This bug touches nothing hardware specific. In alternative timeline where mobile OSes arent fisher price parodies of proper operating systems, they could push the same image to all iphones and have a proper hardware abstraction layer take care of the specific details.
There is nothing fundamentally incompatible about the last couple of generation of iphones. ARMv8 CPU, PowerVR derived GPU. If the mobile computing space weren't driven by greed, this would be a non issue.
A Sandy Bridge era intel machine deployed in 2011 is easily capable of running the latest Linux, BSD or win10. And in the case of the first two, I'd wager it will continue to be viable for the foreseeable future.
It’s not economical to support devices used by less than 1% of the user base. Linux only manages it because community members step up to support older architectures. And sometimes when no one steps up the architectures are removed.
Supporting all of these is work. It makes development of new features harder, because it has to account for quirks of older hardware. Older hardware is also harder to get in the hands of developers and harder to test on. That’s why Linux has dropped support for 386, 486, IA-64 and other architectures.
There’s no point saying trillion dollar corporation etc. It comes down to some basic fact - phones must be built with SoCs, that’s the easiest way. The PC way doesn’t work at scale. Now that we are on SoCs you have to draw the line on support somewhere. Just because the costs imposed on future development aren’t obvious to us doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
I think 5 years minimum (and sometimes more) of OS updates is pretty good, FWIW.
Apple still sells previous phones as lesser, but still not very affordable, models. The iPhone 7 was released in September 2016 and discontinued in September 2019. It is also on iOS 15.8 so presumably also vulnerable to this. That would be about 4 years of security updates. Not the worst but not beating what e.g. Google promises for Pixel phones now.
You can't seriously give Apple shit for this and at the same time praise Google. iPhones have, pretty consistently since the 5 or so, received 5 or 6 years worth of OS updates since the phone's release whereas with Android phones you'll receive 2. Only after years of complaining is Google finally promising to support it for longer. And that doesn't cover Samsung, etc...
Personally I don’t think Apple’s level of support is incredibly bad when you take a look at the used device market. Even with Apple’s famously high resale values, depreciation on smartphones is huge.
Don’t buy brand new old phones new from Apple, they’re a ripoff. If you buy either an iPhone 12 or 13 used for $250-350 you can basically plan on a $50 a year budget to have a smartphone that always has the latest OS judging by their expected remaining lifespans.
I think the big flaw with the status quo is e-waste more than cost to the consumer. I think an iPhone 6S or 7 are incredibly slow and outdated devices for today’s usage but in 5 years I don’t think we will be able to say the same thing about an iPhone 12 or 13. Smartphone hardware is far more mature now than it was even 6 generations deep into the iPhone product line.
We should be able to replace batteries for $20 and replace things like broken screens for not much more, and Apple should be enthusiastic about it considering how services are their bread and butter moving forward. Apple should be happy to produce fewer phones and keep more consumer dollars allocated toward the purchase of high margin digital goods.
The 2020 SE is available from a wide variety of sources for 200USD (still new in box); it'll be supported until 2027. The 2022 SE is 400USD, supported until 2029.
By comparison the Android phones at this price point functionally went out of support 2 years before they even existed- not only is there zero support for them, but they ship with outdated OS versions to begin with. And no, "but I can go to XDA and get a shitty ROM at the cost of my camera" doesn't count as support.
While Google promises, Apple actually has a decade long track record of updating older phones for 5 or more years. We don’t know if Google will actually follow through on their promises or the execs in charge in 5 years will feel differently. But I personally bet $1000 that the iPhone 13 will get 5 years of OS updates minimum.
Google doesn’t have enough e-fuses to update the pixel phones for seven years, the marketing department is incompetent and didn’t talk to literally the only engineers they should have.
It's fine for a vendor to completely abandon 10 year old hardware but if you can still pay 30% App Store tax/pay for iCloud/etc, the security fixes should be backported as well. The current situation is charging full price for inferior (or maybe even dangerous) product: Apple wants to have its cake and eat it too.
I don't totally follow this argument. the 30% app store commission, iCloud subscription, etc. does not only fund security fixes for the OS and core services. I don't think the average consumer thinks that's what they're paying for either. waiving the fee for EOL'd devices would create a perverse incentive of its own.
I do wish apple would follow google's example and commit to a service lifetime upfront, but other than that, I don't object to their model. in practice, it vastly exceeds the level of support for any android phone other than the pixel 8, and we have yet to see whether google actually follows through on that.
So theoretically - and I tried this a couple of years ago - I could still download the “last compatible version” of an app if it’s available on the store for my old 2010 iPad 1st generation running iOS 5.
This device had 256Mb RAM and 400Mhz 32 bit processor. Should Apple still support this with security updates?
It’s an issue of expectations. If Apple advertises security support then it’s fraudulent to not deliver it; on the other hand, if they advertise an EOL date, then I’d agree there’s no reasonable expectation of security updates. But what they actually do is neither, they communicate very little, supporting some past iOS versions fully and others to degrees that only they know, resulting in them profiting off a reputation for backporting security updates while not actually binding themselves to deliver it, or, often, doing so.
Like the battery issue, I feel the whole issue is communication. Apple needs to communicate when they EOL OS versions. You don’t otherwise know it, partly because EOL OS’s, including this phone’s, still get security updates, just not all of them.
They do communicate it in every major release, including which devices are supported. Many major vendors release security updates for EOL devices when doing so would greatly increase the security posture of those devices and comes at little to no cost to the vendor. Notably Cisco, Microsoft, Apple, and Samsung come to mind.
