It's your device, you should be able to repair it

Re:It's your device, you should be able to repair it by fsflover on Friday April 30, 2021 @12:24PM (#26995535)

I would say it is artificially shortened by design choices. It is a perfectly capable device, the harware is still fast and secure. However, I am just not allowed to fix the software, even if I have enough resources for that. This is exactly why we need free software.

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Re:It's your device, you should be able to repair it by ska on Friday April 30, 2021 @12:31PM (#26995645)

> I would say it is artificially shortened by design choices.

The design choices have to be made to artificially shorten the life, not for any other purpose. For example, I can make a device cheaper and use cheaper materials that wear out faster - that's not planned obsolescence. However if I include a little plastic tab that I know will break before everything else for no good reason other than making it break faster - that is.

I suspect you'll have a hard time arguing compellingly that the purpose of apples closed update system was to shorten the useful life, rather than as a side effect of other product and design goals.

Phones are sort of a bad example, because for a long time the replacement cycle was driven by actual technical obsolescence, arguably only relatively recently has this ceased to be the case.

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Re:It's your device, you should be able to repair it by fsflover on Friday April 30, 2021 @12:36PM (#26995713)

> the purpopse of apples closed update system was to shorten the useful life, rather than as a side effect of other product and design goals

So what is the reason to prevent updates of software after the support is over? This is a classical software anti-feature.

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Re:It's your device, you should be able to repair it by ska on Friday April 30, 2021 @12:44PM (#26995838)

I suspect the main driver was consistency of experience. Obviously they didn't always nail this.

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Re:It's your device, you should be able to repair it by google234123 on Friday April 30, 2021 @05:08PM (#26999362)

IT's a ton of work to make and push updates.

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Re:It's your device, you should be able to repair it by fsflover on Friday April 30, 2021 @05:48PM (#26999805)

I am not speaking about making updates. I am speaking about preventing users from making them.

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Re:It's your device, you should be able to repair it by zepto on Friday April 30, 2021 @06:07PM (#27000030)

You know the answer to that - it prevent large classes of social engineering attack and is part of the overall security model.

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Re:It's your device, you should be able to repair it by fsflover on Saturday May 01, 2021 @04:34AM (#27004474)

Even when the device is no longer supported?

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Re:It's your device, you should be able to repair it by zepto on Saturday May 01, 2021 @12:13PM (#27007441)

I fully support allowing the device itself to have alternative OS installations after the end of official support.

The reason 1st gen iPads don’t have this is fairly obvious though - the unlocking feature is itself a likely vector for attacks e.g. by law enforcement unlocking tools, etc.

I’m not sure what it would take to enable it to be done securely without destroying the overall security model but it’s clearly not trivial, and would take some investment that certainly wasn’t possible at the time the 1st gen device was released.

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