Oh geez... calm down... you guys take yourselves way too seriously. Would it help if I said you were smart for buying a Mac over a Windows PC?
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Steve Jobs Confirms Lack of Future Support for Original iPhone
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Oh geez... calm down... you guys take yourselves way too seriously. Would it help if I said you were smart for buying a Mac over a Windows PC?
What? No jailbreak discussion?
There should not be a single original iPhone buyer with AT&T whose contract isn't over. Your iPhone 1G is now an iPod touch with a camera.
Jailbreak your old iPhone and use it for whatever you can. Or don't.
There should not be a single original iPhone buyer with AT&T whose contract isn't over. Your iPhone 1G is now an iPod touch with a camera.
Jailbreak your old iPhone and use it for whatever you can. Or don't.
hmm odd... here in Canada mobile me is only $10 a month. I'd be interested to know how your phone was stolen. It is under my belief that 99% of theft is completely avoidable. I don't think Apple could really track who is using your phone... if you lost a blackberry do you think RIM could track it? I'm sure the only way a cellular handset maker sees their phone again is if it is sent in for repair. I am with you on the iPad thing though... I suspect a price drop. Although if my 1st gen iPad can't supposed OS 7 I will understand!
Occam's razor is screaming at me that you're searching too hard to find a technical explanation for this, when the GAAP explanation fits the facts quite neatly without needing to introduce so many extra unsubstantiated (and ultimately unprovable) assumptions about technological changes.
I owned Smart phones from Nokia for the last 8 years. None of them had one upgrade. Yes there were upgrades available but there were basically bug fixes.
I think Apple is the first phone manufacturer that really puts a lots of new extra features inside their phone and that every 12 months and bug fixes every so many months if necessary.
Most people didn't even expected that the iPhone 3GS would ever get multitasking, auto-focus for Video, unified inbox account, more security etc.
My Blackberry Curve is 1 year and 9 months old, no upgrades or extra feature.
Still multiple times less functionality then my 3GS.
Will see how Android will do it, how well they will improve functionality.
I think Apple is the first phone manufacturer that really puts a lots of new extra features inside their phone and that every 12 months and bug fixes every so many months if necessary.
Most people didn't even expected that the iPhone 3GS would ever get multitasking, auto-focus for Video, unified inbox account, more security etc.
My Blackberry Curve is 1 year and 9 months old, no upgrades or extra feature.
Still multiple times less functionality then my 3GS.
Will see how Android will do it, how well they will improve functionality.
You know that's interesting that you mention the jailbreak. I'm sure some brilliant hacker will have iPOS4 running on the original ("2G") iphone within a month after its release. There's no technical reason why not. My guess is they'll (apple) remove the baseband driver and then either have itunes refuse to load onto the original and/or have some code in the bootloader that goes like this:
if (hardware_rev == iphone1,1)
{
kernel_panic();
}
He did. He explained that his app gets higher framerates on the 3G than original.
But what about your Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz MacBook Pro you bought at the same time as your iPhone?*
*Theoretically
The differences in the sound driver alone could be enough to cause a lower frame rate on the 1st gen iPhone, versus the 3G. I was bitten by that while developing one of my earlier games. I had to reduce audio quality to get the same frame rate on both devices.
Yep. What happens when all the apps in the apps store are for 4.0 only and no upgrades to any 3.0 compatible software. Oh dear how sad...
He would prefer that they stop supporting that immediately so that he has an excuse to go buy a new Macbook Pro.
I can understand them dropping support if the hardware can't take it. Unless Apple intentionally crippled it so that they can make people upgrade to a newer model every so often. Dropping support or leaving out some features to make the buyer keep upgrading is a big pet peeve of mine.
Don't get me wrong, if a company makes the big breakthrough or makes steady progress over a long period of time, without holding anything back, I could see them dropping support.
Don't get me wrong, if a company makes the big breakthrough or makes steady progress over a long period of time, without holding anything back, I could see them dropping support.
Yup, but that's human nature.
I'm all for older hardware having features omitted when the hardware can no longer support it or can support it but not do the feature justice.
However, I don't agree with features being omitted that could be done without any problems, just to make people upgrade and spend money they don't need to right now.
We didn't get screwed. We paid the price that it was worth in our eyes. Yeah, it kind of stunk that it dropped so fast, but it happens everywhere. At least Apple gave $100 credits.
First, it doesn't have to be upgraded at all. It will still run 3.x just fine. Second, phones don't have the same product lifecycle as laptops. Heck, cell companies entice people to get new hardware every 2 years in order to lock them in to contracts. Apple gave iPhone edge users 2 major updates within 2 years. Considering the locked in devices that some people have to deal with, that isn't bad. Again, you buy something for what it can do, not what you think it will do in 2 years.
It sucks that it was stolen, but that has nothing to do with AT&T or Apple. You bought it knowing that there was no insurance policy through them, so complaining after the fact is pointless. I am pretty sure 3rd party companies do in fact offer insurance. Companies care about selling you a product, not how well you take care of it after it leaves the store. That is your problem.You are paying $20 a month for mobile me?
My old one still works exactly as always. I didn't have to jailbreak it. Just no phone or edge connection. Still syncs up apps and music just fine. It's definitely good to keep around as a backup. Can always switch to a $15 / mo cheaper plan with that one too. Or sell it to someone on tmobile.
For that and many other reasons it's still a useful product and potentially has some good resale value. Assuming there's still ways to have the battery serviced.
