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The instructions being… spend more money on a device they won't be bothered to support in a few years?
Apple ends updates for a 5 year old iPhone:

"Thank you Apple for supporting phones for so long. They are such an innovative company and really care about their consumers, no one else supports phones for this long, blah blah blah blah blah"

Whatsapp ends updates for a 10 year old iPhone:

"How dare they! Their solution is to spend more money? They're completely evil!"
 
Is whatsapp dropping iOS 9, or that specific phone?
In the first case, hats off to Apple, that "allows" iphones to be up to date for 5 years.
It has nothing to do with the phone. They are dropping support for iOS 9. The 4s only supports up to iOS 9. The iPhone 5 supports up to iOS 10.
 
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If you both switch to the Signal app you get the same, but better features and Facebook don't get to read / listen to your communications. It's really a no brainer.

That's workable on a one or two person basis; but I have clients in places where What's App is the default communications preference.
 
That's workable on a one or two person basis; but I have clients in places where What's App is the default communications preference.
If they are clients and therefore a business then really they should be caring about security and ensuring their staff have in support phones, they don't have to be expensive or brand new ones. I doubt this will affect any serious business really
 
If they are clients and therefore a business then really they should be caring about security and ensuring their staff have in support phones, they don't have to be expensive or brand new ones.
While I agree with your sentiment, in many parts of the world that is unworkable because of the costs. Services such as WhatsApp make it very cost effective to conduct conference calls across multiple countries and time zones. Replicating that would be very costly if you bought a service. Quite frankly, most calls do not need that high of a level of security.

I doubt this will affect any serious business really

I agree, since iOS 9 and earlier iOS versions are what, 8% or less of the installed base.
 
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If you both switch to the Signal app you get the same, but better features and Facebook don't get to read / listen to your communications. It's really a no brainer.
Unless tridley68 or the daughter are running a version of iOS that's older than 11

signal.PNG
 
If they are clients and therefore a business then really they should be caring about security and ensuring their staff have in support phones, they don't have to be expensive or brand new ones. I doubt this will affect any serious business really
Are you suggesting Miu Miu, Burberry and Valentino are not serious businesses?



Luxury store sales associates from brands including Miu Miu, Burberry and Valentino have increasingly turned to WhatsApp to correspond with high-net-worth customers, alerting them to new product drops or offering new sizes in a personal one-on-one manner. Personal shoppers for Yoox Net-a-Porter often send edits of products to its most important customers.

“This is becoming a new normal in the selling ceremony,” says Federica Levato, a Milan-based partner at Bain & Company. “During and after lockdowns, luxury brands used social media and instant messaging to establish an intimate connection with customers.” Now, she adds, client advisors are still using these platforms to enable direct dialogue and create commercial hooks that ultimately trigger an in-store experience or remote sale.

This type of international, one-to-one selling, or chat-based commerce, is exactly what WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook, is trying to encourage. Because WhatsApp doesn’t gather personal data required for ad targeting, it doesn’t run ads. To make money, it’s looking to boost its business features (some free, some paid-for) that more officially position it as a commerce and customer service tool. In recent months, WhatsApp added a shopping button to product catalogues, then tacked on “carts” to let people select multiple products to send in a message at once. Perhaps most tellingly, it announced plans to buy customer service platform Kustomer — an expert in text message tech — and began testing in-app payments.

With personal clienteling on the upswing and store traffic down, fashion brands targeting international customers present a compelling demographic for both WhatsApp and Facebook
 
Are you suggesting Miu Miu, Burberry and Valentino are not serious businesses?



Luxury store sales associates from brands including Miu Miu, Burberry and Valentino have increasingly turned to WhatsApp to correspond with high-net-worth customers, alerting them to new product drops or offering new sizes in a personal one-on-one manner. Personal shoppers for Yoox Net-a-Porter often send edits of products to its most important customers.

“This is becoming a new normal in the selling ceremony,” says Federica Levato, a Milan-based partner at Bain & Company. “During and after lockdowns, luxury brands used social media and instant messaging to establish an intimate connection with customers.” Now, she adds, client advisors are still using these platforms to enable direct dialogue and create commercial hooks that ultimately trigger an in-store experience or remote sale.

This type of international, one-to-one selling, or chat-based commerce, is exactly what WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook, is trying to encourage. Because WhatsApp doesn’t gather personal data required for ad targeting, it doesn’t run ads. To make money, it’s looking to boost its business features (some free, some paid-for) that more officially position it as a commerce and customer service tool. In recent months, WhatsApp added a shopping button to product catalogues, then tacked on “carts” to let people select multiple products to send in a message at once. Perhaps most tellingly, it announced plans to buy customer service platform Kustomer — an expert in text message tech — and began testing in-app payments.

