SO. MUCH. THIS.
At work my manager still rocks an old Motorola g5 plus. He says phones have reached peak performance and there’s no point of upgrading. Hes a humble, down to earth guy also make $210k/ year.
The problem is that there are security updates that those old phones need and aren’t getting. The whole “let’s tie the operating system binaries to the hardware” thing was always dumb, somehow Windows can handle binary-blob drivers that aren’t built into the OS.
Oh I loved that phone! I still have it but I didn’t have the balls to replace the built in battery so I reluctantly decided to upgrade
He replaced the battery by himself. Ordered stuff from ifixit.
Peak is definitely not true, but there is no point in upgrading for the foreseeable future.
I hope my phone lasts me decades. I don’t really see it being incapable of doing what I need it to unless we radically change how we use our phones.
I’m sure people have felt the same way about PCs, too. Ever since Sandy Bridge, there hasn’t really been a reason for most PC users to upgrade unless they were gaming or did some other CPU-intensive task.
I’ll tell you right now your phone wont last a decade.
That battery, even with light usage, will eventually degrade to the point you’ll have to charge it multiple times a day to keep it alive.
and then you’ll have to do the math and decide between getting a new battery and just getting a new phone.
Thats the decision i had to make when I needed a battery for my old phone… Did the math and found the cost of a new (to me) used phone was close enough to the cost of the replacement battery + labor that it was more value to me getting the newer phone, with newer OS, and still in the receiving update window than putting a aftermarket battery in my old phone.
Granted, the math gets heavily skewed in favor of a new battery if you are well experienced in cellphone disassembly and know you can do it without breaking the screen or back. I’m not, and any savings would go out the door if I broke anything, which is why I was going to let a professional do it.
I would listen to you, but I was using my previous phone for 5 years and noticed no degradation in battery life. I only upgraded to this one because it was free.
Sorry man, maybe you’re right and time will tell. But we’ll just have to wait and see. This phone has a significantly larger battery, too.
If there was no degredation after 5 years and thousands of charge cycles, then you need to rush your phone off to scientists so they can discover the miracle materials inside it 😜
I still use my Galaxy S8. Works just fine, could use a new battery.
I sill have my s9. I have had it for years, but I think next year I might change, only because this ones battery is starting to drain a little toofast.
On a s7 edge right now, but it’s really showing its age
I still use my S9.
Actually after 2 years I got a S21 or whatever and gave the S9 to my daughter. But that one died after 2 years, so I took back the S9 and have been using it for another year.
I bought a second hand flagship from 2019 and surprisingly seamless keeping up with the new ones. And always keeping it on an optimized manner. The only apple device i have is ipod touch 6th gen, yes its old but still working serving my music needs. Also bose speakers from 2000s they get dusty pretty easy but still functioning up to this day.
It’s not about more reusable hardware it’s about software being constrained to support existing hardware rather than ditch it to save a fee bucks on development.
I only upgrade when my phone literally dies or can’t support criticial software and security updates anymore. I upgraded from an iphone 6s to a 12 Pro Max 2 years ago and will probably hold on to this phone until it’s no longer supported.
5 year old Oneplus 6.
Does everything I want it to. Everything still works. Rooted. No ads. Still runs fast. Never used up 80% of storage.
Only notable issue is my battery. If i’m away from WiFi and I’m using it a lot (listening to YouTube ad free on fire fox) then I’ll run outta battery by the end of the day.
Near as I can see cell phones hit a plateau 4 years ago. And unless you have a phone with built in obsoletence - there’s no reason to upgrade anymore for the average user.
Eventually, when your phones gives out,.consider a pre-rooted Fairphone.
5 year warranty, decade long software support, and everything is easily user replaceable including the battery.
The steps are in this order. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Keep your own phone for now to reduce
Wow! That sounds right up my alley.
I found out the last time I bricked my phone that the number of people willing to help me had gone from ‘help in minutes - live help’ to ‘answers via a forum - hours and days response time’ and that’s why my phone hasn’t changed anything major in 8 months. I’m too afraid to mess anything up.
I ain’t reading this but I would like to. Anyone got a paywall free version? I tried 12ft.io to no avail.
