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rgovostes parent
> No longer providing updates to the device after just a few years when it's still perfectly fine.

This is a weird one to complain about because Apple leads the industry in supporting older devices with software updates. iOS 26 supports devices back to 2019. And they just released a security update for the iPhone 6S, a model released a full decade ago, last month.

The oldest Samsung flagship you can get Android 16 for is their 2023 model (Galaxy S23), and for Google the oldest is the 2021 model (Pixel 6).

duncangh
We’re moving away from hardware and into software and longevity in this discussion but wrt “apple leads the industry in supporting older devices with software updates” i would point out that Red Hat is probably more of a beacon / industry leader here as the main promise of RHEL is 10 years of support and updates. But again we don’t ship hardware so I see the narrower sense that you’re making but still would like to push back on the idea that giant companies cannot continue to keep complicated legacy code bases secure and functional about 2x longer in most cases than what Apple has done
DanielHB
Main problem, not just from Apple, is that as phone tech gets standardized and more long-lasting the software support cycles have not gotten longer.

It is abysmal that Android phone makers still need to customize the OS so much for their hardware. Apple has no incentive for longer support cycles if Android does even worse on it.

pjmlp
It has always been like that since CP/M and commercial UNIX days.

Vertical integrations like everyone sell a product, a brand, a whole ecosystem experience.

If all OEMs sold the same CP/M, UNIX, MSX, MS-DOS, Windows software stack, on the what is basically the same hardware with a different name glued on the case, they wouldn't get any brand recognition, aka product differentiation.

Thus OEMs specific customisations get added, back in the day bundled software packages are part of the deal, nowadays preinstalled on the OS image, and so on.

netsharc
"You cheated on me last night!"

"This is a weird one to complain about, look at Donnie, he cheated on his girlfriend 3 times last month!"

throawayonthe
i don't get it, how long do you think is reasonable?
jasomill
I tend to look at technology prices in terms of cost per unit time of useful life.

If Apple continues to supply updates for six-year-old phones, iPhone 17 prices range from $11/month (base model iPhone 17) to $28/month (iPhone 17 Pro Max w/2TB storage), meaning it's only about 20% more expensive to store data on a RAID 10 array of iPhone 17 Pro Maxes running current iOS versions than on standard-tier S3 (not a relevant comparison, obviously, but it amuses me).

So I don't know what's reasonable, but Apple's policies certainly appear to be.

I'm still salty that Apple no longer offer battery service on my OG Apple Watch, however, so reason has its limits.

rgovostes OP
Suppose you always want to be running the latest iOS release, but you want to replace your phone as infrequently as possible. You would "only" have to have purchased 4 iPhones since 2007:

    | Model     | Launch date        | Obsoleted by | Price 
    |-----------|--------------------|--------------|------
    | iPhone    | June 29, 2007      | iOS 4        | $399 (*price cut)
    | iPhone 4  | June 24, 2010      | iOS 8        | $599
    | iPhone 6  | September 19, 2014 | iOS 13       | $649
    | iPhone 11 | September 13, 2019 | -            | $699
Adjusted for inflation, the total for these phones is $3,287 excluding carrier contracts. Assuming the iPhone 11 will be obsoleted by iOS 27 in September 2026, this costs you about $14.29/mo.
leoedin
I was a long time Android user - but I realised I was getting through 2 or more phones in the time my wife had one. They'd either become obsolete or just die. I reluctantly bought an iPhone on this basis - it's actually going to work out cheaper if I get 5 or 6 years out of it.

However, I find the iPhone keyboard so bad and the settings concept so muddled that I'm going to return to Android when this experiment is over. Probably not for another 4 years though!

2 More Comments →
ralphc
Technically not updates but if you hook up a PowerPC mac with 10.4 Tiger on it you can still get it updated to the latest version released, 10.4.11
tveyben
I demoed that exact feature (though on 10.5) not so long ago and people didn’t believe me…!

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