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It is interesting how everyone attributes this to malice, and seems to have inside knowledge that "they could have supported all these things on the iPhone 7". Same with the M1/Stage manager. Amazing how many people have inside knowledge that "they could have supported the A12Z".
because of apples track record?

ie siri worked on the iPhone 4
the latest MacOs is still functional on the earliest intel machines despite being officially "cut off" many years/os's ago
 
On average we are seeing Apple drop support for an iPhone model after 5 years
Is it fair? Or is it because the older models can’t handle the new software are good questions
 
security concerns.

Security updates on old devices come out all the time. Next.

Um, in the mammoth 35 pages of this thread has anyone mentioned that when Apple left the iPhone 5S behind with the release of iOS 13, that they continued to support the iPhone 5S with security updates on iOS 12, a full two years, after iOS 13 was released?

If Apple maintains this precedent, people with the iPhone 7 will have nothing to complain about as when iOS 16 is released, iphone 7 users will continue to enjoy security updates for 2 years on iOS 15.

If they immediately stop supporting iOS 15 with security update, I will write a nasty post here too. At the moment, though, based on precedent, there is probably nothing to complain about…..
 
Think about Tim Apple plan for future after these 3 recent decisions:

1. watchOS 9 does not support Series 3 should be released in September but Series 3 is still in official Apple store

2. Stage Manager is for M1 iPad only, even Pro 2020 which was still in Apple Store until April 2021 is not supported. They choose to use older iPads are not good enough as an excuse but Air 5 64gb doesn’t meet their own requirement still can run it.

3. 7 and 7s will be unsupported this year very soon instead of expected next or next next year

Remember what was this company going to happen before Steve Jobs turned it around? Look like it is getting back to that direction.
 
Exactly, which is why the majority of consumers on the iPhone 7 will *still* stick with their iPhone 7, which will *still* get security updates, and will *still* work with the majority of their applications just fine for years to come.
The main problem I faced with our iPhone 6 and 6+ a few ago was not the limits of the hardware, we are light users, but the dropped iOS 12 support from many applications. From one day to the other, no more e-banking and other essential apps that worked fine for years.

Apple’s hardware is great but the software obsolescence is what breaks it.
 
Um, in the mammoth 35 pages of this thread has anyone mentioned that when Apple left the iPhone 5S behind with the release of iOS 13, that they continued to support the iPhone 5S with security updates on iOS 12, a full two years, after iOS 13 was released?

If Apple maintains this precedent, people with the iPhone 7 will have nothing to complain about as when iOS 16 is released, iphone 7 users will continue to enjoy security updates for 2 years on iOS 15.

If they immediately stop supporting iOS 15 with security update, I will write a nasty post here too. At the moment, though, based on precedent, there is probably nothing to complain about…..
I hate it when people say "iOS 12 got security updates" because while it did, they weren't really the most meaningful security updates

Let's take a look at the security contents (in raw summary) throughout 12.4.2-12.5.5 and compare them to the same sets of updates between them on the 13.x/14.x/15.0 side

(12.4.5, 12.4.6, 12.4.8, and 12.5.1 all do not have security changes and are ignored for the purposes of this, Face ID, Neural Engine, and exclusive feature changes for 13.x+ are also excluded for obvious reasons)

12.4.2: 1 patched vulnerability which allowed for reading restricted memory in "Foundation"
13.0/13.1: 45 patched vulnerabilities in a multitude of things which allowed for much more stuff

12.4.3: 1 patched vulnerability in "Accounts" where AirDrop transfers could be unexpectedly selected while in Everyone Mode
13.1.1-13.2: 21 patched vulnerabilities in a multitude of things which allowed for much more stuff

12.4.4: 1 patched vulnerability in "FaceTime" where a malicious video could allow for arbitrary code execution
13.3: 14 patched vulnerabilities in a multitude of things which allowed for a different variety of stuff

