Apple Blows All Competition With Update to 4S

[Commodus]

1 minute ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

Yay. So if people don't update (rather quickly as well) to fix an issue that is literally only about GPS, their entire device risks becoming a paperweight? Loss of app store and web connectivity?

 

Please remind me to thank apple for their generosity.

That's a bit harsh.  Apple did give a heads-up about this earlier, and you can still update through your computer if you miss November 3rd.  It's just that Apple is delivering a warning to make sure people have a chance to update OTA before the change.

 

My question: how many Android devices are affected by this (and there are Android devices affected by it) that will never get an update to address the problem?  I know some apps can cope with the GPS rollover, but it's a bit odd to complain about Apple's approach when the holy mission of many Android OEMs is to abandon support as quickly as possible.

[Curufinwe_wins]

1 hour ago, Commodus said:

That's a bit harsh.  Apple did give a heads-up about this earlier, and you can still update through your computer if you miss November 3rd.  It's just that Apple is delivering a warning to make sure people have a chance to update OTA before the change.

 

My question: how many Android devices are affected by this (and there are Android devices affected by it) that will never get an update to address the problem?  I know some apps can cope with the GPS rollover, but it's a bit odd to complain about Apple's approach when the holy mission of many Android OEMs is to abandon support as quickly as possible.

So here's the thing. It's a 9ish year old device. It isn't being used for mission critical stuff.

 

I don't care if the GPS still works. I do care if web connected services and the app store do.

 

The type of person who still has a 4s and is actually using it, probably either doesnt have an internet connected computer or wouldn't know how to update their device by it. I said this very recently. I'd rather lose individual features slowly over time than (or fail to have them added) than wake up one day and my device is useless because apple (or Microsoft, see below) said so.

 

I say that as I am personally in the process of moving my grandparents from their 5S's to a modern phone (practicing what I preach here). Haven't decided on OS yet for them actually. The main reason is because they will also need a largish tablet to replace a Surface RT that was recently borked by an update that killed IE, and that OS doesn't have a different browser. Now the tablets themselves are pretty competitive between Samsung and Apple (not even worth mentioning non Samsung android tablets lolz) but once you add keyboard cover the prices diverge really quickly. Also I'm a bit worried about iPad OSs still abhorrent file system and things getting lost.  

 

I wouldn't want to have them use two different OSs though, so still trying to decide which direction to move them, knowing full well that whatever is bought will be used long past the support period (for tablet) and also that they cant reasonably download updates except at our house (no home internet other than hotspotting from phone)

[ryao]

2 hours ago, Sauron said:

What would you call an issue in this context? Cracked screens and dead batteries are the most common reasons phones stop working, I've never come across a device that had its logic board die spontaneously unless it had suffered liquid damage in the past (which would also kill a 4s). If batteries and screens don't count because they can be replaced then I could say that almost all devices can last "for this many years without issues".

Well, the battery is wearable like a car tire. Needing to replace it is no more of an issue than needing to replace car tires.

2 hours ago, Sauron said:

Even if you can't change the standard (I doubt that's the case for an internal timer) you can easily implement a system that can tell when the rollover is going to happen and fix the problem automatically.

Do you have pseudo-code? As a programmer, I cannot think of a sane fix as there are edge cases. I suspect that using internet time servers when available would mostly prevent the issue, but Apple could be doing that already, such that the scope of affected phones would be limited to just those that do not connect to the Internet (voice only plans are a thing).

[Zando_]

4 hours ago, ryao said:

The battery is a wearable component. Replacing it is not much different than replacing the tires on a car when they need to be replaced. I would not call that an issue.

^^^ Replacing the battery in a 4S is even easier than the newer phones anyways (and way easier than swapping the tires or brakes on a car). The back of the 4 slides off with just 2 screws and bam the battery is right there. The screen is annoying to replace, was fixed on newer phones but now you have to remove the screen to get to the battery (more risk and a few small cables to deal with). 

[hgpot]

14 minutes ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

So here's the thing. It's a 9ish year old device. It isn't being used for mission critical stuff.

 

I don't care if the GPS still works. I do care if web connected services and the app store do.

