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Comment by beagle3 | Hacker News Reader

First, "old" in this case is "older than 3 years", which is about 3 years older than almost any other phone manufacturer; my almost 3-year old iphone 4S is still getting updates the same day a new phone does. (Yes, my more-than-5-years-old iphone 3G does not, so?)

2nd, they don't care about older-than-3 iphones. But they care about getting old iphone owners to feel good about themselves and to upgrade to a newer one. And disparaging older products goes against that.

The author of this piece has got it completely confused: Talking sh*t about your old products is in the Microsoft playbook. Whenever they have a new Windows coming out, they tell you how bad the old one was so you should upgrade. Apple has never done that.

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> "2nd, they don't care about older-than-3 iphones"

great, so we agree.

Please show us an example of another smartphone manufacturer that does better.

please explain how this is any sort of relevant to my argument.

i never compared Apple to anyone. i never suggested it would be in character for Apple to vocally disparage their old products. i never put a limit on "old" nor did I ever suggest the original author was correct (or incorrect). lot of people hearing what they want to around here.

feel free to downvote without explanation- that seems to be the trend in Apple threads.

It's relevant in that it shows that there is most likely a reason that support doesn't last > 3 years.

If you're going to state facts like "hardware gets deprecated" simply just to state it, then you're not adding anything to the conversation and that's why you're getting downvoted.

If you're mad at Apple for not supporting outdated hardware when no one else in the industry is supporting outdated hardware, then you're being unreasonable and that's why you're getting downvoted.

thank you for a thoughtful response. my point is not that "hardware gets deprecated" nor am I "mad" at anyone. are these really the only two possible interpretations of my post?

my point is that just because Apple doesn't vocally disparage their old products doesn't mean they think their old products are perfect.

my point is that some light disparaging of their old products may be a refreshing dose of honesty. (inb4 "but that could be bad for business!". I don't care.)

Yeah, at least for me, that's how your original post came across. I think your points that you declare here are fine points and would likely have been well-received (or at least not downvoted) if you had started with it to begin with.

Without qualifying your original statement, it just sounded angry and purposeless. I agree with you now, though.

Don't know why you're getting down voted either. My old ipod touch is basically a brick. The battery doesn't last more than an hour, I can't update the OS anymore, 90% of apps aren't for my older version of iOS, and it lags on every input.

I wish I could just install whatever version of iOS it originally came with and use it as an mp3 player. Don't know why iTunes let me update to a version of iOS that my hardware can't handle, but oh well.

I honestly don't understand why apple fanboys get so worked up over this stuff, as if Apple is infallible. I just try to keep my opinions about apple to my self for the most part, at least on HN, because that's the environment the user base here has fostered.

Can't even read relevant tech news on HN if it shows Apple in a bad light, but hey, I can always go to reddit if I want to get a dose of reality relating to Apple.

You might find Whited00r useful for older iOS devices. For me it made an old 3GS into a snappy prepaid loaner phone for guests visiting from out of country.

i was scared to even breach this topic but I agree here too.

the tone in my original post would have been very different if I could install an old version of iOS on my iPhone. strange you can't, no?

Google's updates make your phone go faster, while Apple's updates make your phone go slower ? :-) (Harvard Study) http://goo.gl/wyAQYE

Does anyone read the actual articles anymore?

A study by Harvard University shows online complaints rise every time a new version is released. Researchers discovered that Google searches for phrases such as ‘iPhone slow’ spike whenever a more expensive type of the device goes on sale.

In contrast, they found there were no such patterns for rival products such as the Samsung Galaxy.

Professor Sendhil Mullainathan said: The results are, to say the least, striking’. However, he warned that the perception of a phone ‘slowing down’ may be purely psychological.

The study bases itself solely on results of Google searches. (also, that's the kind of research some professors are spending their time on these days? wow.)

Not caring about something is not the same thing as disparaging it.

> Apple doesn't give a shit about old iPhones

> my almost 3-year old iphone 4S is still getting updates the same day a new phone does

>great, so we agree

No. I don't think you do.

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