effects that are being argued to death elsewhere. I was a very late smartphone adopter and I'm already trying to reduce the amount I depend on this thing; too much of their marketing always struck me as being more akin to new sneakers than life-improving tech. As a dev I understand the challenges of supporting older hardware. As a conscious consumer, I wish there were another option available in the market, and I haven't yet decided what I'll do when my current device finally needs to be retired.

nextlevelwizard 2y ago
Yearly phone upgrades are akin to new sneakers. People want the latest thing, they do not need it. Phones have not improved for years in significant ways. There has been no new features. Only improvement has been cameras, but really how good of a camera does your average person need in their daily lives?
- adastra22 2y ago
  Do your sneakers last 7 years? Mine barely last 1.
  - mnky9800n 2y ago
    I feel like they used to last longer but now I get literal holes in them
  - nextlevelwizard 2y ago
    Time span is different, but people who like sneakers buy multiples per year.
epistasis 2y ago

dataflow 2y ago

When you make the decision to not support older hardware (whether directly or indirectly), you're making a decision that the maintenance burden you're trying to avoid is more important than the environmental impact of users disposing of & buying hardware. Which... maybe it is; who am I to suggest different priorities for other people. But it would be nice for engineers and businesses to at least think about this and make such a decision consciously.

michaelsshaw 2y ago
>Which... maybe it is; who am I to suggest different priorities for other people I mean, I get the sentiment. But I live in this world too, and the E-Waste and forced obsolescence(or whatever you'd call it in this particular instance) does have an effect on me, personally. So yes, we should absolutely have a say, despite the fact that at this time we actively do not. In the US, our environmental policy is laughably inadequate, and with what happened in the election, we're about to be on a path of complete self-annihilation, environmentally speaking. It's a bit of a long-winded way of explaining myself here, but we definitely shouldn't refrain from serious issues because you feel you may be stepping on others' toes.
- Dalewyn 2y ago
  Let's be real here: Most of us detest forced upgrades because it is Fucking Inconvenient(tm). We don't want to move away from Space Bar Heating[1] once we've gotten established, and screw everyone who tries taking it away. I'm sure a small minority might also have an environmental beef, but arguing green isn't going to grab peoples' hearts. [1]: https://xkcd.com/1172/ https://xkcd.com/1172/
  - michaelsshaw 2y ago
    >I'm sure a small minority might also have an environmental beef, but arguing green isn't going to grab peoples' hearts. That's kind of what it so disheartening about this whole issue. It's seriously urgent, and yet I routinely meet people who actively deny what is actual undeniable fact, claiming various sources of deception (deepstate, lizards, Nancy Pelosi, etc). A good amount of the rest don't care.

Klonoar 2y ago

If you were on an iPhone 8 and wanted to upgrade but keep TouchID, the SE3 is still a fine device. It's possible I'll grab one before the SE4 just to hold on to TouchID a bit longer.

mrweasel 2y ago
Upgrading to an iPhone 16 seems like a weird choice, given that the SE3 exists and it pretty much perfect. One argument that I can see it that the 16 is two years newer, and should get updates at least two year more. The price difference between the two phones however is much to big to justify getting the 16, unless there's some feature you really need.
- HermanMartinus 2y ago
  Hey, author here. I decided on the 16 since its support lifetime started this year. If I'd gotten the SE (which I seriously considered since it has a more appealing form factor and touchID) I would only have a 4 year support lifetime as opposed to the full 6.
  - tzs 2y ago
    On the other hand the SE3 is 54% of the price of the 16 (assuming base models of both), so long term it could be cheaper to go with the SE3 even though you would have replace it sooner.

koliber 2y ago

I feel the same as the author. I also can’t come up with any satisfying solution. I empathize with apple and don’t expect them to support old hardware forever. The only solution I can think of is allowing people to support older hardware themselves. This is one of the strongest arguments for loosening the walled garden for older devices.

michaelsshaw 2y ago
It's completely ridiculous that these phones are as non-hackable as they are. When maintaining the illusion they sell of their stuff being "magic" (so therefore you can't hack on it) over the seriously big fucking issue of pollution and E-waste, I'd go a bit further than saying it's annoying. It's deeply immoral.
maeil 2y ago
> I also can’t come up with any satisfying solution. Laws. As someone else suggested here, the EU mandates 5 years of support. Make it 10. Too big of a barrier that cripples new entrants? Apply it only to megacorps, just like the DMA. Easy peasy. It's trivially easy to solve this, but late stage capitalism's resulting regulatory capture prevents it.

