I'm not a fan of Apple's walled garden mindset and resistance to inter-operating with other platforms, but this degree of legacy support is a case of Apple doing a good thing and deserves praise. Note: I'm not saying that Google/MSFT et al are much better than Apple, but they're not quite as bad.
"Just jailbreak your phone and install <blank>!" they said.
I did that for a while, depending on some random guy in a forum to maintain a working image for my device. He bought a new phone, and that was the end of the updates.
I had a perfectly functional Galaxy A71 this time last year, still had great battery life, etc.
I had to replace it because it only has 5 years of support. Samsung offers 7 years of support but only on their top tier phones.
Google offer 7 years, even on their A series phones so I chose a pixel 9a. It's fine, I don't love it or hate it, but it's not doing anything I care about better than my last phone.
I ran a 5S that I bought in December 2013 as my primary phone all the way up to around March 2020, just as the pandemic was really winding up.
The battery, after ailing for a little while, had eventually just given up. I'd gone skiing a couple of times, with the last trip being just before lockdown, and I think it was the cold exposure of the second trip that dealt the mortal blow, and it died shortly after I returned.
I liked that phone a lot. It did, at the time, everything I needed, and it was a really nice size, but that period in 2020 was a bad time to try to get a phone repaired. I did attempt to replace the battery myself using the guide on iFixit but, sadly, that did not go well due to some contradictory/out of order instructions, and all I succeeded in doing was damaging the phone, I think, beyond repair.
Really good to see that Apple are still supporting them though.
AMD might not be doing the work, but they set the world up to be able to support their chips. I'd take that over crossing my fingers for ok Windows driver support to hold out any day.
Top range of these cards had (only 8GB) of 0.3TB/s memory, which is what a modern 9060xt can do. Double that for the 9070xt, but still not bad. 4->~48 (fp32) TFLOPS though, wow! Especially with a modern driver stack. With the accelerators all using much older architectures I wonder if they stand to get any benefit, not that they're getting used for graphics much.
tokyobreakfast is right that this is just a certificate fix, not a real software update. But it's still notable.
Lots of old devices become paperweights because of expired certs or backend shutdowns. The fact that Apple even bothered to push this to a 13-year-old device is unusual. Most companies wouldn't.
People complain a lot about planned obsolescence but i'm mildly impressed, even if this update is only to keep the lights on and nothing else.
I remember people complaining that the design of the 5 was already outdated when it was new and they needed to have bigger screens and be thinner to compete with Samsung...
What versions can't access the App Store anymore? I've tried Catalina recently, and that still worked fine, but it only stopped getting security updates in 2022, so it's only been a few years.
Also, I've barely ever used the OSX/MacOS app store anyway, and from what little I've heard from other people, it's not really all that great nor popular a place to get your software from.
There's a problem with older Macbooks on older MacOS/factory reset where they can't access the App Store, so they can't directly download newer MacOS, you gotta go sidecar it
Of course this is completely opaque to people who have to do this, it just ends up prompting you to login and things like that.
I think newer MacOS avoids this stuff by not having OS updates be linked to the App Store
Cant you technically access the old jailbreak app stores on a 5? I would assume these phones were jailbroken far more commonly than modern iPhones. I feel like I dont hear about anyone jailbreaking them anymore.
[delayed]
I'm not a fan of Apple's walled garden mindset and resistance to inter-operating with other platforms, but this degree of legacy support is a case of Apple doing a good thing and deserves praise. Note: I'm not saying that Google/MSFT et al are much better than Apple, but they're not quite as bad.
I know folks that have 18-month-old flagship Android phones, that can’t get the latest Android releases.
When they ask me what Android phones to get, I always say a Pixel, because they will at least get the latest OS support in a timely fashion.
They are also excellent phones.
> I always say a Pixel, because they will at least get the latest OS support in a timely fashion.
You can also install e.g. GrapheneOS after Google stops supporting them. https://grapheneos.org/faq#supported-devices
"Just jailbreak your phone and install <blank>!" they said.
I did that for a while, depending on some random guy in a forum to maintain a working image for my device. He bought a new phone, and that was the end of the updates.
I had a perfectly functional Galaxy A71 this time last year, still had great battery life, etc.
I had to replace it because it only has 5 years of support. Samsung offers 7 years of support but only on their top tier phones.
Google offer 7 years, even on their A series phones so I chose a pixel 9a. It's fine, I don't love it or hate it, but it's not doing anything I care about better than my last phone.
I ran a 5S that I bought in December 2013 as my primary phone all the way up to around March 2020, just as the pandemic was really winding up.
The battery, after ailing for a little while, had eventually just given up. I'd gone skiing a couple of times, with the last trip being just before lockdown, and I think it was the cold exposure of the second trip that dealt the mortal blow, and it died shortly after I returned.
I liked that phone a lot. It did, at the time, everything I needed, and it was a really nice size, but that period in 2020 was a bad time to try to get a phone repaired. I did attempt to replace the battery myself using the guide on iFixit but, sadly, that did not go well due to some contradictory/out of order instructions, and all I succeeded in doing was damaging the phone, I think, beyond repair.
Really good to see that Apple are still supporting them though.
[delayed]
I love it when companies keep their old hardware updated.
Instills great confidence.
AMD drops support as soon as it possibly can for "old" GPUs.
Not AMD doing the work, but 14 year old GCN 1 / 1.1 has been getting a bunch of modernization & other improvements. R9 290, HD 7970, many more old chips. https://www.phoronix.com/news/AMDGPU-SI-Power-Management https://www.phoronix.com/news/AMD-GCN-1.1-Driver-Default-Pro...
AMD might not be doing the work, but they set the world up to be able to support their chips. I'd take that over crossing my fingers for ok Windows driver support to hold out any day.
Top range of these cards had (only 8GB) of 0.3TB/s memory, which is what a modern 9060xt can do. Double that for the 9070xt, but still not bad. 4->~48 (fp32) TFLOPS though, wow! Especially with a modern driver stack. With the accelerators all using much older architectures I wonder if they stand to get any benefit, not that they're getting used for graphics much.
tokyobreakfast is right that this is just a certificate fix, not a real software update. But it's still notable.
Lots of old devices become paperweights because of expired certs or backend shutdowns. The fact that Apple even bothered to push this to a 13-year-old device is unusual. Most companies wouldn't.
People complain a lot about planned obsolescence but i'm mildly impressed, even if this update is only to keep the lights on and nothing else.
I remember people complaining that the design of the 5 was already outdated when it was new and they needed to have bigger screens and be thinner to compete with Samsung...
TLDR it replaces an expired certificate, no software is being "updated" here.
Wake me when old versions of OS X can access the App Store again.
What versions can't access the App Store anymore? I've tried Catalina recently, and that still worked fine, but it only stopped getting security updates in 2022, so it's only been a few years.
Also, I've barely ever used the OSX/MacOS app store anyway, and from what little I've heard from other people, it's not really all that great nor popular a place to get your software from.
There's a problem with older Macbooks on older MacOS/factory reset where they can't access the App Store, so they can't directly download newer MacOS, you gotta go sidecar it
Of course this is completely opaque to people who have to do this, it just ends up prompting you to login and things like that.
I think newer MacOS avoids this stuff by not having OS updates be linked to the App Store
> Also, I've barely ever used the OSX/MacOS app store anyway, and from what little I've heard from other people
Thanks for the advice.
10.12 appears to have issues
Cant you technically access the old jailbreak app stores on a 5? I would assume these phones were jailbroken far more commonly than modern iPhones. I feel like I dont hear about anyone jailbreaking them anymore.
Yeah a lot of the features people jailbroke for are generally available these days.