I think it was a mistake for Apple to support the 4s beyond four OSes. The cut off point should have been 8.x, just like the cutoff point was 7.x for the iPhone 4. I doubt that Apple did that on purpose. They were just trying to see how far they can extend the life of old hardware with a new software. It back fired on them. I hope they go back the 4 OSes including the original and that is it.
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Planned obsolescence!
- Thread starter George Waseem
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I think it was a mistake for Apple to support the 4s beyond four OSes. The cut off point should have been 8.x, just like the cutoff point was 7.x for the iPhone 4. I doubt that Apple did that on purpose. They were just trying to see how far they can extend the life of old hardware with a new software. It back fired on them. I hope they go back the 4 OSes including the original and that is it.
I don't think they're going to support the 4s longer than the 5. The 5 and later seem powerful enough for longer support. The difference between 4s and 5 is pretty big.
Or just don't upgrade past a certain point? of course downgrading would be great, but at the current time you can erase all content which is similar to a clean install.
While I would like Apple to put more into optimisation of iOS (on all devices), I do appreciate being able to update my iPad 2 as otherwise i would have had to bought a new one.
Its bleedingly obvious that Apple did not put much effort into optimisation on really any hardware older than the A8 devices, and even less into A5 devices. Why? Because iOS 9 has no new features that would slow down the device. New notes app, new fonts, a news app, an iCloud drive app, a new multitasking menu interface and a new siri interface should not make everything load slower and animations more jittery. If new background services were running, I would understand but they are not. When an iOS device slows down from an update and that update doesn't include power sapping new features (Eg - iOS 7 had a completely new interface with a lot of Blur, iOS 8 has encryption running in the background + text forwarding + phone forwarding etc), its down to poor optimisation of new code used.
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That's all I think they should do. Well, not all. All they should do in this case.
If they do that new features will stop coming and people will cry how iOS is stale and dated.
Stop defending bad decisions based on whether or not people will complain.
Maybe, but will we get a fully optimized version of 9.0 sooner than a month before iOS 10 is released and cycle repeats?
it's worse than that. People will get on iOS 10 Beta 1 way before its official release.
I agree. Don't upgrade beyond two OSes after the original that the iPhone came with. That is what I do by default since I upgrade every two years. This year was different since I moved to the S cycle and intend to stay on it.
The iPhone 4 that I had, I did not sell till way after its usefulness date. I sold it for $80.
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That is why you wait until 9.2 to update from 8.4. Then you wait until 10.2 to update from 9.2. That will give the user almost a year on every OS.
That is the worst part. Just when a particular iOS release attains maturity, the cycle resets and we are greeted by shizloads of bugs, UI issues which take another 7-8 months to fix or worse they get fixed only because a new feature overrides them.
Do you even hear yourself? Your paranoia knows no boundaries.
He is right I am afraid. Apple stops optimizing old devices. Whether due to lack of resourses or managemen
The only mistake I see that Apple is doing is not allowing a downgrade (I know they try to avoid fragmentation and want as many people as possible on the latest os), if they allowed that, many complainers could downgrade and "enjoy" their devices again.
And, in typical novice fashion, people will complain about the performance of a beta like it's the final release candidate.
I am still leaning towards incompetence to get certain devices right. I mean i can understand that there are a lot of difficulties to get slow A5 devices to a very fluid state while maintaining features and security. From a technological standpoint they probably should have been cut of by now with some sort of last special optimized iOS (maybe with the option of security patches).
But even more concerning is the state of A7 iPads. Looking at the performance difference between A5 and A7, i am wondering why those iPads seem to age even worse than the iPad 2. Don't get me wrong, even "high end" games perform still reasonably well on them, but the UI performance (without reduce motion/transparency) is really below Apple's standards.