Thank you
If only new batteries were easily swappable…
flip phones have those, but i’ve never had to swap one. the longest i’ve had one before it broke was ~ 7 years and a charge still lasted about half as long as when it was new (2 weeks vs 4).
they actually fit in a pocket and last a lot longer between charges. i don’t ‘need’ the internet on me 24/7, so i’ll keep getting those as long as they’re still made.
Well, that’s good, but most other people either need to or want to.
Yes, I have one of those as well, but a smartphone is something I carry anyway.
I got my phone for free, thankfully, from Visible. They were going to make me upgrade, but I never did and they just decided to send me a new phone instead.
First time I’ve gotten a new phone for free since I was a kid.
Somewhat related. My grandpa has had a Nokia flip phone since I was a kid. It’s around 20 years old. It’s survived so much abuse. He’s replaced the battery in it about a dozen times. He got a call last year from ATT saying due to the 3G shut off and other network changes his phone will no longer work. They upgraded his plan and sent him an S21 all for free. First new phone he’s ever had since the Nokia. I’m dreading the experience in 3-4 years when he calls me that the battery sucks and shit acting up.
He could sell the S21 and get a Fairphone instead? At least then the battery is still replaceable along with other components.
Consumers however are at the heart of an unhealthy culture of frequent device upgrades
Yes, blame it on the consumer and not on the companies that spend an incredible amount of money to first hire marketeers that think all day long of the best way to push ‘new’ products, and then run costly campaigns to spread the word.
Why not both? For example: one of the advantages if Iphones is the long software support. Why then are people buying a new one every year? I‘m still rocking an IPhone XR and while the batterie is down to 80%, I haven‘t encountered an app that brings it to it‘s knees.
Gotta be honest. Yes blame us. It takes two to tango.
At one point in my life there was this anti consumer movement culturally that got absolutely destroyed and buried. Maybe we’re all just sheep without any free will controlled by Steve jobs of the world. But I feel like we refused to keep certain fires lit and now we’re all freezing. That’s our fault.
Most of it was super obvious too. When ads started invading, some people were pissed. But there was always way more people saying ‘who cares’. But things like ads fuel this consumerism to get people buying and idolizing the tech channels or kardashian lifestyle with all the bling and flash of new. Now we have a generation who probably think anti consumption lifestyle is just flat out crazy talk. Like how do we not have any counter culture anymore to the lavish consumerism culture. Almost every culture has an opposition but that one seems like it’s non existant in a world consumed by ads products
I don’t think there were ever that many of us who read Adbusters every month, but it’s likely even fewer now.
I think that reality TV and social media influencers have had as much to do with people embracing conspicuous consumption as a culture as much as advertisers have.
I think what people are missing here is that although a new phone comes out every year, not every consumer is on the same upgrade schedule.
If I keep my phone for five years then that’s four phones in not getting.
While I agree with you and work on the same timetable I think their point still very much stands.
Look at cars, for example. A model is defined by it’s generation with each model year generally only having small upgrades, if any. With much of our lives if we were to wait that long we’d not miss one generation but instead feel five or more generations behind the curve.
There’s so little of a need for a new phone every year that Apple now sells the iPhone 13, 14, and SE on top of whatever generation is current because they know that the newest tech is just not worth it anymore. Samsung does exactly the same thing and no amount of high-horse whining from Android users will change the fact that those companies are just as bad about it.
We love to throw functional shit in the bin. We love to have overpowered stuff on the off-chance we might need it one day every couple years and we’re too pathetic to either just deal with it or to simply borrow/rent a better thing for that one instance(90% of truck and SUV drivers can absolutely go fuck themselves).
I think along this line of reasoning when it comes to evaluating myself. It’s how I keep myself in check and “sharpen” myself as a person. I like to remind myself of how often I fall short of it though. I also like to remind myself of the things that I have going for me that others might not have had.
When I play the more charitable viewpoint of other people’s life experiences out in my head, it’s usually pretty easy to see them getting where they are. There’s a lot of suffering in this world, and large, effectively international companies are finding ways to exacerbate that in order to keep their businesses growing. It’s nice to sit down after a long day and veg out to short little videos, where each gives you a little chuckle or smile. It’s not that hard to get caught in the trap.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that I agree completely that the path we’re going down is concerning and scary, and individuals can absolutely put the work in to make their lives better and elevate above the mainstream, but for any given person, that can be very difficult for any multitude of reasons, and we can’t forget compassion for them.