guessmyname 2y ago

If it makes you feel better, I work at Apple and I still use the iPhone 8 since 2017.

rubymamis 2y ago

> I also miss TouchID. I agree - Touch ID is far superior to Face ID.

walterbell 2y ago
It works well on iPad Air power button. Apple should include TouchID on all Pro device power buttons.
9x39 2y ago
What do you like about Touch ID? I think I'd switch platforms before going away from Face ID, it's so trivial to authenticate without even moving a muscle that I don't even think about it. I have an older iPad with touch ID, and I simply turned it off because it felt like an anachronism in the experience.
- Cheezmeister 2y ago
  Fingerprint vs Face shines while (for instance) having a conversation and, because you have manners, want to maintain eye contact while pulling up a photo of that thing you are describing, or to make sure that's just a robocall and not your wife with an emergency. It also shines first thing in the morning where your hair and eyes are so disheveled that even Siri didn't recognize you. Your thumb is probably still the same shape.
  - kstrauser 2y ago
    > want to maintain eye contact while pulling up a photo of that thing you are describing Unless your eyes point in markedly different directions, I'm having a hard time imagining how you'd manage that anyway.
- apple4ever 2y ago
  It doesn't fail as often as Face ID - you can touch the phone on table and don't have move your head to get it right (especially on the iPad). Its more secure because it requires an active action (touching) vs passive (looking).

grishka 2y ago

Android phones are kinda better in this regard because if you really insist, you can take matters into your own hands and install a custom ROM. Especially now that GSIs (generic system images) are a thing. Really though, why do we keep updating OSes? I understand security updates, but why do these major yearly releases have to keep happening? What do they solve? Why can't we for once just settle for something in this cursed industry? Why can't we release finished products?

lentil 2y ago
True for the OS, but you won’t get firmware updates/security patches once the upstream vendor stops support.
mcoliver 2y ago
Yeah I don't know....custom ROMs feel less trustworthy than a publicly traded corporations locked down OS. Things like Graphene can't run some bank apps because of security concerns from the banks. I would rather run a pixel missing a few security updates than a custom rom. I also don't visit shady sites or install non mainstream apps.

xkriva11 2y ago

Unusability preservation law: Whenever a technology gets into a state where it becomes usable, when it starts to suit you, you get into it and you are satisfied with it, something always happens that either completely impairs it or makes working with it significantly uncomfortable.

genpfault 2y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME#GNOME_3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME#GNOME_3

ciconia 2y ago

The real question, IMO, is why the need to release a new model every year? I think a lot of the churn of both hardware and software had nothing to do with technological progress, and everything to do with generating sales.

Shank 2y ago
Well, it does obviously have to do with generating sales. But to play devil's advocate, I never have enough battery life, even with a fresh battery. There are incremental improvements, year-over-year, in terms of processor efficiency. I take a lot of photos, and I definitely notice having a 5x optical zoom now. There are details that some people would say are worth upgrading. But it is not the case that all people fit this template.
- lloeki 2y ago
  > Well, it does obviously have to do with generating sales. I don't think it's that obvious, and I don't think manufacturers count on it ("it" being short length updates) Instead I think it's about handling competition: say a manufacturer updates their product line every 3 years, should a user that kept their phone for a while need to buy in the middle to last bout, they'll look at the market and see "oh that other manufacturer has released an update to their product line a month ago, so I'm going to buy that instead of a 2yo product from my current manufacturer". The comparison may be done on any kind of metric but it ultimately comes down to what's state of the art at a given point in time. It doesn't mean the user hasn't kept their previous phone a long time. But to be competitive across the time continuum the product line needs to be fresh enough. In that sense it generates sale, or rather, helps with retention, not by having one update every year or other year, but by creating the opportunity to stay within one's current brand. I think leading manufacturers have realised a long time ago that satisfied customers are what generates reliable sales and growth long term. Even Samsung, king of the shiny "innovative"-but-useless bullet-point feature list have somewhat gotten their act together.
keiferski 2y ago
You kind of answered your own question there. These are businesses, not research labs. Sales comes first, as is to be expected.

nekobrain 2y ago

Just "upgraded" to a Pixel 8 from a 4a (it wasn't even my intention to do so, went to have my 4a battery replaced but the shop botched the job and I needed a working phone quickly), I agree with every point made by the author. It does the same things as the 4a did, just marginally faster. Screen is better but I don't really care, and using it with one hand is harder. On top of that, I'm praying the dreaded green screen issue does not appear (it did on a coworker's Pixel 8). Oh well, at least I got security updates now...