With personal clienteling on the upswing and store traffic down, fashion brands targeting international customers present a compelling demographic for both WhatsApp and Facebook
Too late. I already hit the delete key with respect to WhatsApp. I'll figure out how to do my shopping outside of the app.
 
I use WhatsApp to call my mom, thankfully we are both on modern iOS devices. If you have family outside of the US you need to keep in touch with, its the best way to go.
 
The iPhone 4S is ten years old. It is beyond reasonable to ask your users to get a newer phone.
It’s somewhat reasonable but also legitimately frustrating. Imagine if you had a ten year old car in good working condition but they just stopped making windshield wipers that were compatible with it. Perfectly good car that isn’t going to win any races but still drives only now it can’t go on the road if it’s raining or snowing because of this one small and inexpensive part.
 
iOS 9 makes up 1% of the install base and iPhone 4S is only 0.1%. It's tough to justify spending money to support that. My rule of thumb is to drop support for anything that stays under 5% for a year or longer.
 
iOS 9 makes up 1% of the install base and iPhone 4S is only 0.1%. It's tough to justify spending money to support that. My rule of thumb is to drop support for anything that stays under 5% for a year or longer.
The reason is probably, that Apple does not allow Devs to release new Apps for iOS9 anymore.
 
Are you suggesting Miu Miu, Burberry and Valentino are not serious businesses?



Luxury store sales associates from brands including Miu Miu, Burberry and Valentino have increasingly turned to WhatsApp to correspond with high-net-worth customers, alerting them to new product drops or offering new sizes in a personal one-on-one manner. Personal shoppers for Yoox Net-a-Porter often send edits of products to its most important customers.

“This is becoming a new normal in the selling ceremony,” says Federica Levato, a Milan-based partner at Bain & Company. “During and after lockdowns, luxury brands used social media and instant messaging to establish an intimate connection with customers.” Now, she adds, client advisors are still using these platforms to enable direct dialogue and create commercial hooks that ultimately trigger an in-store experience or remote sale.

This type of international, one-to-one selling, or chat-based commerce, is exactly what WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook, is trying to encourage. Because WhatsApp doesn’t gather personal data required for ad targeting, it doesn’t run ads. To make money, it’s looking to boost its business features (some free, some paid-for) that more officially position it as a commerce and customer service tool. In recent months, WhatsApp added a shopping button to product catalogues, then tacked on “carts” to let people select multiple products to send in a message at once. Perhaps most tellingly, it announced plans to buy customer service platform Kustomer — an expert in text message tech — and began testing in-app payments.

With personal clienteling on the upswing and store traffic down, fashion brands targeting international customers present a compelling demographic for both WhatsApp and Facebook
Nope, in fact you’ve just given an example of my point. Real Businesses like those won’t have a fleet of iPhone 4s phones out there so this news won’t affect them.
 
Now as I said I get not everyone is going to install it overnight and if you have to have WhatsApp for a business reason then you’re stuck with it for now (life lesson!) but I’d probably still recommend you get Signal installed to talk to those who have switched and to give others a reason to move over.

While I agree in principal, as a consultant I am pretty much tied to what the client uses. I can say I'm on X, Y, and Z but whatever they want is what I use. I've had clients give me internal email and a PC and ID Badge with a security chip to run access it (no OWA, only desktop); even though I use a Mac I'm stuck with Office because things need to be 100% compatible (and thus have a VM with the Win Office 365 suite installed as well as the Mac version to verify compatibility).

The best part of WhatsApp is the ability to call a person's cell phone for no charge; with clients spread out internationally that is a real money saver; Skype only does free Skype to Skype so I have to buy time if I want to use it. I have one colleague who has Skype, WhatsApp, etc. installed but never can seem to figure them out. I call his mobile using Skype and tell him to call me on WhatsApp but he can't seem to grasp how to get it to work.

I have a buisness friend from Berlin who is on EVERYTHING just so no opportunities pass him by 😂

Smart man; even if he is a Berliner...
 
It has nothing to do with the phone. They are dropping support for iOS 9. The 4s only supports up to iOS 9. The iPhone 5 supports up to iOS 10.
That's precisely my point. I was just praising Apple for allowing users to update their devices for 5 years. It could be more, but there is way worse than this out there.
 
Care to explain what the hell socks and mail order glasses have to do with iPhones?
Socks, glasses, and phones -- all essential for modern life with great inequality in terms of access. Older models of phones sold as new to less afluent countries forces those users into shorter support for security patches, which is particularly sad in countries that use those vulnerabilities to spy on their citizens.
 
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