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Comment by raffraffraff | Hacker News Reader

> Firstly the 60% have chosen iOS. They are not "hostage" they can leave.

Your are are hostage once Apple stops supporting your device, and it becomes officially impossible to install any software on it. Consider the case of a perfectly functioning iPad 4. If I wipe it and hand it to my nephew, there's nothing he can do with it. Nothing in the AppStore will install on it, and sideloading is impossible. Aside from chucking a perfectly working device into the e-waste, which I hate to do if someone else might get a year out of it, the only other options are complex, dubious hacks.

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You can't call something "perfectly working" and then complain that it doesn't work. You're talking about machine contemporary to netbooks, the Lumia 900, the Nexus 7, etc. None of that stuff is perfectly functional out of the box in 2024, either.

To be fair though, the ability to sideload on any of those devices has arguably expanded their usable lifetime beyond any depreciated iPhone. That's a feature that doesn't break when your TLS functionality gets depreciated, unlike iOS.

That's a nitpick. The hardware is perfectly working. And who even mentioned restricting this to "out of the box" functionality? The point is whether or not it's even possible to make it useful. I guarantee you I could install software on a Nexus 7, whereas I can't install anything on the iPad. Oh wait, except for VLC. But that's about it.

> Nothing in the AppStore will install on it

Odd, because my old Apple devices still let me sign in and offer me the last compatible versions of a lot of software, something Google doesn't do.

Yeah, we switched our phones to Apple after my wife's 9 month old Galaxy stopped being usable for her main purpose... Google Calendar. Visiting Google Calendar website, it refused to load and said to use the app. App refused to load saying it needed a newer OS. There was no newer OS available for her phone. She was SOL.

At the time only Google supported devices more than 1-2 years. Every Android partner had zero support. The message was clear. Switch to iPhone if we wanted >1-2 years of support, so we did, and we've been happy since (~15 years).

The trouble I have with Apple is that while it's possible to install software on an old device you can only do it if you're "grandfathered in" via a previous install years ago. Take Garage Band for instance. My nephew has a 2014 Macbook Pro, can't install Band Camp. But if I wipe a 2014 Macbook and sign into App Store using my account I can install it simply because I chose to install it on a Mac I owned back in 2015.

That does not make me jump for joy. Instead it tells me that I don't wanna touch another Apple product.

He could visit all the apps in the world from Facebook, Instagram, YouTube to Spotify on the web, right? Of course, he cannot use Friendster or Tumblr or Vine — all great iPad 4 era apps but can you really blame Apple for those apps _not_ existing anymore? — So I wouldn’t say “there’s nothing he could do with it”

Well if your argument is: “a perfectly good 10 year old iPad is held hostage by Apple because they don’t provide side loading” then isn’t that the same case with your perfectly good 10 year old Toyota? Or 10 year old Target Toaster oven or 10 year old Samsung fridge?

I think we will live in a strange world if we start demanding our refrigerators allow side loading YouTube.

> then isn’t that the same case with your perfectly good 10 year old Toyota?

A good 10 year old Toyota can have its head unit replaced and you can add new features if you so chose. When I was a kid it was a rite of passage to mod at least your speaker system.

> Or 10 year old Target Toaster oven or 10 year old Samsung fridge?

> I think we will live in a strange world if we start demanding our refrigerators allow side loading YouTube.

You set up a strawman argument. Who is demanding this of fridges and toasters?

Exactly. A computer is a general computing device that can be made to do thousands of things through software. When a computer hardware manufacturer wants to limit what software I can run on my computing device, it is not a good thing.

It's odd that people will defend Apple for this, or laugh when you say that you want to use a 10 year old device, when on the same forum people applaud when someone blogs about getting their old Commodore / Sinclair / Toshiba 8bit to connect to the Internet. Wait, is the iPad too old to be useful, but simultaneously not old enough to be worth repurposing?

The iPad 4 has wifi, bluetooth, a retina screen and several days of idle battery life. If I could install a terminal and a VNC client, I could save this thing from e-waste for another 5 years. The way some people talk on here, it'll like they think that there's something wrong with that.

To the contrary, if my refrigerator has a screen and speakers then I will be pretty upset if the OEM waggles their finger and blocks me from running YouTube on it.

Why does everyone on HN promote laying down and giving up when your manufacturer tells you not to do something that loses them money? It's like there isn't a living hacker left on this website.

No they are killing mobile web lately. Facebook messenger doesnt work on mobile web anymore for example.

>He could visit all the apps in the world from Facebook, Instagram, YouTube to Spotify on the web, right?

Do you really think that the web browser is going to load those pages? Try using a really old web browser on the web today and see how far you get.

> Well if your argument is: “a perfectly good 10 year old iPad is held hostage by Apple because they don’t provide side loading” then isn’t that the same case with your perfectly good 10 year old Toyota? Or 10 year old Target Toaster oven or 10 year old Samsung fridge?

Your fridge still keeps things cold. Your Toyota still drives. Your toaster still makes toast. What does a ten year old iPad do besides collect dust because all of the features you bought it for don't work anymore?

Indeed. The point of a computing device is that it runs software. With the right software a 10 year old iPad could absolutely browse the web, play music and videos and post crap on Facebook. It did it 10 years ago, so it could do it today if Apple allowed the software to be installed.

listen... it's this simple: I should have the ability to install software of my choosing on a hardware device I own. End of story. If a hardware manufacturer provides an App Store, then it should be an added extra, not a padlock.

What are you doing with that?

I'm in the same boat here. The AppStore endpoints have stopped being supported so I can't even sign in and forget about trying to update iOS.

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