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
mcoliver 2y ago
Same here. Pixel 5 has been amazing and would love to keep it but the arbitrary stopping of OS and security updates is forcing my hand. I have searched long and far for the technical reasons (some security chip, ram requirements, processor features, etc) but can't seem to come up with anything. Makes it hard to reason about this in any other way than they want to sell more things.

chr15m 2y ago

This situation doesn't happen with hardware running an open source OS. For example laptops running Linux can upgrade basically forever. Why are community maintained open source OSes better at this than commercially maintained proprietary OSes?

amatecha 2y ago
Yup, I use computers from 2012 which are still running the absolute latest software just fine. Linux, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, etc. :)
TheDong 2y ago
The richest company in the world became the richest company in the world in part by forcing its users to buy new hardware regularly. Linux doesn't have a financial incentive to delete the code that supports 5 year old processors, but Apple does have such a financial incentive.
9x39 2y ago
Open source OS's also don't do anything for the typical person in a feature sense so there's way less to go wrong and way fewer users to ever discover/report issues. Non-technical users want to run specific hardware like new displays or accessories or use apps like a game or a specific commercial program, not run an OS. Without those users, there's no need to grow the feature set as aggressively.
coldtea 2y ago
Because community maintained open source OSes don't need to make money.
okanat 2y ago
It is more about hardware / software bundling than the openness of the source code. Windows is as proprietary as it gets. I was able to upgrade my desktop PC from 2008 to Windows 10. It required removing quite a bit bloatware but it works. Actually, I have a negative example for FOSS for you. I have a laptop with an Nvidia GPU on it from 2012. I cannot use it under Linux since Linux world is terrible at API / ABI stability. So Nvidia driver has stopped working. I can still use the laptop fully functional with Windows 11.

zokier 2y ago

What is to me frustrating is how artificial these lifecycles feel. Even more so on Android side. Just upstream your drivers and "support" should be pretty much free.

genpfault 2y ago
Recently upgraded to a Pixel 8 from a different aarch64 phone (OnePlus Nord N100) and discovered that I can't run 32-bit apps anymore :(
- daghamm 2y ago
  How was your experience with the Nord?
immibis 2y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42038139 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42038139
- ndriscoll 2y ago
  "Just" is a fine word to use when a solution is not technically complicated, and it's important that people with technical understanding express that it really is "just" that simple. That way, if the reason they don't do that is that they and their business partners don't want to, citizens know it's reasonable to ask their governments to make those companies release driver/firmware source code and/or hardware documentation as part of consumer protection laws.
  - immibis 2y ago
    Upstreaming stuff is complicated. You can't just throw your barely working driver over the wall at Linus. You have to put effort into it, and keep putting effort into it.
    - ndriscoll 2y ago

thefz 2y ago

Wasn't EU's right to repair law also mandating at least 5 years of updates? Just make 10. With all the money these companies make, they can dedicate some people to taking care of legacy hardware.

esskay 2y ago
It's sad that we consider 5-10 years to be "legacy" in any way shape or form. It does seem to very much just be at the consumer level. We've still got servers chugging away in datacenters that are pushing 15 years old and still have several years of life left in them.
- objclxt 2y ago
  > It does seem to very much just be at the consumer level. We've still got servers chugging away in datacenters that are pushing 15 years old and still have several years of life left in them. The datacenter is temperature controlled and the air is filtered. The server is locked in the rack and never moves. By comparison, your laptop or your phone go through hell on a daily basis.
  - rini17 2y ago
    Speak for yourself. Some people prefer to handle their devices with care and expect to get longevity in return.
    - objclxt 2y ago
      > Some people prefer to handle their devices with care and expect to get longevity in return I guarantee you however carefully you are handling your device it is a world apart from a datacenter.
      - rini17 2y ago
        So? Refurbished ThinkPads with added 10+yr life expectance don't exist?

chrismorgan 2y ago

> As far as I can tell Apple has the longest support lifetime of 6 years, followed closely by Samsung with 4 years of major Android OS upgrades and 5 years of security updates. Anecdote of Samsung support from a few years ago on a decidedly-not-flagship phone (just straight-up copying from a comment I wrote a couple of years ago—): In April 2019, I needed to rapidly obtain a device, and purchased a Samsung Galaxy J1 (2016) from a major retailer in Australia. I later discovered that this model had already been EOL for over a year when I purchased it. (It was released with 5.1.1, got its last security patch in November 2017, and was actively unsupported no later than March 2018. The handset should very obviously have been updated to Android 6, if not released with it—Android 6 was announced and in beta 7½ months before, and was the stable release 3½ months before, the handset’s January 2016 release.)

