8 ms·

Exactly! I installed this on my original iPhone at one point, and it was a complete waste of time. Apple's goal is to ensure that old iDevices are 100% useless

by FreakyT 12y ago

Exactly! I installed this on my original iPhone at one point, and it was a complete waste of time. Apple's goal is to ensure that old iDevices are 100% useless by refusing to update them, and this project does absolutely nothing to rectify that.

dtech 12y ago
I'm no fan of Apple, but this is baseless Apple bashing. "Refusing" to update old devices is certainly reasonable. You cannot continue to support 7 year old phones when there is so much (hardware) development, it would either make them unsuitably slow or deprive newer models of features. iPhone 4 (06-2010) received it's last (?) update in 06-2014, 4 years of support, other devices have had similar durations of support. Compare that to Google: Nexus One (01-2010) never received 4.0 (10-2011): less than 2 years, Nexus S 11-2010 to 10-2012: 2 years, Nexus S 10-2011 to 07-2013: less than 2 years.
- jwr 12y ago
  Actually, iPhone 4 should never have received iOS 7. The update crippled people's phones: the software ran so slow, that in some cases I was unable to answer the call before it timed out! Subsequent updates made the situation slightly more bearable, but still bad. I would much rather have Apple flat-out refuse to provide updates for devices which are unable to handle the new bloated software.
  - freehunter 12y ago
    I'm unable to do that on my iPhone 5c sometimes. The screen just doesn't respond when I try to pick up. And it was made for iOS7.
    - wvenable 12y ago
      As an iPhone 5 user, I have experienced the same thing. A reboot fixes it. More than likely the problem is more frequent/pronounced the slower the device is.
  - gurkendoktor 12y ago
    iOS 4 on the iPhone 3G and iOS 5 on the first iPad have been the same. They could come out of it looking generous if they would allow us to downgrade our devices again...but all I hear is "your device is practically bricked, where's your credit card?"
    - slantyyz 12y ago
      >> iOS 5 on the first iPad have been the same Man, I would pay a small fee to Apple to be able to do that. I bought a maxed out iPad 1 when it was released and it was basically unusable in 24 months. I expected to be able to use it for 3y.
  - dubya 12y ago
    The initial release was pretty bad, but subsequent ones are fine. Safari, for example, is at least as fast as before. More annoying are third party developers testing only on new hardware. A phone that can run "Infinity Blade" should not take two minutes to start "Threes".
    - slantyyz 12y ago
      >> The initial release was pretty bad, but subsequent ones are fine. Well, it seems there is some variability on this, so the better response may be "YMMV". iOS7 on my iPhone 4 (including the latest updates) -- just made it unusable -- and keep in mind, most of what I do are just the core apps, Safari, RSS and Read Later. I basically had the same issues with the last supported iOS versions on the original iPad and iPhone 3G. The pattern I notice is that Apple tends to offer one OS upgrade too many on older devices, which is basically what led me to leave iOS. The refreshing pattern I've experienced on Android is that most of the upgrades have featured performance improvements.
    - Karunamon 12y ago
      Apple can't win here. They don't release the update, and people bash them for not supporting expensive devices. They release the update, and people bash them for some kind of forced-planned-obsolescence.
      - mikeash 12y ago
        They could release the update and make sure it actually runs well. Note that it's not a given that a new OS release must run slower. Mac OS X had many releases that got successively faster. The trend only stopped with 10.7 or so.
        Karunamon 12y ago
        It's also not a given that older hardware has the ability to support whatever changes and new features were made in the new OS.
  - CocaKoala 12y ago
    My iPhone 4 is still on iOS 6.1.3; I only had to upgrade to the 4 when my 3g stopped working after some OS updates. I learned my lesson there and didn't bother to move up to iOS 7 for my current phone; I'll probably get a new one soon just because my phone is now ~4 years old and starting to slow down on its own anyways.
  - Yizahi 12y ago
    I see same problem on my 3GS with iOS6 (updated from 4 to 5 then to 6). Once every 30 calls or so.