I’m not saying consumers are not to blame, but i have objections against the phrasing; as if it’s primarily blaming consumers. I myself am not quite a minimalist, but do have strong tendencies in that direction. So, i never cared about fashion, or buying the newest gadgets. And i know there are people who are the complete opposite. However, i do feel that companies fuel the greed of consumers big time.
While consumers need to educate themselves/be educated by their caretakers and schools, i feel the heart of the matter is the marketing culture and the tendency of companies of hiding shady practices, like profiting from child slaves who have to mine precious metals, or women slaving away in factories for long hours, while risking their lives and bodies due to unsafe machinery, buildings and being bullied by their
employeesemployers, for a shamefully low salary. Edit to replace the word employees
I always say this. You’re one person. Facebook was once a trillion dollar company that hired teams of engineers, phds, and marketers to device the most abusive ways to keep your attention. There are literal studies showing how insta promotes depression in young girls and yet they’re still allowed to operate.
Social media’s marketing schemes are the new generations tobacco industry.
Though i agree with you, i never feel like ‘i’m only one person’. For instance, if someone turns off the lights and recycles their trash, they often say; how does it help, i’m only one person after all. But there are so many people thinking the exact same thing and together we can help change the world.
So, yes, companies should be changed and i think this is also about politics and economics, which are usually conservative and greedy. But i never feel like the things i do are in vain; i’m standing with perhaps millions of invisible people who care about the environment and try to do their best and who all might be thinking; i’m only one person. Many people do want to change and try their best, but it’s time that all these conglomerates are being forced to change for real, instead of getting subsidized, and just greenwash their products.
While these sorts of practices are legal, consumers need to be educated.
I have another idea - get rid of capitalism.
Great idea, what are we replacing it with?
Yeah, let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater just yet. Capitalism is an incredible engine, but it needs guard rails.
The whole infinite growth mentality caused by companies being public on the stock market is the real poison I think. So lets just axe the whole thing. No more stock market, every company is private again.
Which means no more stock speculators, or stock buybacks, or market manipulation schemes. Just companies selling their products to consumers based on their own metrics.
Well, for starters, this obliterates most people’s retirement plans, so that’s a bit of a hurdle.
That aside, what would happen is private equity firms and investment banks simply buying up most public companies, so I don’t really see the grand improvement here.
I hate so much this talking point:
the system has captured the retirements, so we can’t abolish it.
Like if we need this load of bull to support retirement, we should rethink everything from the ground up.
I agree, I don’t think any one system is the answer, they all have their strengths and weaknesses… a combination of them would be a better idea.
To be honest, you cannot achieve capitalism with guard rails.
Rich individuals will accumulate money then bribe or donate to politicians to earn more money thus more bribes then more influence and so on.
Take USA as an example, big corporations have monopoly on almost everything and you as a citizen cannot do anything about it. Sure you can vote but either way, donations to politicians always win.
EU is better but not much. After GDPR, every website would interrupt you to say how they will sell your data and tell you to leave if don’t like it.
With humanity.
I’ll stick with Capitalism, then…
That is not an answer. You’d have credibility if you said, “I’m actually not sure.”
That’s a vague platitude.
Capitalism works becuase we live in a transactional reality. Food could not grow on trees of the tree didn’t take capital (I.e. resources such as nutrients from the soil, light and heat from the sun) to grow that apple. If farmers did not account for the resources the tree needs the tree would simply die.
The issue with capitalism today is that we over apply it and forget to help people who truly need help, and thanks lobbying by sociopathic business owners, we have created a system where we much engage with learned sociopathy to survive and function. We look down at the homeless sick and needy and invent backstories to justify their suffering. They must be drug abuses, violent, lazy, etc cetra.
Capitalism has nothing to do with resources. I think insurance is a great example of that.
We sell nebulous ideas all the time.
If anything our economy is based off of services now.
I would argue ability to provide a service is in it’s self an abstract form of capital.
Time, energy and willpower can also be viewed as a capital. There’s a reason business owners will pay people to be doing work they could easily do themselves. And I think it’s important that we as a society recognise that any time or energy spent transactionally should be properly compensated.