Hawxy 2y ago
That device very much predates Samsung's long-term support policy. I'm surprised it was even being sold at that point.
daghamm 2y ago
J1 was introduced in February 2015, and cost not much more than a burner phone. I am surprised you could buy one in 2019. Anyway, the Samsung update program did not exist in 2015.

keiferski 2y ago

To play devil’s advocate here, I actually think iPhones have some of the best longevity and resale value, compared to virtually any other product or brand - except perhaps if we go back decades to appliances made near the middle of the century. The fact that a device can be perfectly usable for 5+ years is pretty good compared to most other things I find myself buying and replacing in less time. Otherwise I think the only real “solution” to this is to rethink your notion of a phone. Personally I tend to use WhatsApp, email, and other non-phone-specific applications, and don’t use the actual phone feature very often. So theoretically I could use any small computing device and upgrade its components as needed, and not need to have a phone at all.

solstice 2y ago
That could work (given sufficiently good build-out of the data network), but for the mid-term you'd still need to have a way to receive SMS for 2FA etc.
- keiferski 2y ago
  Google Voice or Twilio could solve this, I think?
  - lifestyleguru 2y ago
    Their phone number ranges and oftentimes gray or blacklisted.
- lifestyleguru 2y ago
  I want "2FA device in a drawer". Always on, on a mute, receiving SMS, and forwarding them to the system of my choice (CalDAV, email, etc).
- nicolas_t 2y ago
  It gets worse, the banks I use have phased out sms for 2FA. Only using their app on a non-rooted phone is allowed. So getting a dumb phone doesn't work either.

ctenb 2y ago

This is one of the reasons I decided to buy a fairphone, because I noticed the effort that company was putting in supporting older devices with android updates, even though the hardware vendors like qualcomm don't support it anymore.

lifestyleguru 2y ago

The supply and demand optimizes for cost extraction, ignoring customer preferences, health, and sanity. So here we are sitting in our crossovers scrolling our phablets with unlimited data for tiktok and instagram.

genericspammer 2y ago

The authors frustrations are shared by many. I used an iPhone 6 way past its expiry date. It also became slower over time for no reason until it was essentially unusable. Finally I bought a refurbished iPhone SE 2020 for 200 euros in 2022. It felt almost like going back to a brand new iPhone 6 in both performance and features. I hope to keep it until the inevitable performance drop makes it annoyingly slow, then buy a refurbished iPhone SE 2022 and repeat. After the SE 2022 becomes unusable there will be no good alternative left in the market for someone who only wants a small, simple phone without an abundance of stupid features, then I guess I’ll just stop using smartphones.

Retr0id 2y ago

iPhone SE3 might've been a better upgrade path. Substantially cheaper (than the 16), still has a good few years of updates left, still has touch ID, and the exact same form factor as the iPhone 8.

fmajid 2y ago

You will get longer support with alternative firmware like GrapheneOS or LineageOS, which both support some phones abandoned by their manufacturers.

genpfault 2y ago
Subject to device maintainer interest.

sumuyuda 2y ago

Still rocking an iPhone 7. I’ve encountered a few apps that have dropped iOS 15, but surprisingly not that many. I feel the same way the author does. With a new battery the phone works fairly well and I don’t need to upgrade. With the exception of the SE models, all newer models are too big, have a notch, and Face ID. There’s just no compelling reason to upgrade other than being forced by the company.

bb101 2y ago

I tried to go back to using an old but trusty iPhone 5 in 2018. I found that I couldn't get a signal in half the locations I used to get signals fine previously. Technology had marched on, and so had the mix of 2G, 3G and 4G bands. Given that our beige computing boxes used to be out of date within two years, I'd say six years for a phone is good going. Time to get a new iPhone.

soerxpso 2y ago

The feeling of upgrading to something worse has always been my gripe. I think the last time a phone upgrade was purely positive for me was the switch from flippy phones to touchscreens. I don't need whatever new gimmick they're pushing that year, which usually just serves to get in the way. I certainly don't see how I benefit from this new "feature" where my old earbuds don't work without a dongle. I use Android, and I agree that the Android ecosystem is worse about this, although neither option is acceptable. At this point I would pay more for a newly-manufactured model from 2010 than for the current model, if it could still support modern apps (even though it alludes me how the price keeps going up and not down).