  - gcb4 12y ago
    i have an old 3gs that i used for testing and now it's my Pandora client permanently attached to my receiver. i never update it past 6. when friends with 4 and 4s with ios7 show up i like to ridicule then on how they have a phone worse and 10x shower then the previous generation. oh apple. you're so funny when you try to nickel and dime your customers. they take some 2min to load the first screen on maps. it's hilarious.
- Kayou 12y ago
  So yeah they are better than one of the worst. This doesn't mean they should not try to do even better. Why can my 2008 Vista laptop be upgraded all the way to 8.1 and use software that come out today and my 2008 pocket computer / smartphone cannot do that? Especially that this year, smartphone specs are a little stuck. We should have an OS as independent as possible from the hardware, on any device.
  - aroch 12y ago
    Because smartphones are in the exponential phase of development, much like computers were in the late 90's early 00's. Smartphone silicon has changed dramatically in the last 4 years, laptop silicon has not.
    - fleitz 12y ago
      To be fair CPU performance has massively improved since '07, however, it just doesn't matter because everything you wanted to do is fast enough. If you take an modern game and run it on an '07 PC it will be very slow at max settings. Back in 06-07 it you needed a 15x15K drives and a controller with 256 MB of cache RAM to hit 800 MB/sec random read/write. Now you can drop in two $200 SSDs
      - aroch 12y ago
        They are still, in comparison to mobile phone SoCs, incremental increases in power. Especially the Core-i series of the last few years. On top of that they still sell computers with dual-core celeron and pentium processors because they're "good enough" and instruction sets haven't changed much. Smartphone SoCs have seen leaps and bounds both in the physical silicon and in stuff like instruction set support, hw codecs and the like.
  - potatolicious 12y ago
    Because: 1) You pay for Windows, and part of that cost is specifically to ensure backwards compatibility. iOS is free. 2) The performance of smartphones in 2008 vs. smartphones in 2014 is very different than the performance of PCs in 2008 vs. PCs in 2014. In 2008 smartphones and mobile ARM platforms were in their infancy. The latest smartphones (Android, iOS, or otherwise) are easily 100x faster than those old phones. This is why I'm personally skeptical that these guys can get the iOS7-blur effect on an original iPhone1. You'd see incompatibilities galore, too, if PCs advanced by a factor of 100 in 6 years. In fact, we did see that in the mid-late 90s when PC performance was exploding - the upgrade cycle back then was way, way shorter than it is today.
- chrisdevereux 12y ago
  Apple don't help by requiring App Store submissions to be compiled with a current version of Xcode, while removing compiler support for older ARM CPUs. Not suggesting that this is a deliberate ploy (it likely makes very little difference to their bottom line), but it certainly doesn't help...
- chaz72 12y ago
  This year, you're absolutely right: Apple has among the best support for older devices, among smartphone makers, which are a breed apart from more general purpose computing. For now. Long term, as things stabilize, I think we all can agree we want more from these gadgets.
bushido 12y ago
I may get some flack and down votes for saying this. But, I have experienced something quite the opposite. Apple keeps pushing updates that cripple older devices. In the last few years I have had a number of my devices and those of my friends rendered useless because of updates pushed by Apple. I have seen a variety of issues the most common and annoying of those include: 1. Battery Failure - Immediately after an update (happened to my iPhone 4, my cousins and two friends in the same week, immediately after the update) 2. Extreme lag/slowdown when receiving calls/typing 3. Front camera stops working or more accurately hangs the application making use of it. I am not a conspiracy theorists. But in all cases I have seen people including myself upgrade soon after, at times to android devices, but most often to iDevices. Don't know if it is a deliberate goal. But it truly sucks.
- tracker1 12y ago
  I'd say vote with your feet and wallet... if you move to a competing device, and convince others to do the same, that's good for the larger community imho.