Why do they let this happen? An intentional slowdown makes no sense, because Apple is still selling the rMini 2/Air. If they think there is a market for those devices, why sell it with underperforming UI? Touch ID,better cameras, good screen quality, weight etc. should be enough to differentiate them from the rest of the lineup. I never heard of any upsell marketing strategy, where you cripple your own product in such a way. Either they are evil geniuses of they just have a problem with their software quality management/resources.
But even more concerning is the state of A7 iPads. Looking at the performance difference between A5 and A7, i am wondering why those iPads seem to age even worse than the iPad 2. Don't get me wrong, even "high end" games perform still reasonably well on them, but the UI performance (without reduce motion/transparency) is really below Apple's standards.
Why do they let this happen? An intentional slowdown makes no sense, because Apple is still selling the rMini 2/Air. If they think there is a market for those devices, why sell it with underperforming UI? Touch ID,better cameras, good screen quality, weight etc. should be enough to differentiate them from the rest of the lineup. I never heard of any upsell marketing strategy, where you cripple your own product in such a way. Either they are evil geniuses of they just have a problem with their software quality management/resources.
You know,now that I think about it what exactly did iOS 9 add featurewise which warrants decreased performance.A new Notes app,a new Maps app,a News App and improved Siri.None of these features have the capability to slow down a device
Just from this one quote alone shows me you have no idea(ZERO knowledge at all) how software development works and how difficult Operating Systems are to program.
The biggest change is under the hood. That is Metal API is used everywhere to render the UI animations. That has caused the unpleasantness.
Well the proactive Siri sure use a some resources , Metal as suggested is another one because it was designed for more modern cpu.
The fact that you do not use it does not mean it is not doing anything and not using resources.
1000 ants can annoy an elephant , the elephant might not annoy 1000 ants, it might not be 1 feature that slows you down big time , but 100 that slows you down a tiny bit, but all together are worse than the one mentioned before.
There is more than just a new Note app in ios 9 some you see some you don't see, but does not mean are not there.
iOS 9 is also more optimized at giving you more battery life than giving you more performance, since the newest gen phones have better specs that can cope with the "slow down" and smaller battery, so i would say they work to get the best on the newest phones, the obsolescence people are referring to is just a side effect more than a planned effect.
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I know, there is some forum common sense about Metal on iOS, but it might not be the (only) culprit. E.g. Mac OS Metal definitely improved performance. Animations are way better on my rMBP with El Cap. And Metal on iOS also improved gaming performance. So why should it suddenly destroy UI performance? Bad coding, lack of optimizations, it is all possible. But Apple also implemented in iOS 9 a different battery management (cpu/gpu speed stepping) and way more aggressive ram management (also idevices lack a dedicated VRAM for e.g. animations).
In theory this sounds like a great idea, but it could be difficult in practice to find the right balance. I think there are some animations, which seem to improve greatly (like the folder opening, spotlight) when they have been used more than once. So it might be easy to point the finger at Metal while there could be other variables at play. So far we don't have any proof of what is really going on and therefore i suggest to continue writing bug reports until this is sorted out.
I don't believe Apple sits down and says "Lets slow older devices", however their obvious lack of optimisation (as you say for whatever reason) has the same effect.
For my iPad 2 its been acceptable enough, because it wasn't until iOS 8 that it really started slowing to an annoying level. My iPad Mini 2 on iOS 8 though was already getting annoying and iOS 9 has somehow made it worse.
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Interestingly they do with low battery mode turned on. I've been reading for weeks about the iPhone 5 managing animations so much better than A7 devices, yet my iPhone 5 stutters in both. I do always have low battery mode turned on, and when I turned it off the other day, spotlight and cc were so much better!
You are forgetting that the iPad mini was released a year after the iPhone 4s and is also entitled to 4 OS updates (which is iOS 6, 7, 8 and 9), by your logic. And since the iPad mini has identical specs to the 4s and ipad2, if the iPad mini gets iOS 9, there is no reason for the 4s and iPad 2 not to.
I believe marketing what is effectively a year-old iPad 2 as a new product is coming back to haunt Apple.
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