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Forced obsolescence. It's nothing new. Hardware has been so good for many years now, the only way they can force you to upgrade is by obsoleting it firstly from from OS updates then from security updates.
They are absolutely not forcing anything.
Your iPhone 7 is not going to be losing any features, and will still get security updates for the next several years.
Of course if you upgrade you get *more* functionality, but if you stay on your current phone you don’t *lose* any functionality.
 
I wonder why did the iPhone 6s get one extra year of support compared to iPhone 7 despite being an older and less powerful device, especially when iOS 16 has no issues running not just on A10, but on A9 as well? I'd be fine if Apple killed 6s today and 7 next year with iOS 17, but what they did instead is just scummy.
 
Seriously people are whining about their 6 year old phone not being supported by iOS anymore? Does the battery even work in that phone anymore? It's kind of a dinosaur in phone terms.
 
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People need to get over it, no device will receive support forever. Apple isn’t forcing them to do anything, they will still work on the current iOS software, which is very good.
Agreed. This is one the areas that I really love about Apple; optimizing the OSs to run on the latest hardware and not being concerned about supporting old devices allows for less software bloat and inefficiency. Apple does the same thing with dated APIs like flash for example.
And like you say it's not like the older device won't run on iOS 15 and still get the needed security updates.
 
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Spoken like a true Apple executive! Why? If the phone still works, and is capable, why should anyone be forced to upgrade? Not everyone needs the greatest and latest.

If the iPhone 7 still allows these users to text, review their social media, etc, then that's great.
Good click-bait article, got all of us.

I see a lot of entitlement in the complaints section around this decision. 6-years for a phone is stupid old. 3-5 years for a phone is a normal lifespan.

Also - it isn't forced obsolescence, no one is bricking the phone. After 4-6 years of receiving security patches, the value has reached full reciprocity.

Sorry, but the ride ends in September lol ;)
 
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I wish we would stop reporting on when a model was introduced and rather report on the date at which a model was last sold as new.

The iPhone 7 was still sold as new into late 2019. That means we're now expecting OS updates for only 3 years? That's shorter than they have done it in the past.

So you'd want Apple to continue torturing Apple Watch 3 by giving it updates since it is still being sold?
 
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Android isn’t exactly a high bar comparison. If Apple actually cares about sustainability they should be supporting older hardware.
They are and they have.
Why are people easily forgetting that iOS 13, 14, and 15, three different updates over three different years, didn’t drop *any* hardware.
Of course once they eventually decided to drop hardware it was going to feel dramatic.
The truth is that if Apple dropped 6 support an iOS 13 which they did, and then dropped 6S support in iOS 14, then 7 support in iOS 15, no one here would be as upset about this.
But because Apple didn’t drop any devices for several years, and now they are, it just seems a lot worse than it actually is.
If you have any device that was dropped, you’ll be completely fine.
iOS 15 Will continue to get security updates for years to come, just like iOS 12 did, and developers won’t be dropping support for quite a long time.
On the Mac side I completely understand the frustration since Apple went absolutely aggressive with the devices that they are dropping, but even there Monterey will still get security updates for at least the next two years
 
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buy a new phone 2016 till now 2022, already more than 5 years. DO not be cheapskate, nothing last forever.
 
I wonder why did the iPhone 6s get one extra year of support compared to iPhone 7 despite being an older and less powerful device, especially when iOS 16 has no issues running not just on A10, but on A9 as well? I'd be fine if Apple killed 6s today and 7 next year with iOS 17, but what they did instead is just scummy.
The iPhone 6S had a big jump in RAM to 2GB
 
Spoken like a true Apple executive! Why? If the phone still works, and is capable, why should anyone be forced to upgrade? Not everyone needs the greatest and latest.

No one is forced to upgrade. The phone still works like it did before.

If the iPhone 7 still allows these users to text, review their social media, etc, then that's great.

It does.

Android isn’t exactly a high bar comparison. If Apple actually cares about sustainability they should be supporting older hardware.

The oldr hardware works just fine; sustainability is a user issue. Users want the latest, even if what they have works, and trash the perfectly good phone for the new shiny.