 

The type of person who still has a 4s and is actually using it, probably either doesnt have an internet connected computer or wouldn't know how to update their device by it. I said this very recently. I'd rather lose individual features slowly over time than (or fail to have them added) than wake up one day and my device is useless because apple (or Microsoft, see below) said so.

 

I say that as I am personally in the process of moving my grandparents from their 5S's to a modern phone (practicing what I preach here). Haven't decided on OS yet for them actually. The main reason is because they will also need a largish tablet to replace a Surface RT that was recently borked by an update that killed IE, and that OS doesn't have a different browser. Now the tablets themselves are pretty competitive between Samsung and Apple (not even worth mentioning non Samsung android tablets lolz) but once you add keyboard cover the prices diverge really quickly. Also I'm a bit worried about iPad OSs still abhorrent file system and things getting lost.  

 

I wouldn't want to have them use two different OSs though, so still trying to decide which direction to move them, knowing full well that whatever is bought will be used long past the support period (for tablet) and also that they cant reasonably download updates except at our house (no home internet other than hotspotting from phone)

Right...but the issue is not literally only about GPS. The device uses GPS for time. Without this (free, mind you) update, the device will stop being able to tell time, and thus most services that are encrypted with a certificate (read: almost everything now) will stop working as the device will think it is 20 years in the past, and think that the certificates are invalid. 

 

If they are still actively using the device, then likely it has a working cellular or Wi-Fi connection to the Internet. In that case, the update will come automatically over the air. 

[BuckGup]

4 hours ago, Sauron said:

Have we learnt nothing from Y2K? Just use a 64bit unsigned integer and be done with it ffs

I have a 4s a friend gave me and the battery is dead.

People still use YY for date formatting all the time in SQL and it makes me cringe

[Curufinwe_wins]

1 hour ago, hgpot said:

Right...but the issue is not literally only about GPS. The device uses GPS for time. Without this (free, mind you) update, the device will stop being able to tell time, and thus most services that are encrypted with a certificate (read: almost everything now) will stop working as the device will think it is 20 years in the past, and think that the certificates are invalid. 

 

If they are still actively using the device, then likely it has a working cellular or Wi-Fi connection to the Internet. In that case, the update will come automatically over the air. 

Oh. Ok, see that's a better explanation. Thank you. It isn't Apple changing anything (by not updating), its just a (not necessarily apple specific) bad design in the first place. I guess it might have made sense in an era of more limited cellular connectivity to default to GPS time instead of internet/carrier time, but not convinced.

 

Though it beggars belief that this update (presumably known to be an issue more than 5 years ago) wasnt being pushed until rather recently (July). 

 

Automatically having the update appear and having it download/install are very different. Again grandparent example, numerous updates wait months because updates on cellular are very expensive given the cost of US data plans (particularly in rural areas).

[Sauron]

1 hour ago, ryao said:

Do you have pseudo-code? As a programmer, I cannot think of a sane fix as there are edge cases.

For pseudo code I'd need to look up the details of the standard which I can't really be bothered to do, regardless it should be as easy as keeping a separate counter on the device to ensure that dates after the roll over aren't considered to be earlier than dates before it. If there are edge cases (can't really think of many edge cases for an overflowing counter tbh) then check for those edge cases. You can do whatever you want on your device, so long as you preserve the original standard for external communication you'll be fine.

[Sauron]

1 hour ago, hgpot said:

The device uses GPS for time.

Not gonna knock it too much but there are plenty of internet based time services it could be using instead that don't have this problem.

[vanished]

The fact this is necessary frankly just seems like a flaw in the OS design, and as such makes it possible to twist what should be mocked into praise for taking care of something so old.

 

This should only require an app update or other such small tweak, and as such should be able to roll out to all devices running this app, regardless of OS version.  Updating the OS in a phone 7 years later is great and all that, but they're not really doing that are they?  If they were, the 5 would be getting iOS 13 or whatever they're up to now.  No, they are just updating an app, and if it happens to need an OS tweak to make it happen, that's just an indirect thing - a side effect.