12.4.7: 2 patched vulnerabilities in Mail and 1 patched vulnerability in Wi-Fi which were both not the most significant of vulnerabilities
13.3.1-13.5: 103 patched vulnerabilities in a multitude of things which allowed for a different variety of stuff

12.4.9: 4 patched vulnerabilities across 3 potential attack surfaces which allowed for a different variety of stuff
13.5.1-14.2: 129 patched vulnerabilities in a multitude of things which allowed for a different variety of stuff

12.5: 1 patched vulnerability in "Security" in which "unauthorized code execution may lead to an authentication policy violation"
14.3: 15 patched vulnerabilities in a multitude of things which allowed for a different variety of stuff

12.5.2: 1 patched vulnerability in "Webkit" which could allow for Universal Cross Site Scripting
14.4-14.4.2: 48 patched vulnerabilities in a multitude of things which allowed for a different variety of stuff

12.5.3: 4 patched vulnerabilities in things related to Webkit which could allow for a different variety of stuff
14.5/14.5.1: 59 patched vulnerabilities in a multitude of things which allowed for a different variety of stuff

12.5.4: 3 patched vulnerabilities, of which all of them could allow for arbitrary code execution
14.6: 45 patched vulnerabilities in a multitude of things which allowed for a different variety of stuff

12.5.5: 4 patched vulnerabilities, of which all of them could allow for either arbitrary code execution or bypassing the sandbox
14.7-15.0: 96 patched vulnerabilities in a multitude of things which allowed for a different variety of stuff

Really though, just in general from reading this thread I think the whole point of "you're still getting security updates, your device lasted longer than most Android devices anyways" is a horrible argument for other reasons:
  • The standards which people have for Apple should not be "it's better than Android"
  • What point do security updates have if they're on much less of a scale than on supported devices?
  • App Support dies in a fire much earlier relatively on iOS devices than on Android devices - meaning the practical usage of the device remains around the same if not slightly longer on the Android side (it's not hard to figure this out, just do some research)
 
Think about Tim Apple plan for future after these 3 recent decisions:[...]


Remember what was this company going to happen before Steve Jobs turned it around? Look like it is getting back to that direction.
Tim Apple? Such condescension. (And Apple will do what it does anyway) Sure what goes up, must come down. But could take a longer time than you think.
The main problem I faced with our iPhone 6 and 6+ a few ago was not the limits of the hardware, we are light users, but the dropped iOS 12 support from many applications. From one day to the other, no more e-banking and other essential apps that worked fine for years.
Yeah, some apps work and some didn't. I'm wondering if the reason support was dropped has to do with security features.
Apple’s hardware is great but the software obsolescence is what breaks it.
Mostly all electronic consumer discretionary products have some type obsolescence at some point in time. You have to expect when you buy an iphone, the usable life is about 7 years.
 
I hate it when people say "iOS 12 got security updates" because while it did, they weren't really the most meaningful security updates

[...]
So they gave security updates, but they weren't the most meaningful....as opposed to no security updates at all.
Really though, just in general from reading this thread I think the whole point of "you're still getting security updates, your device lasted longer than most Android devices anyways" is a horrible argument for other reasons:
What's a horrible argument? That IOS 12 got updates nearly 10 years after its' release?
  • The standards which people have for Apple should not be "it's better than Android"
  • What point do security updates have if they're on much less of a scale than on supported devices?
  • App Support dies in a fire much earlier relatively on iOS devices than on Android devices - meaning the practical usage of the device remains around the same if not slightly longer on the Android side
People will apply their own arguments to this. Perceived longevity is a criteria.
  • (it's not hard to figure this out, just do some research)
If you are going to make a blanket statement then provide some proof, unless of course this is just your opinion, then just say so.
 
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because of apples track record?

ie siri worked on the iPhone 4
the latest MacOs is still functional on the earliest intel machines despite being officially "cut off" many years/os's ago

I will bite.

The iPhone 7 has received 5 years of software updates. Which to me feels more than fair.

How long do you think Apple should support the iPhone 7, and why?

