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by ryandrake 376 days ago
This is the real tragedy: That we have to throw away perfectly working phones because their manufacturer and the software ecosystem are working together to make sure our devices outlive the software on them.
2 comments

The 6s still got an update earlier this year. I sold it to someone who was going to use it. It was just sitting around otherwise. So I'm not sure that's entirely true.
Eh.

Not sure you can fault Apple for stopping investment in software for devices past a certain age. And certain functionality just isn't supported by older hardware.

Doesn't mean the devices stop working. Just that Apple is saying you're on your own.

(Although the proprietary nature of Apple software means you also can't continue upgrading the software on your own or through a third party.)

Yeah, especially considering how long they already are supported by Apple.

Sure it'd be nice to continue to be able to upgrade the software on out of support devices, but how long can we really expect a for profit company to support old stuff? I personally think 5 years is fine for a phone.

Time will tell what they do about apple silicon Macs though. The M1 is 5 years old now, and is still capable for pretty much all workloads if you have one with enough RAM. I could see it being still useful for 5+ more years. It's there I would expect at least 10 years of support, I think.