- It remains a good iPhone, up to version 3.0.
- It remains a very nice Wifi internet device for the home.
- It remains a cool Apple TV remote.
- It remains the best MP3 player there is.
- It remains a fun toy for hackers.
Whereas I think the GAAP accounting rules might be the stronger reason, I suggest that there might well be more than one reason for this management decision. Even if the accounting/reporting rules were to somehow be changed, Apple might not have a working OS 4.x build for those old devices. The other two (or more) ARM processors in the old phone might not be up to it.
Some thoughts on this
Having worked at a related company for a while, I can say that there are several good reasons for Apple's behaviour on this upgrade:
1) The customer experience of running OS4 on a 1.0 iPhone would probably be terrible. As someone else said, each device is a walking ad for iPhones in general.
2) Notwithstanding point 1, even if the performance of an original iPhone and a 3G are the same (which seems to be a point of contention), you *cannot* discontinue support and an upgrade path for devices that are still available for sale. Crappy and low-end companies do that; companies like Apple do not.
3) The effort involved in creating, testing, delivering and supporting a build of software extends well beyond just hitting "compile". Every test needs to be run on every build, on every supported device. The binaries often need to be manually tweaked per target, the build machines have to be set up for additional deliverables per target device, the App Store needs to have the right binaries delivered, customer support needs to have additional documentation, etc, and when any of this goes wrong internally (as it will at any company), someone needs to clean it up. Then what if the interactions between the app processor and the radio processor are different between 1.0 and 3G (as they obviously are, since the radios are different)? You will have bugs that only surface on the 1.0 devices; will these get fixed? The man-hours that get sucked into supporting a target that is "almost identical" to another target can be staggering.
4) The people who bought iPhone 1.0 tend not to live in social housing projects. They will wail and gnash their teeth and then pony up another few hundred $$ for the latest and greatest iPhone, or a used 3GS, because they can afford to. Apple doesn't cater to the poor; it never has.
There really isn't a good business case for supporting the 1G, and I think 3G upgrades will disappear 4-6 months after it is discontinued.
Spiggles
Having worked at a related company for a while, I can say that there are several good reasons for Apple's behaviour on this upgrade:
1) The customer experience of running OS4 on a 1.0 iPhone would probably be terrible. As someone else said, each device is a walking ad for iPhones in general.
2) Notwithstanding point 1, even if the performance of an original iPhone and a 3G are the same (which seems to be a point of contention), you *cannot* discontinue support and an upgrade path for devices that are still available for sale. Crappy and low-end companies do that; companies like Apple do not.
3) The effort involved in creating, testing, delivering and supporting a build of software extends well beyond just hitting "compile". Every test needs to be run on every build, on every supported device. The binaries often need to be manually tweaked per target, the build machines have to be set up for additional deliverables per target device, the App Store needs to have the right binaries delivered, customer support needs to have additional documentation, etc, and when any of this goes wrong internally (as it will at any company), someone needs to clean it up. Then what if the interactions between the app processor and the radio processor are different between 1.0 and 3G (as they obviously are, since the radios are different)? You will have bugs that only surface on the 1.0 devices; will these get fixed? The man-hours that get sucked into supporting a target that is "almost identical" to another target can be staggering.
4) The people who bought iPhone 1.0 tend not to live in social housing projects. They will wail and gnash their teeth and then pony up another few hundred $$ for the latest and greatest iPhone, or a used 3GS, because they can afford to. Apple doesn't cater to the poor; it never has.
There really isn't a good business case for supporting the 1G, and I think 3G upgrades will disappear 4-6 months after it is discontinued.
Spiggles
According to their SEC filings, they consider the the economic life of iPhones and AppleTVs to be 24-months. iPhone 2G has been on the market longer than 24 months. iPhone 3 hasn't. Guess which model's not getting supported next year, this time?
So why do they support the iPhone 3G?
They could have written 4.0 to run on iPhone 2G, if they wanted to. They would not have been able to distribute that update for free.
Well it IS a part of the cost, because you are signing a contract and the cost is built into the plan. My home phone and data service doesn't have an added-in cost to subsidize a device -- that's why it's not $100 a month (avg. iPhone plan after T&F). But maybe it would be more accurate if I added in the built-in phone subsidy cost... which gauging from t-mobile's prices (they are now offering you a lower price if you don't get a subsidized phone), is about $10 a month on regular devices, I would guess $20 on "smart" phones (extra $10 in the data plan). So it's probably more like $480 over 3 years; if you bought the original device, it's probably $1080 then in total costs. That IS a part of the cost, because if the carrier wasn't subsidizing the device, they COULD (and Tmobile now IS) offer a lower price. You're paying for it, even if you don't see it.
And sell it on eBay; there's still a market for any jailbroken iPhone. The only reason I use an original iPhone is that I'm on T-Mobile. I pay $5/month for unlimited EDGE internet, a savings I still can't justify giving up for the sake of multitasking or 3G speed on AT&T. I'm sure there are plenty of other T-Mobile users that are just as broke as me that are willing to settle for a slower iPhone.
A layman's explanation of why the limited RAM on the iPhone 3G won't work well with multitasking:
http://blog.rlove.org/2010/04/iphone-os-4-and-multitasking.html
http://blog.rlove.org/2010/04/iphone-os-4-and-multitasking.html
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US) AppleWebKit/533.2 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/5.0.342.9 Safari/533.2)
Had to happen some day. Is it a problem it's happening now?
Had to happen some day. Is it a problem it's happening now?