It feels like Apple is in a lose-lose situation, because regardless of how long they do end up supporting their devices, people will simply go “but I am sure they could easily support it for another year…”

Would you all be satisfied only if Apple releases a patch every year that does nothing except change the software version on your device to the latest number just to make you happy?
 
I will bite.

The iPhone 7 has received 5 years of software updates. Which to me feels more than fair.

How long do you think Apple should support the iPhone 7, and why?

It feels like Apple is in a lose-lose situation, because regardless of how long they do end up supporting their devices, people will simply go “but I am sure they could easily support it for another year…”

Would you all be satisfied only if Apple releases a patch every year that does nothing except change the software version on your device to the latest number just to make you happy?

Apple still sells iphone 11 now, which means if you buy it now, you will only get around 3 years of ios updates. Don't sound like right for a still pretty expansive phone.
 
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Apple still sells iphone 11 now, which means if you buy it now, you will only get around 3 years of ios updates. Don't sound like right for a still pretty expansive phone.
Apple will probably support an iPhone for 5 years after they stop selling it. To give the about an 8 year life span from when it’s sales cease.
 
Apple still sells iphone 11 now, which means if you buy it now, you will only get around 3 years of ios updates. Don't sound like right for a still pretty expansive phone.

A reason the new iPhone 11 is sold at a discount today ($200 less than its launch price) is because it gets fewer years of OS updates. Someone looking for more years of updates at a low price may want to consider the third gen iPhone SE instead.
 
A reason the new iPhone 11 is sold at a discount today ($200 less than its launch price) is because it gets fewer years of OS updates. Someone looking for more years of updates at a low price may want to consider the third gen iPhone SE instead.
Another reason is the iPhone 11 is still useful. The costs are already recouped and there are potential customers who will buy the iPhone 11 as a lower cost option.
 
A reason the new iPhone 11 is sold at a discount today ($200 less than its launch price) is because it gets fewer years of OS updates. Someone looking for more years of updates at a low price may want to consider the third gen iPhone SE instead.

While Samsung provides 4 years warrenty for latest FE phone with lower pricing (always have big discount), don't sound like iphone 11 is competitive at all. It used to be around 7 years support for iPhone, even sold for 2 years already then 5 years. Just 3 years then Tim Apple just invites more people to switch team.
 
While Samsung provides 4 years warrenty for latest FE phone with lower pricing (always have big discount), don't sound like iphone 11 is competitive at all. It used to be around 7 years support for iPhone, even sold for 2 years already then 5 years. Just 3 years then Tim Apple just invites more people to switch team.
Yes. The iPhone 11 most likely will be supported for about 3 years after saws cease and 2 years of o/s support after that. iPhone longevity is generally greater than android. And MR. Cook personally sends out in stations for people to throw their cash at apple.
 
So they gave security updates, but they weren't the most meaningful....as opposed to no security updates at all.
I should've explained this better, but my point really was supposed to be that in a worst case scenario all somebody needed to do was change their exploitation flow to use another vulnerability (that was already known and already patched in up to date iOS) - after all the overwhelming majority of what would get patched in up to date iOS would not get patched on the 12.x side

If you are going to make a blanket statement then provide some proof, unless of course this is just your opinion, then just say so.
I can provide some anecdotal evidence; I have a Note 10 on Android 9 (which was around the time of iOS 12) and an Air 4 on 14.1.

That Air 4 cannot run the latest version of Twitch (Requires 14.2+) and other apps I use the most are getting extremely close to cutting off 14.x (Twitter, MLB, and eBay all require 14.0+), meanwhile on my Note 10 I can use those apps on their latest versions and they are not (likely) close to a cutoff, given that from what I've seen they still are supported down to at least the previous Android version (and generally a lot further)

Also, just while searching on the App Store other apps people use (from companies such as Meta, Google, or Amazon) about 25% of what I find has a requirement of 14.0+, and even if they do eventually drop Android 9 support (which they 100% will at some point), it's still 2 years older than iOS 14
 
I should've explained this better, but my point really was supposed to be that in a worst case scenario all somebody needed to do was change their exploitation flow to use another vulnerability (that was already known and already patched in up to date iOS) - after all the overwhelming majority of what would get patched in up to date iOS would not get patched on the 12.x side


I can provide some anecdotal evidence; I have a Note 10 on Android 9 (which was around the time of iOS 12) and an Air 4 on 14.1.

