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Shut it Tim. You could have stop the support ten years ago, but you do so now when revenue is declining. When are you going to fix QC issues with your products. Stop counting beans and innovate.
Knowingly letting someone suffer with an early 2010s era iPhone or iPad is criminal. Like Guantanamo Bay levels of torture. There is no reason anyone should want such an objectively terrible experience. But then again, how does the old saying go? "You can't fix stupid, only train it not to hurt itself?"
 
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I find it hard to believe that with the changes there is a lot of apps that still work that make this old of device worth while to use.

We're still rocking iPhone 4's (that's iPhone 4, but two of them) for nighttime ebook reading— great device. Gobs of apps still work fine— from Notebook and ToDo to ereaders, spreadsheets, and Sky charting software.

I can’t imagine using the iPhone 4 entering 2025 😵‍💫 it was already outdated by 2015.

Imagine it! 😀 People have different needs and different, albeit niche, uses for different, older devices.

Curious, anyone here still use an iPhone 4?

Yes, we do! We also have iPhone SE's for the rare cell call we make.

Or you know, better yet, if you don’t have device that can’t run iOS 9…….

TIME TO UPGRADE YOUR DEVICE ASAP!!!!!!!

Your device is obsolete and it’s security disaster waiting to happen.

No security issue unless you use the device for web surfing!

anyone here still running iOS 8? i would be surprised!

iOS 6 on our iPhone 4's — again, that's iPhone 4 plural.

All manually backed up as needed.
 
Apple: We help protect the environment by forcing you to ditch devices we deem obsolete.

PS Buy our new iPhone - not the old 15 model that doesn’t have our amazing Apple Intelligence.
Oh come on, the devices affected by this are well over a decade old at this point. Apple supports their old devices better than anyone, but there’s got to be a limit somewhere.
 
I use an old iPad 1 to play Christmas songs to a Bluetooth speaker. It was a freebie from a friend who was upgrading about a decade ago. The rest of the year it lives in a drawer and it won’t bother me when someday it finally won’t turn on. It amuses the grandkids, though, to see an ancient Apple device. No camera. A stock YouTube app.
 
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Good that I'm safe with iPhone 6S with iOS 15... not that I use iCloud backups, don't trust it, but good to know that Apple still supports the backups made with iOS15.
 
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We're still rocking iPhone 4's (that's iPhone 4, but two of them) for nighttime ebook reading— great device. Gobs of apps still work fine— from Notebook and ToDo to ereaders, spreadsheets, and Sky charting software.



Imagine it! 😀 People have different needs and different, albeit niche, uses for different, older devices.



Yes, we do! We also have iPhone SE's for the rare cell call we make.



No security issue unless you use the device for web surfing!



iOS 6 on our iPhone 4's — again, that's iPhone 4 plural.

All manually backed up as needed.
but why? these things can clearly be done with newer devices and there's no way those things haven't had to have the batteries replaced multiple times.
 
I find it hard to believe that with the changes there is a lot of apps that still work that make this old of device worth while to use.
If the device and apps work and do what one needs, then by all means keep using them.

BUT USE THEM OFFLINE!!

In no shape or way should anything this outdated be connected to any network.
 
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Curious, anyone here still use an iPhone 4?
Xcode can no longer can generate code that runs on (32-bit) ARMv7 devices (anything prior to the iPhone 5s), and the App Store stopped accepting 32-bit apps from old versions of Xcode many years ago. So, even if one has an iPhone 4 that still boots up, there are very few things one can use it for. Maybe as an alarm clock or mp3 player?
 
In other words, iPhones 4 and earlier, as well as the original iPad, cannot be backed up to iCloud.
Thanks for popping in with this. I have an iPad Mini 2 and an iPhone 5SE (wifi only no cellular) that hopefully will continue backing up to iCloud. for a while. It's like 12 years and they still work in a pinch. I have a 2008 MacBook White still works (love the DVD drive for burning DVDs with old Handbrake) and another monster MacBook Pro 2008 with NVIDA GForce Graphics sitting here. Etc. I will keep this gear going forward - plus lots of accessories and dongles. I have learned (after dumping a maxed out Apple IIE (Mouse, S80 card, Turbo Pascal) that these are incredible pieces of technology. Good on Apple for maintaining their utility.
All the talk about 4's - 5's were a step up and with it used a Gigastone Lightning Micro SD Dongle to offload videos on a month long Euro trip saving iCloud storage. I made an hour long video of the epic trip (France/Netherlands/Germany) with that tiny little thing. You go for the limits and hang onto the kit that still works.
 
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Dang! My 5th gen iPod touches running iOS 6 and iOS 7 are left for dead 💀

Yep I just checked and the backups don’t show up on iCloud anymore 😭
 
Shut it Tim. You could have stop the support ten years ago, but you do so now when revenue is declining. When are you going to fix QC issues with your products. Stop counting beans and innovate.
Anyone with an iPhone 4 is not using an iPhone that needs cloud backup. Seriously….

It’s hilarious that anyone thinks this is an issue, let alone something to get angry about.
 
Xcode can no longer can generate code that runs on (32-bit) ARMv7 devices (anything prior to the iPhone 5s), and the App Store stopped accepting 32-bit apps from old versions of Xcode many years ago. So, even if one has an iPhone 4 that still boots up, there are very few things one can use it for. Maybe as an alarm clock or mp3 player?
Or any app that it ran at the time?
 
Or any app that it ran at the time?
Depends on the app. Many of course will still work. But an example of some that may not are ones that had to log onto a server and they changed the login process to be more secure and require an updated version of their app to conform.
By the way, I would not be surprised at all if the reason Apple doesn't support backup for older OS versions is related to new security methods.
 
I use an old iPad 1 to play Christmas songs to a Bluetooth speaker. It was a freebie from a friend who was upgrading about a decade ago. The rest of the year it lives in a drawer and it won’t bother me when someday it finally won’t turn on. It amuses the grandkids, though, to see an ancient Apple device. No camera. A stock YouTube app.
I wouldn't call the iPad 1 ancient, as my PowerMac 7500 is 15 years older than it, and even in 1995 the 7500 was almost 20 years newer than the earliest Apple device.
 
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