 

With that in mind let's make sure we're comparing to the competition correctly.  It's well known that Android feature updates (lollipop, nougat, etc.) are usually only given once or twice on the life of a device, and apple definitely has them beat there.  However they continue to receive security updates for quite a while still after that, and most importantly, afaik there is no hard cap on app updates such as this, that comes down to the developer (what OS they want to target with the app).  For that reason I don't know what's typical to expect, but it seems perfectly reasonable to me that android could also receive a similar upgrade.

 

Really though let's not forget the elephant in the room.  A desktop computer makes all mobile devices, even apples, look like the absolute joke that they are.  In the mobile space it's just expected that your hardware will become useless in just a few years but no such stupidity exists on desktop.  A computer from 10 years ago can run a current OS, and even if it didn't, it would likely still run all necessary applications anyway.  The only thing that would put it down is being too slow to be useful, or an architectural shift like 32 to 64 bit, and that only comes into play on certain situations.

[Thaldor]

6 hours ago, Sauron said:

Have we learnt nothing from Y2K? Just use a 64bit unsigned integer and be done with it ffs

Well, GPS system is build quite a while before Y2K problems and was way long time only in limited use where these kind of problems didn't arise (or matter). Problem with these really isn't that the old system is build wrong, but that the modern system is build badly. Not having "fallback"-feature in code that handles something that old that has a integer that may zero is bad and extremely lazy because that fallback is something like 3-5 code lines which basicly is just a IF-partition that checks when 0 integer is given was the earlier integer 1024 and if it was marks the current date as the starting date and lives on. And especially when this kind of thing is KNOWN to happen because it has happened before the newer systems should be able to handle that, especially when there isn't all that hassle with extremely limited memories and storages where every byte was crucial.

[Sauron]

3 minutes ago, Thaldor said:

Well, GPS system is build quite a while before Y2K problems

Yes, but iPhones weren't. Even if I were to concede that they couldn't possibly have found a workaround for this (which I don't) they didn't need to rely on it for the entire phone to function.

4 minutes ago, Thaldor said:

Problem with these really isn't that the old system is build wrong, but that the modern system is build badly. Not having "fallback"-feature in code that handles something that old that has a integer that may zero is bad and extremely lazy because that fallback is something like 3-5 code lines which basicly is just a IF-partition that checks when 0 integer is given was the earlier integer 1024 and if it was marks the current date as the starting date and lives on. And especially when this kind of thing is KNOWN to happen because it has happened before the newer systems should be able to handle that, especially when there isn't all that hassle with extremely limited memories and storages where every byte was crucial.

Exactly my point.

[RedRound2]

43 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

The fact this is necessary frankly just seems like a flaw in the OS design, and as such makes it possible to twist what should be mocked into praise for taking care of something so old.

 

This should only require an app update or other such small tweak, and as such should be able to roll out to all devices running this app, regardless of OS version.  Updating the OS in a phone 7 years later is great and all that, but they're not really doing that are they?  If they were, the 5 would be getting iOS 13 or whatever they're up to now.  No, they are just updating an app, and if it happens to need an OS tweak to make it happen, that's just an indirect thing - a side effect.

How does correcting something related to GPS be fixed with an app update? Yes, it's a fairly tiny flaw in OS design, but I'm pretty sure they didn't have that in the top of their head while designing the OS for those two phones until now

43 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

With that in mind let's make sure we're comparing to the competition correctly.  It's well known that Android feature updates (lollipop, nougat, etc.) are usually only given once or twice on the life of a device, and apple definitely has them beat there.  However they continue to receive security updates for quite a while still after that, and most importantly, afaik there is no hard cap on app updates such as this, that comes down to the developer (what OS they want to target with the app).  For that reason I don't know what's typical to expect, but it seems perfectly reasonable to me that android could also receive a similar upgrade.