That Air 4 cannot run the latest version of Twitch (Requires 14.2+) and other apps I use the most are getting extremely close to cutting off 14.x (Twitter, MLB, and eBay all require 14.0+), meanwhile on my Note 10 I can use those apps on their latest versions and they are not (likely) close to a cutoff, given that from what I've seen they still are supported down to at least the previous Android version (and generally a lot further)

Also, just while searching on the App Store other apps people use (from companies such as Meta, Google, or Amazon) about 25% of what I find has a requirement of 14.0+, and even if they do eventually drop Android 9 support (which they 100% will at some point), it's still 2 years older than iOS 14

Is old Android safe? Honestly I don’t know. I never see a fair security testing between an outdated android vs outdated iOS
 
While Samsung provides 4 years warrenty for latest FE phone with lower pricing (always have big discount), don't sound like iphone 11 is competitive at all. It used to be around 7 years support for iPhone, even sold for 2 years already then 5 years. Just 3 years then Tim Apple just invites more people to switch team.

Whether a just launched iPhone with 5-7 years of OS updates or a new iPhone that's been out for a while and has only three or so years of OS updates left, I don't think iPhones are typically considered a value choice (at least as far as purchase price) anyway.

However, compared against the "latest" Samsung FE phone (which I believe is the Galaxy S21 FE 5G) you mentioned, it seems to be competitively priced. From what I've seen, pricing on the S21 FE 5G is as high or higher than what you can get an iPhone 11 for under comparable conditions i.e., with trade or without, with carrier/plan requirement or without, etc. Given that the S21 FE has been out for a while and is also already eating into its four years of OS updates, I don't see it as being an especially good value against the iPhone 11.

For example:
Through Samsung and with NO trade-in or carrier/plan requirements, the 128GB Galaxy S21 FE 5G is priced at $624.99.
Through Apple and with NO trade-in or carrier/plan requirements, the 128GB iPhone 11 is priced at $549.
 
I should've explained this better, but my point really was supposed to be that in a worst case scenario all somebody needed to do was change their exploitation flow to use another vulnerability (that was already known and already patched in up to date iOS) - after all the overwhelming majority of what would get patched in up to date iOS would not get patched on the 12.x side


I can provide some anecdotal evidence; I have a Note 10 on Android 9 (which was around the time of iOS 12) and an Air 4 on 14.1.

That Air 4 cannot run the latest version of Twitch (Requires 14.2+) and other apps I use the most are getting extremely close to cutting off 14.x (Twitter, MLB, and eBay all require 14.0+), meanwhile on my Note 10 I can use those apps on their latest versions and they are not (likely) close to a cutoff, given that from what I've seen they still are supported down to at least the previous Android version (and generally a lot further)

Also, just while searching on the App Store other apps people use (from companies such as Meta, Google, or Amazon) about 25% of what I find has a requirement of 14.0+, and even if they do eventually drop Android 9 support (which they 100% will at some point), it's still 2 years older than iOS 14
Pretty sure you can use the apps just not the latest versions of any of those. When was the last time the MLB app had some must get feature for example
 
I should've explained this better, but my point really was supposed to be that in a worst case scenario all somebody needed to do was change their exploitation flow to use another vulnerability (that was already known and already patched in up to date iOS) - after all the overwhelming majority of what would get patched in up to date iOS would not get patched on the 12.x side
What the above is a generalized hypothetical scenario. Do you have any meaningful concrete scenarios that exemplifies the above?

