Comment on Campaigners urge EU to mandate 15 years of OS updates
boonhet@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
This comes after e-waste watchers revealed that 75 million iPhones could be rendered obsolete – tipping the scales at around 1.2 million kilograms of e-waste – following the release of iOS 26.
Not strictly true because the phones they counted here will still get security updates for 2-3 years AFAIK. 7 year old phones, mind you. But yeah, no more feature updates. Which are so meaningless these days anyway.
kayazere@feddit.nl 2 weeks ago
The security updates for old iOS versions are a sleight of hand. Most companies only support the three latest versions of iOS, so soon that will be iOS 17 as the minimum. I had a device stuck on iOS 15, which was released in 2016, and banks and other major apps dropped support. So while the phone did get security updates, it can’t run the apps I needed.
boonhet@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
That’s the app devs being idiots.
My two local banks that I use support 15.1 and 16. My two globally useful neobanks support 13 and 16. None of them have any features that the one on 13 doesn’t have (in fact, that gets the most updates and has the most features of them all)
kayazere@feddit.nl 2 weeks ago
I think Apple is responsible by releasing new APIs that are only available on the specific iOS version. Rarely have they back ported functionality to older iOS versions. Apple draggles shinny new APIs in front of developers causing them to update the minimum version.
Yeah Apple rapidly dropping support with Intel Macs is really terrible. I have a 2018 Mac mini that is already obsolete, what a joke. That was the last Mac I buy.
boonhet@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
The shiny new APIs are rarely required for most apps tbh. Hence Revolut having a fully functional neobank app with minimum iOS version of 13 (meaning you could run it on a 10 year old device right now). Wise actually has less functionality theoretically, but it requires iOS 16. Neither one of them does anything special in the client anyway, probably could make the same apps on iOS 10 APIs and not notice a difference, but nobody uses that anymore anyway.
I understand games, VR apps (lol vision pro) and such requiring the shiniest new APIs… Hell, even things like video players, etc - maybe Apple added some fancy new video codecs, etc. But basic business apps have no real reason to switch to the newest target version every year or 2.