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I'll just say that my little bro's iPhone 5S had weird freeze/lockup related issues a few times that required a hard reboot. "It just works" my ass. At least he hasn't had to ask me about anything regarding the iPhone SE that replaced it and seems plenty content with it, even if iOS (and any version of OS X/macOS starting at roughly 10.7 Lion or so, for that matter) is not my cup of tea for a litany of reasons.
Anyway, Apple could've grabbed my attention if they just announced one thing on the iPhone X that I honestly would never have expected to begin with: Pencil support. But no, missed opportunity to steal some of Samsung's Galaxy Note userbase there, just like everyone else. Welp.
Seriously, they're the only ones with active pen digitizer tech that can even compete against Wacom (whose EMR tech that the S Pen is just a rebadged version of), and they withhold the Pencil to the iPad Pro lineup anyway!
Oh well, their loss. I got my Note 8 earlier today and am quite happy with it so far, though the real test for any Samsung device - especially on stock firmware - is after a few months. Gotta see if it ends up choking like a typical Windows install.
That last part is one reason why I don't mind getting iPhones, whatever you think about iOS or Apple at large. The Note 8 is a great phone hardware-wise, and of course Android is more flexible, but you know what I don't miss? OS installs that degrade in performance within months because the OEMs are just that bad at programming. System updates that show up half a year after the OS creator released them. Basically, that sense that Samsung (and to a lesser extent, other vendors) only cares about software support for long enough to clinch the sale.
But there's always OnePlus as well who makes some damned fine - and damned well priced - flagship-level hardware as well and out of the box those are basically "factory ready" for custom ROMs based on the very latest version of Android, whatever it happens to be. Typically there will be a lot of community support ready to go before whatever the latest version of a OnePlus device even hits the market for sale, actually, and as noted the pricing on the devices is pretty much always going to be less than comparable hardware by the big 4 (Samsung, LG, Lenovo/Motorola, and HTC) and all the other smaller manufacturers as well and yes I know Xiaomi is gaining traction worldwide nowadays as well.
But the whole idea of the OnePlus devices is giving the end user the ability to customize effectively everything - they're still the only manufacturer that I'm aware of that is completely OK with unlocking the bootloader of their devices and even covers a "brick" situation (from a failed flashing process) under warranty which is pretty awesome. The fact that they do all of that while also providing a significantly lower price is something that cannot be dismissed out of hand.
So, with Pixel devices being so absurdly expensive nowadays and lacking in some features that people are actually wanting, OnePlus is still a very capable and worthy alternative. Their stock OxygenOS ROMs are damned fast and smooth, minimal bloat of any kind, almost pure Android really with a lot more customization possible than stock Android has ever offered so, definitely something to always consider as a device.
After purchase support is still questionable and obviously not up to Google/Apple levels and most likely will never be.
Yeah, it's annoying, but I figure that's why the XDA-developers community exists. Too bad Samsung seems hellbent on bootloader-locking their North American variants lately. LG doesn't sound much better; I figure both of them need to take a page from OnePlus here.That last part is one reason why I don't mind getting iPhones, whatever you think about iOS or Apple at large. The Note 8 is a great phone hardware-wise, and of course Android is more flexible, but you know what I don't miss? OS installs that degrade in performance within months because the OEMs are just that bad at programming. System updates that show up half a year after the OS creator released them. Basically, that sense that Samsung (and to a lesser extent, other vendors) only cares about software support for long enough to clinch the sale.
Yeah, it's annoying, but I figure that's why the XDA-developers community exists. Too bad Samsung seems hellbent on bootloader-locking their North American variants lately. LG doesn't sound much better; I figure both of them need to take a page from OnePlus here.
As for OS performance degradation, I recall that one of my local friends was still rocking an iPhone 4 of some sort, running a fairly modern iOS version (past iOS 7 for sure), and it was SLOW. That thing clearly didn't age well.
Almost reminds me of the various OS discussions I've read on how people will intentionally install older Mac OS versions to make things easier on older Macs (for instance, System 6 instead of 7 on 16 MHz 68030s, System 7.5.5/Mac OS 7.6.1 instead of Mac OS 9 on pre-G3 Power Macs, OS X Tiger instead of OS X Leopard on G4 systems that don't need installer hacks for Leopard) because they felt that the later versions, for all their speed increases, felt sluggish on older hardware.
Conversely, OS X/macOS had a ridiculous rate of planned obsolescence going on, which is kinda funny when people use iOS software support as an iPhone selling point.
Any version before 10.4 Tiger (or maybe 10.3 Panther) was effectively useless from a third-party software standpoint even a decade ago, like "you're better off running Mac OS 9.2.2" bad. Tiger itself cut out systems which didn't have built-in FireWire (conspicuously including all those 350 MHz slot-loading iMac G3s). Earlier versions cut out 604e-powered beasts like the Power Mac 9600 despite being capable of running OS X during development. Leopard cut off all G3s and G4s before 867 MHz (the latter can be worked around), and killed the Classic environment for PowerPC systems. Snow Leopard axed PowerPC support entirely. Lion axed the Rosetta emulation layer for PowerPC apps. At least every version since Mavericks is a free upgrade instead of some kind of paid service pack if you're running an Intel Mac, though finding PowerPC software is a complete pain these days because I keep pulling up later, Intel-only versions hosted by developers without any regard for older systems like the ones I maintain.