I can provide some anecdotal evidence; I have a Note 10 on Android 9 (which was around the time of iOS 12) and an Air 4 on 14.1.

That Air 4 cannot run the latest version of Twitch (Requires 14.2+) and other apps I use the most are getting extremely close to cutting off 14.x (Twitter, MLB, and eBay all require 14.0+), meanwhile on my Note 10 I can use those apps on their latest versions and they are not (likely) close to a cutoff, given that from what I've seen they still are supported down to at least the previous Android version (and generally a lot further)

Also, just while searching on the App Store other apps people use (from companies such as Meta, Google, or Amazon) about 25% of what I find has a requirement of 14.0+, and even if they do eventually drop Android 9 support (which they 100% will at some point), it's still 2 years older than iOS 14
I have apps that still run on my 5s. I have only one app from the above list, Gmail. Out of the millions of apps on both app stores hard to make a generalization. I get that devs don’t want to support multiple versions of their apps with different feature sets. But imo many newer apps that support o/s specific features won’t have backwards compatibility on both platforms.
 
Whether a just launched iPhone with 5-7 years of OS updates or a new iPhone that's been out for a while and has only three or so years of OS updates left, I don't think iPhones are typically considered a value choice (at least as far as purchase price) anyway.

However, compared against the "latest" Samsung FE phone (which I believe is the Galaxy S21 FE 5G) you mentioned, it seems to be competitively priced. From what I've seen, pricing on the S21 FE 5G is as high or higher than what you can get an iPhone 11 for under comparable conditions i.e., with trade or without, with carrier/plan requirement or without, etc. Given that the S21 FE has been out for a while and is also already eating into its four years of OS updates, I don't see it as being an especially good value against the iPhone 11.

For example:
Through Samsung and with NO trade-in or carrier/plan requirements, the 128GB Galaxy S21 FE 5G is priced at $624.99.
Through Apple and with NO trade-in or carrier/plan requirements, the 128GB iPhone 11 is priced at $549.

For my city, the retail shop FE 256gb price is around exactly the same as iPhone 11 128gb price.
 
What the above is a generalized hypothetical scenario. Do you have any meaningful concrete scenarios that exemplifies the above?
Yes. Jailbreaking is one great example. (For the uninformed, jailbreaks exploit security vulnerabilities to be able to do what they are able to do).

To start, when unc0ver updated to 5.3.0, it gained support for 12.4.1-12.4.8 on these old devices... thing was, they used an exploit of a vulnerability that was patched in 13.3.1 (time_waste)

When Apple released 12.4.9, it did break the tool... only because the kernel version was incremented (the exploit/vulnerability was still there and worked fine without any modifications). Soon after, Chimera 1.5.0 (utilizing a different exploit of the exact same vulnerability for unrelated reasons) and later on unc0ver 6.0.0 would add support for 12.4.9

When Apple released 12.5.5, it also broke all of those tools... for the exact same reason as 12.4.9, tools would eventually be updated and 12.5.5 became a non-issue very quickly.

Mind you, if anyone wanted to, the exploits utilized in these jailbreaks could very easily be used for malicious intent if somebody desired to go that route.

I have apps that still run on my 5s. I have only one app from the above list, Gmail. Out of the millions of apps on both app stores hard to make a generalization. I get that devs don’t want to support multiple versions of their apps with different feature sets. But imo many newer apps that support o/s specific features won’t have backwards compatibility on both platforms.
That's a fair point - the extent people can be affected by app compatibility being dropped can vary wildly for many people, ranging from not being an issue to being a massive issue. And yes, if an app wants to use brand new functionality, it likely has to either implement a pathway for the older OS to ignore the functionality or drop the old OS entirely.

That being said, regarding the devices actually being dropped it does in effect start a time bomb that will keep ticking down with regards to app support, both on an app support scale and on a (where applicable) server support scale

(And for the people who just browse the web, website support can start to degrade over time as well, as can be seen by the various examples of the modern web breaking on older browsers).
 
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