Android rarely gets security updates. Maximum two or three security updates after they stop feature updates. If there's vulnerability found, well shit, you can't do anything about it if your android device is 3+ years old. For iOS devices, if it's a critical security flaw, even the EOL devices usually gets updated

43 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

Really though let's not forget the elephant in the room.  A desktop computer makes all mobile devices, even apples, look like the absolute joke that they are.  In the mobile space it's just expected that your hardware will become useless in just a few years but no such stupidity exists on desktop.  A computer from 10 years ago can run a current OS, and even if it didn't, it would likely still run all necessary applications anyway.  The only thing that would put it down is being too slow to be useful, or an architectural shift like 32 to 64 bit, and that only comes into play on certain situations.

Can't believe you actually compared a smartphone and a desktop PC. Mobile OS like iOS and Android evolve much faster than Windows could ever dream of. It's time for Microsoft to stop supporting any devices with less than 4GB RAM on standard windows, but they can't as it would cause fragmentation due to many old low powered PC still being used today for a singular task in manufacturing line, mission critical stuff, etc. A great example would be Windows Aero (frosted glass UI) which is still buggy due to the existence of both Aero on and off as they are forced to support older hardware that cannot have this feature running

 

A great example is macOS. With Mojave, Apple dropped support for a lot of amcs because they were incapable of supporting Metal graphics API. In addition to that, mac users can enjoy consistent features across their devices like continuity, power nap, etc all of which requires fairly modern hardware from the last 5 years.

 

In a way, it's good thing phones need to change every 5 years today, because technology on phones move way faster than any other part of the tech industry. And it's easier for companies like Apple to enforce features that requires say biometrics, etc and wouldn't be bogged down by the limitations of their older devices. Same things applies to android.

[vanished]

16 minutes ago, RedRound2 said:

How does correcting something related to GPS be fixed with an app update? Yes, it's a fairly tiny flaw in OS design, but I'm pretty sure they didn't have that in the top of their head while designing the OS for those two phones until now

Because it is an app update, or at least it should be.  Same thing happened back when their calculator was having issues with taking inputs during animations causing it to miss keystrokes if they were too fast - it required a whole OS update to fix rather than just a patch to the calculator app.  That seems like a design flaw in iOS and how they do updates in general to me.

16 minutes ago, RedRound2 said:

Can't believe you actually compared a smartphone and a desktop PC. Mobile OS like iOS and Android evolve much faster than Windows could ever dream of. It's time for Microsoft to stop supporting any devices with less than 4GB RAM on standard windows, but they can't as it would cause fragmentation due to many old low powered PC still being used today for a singular task in manufacturing line, mission critical stuff, etc. A great example would be Windows Aero (frosted glass UI) which is still buggy due to the existence of both Aero on and off as they are forced to support older hardware that cannot have this feature running

 

A great example is macOS. With Mojave, Apple dropped support for a lot of amcs because they were incapable of supporting Metal graphics API. In addition to that, mac users can enjoy consistent features across their devices like continuity, power nap, etc all of which requires fairly modern hardware from the last 5 years.

 

In a way, it's good thing phones need to change every 5 years today, because technology on phones move way faster than any other part of the tech industry. And it's easier for companies like Apple to enforce features that requires say biometrics, etc and wouldn't be bogged down by the limitations of their older devices. Same things applies to android.

I did compare them because it's completely fair to.  What your describing would be terrible, we want mobile to get better, not desktop systems to get worse.  On desktop, hardware and software abstraction works as it should.  Applications are built for the OS, and the OS handles the hardware.  You don't have this full vertical integration that causes perfectly good hardware to be killed off for arbitrary software-related reasons.  That's my point, that that's something mobile would do well to pickup, but it won't because the current paradigm is better for making  people buy a new phone every few years.

[DrMacintosh]

12 hours ago, mr moose said:

This is funny because the iphone 4 and 5 were probably the last of the apple devices that could actually be used for this many years without issue.

What on earth are you (and the 7 people who agreed with you) talking about? 
 

Those old devices can barely run the last operating systems they were given and can’t really access any modern services. Their usability in 2019 entirely relies on the headphone jack and syncing music with iTunes to make them a glorified MP3 player. That’s all they can do these days. 
 

The 4-5 all also had their own hardware flaws that anyone who used them this long would have to have deal with at least twice. 

[DrMacintosh]

21 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

You don't have this full vertical integration that causes perfectly good hardware to be killed off for arbitrary software-related reasons.