Contortion 2y ago

Fairphone guarantees 8 years of updates for the Fairphone 5.

Derbasti 2y ago
Not to diminish Fairphone's accomplishments here, but beginning in 2025, the EU mandates five years of software updates for all phones sold in the EU.
creole_wither 2y ago
From looking at their website, that is 8 years of software updates. Not 8 years of Android version updates. Apple has released security updates for 10 year old devices such as iOS 12.5.7 which released in 2023 and runs on iPhone 5s.
- Pfeil 2y ago
  FP5 owner here. IIRC, this is a guarantee for security updates at least, yes. There was some promise on how many major android updates they guarantee I think, but I forgot the details. I also wonder if and how far the promised minimum will be exceeded. That said, I am just glad Fairphones are usually relatively well covered by open source versions of android and other operating systems. Even if I may need another phone for banking apps and all that annoying stuff in 2030 or so, I can at least safely re-use it for other purposes. My "old" Android is now nothing more than an offline mp3 player, which is kinda sad.

frackintoaster 2y ago

Look, we live in a capitalist world. (Most of us) Companies have a need to make money, for better or worse, that’s how it is. Companies like Apple have to balance the economic viability of maintaining developers on software - for them to keep being updated - with keeping users happy. Modern smartphones are not analogous to gas cookers. They’re about 100 times more complex, with third party, hardware, software, security and economic interplay. Reducing it to “My fridge worked for 20 years why doesn’t my iPhone?” is just a stupid argument. Your phone is not a banana.

putzdown 2y ago

The main message I take from this story is that a decent quorum of consumers want Apple to offer a smaller phone in each generation. The OP seems not to have minded having to upgrade eventually, just not to a “virtual tablet.” I’ve heard others express the same desire.

zitterbewegung 2y ago
And Apple did this for two generations and not enough of people one bought it but it is still available used . https://www.apple.com/by/iphone-12/specs/ https://www.apple.com/by/iphone-12/specs/ (12 mini) https://support.apple.com/en-us/111873 https://support.apple.com/en-us/111873 I would recommend to return the phone and get the 13 mini which should last awhile
- gregoriol 2y ago
  The SE3 is good enough and not too big
  - vundercind 2y ago
    The only, only reason I ever buy anything but the smallest phone they offer is because the best cameras are never on the smallest devices. The extra size is pure down-side for me, and I don't really give a shit about slightly faster processors or what have you (I hardly burden the low-end ones), but I do find when looking back at older photos I always appreciate when I've had better cameras, so I hesitate to go too low-end on those. I'd pay about the same (or maybe even exactly the same, but feel a little annoyed about it) for a small Apple phone with the same camera as the expensive big models.
    - gregoriol 2y ago
      I choose the cheapest technically up-to-date one. I really don't care about the camera, the gap between generation is mostly not interesting. Actually the only reason I had to replace the last one is that Apple stopped supporting it with the latest iOS...

devops99 2y ago

The older iPhones are nice products. It's a shame there are so many gaps in driver support for these devices. A lot of people would be happy to run something like GrapheneOS on them.

xmprt 2y ago

I think a big part of this is that upgrading from iPhone 8 to 16 is such a huge jump that all the muscle memory that you've built up has changed. You might as well switch to an Android phone. I wonder how OP's opinion would change in a few months once they're used to the phone.