Of course we shouldn’t fall for the trap of trying to maximise and optimise every last ounce of capital in our lives, its important to learn to let go of our posessive human nature. But we should appreciate when we are giving and taking things to and from other people.
Why am I suddenly seeing so much discussion about capitalism these days? This is way above the usual background level of how often this topic gets brought up in various circumstances.
It’s a convenient abstract entity that can be used as a general boogeyman and blamed for all things.
For sure, some things are indeed a direct consequence of capitalism, but lots of other problems come from the simple existence of things having costs, scarcity existing, and humans not being completely selfless. No amount of economic re-arrangement is going to get you away from those things, but it’s nice to imagine so.
blame it on the consumer
Yeah. Blame it on the consumers indeed. Are you a adult or not? Put the tendies down and put your big boy pants on and realize that you need to take responsibility for at least some of your actions.
Same goes for all those dopes that pre-order every game that gets released and then we all wonder why the industry releases so many unfinished games that need patches and updates. That’s because consumers are rewarding these game developers for releasing shitty software.
I don’t really like this trend of absolving consumers of literally all agency in how they spend their money. Outside of practices that intentionally try to make older products obsolete like purposeful throttling - which should absolutely be shamed and made illegal - no one is holding a gun to your head and telling you to buy the new phone or else. If someone decides that a product is a worthy use of their money and decides to purchase it, then so be it. People aren’t children and can decide how they’d like to spend their money, and I really don’t see what’s wrong with a company trying to convince you to do so. People can make their own choices, and that includes financially poor ones. They can also choose to prioritize different things than you or I might.
Ultimately, if you don’t want to buy a new phone, don’t. They’re really quite good nowadays and tend to last a while. There will of course continue to be shiny new things, and if having the newest thing is truly important to you, you can decide to spend your money on it. Or, you can also not. But to say that consumers have essentially no choice and are simply the poor victims of marketing with no real agency at all is reductive to the point of being almost patronizing.
Ultimately, if you don’t want to buy a new phone, don’t.
Could you have made a more vacuous comment? Obviously people shouldn’t buy every new toy that comes out, that doesn’t change the fact that 90% of the blame—and 90% is a hard floor—belongs to the people who waste the Earth’s resources pinching it off in the first place and then waste even more in protectionism and generally making sure there are as few viable alternatives as possible.
The fundamental truth is that companies would not make a bunch of new phones if there were not people that wanted to buy them, for one reason or another.
And it’s not as if the smartphone market isn’t littered with failed products and ideas. Marketing can do a lot, but it’s not able to generate demand for a product that consumers simply do not want. You might remember the pushes for 3D displays, WiMAX, modular phones, styluses, the recent push for foldable devices, etc etc. These failed because consumers simply did not want them. Motorola, HTC, LG, etc failed because consumer did not want their products and they were generally inferior.
Again, you do not need to buy a new phone every year. There are people who do voluntarily want to do that though, and so companies will provide products to meet that desire. I simply do not understand this compulsion to insert yourself into a blatantly voluntary transaction, with the customer wanting a new phone, the company providing one, and you stating “Actually, you’re being exploited.”
This meme comes to mind.
“One reason or another”
Given that one big reason is “Planned obsolescence”, you’re still pointing the finger entirely in the wrong direction.
You can’t scroll Facebook for five minutes without seeing people complain that “They don’t build stuff like they used to anymore” or “All this Chinese junk just falls apart in 5 minutes.”
Consumers want reliable, long lasting products that they don’t have to replace all the time. They just have no way of reasonably obtaining them.
If consumers were actually as hungry for constant upgrades as you claim, phone manufacturers wouldn’t put so much effort into making their products impossible to repair.
Consumers want reliable, long lasting products that they don’t have to replace all the time.
This is the thing that I’m genuinely not entirely convinced of. More than anything, I think a lot people want shiny new stuff as cheaply as they can get it, and that most consumers will generally opt for that over a more expensive but more durable alternative, even if that’s not what they’ll actually tell themselves. “Chinese junk” succeeded because masses of people preferred a cheaper product over a more expensive domestic one. Plenty of people raged against removing headphone jacks, for instance, but ultimately, those phones still sold very well. If there was really a huge demand for phones with headphone jacks, why would Samsung etc. not plop one in there and capture that demand? I would speculate it’s because it doesn’t actually exist to a super significant degree. Plenty of Android phones had removable batteries for long while, but as they started to go away, you didn’t see a huge group of people flock to the phones that kept them. Ultimately, consumers generally showed that they would opt for better waterproofing and slimmer design with a more annoying battery replacement procedure than a bulkier phone with easily removable batteries (though I am intrigued to see if the EU will actually be able to successfully mandate them).