Is the implication that once a device is EOL that a vendor should never release an update for that device again?
Correct. The issue is it is not commonly known that Apple isn't actually backporting fixes for exploits while it has been claiming to update the phones: this is earth-shaking[^1] news
[^1] It would be completely reasonable to say "Earth-shaking? Really? You expect security backports for a decade?" I've been in mobile my whole career, iOS for 7 years, starting from jailbreaking the original iPhone, then worked on Android itself for 7 years. I am sure significant decisions were made assuming this was the case.
Huh, it can be totally earth shaking or completely normal depending on time and place. In current market place of smartphones it is more towards earth shaking than normal.
You don't have to agree but resell value of older iPhone being much-much higher than Android tells customer values the support and quality of iPhone.
no_time|2 years ago
There is nothing fundamentally incompatible about the last couple of generation of iphones. ARMv8 CPU, PowerVR derived GPU. If the mobile computing space weren't driven by greed, this would be a non issue.
A Sandy Bridge era intel machine deployed in 2011 is easily capable of running the latest Linux, BSD or win10. And in the case of the first two, I'd wager it will continue to be viable for the foreseeable future.
nindalf|2 years ago
- Linux dropping support for old graphics drivers (Nov 2023) - https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-Drop-Old-UMS-DRM-Infra
- Linux Kernel Developers Discuss Dropping A Bunch Of Old CPUs (Jan 2021) - https://www.phoronix.com/news/2021-Linux-Drop-Old-CPUs
Supporting all of these is work. It makes development of new features harder, because it has to account for quirks of older hardware. Older hardware is also harder to get in the hands of developers and harder to test on. That’s why Linux has dropped support for 386, 486, IA-64 and other architectures.
There’s no point saying trillion dollar corporation etc. It comes down to some basic fact - phones must be built with SoCs, that’s the easiest way. The PC way doesn’t work at scale. Now that we are on SoCs you have to draw the line on support somewhere. Just because the costs imposed on future development aren’t obvious to us doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
I think 5 years minimum (and sometimes more) of OS updates is pretty good, FWIW.
ionyun|2 years ago
albntomat0|2 years ago
Pixel 8: released in 2023, updates through 2030 Pixel 5: released in 2020, stopped getting updates in October 2023.
https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/4457705?hl=en
mrcarruthers|2 years ago
dangus|2 years ago
Don’t buy brand new old phones new from Apple, they’re a ripoff. If you buy either an iPhone 12 or 13 used for $250-350 you can basically plan on a $50 a year budget to have a smartphone that always has the latest OS judging by their expected remaining lifespans.
I think the big flaw with the status quo is e-waste more than cost to the consumer. I think an iPhone 6S or 7 are incredibly slow and outdated devices for today’s usage but in 5 years I don’t think we will be able to say the same thing about an iPhone 12 or 13. Smartphone hardware is far more mature now than it was even 6 generations deep into the iPhone product line.
We should be able to replace batteries for $20 and replace things like broken screens for not much more, and Apple should be enthusiastic about it considering how services are their bread and butter moving forward. Apple should be happy to produce fewer phones and keep more consumer dollars allocated toward the purchase of high margin digital goods.
qball|2 years ago
The 2020 SE is available from a wide variety of sources for 200USD (still new in box); it'll be supported until 2027. The 2022 SE is 400USD, supported until 2029.
By comparison the Android phones at this price point functionally went out of support 2 years before they even existed- not only is there zero support for them, but they ship with outdated OS versions to begin with. And no, "but I can go to XDA and get a shitty ROM at the cost of my camera" doesn't count as support.
nindalf|2 years ago
While Google promises, Apple actually has a decade long track record of updating older phones for 5 or more years. We don’t know if Google will actually follow through on their promises or the execs in charge in 5 years will feel differently. But I personally bet $1000 that the iPhone 13 will get 5 years of OS updates minimum.
kaba0|2 years ago
I’ll believe it at 6 years in, maybe.
walteweiss|2 years ago
Almondsetat|2 years ago
Google: promises
you're being disingenuous
code_duck|2 years ago
polyomino|2 years ago
madars|2 years ago
leetcrew|2 years ago
I do wish apple would follow google's example and commit to a service lifetime upfront, but other than that, I don't object to their model. in practice, it vastly exceeds the level of support for any android phone other than the pixel 8, and we have yet to see whether google actually follows through on that.
wtallis|2 years ago
judge2020|2 years ago
> iOS 12.5.7
> Released January 23, 2023
https://support.apple.com/en-us/103015
scarface_74|2 years ago
This device had 256Mb RAM and 400Mhz 32 bit processor. Should Apple still support this with security updates?
handsclean|2 years ago
Like the battery issue, I feel the whole issue is communication. Apple needs to communicate when they EOL OS versions. You don’t otherwise know it, partly because EOL OS’s, including this phone’s, still get security updates, just not all of them.
voidwtf|2 years ago
Is the implication that once a device is EOL that a vendor should never release an update for that device again?
uxp8u61q|2 years ago
refulgentis|2 years ago
[^1] It would be completely reasonable to say "Earth-shaking? Really? You expect security backports for a decade?" I've been in mobile my whole career, iOS for 7 years, starting from jailbreaking the original iPhone, then worked on Android itself for 7 years. I am sure significant decisions were made assuming this was the case.
gridder|2 years ago
geodel|2 years ago
You don't have to agree but resell value of older iPhone being much-much higher than Android tells customer values the support and quality of iPhone.
beeboobaa|2 years ago
hulitu|2 years ago
Microsoft is trying to fix this. Win 11 wants a TPM. /s