I think the idea behind Apple’s stop signing the old version is simple. It will be confusing for Apple and users when there is new features or new hardware. Secondly, it will simplify support team, and lastly, it drives users to buy the new phone. If these made their life easier and increase their sales indirectly, why bother to change it?
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Apple Stops Signing iOS 16.3.1 to Prevent Downgrading
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It’s your contention that by if some miracle apple would allow downgrading that move would cause sales to decrease? How so?
Moving to an o/s that has more bugs, vulnerabilities and less features?
That's my view as well, having had a iPhone 6+, X, 12, and now a 14PM. I've never had an iOS update result in noticeable battery life/performance degradation - and I keep pretty close tabs on that.
"...why anyone would want to downgrade to it is beyond me."
Same here. Apparently many don't believe Apple (viewed as The Man wanting to stick it to you at every turn) when they release an update to thwart major security issues, and instead believe it's all a ruse just to ruin battery performance in order to foster more iPhone sales. People just love conspiracies. Sadly, for a variety of reasons, that's the new normal.
In the end it boils down to: Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
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others have said so. so which customers should Apple listen to? can't be both as supporting many iOS versions simultaneously is prohibitively expensive.
No idea what you're trying to say.
Supporting many old iOS versions is not a good idea especially on the backend. If you want to stay on an old version, that's your call but backend will continue to evolve, third party apps will require a higher minimum iOS version to reduce costs, and it's much better to stay secure on the latest version of the software.
Your argument is a bit far from the original point: Apple hardly doing planned obsolescence. It's actually in Apple's financial interest to stop giving customers a chance to switch to Android by extending the longevity of the ownership of the devices so that they can continue to sell services which is Apple's fastest growing category in terms of revenue.
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By the models you mentioned I already know that’s not true. The iPhone 6+ was underpowered in iOS 8. By iOS 12, it was quite abhorrent, in both performance and battery life.
I maintain that people who constantly update simply do not remember how good the devices used to be.
The iPhone X is significantly worse on battery life, but it shouldn’t be abhorrent per reports on iOS 16. The iPhone 12 and the 14 Pro Max are too new, with the latter on its original iOS version.
Once again, don’t support them. Sign them (i.e., allow me to install whatever I want, whenever I want), and don’t support them. I’ll assess the risks, thank you very much.
Serving old versions of the firmware and signing them is supporting old versions. Don't update. Simple.
What? Just remove iTunes’ stupid check as to whether a version is digitally signed.
That’s not supporting anything. Apple signed iOS 6 for the 4s for years. They have no cost involved.
"remove stupid check"
so hackers have another way of targeting government/high class individuals just so that you can stay on an old version?
remember when chinese developers downloaded a copy of Xcode from a chinese CDN since it was faster than getting it from them instead of from Apple only to find out it was an infected copy?
also there's indirect costs as a fragmented user base with many flavors of iOS due to people downgrading is a headache for developers.
Certainly true for me having used it for 3 years and making many thousands of photographs (I'm a photographer) with it .
"I maintain that people who constantly update simply do not remember how good the devices used to be.
I certainly remember how good it was over the 3 years I owned and used it. Perhaps it is you with the faulty memory.
I’m sorry. What I said was stupid. I meant “sign all iOS versions”. Removing the check is not good.
On it being a headache for developers - and Apple, I’d argue. True, not important.
In my opinion, users’ devices working well > obliterating them for convenience.
So you are saying that the iPhone 6 Plus is as good on iOS 12 as it was on iOS 8?
You could’ve picked a different model. You could’ve picked A11 devices. That one, there is one thing it’s not, and that’s as good as it used to be. In fact, barring 32-bit devices, it’s probably the worst iPhone ever in terms of longevity.
I'm saying that during the three years I owned my 6+ I noticed no significant battery degradation.
"You could’ve picked A11 devices."
Huh? I picked an iPhone 6+ for the display size, 8mp camera, and larger battery (2,900 mAH).
Why are you so hung up on my iPhone/camera choice when I found it to be an outstanding phone/camera that allowed me to make so many photographs that I liked?
That's just weird.
Everything I’ve both tried and seen indicates otherwise.
I meant for the example of less degradation, not as your personal device, given that the 6 Plus was one of the 64-bit devices that was degraded the most. Sorry for being unclear, my fault.
Then apple shouldn't use customers as beta tester, test them better in house, before releasing updates. Customers can't downgrade but in house beta testers can.
Think apple is following Microsoft’s lead here, but if Microsoft can do it so can apple.
(a) None of us are asking Apple to support anything except to stop actively blocking us from installing any iOS version supported by our hardware. As I said, I don't care about the big, scary security aspect or what business sense it might make. I think we're all well aware that even if there were nothing regulating iOS installations, only a tiny fraction of users would ever choose to remain on outdated versions, as should be their prerogative, many of whom are perfectly accepting of the alleged security risks.
(b) I don't consider iOS 6 "limited" in that it did just about everything I wanted it to. You could remove 90% of the features added since 2012 and I wouldn't even notice, let alone be upset, and stability and efficiency would likely improve as well. I don't want the vast majority of the bloating features that get in my way and take engineers away from refining things I actually use, so I don't consider the massive increase in functionality to be of much, if any, benefit to me.
I can deal with apple not making it easy to downgrade or limiting it to developer only. As a developer the fact that we can not downgrade devices makes life stressful and keeps forces us to keep older devices and treat them like gold that have older OS's on them for testing purposes. Simulators do not always work and some things like the camera require a real device.
At one place we had a support tech upgrade one of our iPads that was 3 OS version behind. They got chewed out multiple ways to hell for doing it. That took out one of our critical testing devices on that old OS plus put us down to one device that we could demo something on at times that we really did not want to work on until their was more interested in it. It was never released but we would sometimes want to get some people thoughts on it if they were ready for it yet.
There are bugs that happen that only happen on a release device and older OS that we need to make sure we work with them.
At one place we had a support tech upgrade one of our iPads that was 3 OS version behind. They got chewed out multiple ways to hell for doing it. That took out one of our critical testing devices on that old OS plus put us down to one device that we could demo something on at times that we really did not want to work on until their was more interested in it. It was never released but we would sometimes want to get some people thoughts on it if they were ready for it yet.
There are bugs that happen that only happen on a release device and older OS that we need to make sure we work with them.
lol at expecting bug free operating system releases.
this is why enterprise is always intentionally at least 1 major release behind.
I'm not talking about bugs, I'm referring to battery life. They can easily test that or say so in the upgrade notes, and let users decide if they want upgrade.
If I get 8 hrs of screen on time, and update iOS, I'm expecting 8 hrs of screen on time after updating.
there's a limitless amount of legitimate possibilities as to why you're not getting 8 hrs of screen on time after updating that's out of apple's control.
I think they meant that at least Apple should be honest and outright state that iOS updates decrease battery life.
While I think they’ll obviously never do that, I think this is one of the worst things they do:
Apple’s own “Batteries - Maximising Performance” article directly states updating iOS as a battery-enhancing mechanism. I think it’s pretty clear that the exact opposite is true.
I can accept Apple not attacking their own updates by directly stating they are harmful (which they are, but they’ll never say it), but don’t recommend them as battery-enhancing, because that is one thing they are not.
Here’s the article: https://www.apple.com/batteries/maximizing-performance/
Apple, is it really so difficult to keep that article update-agnostic? Just state all of the other (actually helpful) tips, and remove that one. Don’t even mention the truth (that they are always harmful eventually), just... don’t say anything. Lying by omission? Sure, but I prefer that than this article, in which they are actually lying.