[grobbyy]

The article mistakes that iPhone has any support guarantee. It doesn't. The latest iPhone might stop receiving security updated a week after it ships. Or a century.

In practice, Apple has shipped updates longer than competitors, but there is no guarantee. With Android vendors, there's a guaranteed support life.

It's a question of the degree you trust that part performance predicts future performance versus written policies.

[baq]

My iPad 5 which at this point is older than the hills got an OS update last week or so.

It’s actually amazing. I switched from android to iOS basically for this reason and am not disappointed. Yet.

[jauntywundrkind]

Apple doesn't really have a choice except to offer long support.

Android should offer long support windows, & the hope is there we will someday see this growing significantly (Project Treble & others).

But, Android devices let you install your own OS (if you can get an unlock, caveat #1). The device might not be supported by the manufacturer, but it's still possible to support the device. Which by virtue of being Linux needs to have sources available. Caveat #2, it's often a terrible vendorized kernel that will be incredibly difficult to use (but again Project Treble is trying to tilt the needle here). There's huge caveats, but at the same time, there's also a lot of quite old devices out there that can run quite modern OSes, without the manufacturers help. Which is something no iPhone iPad or iTv can do, and there's seemingly nothing on the horizon with promise to unbind these devices from Apple.

[kanbara]

apple _de facto_ ships software + security updates for many many years, and does so longer than google.

who cares if android has _de jure_ lifetimes, as they are shorter. apple won’t suddenly stop giving any devices updates after 1yr, so it doesnt really matter

[makeitdouble]

It's still more complicated than that.

Apple ships OS updates for longer, but not all features make it to the older devices, even when they're not bound to specific hardware. Also devices that don't get OS updates might as well be dead. Third party software support becomes non existent, Safari gets locked in time, the usability significantly decays.

In comparison Google decoupled their framework updates from OS updates a while ago now, and there will be enough third party options to keep the device useful long after the official support has ended. The Pixel 4a's support has ended, but it's still a useable device, where the iPhone 6S is already losing some apps that stopped supporting iOS15 completely.

At the end of the day, I don't think both approaches make that much of a difference.

[mpixel]

iphone 6s came out in 2015. pixel 4a came out in 2020.

[makeitdouble]

Let's take the Pixel 1 then.

You can still update the play services [0] or straight root it and install another OS

[0]: http://google-play-services.apk.watch/23.06.17%20(040400-511...

[yftsui]

Pixel 1 was released in 2016, you have to root to upgrade OS, but not able to upgrade Android major versions.

[jeroenhd]

Apple is a weird company. They will provide software updates for their phones for longer than for their computers. Computers that have lost support still get some security updates (not all).

They won't go full Wish.com phone on you, but with the prices of modern smartphones (€556 for the cheapest model, doesn't even come with a charger) I think the question "can I use this for five years or for eight years" is fair to ask.

[theonlybutlet]

The difference being the computers are still usable, the phones, being so locked down, basically become bricks without updates.

[Almondsetat]

How come? When you stop receiving macOS updates Safari becomes a dead man walking, just like with phones. I seriously doubt anyone uses their Mac without browsing the internet

[nicoburns]

You can use alternate browsers. You can also install linux on old macs. Or even windows on x86 macs.

[michaelt]

> It's a question of the degree you trust that part performance predicts future performance versus written policies.

Personally, I trust past performance much, much more than written policies.

After all, the written policy doesn't promise the updates won't slow down the phone, or fill up its storage, or drain the battery faster, or introduce new ads and tracking - so in practice you're trusting past performance anyway.

And if I've got a written guarantee of updates and the company doesn't deliver, am I going to sue them? That sounds like a lot of hassle.

[zigzag312]

There is also no quality guarantee for guaranteed Android updates.

Many Android devices I have owned introduced new bugs with the updates that where then never fixed for these devices.

[stratom]

Unfortunately such a guarantee might me worth less than a vendor just keeping to push updates. I personally have been a bit disappointed how HMD Global(Nokia phones) handled their update promise.

[kaba0]

That difference doesn’t matter at all in the real world.

[fsflover]

Until it does.

[viknesh]

"when pigs fly"...

Edit: I've owned almost 10 Google android devices: nexus 5, 6, 5x, pixel 1, 2, 3, 6 pro, and a couple tablets

Of those, maybe 2 of them were stable after 2 years. Who cares if Google "promises OS updates" for 5 years if the updates are so unstable that the phone is unusable.

Meanwhile, it's not uncommon for people to be using 3+ year old iphones with no complaints. My iphone 11 (~4 years old) feels much snappier than my pixel 6 pro (~2 years old).

[WawaFin]

The only OEM that does officially guarantees updates support timeframes is Google

Samsung claim a support timeframe but they never released a page like Google's one (https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/4457705?hl=en) as far as I know

And even if we use Samsung claims as some sort of guarantee, we also need to take into account that while Google use the "at least" terminology, Samsung uses "at most" or "up to". Which basically means that they commit to nothing since a "up to 4 years of updates" (with one major update per year) could both means 1 or 0 updates or 4 updates