If hardware can’t run the latest software....ending support for said hardware isn’t arbitrary then, is it? 

[vanished]

49 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

If hardware can’t run the latest software....ending support for said hardware isn’t arbitrary then, is it? 

In that case no, but that's not what's happened here at all (or in many cases tbh).  If there's some new program that's just too demanding or requires hardware features that are absent, that's one thing, but if it's just a security patch or a fix like this, or any other feature that could be supported, I'd rather that it was, and it shouldn't be considered amazing or magical if it is because on desktop, that's the norm.  It's only special because on mobile we've been conditioned to not expect it.

 

49 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

*snip*

Actually maybe you can answer something somewhat unrelated to the above.  I was so caught up in my theories and philosophy of what should and shouldn't be I missed a very real oddity staring me right in the face:

Quote

iPhone users still clinging to their seven-year-old iPhone 5 or eight-year-old iPhone 4S models need to update to the latest software this week, or risk losing access to GPS, email, iCloud, the App Store and other web services.

I get the GPS thing since that's the main story here - the time rollover thing, like Y2K but for phones - but how do you explain the rest?  Why on earth would a GPS time issue have anything to do with those other features!?  That seems like a far more serious design flaw than anything I've mentioned up to this point and also deserves some attention.

 

9 hours ago, Sauron said:

Have we learnt nothing from Y2K? Just use a 64bit unsigned integer and be done with it ffs

I suspect because the system was invented in the late 70s and this would have been considered obscene.  Referencing Y2K is very apt, it's the same reason that was even an issue - they didn't want to store the whole year because that was too expensive, so they just stored the last two digits.

 

The real question for me, and this is something that I've never seen answered, is if efficiency is so important, why code it in such a stupid manner?  Yes, two text digits takes less space than 4 text digits, but what's even better is a single digit used as an integer.  They could have coded years using an assumption of 1900+an unsigned 8 bit int, which would have lasted until mid 22nd century, all while using half as much as the 2 digits responsible for Y2K.  If anyone knows the reason behind this please let me know lol

[DrMacintosh]

1 minute ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

Why on earth would a GPS time issue have anything to do with those other features!?  That seems like a far more serious design flaw than anything I've mentioned up to this point and also deserves some attention.

I’m not a hardware/software engineer. I can only imagine GPS is used for the system clock in some way. If the clock can’t keep the correct time, it can’t access servers that have a requirement for an accurate clock. Things like the App Store and email. 
 

I guarantee that Apple isn’t the only one that’s going to have devices affected by this. Pretty much any mobile GPS device will get boned. 

[vanished]

Just now, DrMacintosh said:

I’m not a hardware/software engineer. I can only imagine GPS is used for the system clock in some way. If the clock can’t keep the correct time, it can’t access servers that have a requirement for an accurate clock. Things like the App Store and email. 
 

I guarantee that Apple isn’t the only one that’s going to have devices affected by this. Pretty much any mobile GPS device will get boned. 

I would expect clock issues to mess with those services, as described by @samcool55 earlier.  I just don't understand how GPS would be factored into that.  Maybe they use GPS to set the time, but you could just not do that and be fine.  Plus afaik many devices use the mobile network to get time, not GPS, so that doesn't really make sense either.

 

But yes, I'd expect other GPSes to have issues too if not updated.  This is an unfortunate leftover of an old design.

[mr moose]

8 hours ago, Sauron said:

Have we learnt nothing from Y2K? Just use a 64bit unsigned integer and be done with it ffs

I have a 4s a friend gave me and the battery is dead.

I would call that an issue, but I wouldn't call a battery (that you can replace) that wore out over a normal time frame for the technology and not an intrinsic  design flaw (undersized or glued in and locked to the OS) to be an issue.

8 hours ago, Froody129 said:

My 6s Plus is still functioning like a new phone. Only downside is the camera is dated compared to modern phones, but it's fine for me. If they're not dropped, phones can last a long time, especially with Apple seeming to actually care about older devices 

Only because the plus model got a bigger battery, the standard 6 was undersized and needed a software patch to throttle the processor to stop it shutting down too early.