LeafItAlone 2y ago
I went from an 8 to a 15. My muscle memory adapted in about a day or two. I’m not old, but I’m also not young. I love the 15 and still keep the 8 around for music and other things. For me, Face ID is superior and I get confused when I look at my 8 and it doesn’t immediately unlock. And I was super worried about losing Touch ID.

codr7 2y ago

I'm running an iPhone SE that's probably older. Love it, it's perfect for me, I dread the day it stops working. I've been forced to use various newer models over the years, and they just keep getting worse to me.

zupa-hu 2y ago
Same here.
EvanAnderson 2y ago
Agreed. The original iPhone SE was peak form factor and ergonomics. Everything after has been a regression.

halemmor 2y ago

I’m in a similar situation with my iPhone 8. The battery currently shows 81% capacity, so needs changing, but it doesn’t make much sense considering it’s not getting anymore software updates. It sucks, because outside of that, the phone is fine! Really wish that we got updates for longer; feels as though companies are forcing you into upgrades just to sell more devices.

llm_nerd 2y ago

I'm curious which apps were the purported problem. Apple's recommendation for app developers is targeting 16.1 as the min device, which the 7 and 8 support (devices that are 7+ and 8+ years old, fwiw), and doing a quick check of the app store, every top app I looked at required 16.1 or earlier. And FWIW, while Apple offers no specific guarantees, they're still providing security updates when necessary. There was one a few months ago. Could there be a specific app that used some super new API or just wanted to force users to have recent devices? Sure, there absolutely are. But a simple survey demonstrates they're the fringe. For most people, iOS being stuck on iOS 16.x will remain irrelevant for a few more years.

ryandrake 2y ago
I can give you an egregious example: FlightAware. Not only do they not offer updates that support 16.x (fine, I’d just use the last version that still works on my phone) but instead, their last update puts a full screen modal dialog up, telling me the app will no longer run and that I need to buy a new phone that supports the latest iOS. You can’t even dismiss the modal, so the app effectively no longer works. Total “fuck you” to users! I’d love 5 minutes in a room alone with the bonehead PM or eng lead who decided this was a good way to treat your users.
- StressedDev 2y ago
  Software engineers are notorious for not wanting to support legacy devices and software. You see this all of the time on Hacker News. If you want more venders to support older devices, you need to change the culture. You also need to acknowledge the costs. Here are the costs: 1.Increased software development costs - Costs increase because software has to be designed to fallback to alternative implementations when the newest OS, browser, database, etc. features are not available. 2. Increased performance optimization costs. Older devices tend to be slower and this means software engineers will have to spend more time optimizing programs. 3. Increased testing costs - You need to test all features on older and newer devices. The other problem is it might not be worth it to support older devices. Basically, supporting older devices may not be profitable (i.e. too few users who do not generate enough revenue to justify the increased costs).

aucisson_masque 2y ago

Yeah that sucks but it’s already the best out there. Some would say that you can use lineageos indefinitely on Android when the boot loaders is unlocked but the cold truth is that app requiring minimum os version also require the phone not to be unlocked and pass Google safetynet, which lineageos (even with magisk) can’t.

StressedDev 2y ago

Once a computer (a smart phone is a computer) stops getting security updates, it should not be connected to a network. The reason is that device will get hacked and that is not good. This person should have upgraded his iPhone 8 as soon as Apple stopped offering security updates. He either already got hacked or would have eventually got hacked if he continued to use an insecure phone. Note that not all hacks are visible. For example, information stealers (malware which steals passwords and data) are designed to run silently in the background. They don't want to victim to know they have been hacked.

ryandrake 2y ago
This kind of “security ransom” should not be acceptable. Oh I should throw away my perfectly working phone because the OS vendor just up and decided to stop fixing its security, leaving the device useless? Shouldn’t they compensate me for making my perfectly good hardware useless, since I should not be connecting it to the web now? This person is doing the right thing: complaining loudly about corporate practice that should not be accepted by consumers.
- andrewxdiamond 2y ago
  If I want to produce a device, am I required to put work in to maintaining it forever? An iPhone 8 is really old by this point, honestly I’m impressed it still works. What timeline would you recommend that is fair to both consumers and producers?
  - ryandrake 2y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42299639 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42299639
    - FredPret 2y ago
      Tying software support to how long the hardware lasts will ensure that every hardware manufacturer builds in a time-based killswitch into every device they make. Software engineers are expensive.

ttepasse 2y ago

I'm currently in the same position, upgrading from an iPhone 6s (2015) to an iPhone 16. The thing is, it is mostly not the apps which forced me to upgrade. I can't get newer ones, of course, but the old ones still work. (Except a supermarket app which practically deactivated its current app and asks me to update to a newer version which I can't install. There is no need, no new APIs except maybe developer convenience.) But the real villain is the web. Browsing simple websites becomes a chore, Safari becomes unresponsive for minutes at a time. Sometimes it feels worse web experience than the one an iPhone 1 with the checkerboard background. I blame React for having to pay money just to stand still.