So, while I do agree that consumers do want reliable and long-lasting products, they also want maximally cheap products, and products that feel new and sleek and luxurious. These are contradictory aims, and it seems to me that consumers’ revealed preferences are towards novelty and price, not durability, though I’d also say that I think this is shifting somewhat. Each new generation of phones is offering fewer genuine innovations and improvements, and at least in my experience, consumers are noticing more and more that even mid-range phones are perfectly adequate and that any phone can last several years. As I understand, this has been reflected in declining sales over the last several years.
What, like there’s some kind of ethical standard of consumerism that people are failing to live up to? Take the corporate dick out of your throat and take your L with dignity instead of grasping at straws to be Right and “win” an online argument. Why even try? You really think you’re gonna be the guy who changes people’s hearts and minds and has them say “yes, it’s actually the changing whims of the market that drive corporations to produce waste, they definitely don’t forcibly create their own market through manipulation and abuse”? Are you really trying to be the Rosa Parks of convincing people that there is ever even one case where a corporation isn’t automatically to blame for the existence of their own fucking product? You think consumers should just “not buy”, yet you don’t say that companies should just ignore the market and release new products less frequently? “Oh well that’s not realistic because they’re just not gonna do that” you’re going to say, willfully uncomprehending that you’re reinforcing my point and pretending you just got a gotcha. Get real.
It’s comically bold to talk about dignified discourse while casually throwing out homophobic phrases like “take the dick out of your throat”.
At any rate, your true colors are showing brightly enough that I, empowered consumer that I am, will see myself out of this conversation. Enjoy your iPhone 15 Pro Max that you just had to buy. Truly, it must be hard.
“Oh shit that was embarrassing, better pretend to be smugly aloof and then ‘abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past’.”
Literally every time. Do you people get a phrasebook or something?
Whelp, your point can still be made without the first sentence. The fediverse has this reputation of being unfriendly which push newcomers away, so we’ll have to do something about it ourselves. Something as simple as not being snarky unless it’s absolutely necessary would help the fediverse community a lot. Cool template btw, I’m going to save for later.
the fediverse has this reputation of being unfriendly which push (sic) newcomers away
What I was doing was being generous. I’m not going to shed any tears if people who spend all day on Facebook and Instagram think the fediverse is too hard to figure out and too unfriendly. Barriers to entry are a good thing when you have barbarians at the gate. That mostly means the drooling masses from corporate social media who ruin everything they touch, but it also means le epic wholesome keanu chungus morons from reddit and beard-stroking corporatist pontificators from slashdot and hacker news. The dweeb I was responding to is from the latter camp, and I really don’t feel any obligation to help make the fediverse into a place where people like him can expect a positive reception for pinching off loafs like his opinion.
Imagine how shocked I was to discover that our friend pimento64 also casually revealed themselves to be a homophobe.
Care to explain what the fuck you’re talking about?
I don’t.
Imagine how shocked I was to discover that our friend BraveSirZaphod casually revealed themselves to be a maniac who butchers teenage runaways in his basement. No, I don’t care to explain it.
Edit: oh of course you’re the same fucking dude. Get a real hobby.
Consumers have very little choice when it comes to things like cars, electricity company, cable company, etc. In that case it is appropriate to put blame on the companies who have a captive customer base. But with other products like phones, there is nothing compelling consumers to buy the latest except FOMO and greed.
Absolutely, and for products and markets that are essentially necessary to life, there’s a much stronger case to be made for strong regulation since the potential for exploitation is much higher (the nightmare that is the entire healthcare industry exemplifies this perfectly, since market forces don’t work well when you’re unconscious or will otherwise die).
But for luxury items, which high-end smartphones undoubtedly are? Yeah, consumers can take a little bit of accountability.
And here I am with my S4 running lineage Os (android 11)
Phone is on its third battery but doing fine, and does everything I want it to.