 

35 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

What on earth are you (and the 7 people who agreed with you) talking about? 
 

Those old devices can barely run the last operating systems they were given and can’t really access any modern services. Their usability in 2019 entirely relies on the headphone jack and syncing music with iTunes to make them a glorified MP3 player. That’s all they can do these days. 
 

The 4-5 all also had their own hardware flaws that anyone who used them this long would have to have deal with at least twice. 

I am talking about hardware that is designed to last and not ballsed up designs with undersized batteries or irreplaceable parts.  I think it is fairly obvious what I was talking about.

[mr moose]

6 hours ago, RedRound2 said:

You just couldn't help yourself, could you? Any positive Apple news (however small it may be) you have to say something with no base or evidence whatsoever to colour the opinion of people who aren't as well informed as you and I.

Actually, it's just a fair opinion and several people clearly hold the same.  If it upsets you that others have opinions maybe you should avoid the forums.   No coloring, no need to get your jimmies rustled, you can just ignore it if you like or you can try post evidence as to why it's wrong.

 

 

[Curufinwe_wins]

22 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

I would expect clock issues to mess with those services, as described by @samcool55 earlier.  I just don't understand how GPS would be factored into that.  Maybe they use GPS to set the time, but you could just not do that and be fine.  Plus afaik many devices use the mobile network to get time, not GPS, so that doesn't really make sense either.

 

But yes, I'd expect other GPSes to have issues too if not updated.  This is an unfortunate leftover of an old design.

My impression from someone's update above was that GPS time (which is an extremely synchronized, carrier-agnostic time) is the ONLY internal reference clock available to these models. Thus any certificate date is going to be rejected as erroneous based on the internal clock. So the update is either fixing the rollover, or letting the device update its internal time via a different method.

 

No android device I am aware of today (or in the recent past) lacks the ability to use a different time source to set the internal device time, but some old 2012 articles talking about leap seconds seem to indicate that that wasnt always the case. Of course it could have been updated via software itself and still doesnt address that this issue was known 20 years ago at least, and should have been fixable at literally any moment apple wanted to since the launch of the device, so waiting until 3 months ago is stupid.

 

As mentioned before, I guess there was some justification to not relying on carrier time or internet time sufficiently long ago in the past, but I personally would have expected that era to have past long before 2011.

[Sauron]

53 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

The real question for me, and this is something that I've never seen answered, is if efficiency is so important, why code it in such a stupid manner?  Yes, two text digits takes less space than 4 text digits, but what's even better is a single digit used as an integer.

You're assuming the punch cards were written in binary, which was not always the case. ASCII didn't even exist when these date encoding conventions were established.

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

7 hours ago, RedRound2 said:

with no base or evidence whatsoever

You mean to tell me that bendgate, touch disease, the audio IC chips coming loose and the whole thing with Apple quietly slowing phones down after a year (because that was easier than spending just a little more on good batteries) are no base and that there is no evidence of any of those being a problem? 

 

7 hours ago, RedRound2 said:

And even the battery health hasn't gone below 80% because there was a free battery replacement program by Apple for the 6S 2 years ago.

Sure, but they wouldn't have had that program if it weren't for people suing them because their year-old phones were unexpectedly shutting down due to crappy batteries.  Can't really praise Apple for that.  If they had their way, you'd have paid the full price for that replacement.

 

[mr moose]

1 minute ago, Captain Chaos said:

You mean to tell me that bendgate, touch disease, the audio IC chips coming loose and the whole thing with Apple quietly slowing phones down after a year (because that was easier than spending just a little more on good batteries) are no base and that there is no evidence of any of those being a problem? 

 

Sure, but they wouldn't have had that program if it weren't for people suing them because their year-old phones were unexpectedly shutting down due to crappy batteries.  Can't really praise Apple for that.

 

 

the sad part about this discussion is that that all probably needed to be listed so because people keep pretending they never happened.

 

The worst part is apple wouldn't have had to replace batteries on the 6 if they designed it right from the beginning. Which is clearly the issue.  So pointing out that they did have a battery program is providing evidence for their shitty designs since after the 4/5.