You Paid $1k for an iPhone, but Apple Still Controls It

Re:You Paid $1k for an iPhone, but Apple Still Controls It by CivBase on Sunday November 12, 2023 @10:24AM (#38240898)

> Also, security requires constant updates and updates cost money, so it's not realistic to use a device for a decade, because you won't have security updates from any company at that point. Apple has better updates over time, which is reflected in it's higher resale values.

I'm absolutely still using PCs from over a decade ago and I'm still getting security updates.

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Re:You Paid $1k for an iPhone, but Apple Still Controls It by FirmwareBurner on Sunday November 12, 2023 @10:28AM (#38240967)

You're getting updates for PCs over 10 years old because thanks to the way the PCs work, the OS kernel can be independently updated from the drivers of the peripherals, not tied to them as it is in the ARM ecosystem with obscure FW blobs that are tied to the interfaces of a particular Android/Linux version.

On Widows at least, drivers from the Windows Vista days still work just fine on Windows 11 as the ABI hasn't changed that much since then. Good luck with that on Android.

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Re:You Paid $1k for an iPhone, but Apple Still Controls It by CivBase on Sunday November 12, 2023 @10:47AM (#38241160)

Sounds to me like a design problem, not a justification for letting companies maintain control over the goods purchased from them.

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Re:You Paid $1k for an iPhone, but Apple Still Controls It by FirmwareBurner on Sunday November 12, 2023 @10:52AM (#38241218)

Sure, but since time immemoriam, this has been left to the "free market" to sort itself out, and the "free market" has let us to this point.

Should some government regulatory body like the EU intervene to force their hand? Maybe.

But do remember that in the "old-days" of dumbphones and featurephones you were getting no SW updates at all ever and replacing your phone every 2-3 years was the norm back then.

It's only now we're thinking about this as we start to think about phones more as general purpose computers in our pocket and less as phone dialing devices like in the old days.

One thing's for sure, it's that the free market will never self regulate itself on this matter.

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Re:You Paid $1k for an iPhone, but Apple Still Controls It by tortoise_in on Sunday November 12, 2023 @12:40PM (#38242332)

LineageOs

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Re:You Paid $1k for an iPhone, but Apple Still Controls It by daft_pink on Monday November 13, 2023 @12:27PM (#38252708)

Phones aren't PCs. They just don't have the lifespan a PC has and they aren't standardized the way PCs are.

They are getting there and maybe someday they will be as they start to mature, but today it's just not realistic.

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Re:You Paid $1k for an iPhone, but Apple Still Controls It by CivBase on Monday November 13, 2023 @12:39PM (#38252841)

Why should they be treated any different?

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