Wow, I commend you! I replaced my s5 3.5 years ago because it was feeling very sluggish, I can’t believe what is like using an s4 with modern apps!
I actually find it’s less sluggish with android 11 than it originally was… but then again I don’t have a lot of apps on it, mainly firefox, Rethink (firewall), Voyager (lemmy frontend that uses firefox), Adaway, and a few other ones. I don’t have any games or anything on it, I only game on my pc anyway.
The bloatware that it originally came with did nothing for performance, that’s for sure.
I’m still using my S5.
I still have four new replacement batteries. I expect another 4-6 years with it.
That’s awesome
maybe it’s my personality or i’m old but i keep my things (including tech) until they become unusable. i’ve never thought about upgrading my phone every couple of years. i kept my last phone for 6 years (it became a brick), my current phone is from 2018.
Me too. My phone is 10 years old, my microwave is 40 yrs old, my car is 24, my home theater amp is 25.
I take pride in taking care of my stuff and making it last as long as possible. It’s something I got from my grandmother who wouldn’t let anything go to waste. (She was a refugee from ww2, so she knew a thing or two about making things last and making due.) Obviously not everything can last that long, but if you get good quality things chances are it’ll be around a lot longer than if you just buy cheap or flashy stuff.
In the era when everyone seem to be taking out expensive contracts for new phones every year I have had just 4 smart phones in the past 20 ish years. They all reach the stage where they are just too slow for modern apps but I think we might finally be in the stage where compute power progress has slowed that the current phone might get an open source Lineage et el on it for a decent period of time with multiple battery swaps.
I intentionally buy things that I know I can use until they are unusable. I do not often buy anything from apple.
Me too. my phone is from 2017 and I’m fine with it. It’s part of your personality, to preserve things. Associating personality traits to being “old” or to any stigmatized aspect in our society is a dirty trick to manipulate people (in this case, used to force people into consumerism). Just be yourself, and don’t feel bad about it.
First and foremost, don’t feel pressured to get a new hand tablet with a ten-lense DSLR stapled to the front every single year.
I know Straits only used a picture of an iPhone to get more clicks, but Apple is the least of the offenders when it comes to this. iOS 17 runs on phones released six years ago (including the last iPod touch!), and security updates go a couple years further back than that. I wish Android phones could guarantee that kind of lifespan.
Battery replacement sucks on every smartphone except for obscure modular phones that suddenly lose support or the company goes out of business. But the newest iPhone actually makes it easier to replace the battery (read: still sucks a bit). So, while you have to jump through hoops, you can replace the battery on every smartphone (usually through official channels, but also by other means if needed).
What needs to happen is the masses need to be taught that it’s okay to keep your phone for a few years. Phones need to regarded like cars. Drive it until you can’t, THEN get a new car. And when you do, consider a newer used car. Once that becomes commonplace, then companies will be forced to tone down their release schedules.
This isn’t talked about enough. Apple at least for now support more older models than most if not all androids. The key is not to buy into the marketing. Phones today are good enough and mature enough to not need to be at the bleeding edge every other year. Just get a new case, new wallpaper and swap the battery before deciding a new phone.
Honestly if you care about camera improvements, get a second hand semi decent mirrorless or point and shoot camera. Way more fun. And easy replaceable battery and storage.
that’s why Apple forces replacement parts to be paired with the original device, making impossible for repair shops to scrap and reuse parts of broken iPhones to repair others.
https://www.ifixit.com/News/82493/we-are-retroactively-dropping-the-iphones-repairability-score-en
Agree with all of this, however there isn’t any need to tone down release schedules. There being a new product doesn’t force you to buy it, however it does mean that when you do come to buy it there is a fresh model available. For example imagine if they adopt a 3 year release cycle and you break your phone on year 2.9, now you’re forced to buy a model with a 3 year out of date feature that will itself be obsolete faster, especially since a new model is round the corner. This isn’t the best system. Better the phone companies keep making the latest tech available, so when you do need to buy you can get the phone with the longest life ahead of it.
Ok but first manufacturers must “rethink” planned obsolescence and right to repair
I agree. I’m tired of always blaming the end users for everything
This.
we don’t “this” here.
But apparently you do diss.