by FreakyT 12y ago

dtech 12y ago

I'm no fan of Apple, but this is baseless Apple bashing. "Refusing" to update old devices is certainly reasonable. You cannot continue to support 7 year old phones when there is so much (hardware) development, it would either make them unsuitably slow or deprive newer models of features. iPhone 4 (06-2010) received it's last (?) update in 06-2014, 4 years of support, other devices have had similar durations of support. Compare that to Google: Nexus One (01-2010) never received 4.0 (10-2011): less than 2 years, Nexus S 11-2010 to 10-2012: 2 years, Nexus S 10-2011 to 07-2013: less than 2 years.

jwr 12y ago
Actually, iPhone 4 should never have received iOS 7. The update crippled people's phones: the software ran so slow, that in some cases I was unable to answer the call before it timed out! Subsequent updates made the situation slightly more bearable, but still bad. I would much rather have Apple flat-out refuse to provide updates for devices which are unable to handle the new bloated software.
- freehunter 12y ago
  I'm unable to do that on my iPhone 5c sometimes. The screen just doesn't respond when I try to pick up. And it was made for iOS7.
  - wvenable 12y ago
    As an iPhone 5 user, I have experienced the same thing. A reboot fixes it. More than likely the problem is more frequent/pronounced the slower the device is.
- gurkendoktor 12y ago
  iOS 4 on the iPhone 3G and iOS 5 on the first iPad have been the same. They could come out of it looking generous if they would allow us to downgrade our devices again...but all I hear is "your device is practically bricked, where's your credit card?"
  - slantyyz 12y ago
    >> iOS 5 on the first iPad have been the same Man, I would pay a small fee to Apple to be able to do that. I bought a maxed out iPad 1 when it was released and it was basically unusable in 24 months. I expected to be able to use it for 3y.
- dubya 12y ago
  The initial release was pretty bad, but subsequent ones are fine. Safari, for example, is at least as fast as before. More annoying are third party developers testing only on new hardware. A phone that can run "Infinity Blade" should not take two minutes to start "Threes".
  - slantyyz 12y ago
    >> The initial release was pretty bad, but subsequent ones are fine. Well, it seems there is some variability on this, so the better response may be "YMMV". iOS7 on my iPhone 4 (including the latest updates) -- just made it unusable -- and keep in mind, most of what I do are just the core apps, Safari, RSS and Read Later. I basically had the same issues with the last supported iOS versions on the original iPad and iPhone 3G. The pattern I notice is that Apple tends to offer one OS upgrade too many on older devices, which is basically what led me to leave iOS. The refreshing pattern I've experienced on Android is that most of the upgrades have featured performance improvements.
  - Karunamon 12y ago
    Apple can't win here. They don't release the update, and people bash them for not supporting expensive devices. They release the update, and people bash them for some kind of forced-planned-obsolescence.
    - mikeash 12y ago
      They could release the update and make sure it actually runs well. Note that it's not a given that a new OS release must run slower. Mac OS X had many releases that got successively faster. The trend only stopped with 10.7 or so.
      - Karunamon 12y ago
        It's also not a given that older hardware has the ability to support whatever changes and new features were made in the new OS.
- CocaKoala 12y ago
  My iPhone 4 is still on iOS 6.1.3; I only had to upgrade to the 4 when my 3g stopped working after some OS updates. I learned my lesson there and didn't bother to move up to iOS 7 for my current phone; I'll probably get a new one soon just because my phone is now ~4 years old and starting to slow down on its own anyways.
- Yizahi 12y ago
  I see same problem on my 3GS with iOS6 (updated from 4 to 5 then to 6). Once every 30 calls or so.
- gcb4 12y ago
  i have an old 3gs that i used for testing and now it's my Pandora client permanently attached to my receiver. i never update it past 6. when friends with 4 and 4s with ios7 show up i like to ridicule then on how they have a phone worse and 10x shower then the previous generation. oh apple. you're so funny when you try to nickel and dime your customers. they take some 2min to load the first screen on maps. it's hilarious.
Kayou 12y ago
So yeah they are better than one of the worst. This doesn't mean they should not try to do even better. Why can my 2008 Vista laptop be upgraded all the way to 8.1 and use software that come out today and my 2008 pocket computer / smartphone cannot do that? Especially that this year, smartphone specs are a little stuck. We should have an OS as independent as possible from the hardware, on any device.
- aroch 12y ago
  Because smartphones are in the exponential phase of development, much like computers were in the late 90's early 00's. Smartphone silicon has changed dramatically in the last 4 years, laptop silicon has not.
  - fleitz 12y ago
    To be fair CPU performance has massively improved since '07, however, it just doesn't matter because everything you wanted to do is fast enough. If you take an modern game and run it on an '07 PC it will be very slow at max settings. Back in 06-07 it you needed a 15x15K drives and a controller with 256 MB of cache RAM to hit 800 MB/sec random read/write. Now you can drop in two $200 SSDs
    - aroch 12y ago
      They are still, in comparison to mobile phone SoCs, incremental increases in power. Especially the Core-i series of the last few years. On top of that they still sell computers with dual-core celeron and pentium processors because they're "good enough" and instruction sets haven't changed much. Smartphone SoCs have seen leaps and bounds both in the physical silicon and in stuff like instruction set support, hw codecs and the like.
- potatolicious 12y ago
  Because: 1) You pay for Windows, and part of that cost is specifically to ensure backwards compatibility. iOS is free. 2) The performance of smartphones in 2008 vs. smartphones in 2014 is very different than the performance of PCs in 2008 vs. PCs in 2014. In 2008 smartphones and mobile ARM platforms were in their infancy. The latest smartphones (Android, iOS, or otherwise) are easily 100x faster than those old phones. This is why I'm personally skeptical that these guys can get the iOS7-blur effect on an original iPhone1. You'd see incompatibilities galore, too, if PCs advanced by a factor of 100 in 6 years. In fact, we did see that in the mid-late 90s when PC performance was exploding - the upgrade cycle back then was way, way shorter than it is today.
chrisdevereux 12y ago
Apple don't help by requiring App Store submissions to be compiled with a current version of Xcode, while removing compiler support for older ARM CPUs. Not suggesting that this is a deliberate ploy (it likely makes very little difference to their bottom line), but it certainly doesn't help...
chaz72 12y ago
This year, you're absolutely right: Apple has among the best support for older devices, among smartphone makers, which are a breed apart from more general purpose computing. For now. Long term, as things stabilize, I think we all can agree we want more from these gadgets.

bushido 12y ago

I may get some flack and down votes for saying this. But, I have experienced something quite the opposite. Apple keeps pushing updates that cripple older devices. In the last few years I have had a number of my devices and those of my friends rendered useless because of updates pushed by Apple. I have seen a variety of issues the most common and annoying of those include: 1. Battery Failure - Immediately after an update (happened to my iPhone 4, my cousins and two friends in the same week, immediately after the update) 2. Extreme lag/slowdown when receiving calls/typing 3. Front camera stops working or more accurately hangs the application making use of it. I am not a conspiracy theorists. But in all cases I have seen people including myself upgrade soon after, at times to android devices, but most often to iDevices. Don't know if it is a deliberate goal. But it truly sucks.

tracker1 12y ago
I'd say vote with your feet and wallet... if you move to a competing device, and convince others to do the same, that's good for the larger community imho.