iamwpj 2y ago

I think people forget how new and dynamic these devices are. Maybe in a couple of decades we can have evergreen devices, but for now the changes of the devices and capabilities is still driven by new releases and proliferation. These types of changes still require a ton of human effort and hardware restrictions. In the 60s and 70s car lifespans were much shorter (around 100k miles), but today those are much longer, double that of 50 years ago. You can already see this shift happening in smartphones -- as evidenced by consumers not recognizing improvements between devices that are 5 years newer, although if I'm going to be honest, I find it really odd that you wouldn't notice some of the improvements between iPhone 8 to 16. It's wasteful, but also not really all at the same time. We're combining a lot of devices and functionality into one unit which can reduce waste, and there's not a lot of things in your life you use as much as a smartphone -- even if you cycle it out every 5 years. There are components of these that are easily recycled as well. For many households the costs of smartphones are cut down as the devices are passed down based on seniority or priority, this makes for a really functional reuse system.

aranelsurion 2y ago
> I find it really odd that you wouldn't notice some of the improvements between iPhone 8 to 16. I'm sure they notice some improvements, when I was out shopping for a new phone I could tell the then-flagship iPhone 13 having a slightly better display and a slightly better camera than 11 even by playing with it at the store. But then, I've upgraded from an iPhone 6S+ to iPhone 11, and even 11 was unnecessary to me. I just had to because I bought the 16GB model back then, the lowest storage option, and with ever larger iOS updates my phone wasn't usable anymore. With that a perfectly usable iPhone 6S became electronic waste, and I was out 600 euros, to do exactly what I've been doing on 6S: browsing, instant messaging, Uber and Uber-likes. Now the fonts look a little nicer, and camera is so much better, and that's.. about it for noticeable features for me. I wouldn't pay that much for either of those if I could. My point is, I think smartphones hit a ceiling of useful features a long time ago. The big features, all the important stuff, the GPS, camera, browser, IM and a few other things have been figured out since a decade now. There are some smartphone "power users" who don't have a computer or maybe a TV and use it for watching movies, playing games or they are amateur photographers/influencers and such, for them maybe these new models still offer something. For everyone else an iPhone 16 does what an iPhone 6 does, just a little fancier.

hamdouni 2y ago

Reminds me of the bricked Nexus 7...

RadiozRadioz 2y ago

I still target Android JellyBean as the minimum version with my apps. I have never increased the minimum version since I created the app. Google makes it difficult, but I refuse to give into their quest to annoy users. I love my 3 JellyBean users as much as the rest of my users and they deserve to not have their software break for no reason.

ryandrake 2y ago
From your lips to all software developers’ ears! Thank You.

RadiozRadioz 2y ago

Personally I keep two phones. I keep a very old Android phone that I like to use, then a new iPhone that I keep "normal". I use the Android phone for as much as possible, but bank apps don't work any more and many apps dropped support for my version years ago. In these cases, when required, I drop down to the iPhone and pretend to be a "normal" user; I install all my updates, use the stock browser, sign into all the cloud crap, pick the easy sign-in options to everything. The most expected, everage user that everybody is catering towards. Using the iPhone sucks, but owning it lets me mostly use the Android phone I actually like, while still being able to do everything I would otherwise be arbitrarily restricted from doing.

Havoc 2y ago

Noticeable change has definitely slowed down. Personally I don’t mind their cadence. 3-4 year cycle is good for me and well within apples window. I can understand OPs irritation though. Throwing working hardware out is not nice

TomMasz 2y ago

I'm in the same boat. I need to update my Apple Watch but can't because I can't update my iPhone 8. I love Apple stuff but there's no ignoring the costs (beyond the purchase price).

meisel 2y ago

I refuse to believe they didn’t notice a key difference in the phones - the iPhone 16 will feel much, much snappier. Games aside, just opening any old app will be much faster. I notice this every time I upgrade, even when it’s just going up 3 versions, not 8.

mrgoldenbrown 2y ago

My ancient MacBook air is also working perfectly well except for the lack of OS support. I finally got a newer model this weekend and my wife asked me what new features the new one had, and I struggled to explain that it had no new features (useful to me) really, except OS updates.

methuselah_in 2y ago

Welcome to pixel