[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

> One of my real pet hates is software developers who assume everyone's running their software on an excellent internet connection.

That could be said for a lot of assumptions developers make. Everyone has 32GB of ram, everyone has an SSD, everyone has an i7...

It is an old problem, but like almost everything else in computing for some reason it seems to have become much worse since about 2010.

[letitbeirie]

The spread of capabilities is bigger now.

In 2000 a developer might have been developing on a Pentium 3 with 128 MB of RAM, but they could reasonably expect their audience to be using at least a 486 with 16 MB of RAM because that was the minimum spec for IE4.

Now you're stuck with trying to impress people with a Ryzen Threadripper and 64GB of DDR5, but your webapp still has to support everyone's iPhone 7 (with 2GB to share with iOS and everything else they have running) for as long as Apple does.

[jrumbut]

What I think is even more different is that someone with the 486 in 2000 was used to the idea that they wouldn't be able to run some software, but unable to run a website? Unheard of, it's just broken.

[tompazourek]

Apple still supports the older iPhones. For example, the iPhone 6 that doesn't get the latest iOS version anymore (stuck with iOS 12) is still supported by regular security updates (the last iOS 12 update was 54 days ago).

Apple supports (at least security wise) probably more devices than you think.

[tamiral]

I was working on a proposal for a client who wanted to build a marketplace, but most of the vendors had low-end tech equipment, and he went with someone who had a lower quote. My biggest caution was that a limited number of developers actually understood what to do with slow internet connections and old tech. Marketplace failed... ignorance sometimes is the worst thing in people who believe that it works on my machine and will work on everyone else's.