Planned obsolescense is a myth. It’s just cost-benefit that makes old tech crappy. Tech keeps getting better, and supporting the old device is a pain for no extra money. And phone architecture is stupid so they need every single part supplier to provide updates if they want to update the OS, unlike PCs where the hardware is better-abstracted.
You’re either a troll or an uninformed idiot who has never done operating system development. A properly modularised OS can allow for minimal upkeep for older hardware. A leading example is Apple’s .kext system allowing for near 10 years of OS support both on macOS and iOS. Not that I think Apple is a great company but they do have some really good software development practices.
Also regardless of the technical explanination above, accepting a constant flow of e-waste for the sake of a new shiny year is just unethical regardless of the supposed reason.
Sir, you can prove someone wrong without insults. You need to chill a bit.
Shh corporation bad giv updoot.
Sorry about that but it really boils me when people defend poor software development practices when making the point of supporting hardware for a long time is difficult.
I actually did do operating system development, at least back in school. But comparing Apple to everybody else is insane when Apple controls the full vertical stack of end to end hardware. You may as well compare them to the driver support on Nintendo or Toyota.
And also there’s the problem that the Android OS is based on Linux which handles the “wierd new hardware” problem by recompiling the kernel, which doesn’t work so well with closed-source binary drivers. And that’s before even getting into the ARM architecture.
I’m playing around with OS development only as a hobby currently. I don’t know much about black box insides of macOS however I have used third party drivers as well as looked into how the kext system is structured and it really seems like a master class of software engineering. Having the drivers structured hierarchically under categories/subsystems and with multiple kernel API revisions supported means the kexts work over a wider lifespan.
Also comparing Apple to the rest of industry is not completely unreasonable for one reason. Modern register level documentation is hidden under shitty NDA’s and aren’t even complete half the time, with the usually poorly written SDK being used as documentation instead. Even better is when parts of the SDK are fucking binaries with no hopes of figuring out where the bug lies. The top dog of course is no SDK whatsoever and instead opting to release a fixed, factory compiled linux kernel release for Android only. I believe this is what Qualcomm mostly do and why those Android releases have a fixed lifespan of 3-5 years. When this is how over half the Android phone SoC market operates, I wonder how half of them make it to market working as well as they do.
Linux on the other hand is just a mess (In more ways than one. I have low opinions of it). That is not a good example of modular driver support. The unwillingness of the Linux community from both userspace applications / libraries and kernelspace to maintain a versioned API system with rigorous testing for compliance and to instead create a moving target is nothing short of a fucking joke. It’s no wonder Android can’t easily maintain cross-generation support. Then there is the lack of support for running different versions of libraries side by side as necessary.
I run a Linux server for home use as it’s still king in this regard and have sometime attempted to use Linux as a desktop. However I eventually come to the same conclusion that it’s just too unstable and “patched together”. My daily driver is still a mac, no matter how much I want to move away due to Apple’s worsening business practices.
Sorry for getting heated. It just really boils me when people defend poor software development practices because it the “industry standard”. I disdain manufactured e-waste stemming from rubbish software development practices.
I’m not sure why you’re getting downvoted because your argument is right. Apple has a rather small number of hardware devices to support. That makes long term support a lot easier.
Edit: I mostly disagree with your previous argument though. Planned obsolescence is alive and thriving. I’ve seen so many PCB layouts where heat sensitive parts were placed right next to heat emitting ones that I cannot believe this is by accident.
it’s not just phones or devices that need updates, though. None of my refrigerators, washing machines, dishwashers have ever lasted more than 10 years; I think the average is about 5 years before they stop working, get all rusty or a very expensive piece breaks so they are not worth repairing. Meanwhile all of my granma’s old kitchen appliances are still working perfectly after 60+ years of service.
Sure, it might be just that over-optimizing their production so they are more performant while being cheaper to make is also making them less durable, but I don’t see a lot of motivation from companies to go out of their way to build durable things either. And it’s not that I think Corporate = Bad; as you say it’s a cost/benefit thing, it’s just that the “benefit” companies try to maximize is their shareholders’, not our planet’s. It’s on Politics to create a legal framework where some of the cost to our planet is shared with companies (so they have incentives to make things durable/repairable again) and on us consumer to choose wisely what to buy, when and from whom.
Paid content, really?