Yeah, I got carried away there, but long story short, Apple does not care one bit about backwards compatibility or providing lasting software support in all cases (just ask those suckers who bought a Core Solo Mac mini that doesn't have 64-bit support). If anything, it's surprising that they don't use the same tactics to push iPhone sales like they do Mac sales.
Yeah, it's annoying, but I figure that's why the XDA-developers community exists. Too bad Samsung seems hellbent on bootloader-locking their North American variants lately. LG doesn't sound much better; I figure both of them need to take a page from OnePlus here.
As for OS performance degradation, I recall that one of my local friends was still rocking an iPhone 4 of some sort, running a fairly modern iOS version (past iOS 7 for sure), and it was SLOW. That thing clearly didn't age well.
Almost reminds me of the various OS discussions I've read on how people will intentionally install older Mac OS versions to make things easier on older Macs (for instance, System 6 instead of 7 on 16 MHz 68030s, System 7.5.5/Mac OS 7.6.1 instead of Mac OS 9 on pre-G3 Power Macs, OS X Tiger instead of OS X Leopard on G4 systems that don't need installer hacks for Leopard) because they felt that the later versions, for all their speed increases, felt sluggish on older hardware.
Conversely, OS X/macOS had a ridiculous rate of planned obsolescence going on, which is kinda funny when people use iOS software support as an iPhone selling point.
Any version before 10.4 Tiger (or maybe 10.3 Panther) was effectively useless from a third-party software standpoint even a decade ago, like "you're better off running Mac OS 9.2.2" bad. Tiger itself cut out systems which didn't have built-in FireWire (conspicuously including all those 350 MHz slot-loading iMac G3s). Earlier versions cut out 604e-powered beasts like the Power Mac 9600 despite being capable of running OS X during development. Leopard cut off all G3s and G4s before 867 MHz (the latter can be worked around), and killed the Classic environment for PowerPC systems. Snow Leopard axed PowerPC support entirely. Lion axed the Rosetta emulation layer for PowerPC apps. At least every version since Mavericks is a free upgrade instead of some kind of paid service pack if you're running an Intel Mac, though finding PowerPC software is a complete pain these days because I keep pulling up later, Intel-only versions hosted by developers without any regard for older systems like the ones I maintain.
Yeah, I got carried away there, but long story short, Apple does not care one bit about backwards compatibility or providing lasting software support in all cases (just ask those suckers who bought a Core Solo Mac mini that doesn't have 64-bit support). If anything, it's surprising that they don't use the same tactics to push iPhone sales like they do Mac sales.
That's good to know. I'm not sure what the obsolescence rate is on modern versions of macOS, other than that El Capitan requires SSE4 and will thus not run on 65nm Core 2 CPUs. However, Core 2-based systems had a 32-bit EFI related issue that cut them off officially several years earlier; it reminds me a lot of the "32-bit dirty" ROM issue with earlier Macintosh II models and the SE/30 that cut them off from Mac OS 7.6.1 or so without a 32-bit clean ROM SIMM and some OS-side hacks (and earlier versions needed Mode32 to actually run in 32-bit mode).The hardware and software of a lot of platforms experienced growing pains in the late 2000s and early 2010s.
However as the hardware itself has matured the 'obsolescence' through software as you call it has declined, rapidly.
The big reason for the drop off I think is primarily due to how fast hardware was accelerating and how software was also changing rapidly to utilize this new found speed. Now however there has been diminishing returns on how much faster fast hardware is in compared to how much processing power new software needs to run.
Need examples?: Well, High Sierra as an OS basically covers every Mac since 2010. The update will be free. And every piece of hardware that is supported by it will operate just fine. I'm not at all concerned about running it on my 2011 iMac.
http://osxdaily.com/2017/06/06/macos-high-sierra-compatibility-list/
The iOS side is also extensive for iOS 11.
https://www.macrumors.com/2017/06/06/ios-11-compatible-iphone-ipad-ipod-models/
Now, I would be wary of running iOS 11 on a 5s, but the 6 and on will be more than fast enough. That's 4 years worth of devices that will more than likely run the software without issue (although there will probably be growing pains like there usually is... it will probably be several point releases in, before iOS 11 is properly optimized for older hardware).
And like I mentioned before, yeah there has been slow downs of using new iOS versions on older iOS devices. But this goes back into what I was saying above: the drastic increases in hardware versus the slower increase in hardware capability needed to run the software makes this an entirely different time. On balance the same issue(s) has taken place on the Android side as well. Early devices really couldn't take too many updates before being entirely obsolete, but now Android could probably support devices 4 years old (if their partners would actually bother to do it).