If Apple did support older models with a subset of the new features users would whine they didn’t get everything; or that the upgrade was too slow if it did everything.

I suspect when iPadOS 16 is released we’ll see a bunch of whines over requiring an M1 for windowing.
 
So you'd want Apple to continue torturing Apple Watch 3 by giving it updates since it is still being sold?

No, I'd want Apple to have stopped selling the Apple Watch 3 at least 2 years ago, and provide a better value model in the low end.

But since they dug themselves into this hole, then yes, Apple would need to find a way to provide the poor souls that bought it updates.
 
I wish we would stop reporting on when a model was introduced and rather report on the date at which a model was last sold as new.

The iPhone 7 was still sold as new into late 2019. That means we're now expecting OS updates for only 3 years? That's shorter than they have done it in the past.

Also, for all of the reasons mentioned in the article, this is planned obsolescence in action.

I'm disappointed because I got my kids non-activated iPhone 7s for about $150 each in the past year or two - much less than $700+ that Apple wants for new phones now. I knew it wouldn't last as long from an OS upgradability standpoint, but I didn't think Apple would cut it off this quick.

That being said, they will continue to run iOS 15 just fine, and I expect Apple to continue supplying security updates for iOS 15 for some time. But still... I get it. This was a profit play from an incredibly profitable company.
The iPod was sold till a few months ago.... yet it did not get iOS 16...
 
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Remember when Apple was sued for new releases degrading performance on older phones?
Apparently Apple remembers.
 
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No one is forced to upgrade. The phone still works like it did before.



It does.
Except when the developers cut support because it is unfeasible for them to continue supporting multiple iOS versions.
 
The iPad 5th Generation has no customizable lock screen experience like iOS 16, so creating a more device-specific experience that can reach more older iPads is easier. Pulling the entire always-at-the-ready experience from the iPadOS codebase is something that you just can't do with iOS unless you want to have a dedicated team creating a fork of iOS 16 specific for non-Neural Engine devices, which makes zero business sense for Apple.
And yet they have a dedicated team creating a fork of iPadOS 16 specific for non-M1 iPads. Interesting.
 
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Spoken like a true Apple executive! Why? If the phone still works, and is capable, why should anyone be forced to upgrade? Not everyone needs the greatest and latest.
No one is forcing you to upgrade to iOS16.
If the iPhone 7 still allows these users to text, review their social media, etc, then that's great.
Your iPhone 7 will still keep doing what it does now.
 
Except when the developers cut support because it is unfeasible for them to continue supporting multiple iOS versions.
Then it's developers that should get bashed not Apple.

It's not Apple's fault if a dev decide to make app iOS specific.
 
They can limit features on iPadOS 16 to M1 iPads but can't do the same with iOS 16?

iPhone 6s (Plus) and iPhone SE (1st generation) are as capable as iPad (5th generation). All are equipped with the A9 chip and have 2GB RAM. Yet, only the iPad will received iPadOS 16 updates.

Planned obsolesce right there.
Nope iPad performance are higher and also flash memory speed for example. Also iPad didn't get some features form iOS. Apple could support iPhone with iOS16 with compromises but you would blame Apple screaming about planned obsolescence anyway. Maybe they will support iPhone 7, maybe not, the only thing for sure users will whine about planned obsolescence while they don't have a clue about what really it is.
 
I wish we would stop reporting on when a model was introduced and rather report on the date at which a model was last sold as new.

The iPhone 7 was still sold as new into late 2019. That means we're now expecting OS updates for only 3 years? That's shorter than they have done it in the past.

Also, for all of the reasons mentioned in the article, this is planned obsolescence in action.

I'm disappointed because I got my kids non-activated iPhone 7s for about $150 each in the past year or two - much less than $700+ that Apple wants for new phones now. I knew it wouldn't last as long from an OS upgradability standpoint, but I didn't think Apple would cut it off this quick.

That being said, they will continue to run iOS 15 just fine, and I expect Apple to continue supplying security updates for iOS 15 for some time. But still... I get it. This was a profit play from an incredibly profitable company.
$150. Seems like you got your money's worth... just saying
 
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