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I can't speak too much to the times of the PPC Mac, but in terms of the original Intel Core and things of that nature, most of that hardware dropped off on every other platform too. Everyone on Windows and Linux got just as screwed if they wanted to run a 64 bit OS with the Original Core. Each platform can only exist so long, but with the nature of hardware these days, it's less and less of an issue. I know you're annoyed that PPC isn't really covered anymore, but Mac has been Intel since 2006. The cutoff had to happen in order for software development to stop using legacy based coding.
As great as Windows is with compatibility, it has also forced them to continue to support things that bog down the OS. It's a tradeoff for sure, but considering most people don't use a computer for more than 6 years on the outside, I think Apple has done more than a reasonable job with how and when things are rotated into obsolescence. Which I would hardly call 'planned obsolesence' more like 6 years in, whatever hardware you're on is just plain old. That's hardly Apple's fault, that's just the pace of technology. I wouldn't want to be on a PC from 2005 or earlier either. I'm not sure how you can fault Apple for the same thing on PPC.
Five years of support is already three and a half more years than most Android manufacturers will provide - yes, even Google themselves. That's some serious dedication, so long as the 5-year-old devices aren't screwed over in terms of optimization.I have to disagree: Apple does care about backward compatibility, it just tends to be fairly ruthless when it decides to cut things off -- and for a while, it was particularly bad about maintaining performance on the oldest hardware.
One big shift it did in the past couple of years, at least for iOS, was to re-prioritize how it developed for older phones. Before, it would target newer hardware with iOS and remove features until the software could run on the oldest hardware they wanted to support. Now, it's more of a holistic approach where it thinks about the older hardware from the start. Apple is helped by hardware getting progressively more capable, of course.
And like Unknown said, High Sierra should support many Macs that are several years old... now, they probably won't run it as well as on a newer Mac, but my parents' base-level 2007 iMac always ran macOS well up until Apple slashed support. I'll definitely agree that macOS / OS X upgrades tended to be rough earlier on, if just because the hardware differences were much more conspicuous between generations.
Besides, I'd still rather choose long-but-flawed support over what Samsung and most non-Google vendors do. If my phone gets 5 years of OS updates, that's 5 years of security fixes, 5 years of getting the latest app versions, 5 years of compatibility with key features. Yes, you can use ROMs to work around that, but I see that as a bit of a cop-out: it's like buying a 15MPG car but saying you can get 30MPG if you rip out all the seats. You have a better case on the desktop, but still... several years of largely elegant support these days.
And again I say that doesn't matter at all given the huge community of support behind OnePlus devices - even the OnePlus One will have Android 8 soon if it doesn't have it already and that won't be coming from OnePlus obviously who has long since let that phone drift into obsolescence when it obviously isn't obsolescent, and that Snapdragon 801 SoC in it, unbelievably relevant to this day, really.
I learned a long time ago as an Android enthusiast to not give a fuck about manufacturer support for given devices and to focus on buying those that have communities around them with lots of custom ROM support and other aspects that go far beyond what any manufacturer - even OnePlus - will do for their devices once they hit that 18-24 month age point and typically just fall off the radar as far the companies are concerned.
Even with the one or two Nexus devices that I owned in the past I didn't care about when Google would get around to pushing out the next version or build of Android for those devices because I knew someone out there in the community would have it done and potentially improve on it in various ways and I was rarely if ever let down in that respect.
In my opinion fingerprint scanner is just way more user friendly and convenient than face detection and/or iris scanners. I just love fingerprint scanners - those actually just work and aren't gimmicks that are hard to use.
That's true for non Google phones, but to me in the smartphone world there's only two lines to chose from, the iPhone Plus model or Pixel XL phone.
- Apple = I'm really not a fan of the iPhone, but with the Apple phones, you are guaranteed updates for years and always great support, even if your phone is 2 or 3 years old, Apple still supports you, and you get the update just like the newest iPhone would, immediate and right away.
- Google phones = Nexus and now Pixel phones are pretty similar to Apple support with the iPhone, with the Pixel you get supported first and right away on updates. And for 2 yrs you are fully supported nonstop. Plus the Pixel line runs stock Android, an no argument it's the smoothest most lag free of Android phones.
- Other Android phones = Samsung, LG, HTC, etc...to be honest I see zero need for these today, Samsung's Lagwiz still has hiccups, and slight micro stutters. I owned the Galaxy S8+, and my old Nexus 6P was night and day smoother than the S8+ FACT, not made up, I had both phones sides by side for a week, and the 6P was smoother overall. Yeah the S8+ was faster, no doubt about it, and the hardware and display on the S8+ was amazing, but the 6P was a more lag free phone. And don't get em started on Samsung's OS updates, they can be 4 to 6 months behind when Google releases a new Android update. That's unacceptable. I could understand 4 to 6 weeks behind official releases, but 6 months !!! Come on. And when a Samsung phone is 2 to 3 yrs old, LOL good luck on timely support.
From what I read, the notch lines could be changed to black. And videos do not go into the notch.
But on the other side, I do wish Apple would build in re-authentication on an app based level. For example, require a passcode lock when opening WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger.