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Apple Faces $5 Million Lawsuit Over Allegedly Slowing the iPhone 4S With iOS 9 (mashable.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A $5 million lawsuit filed in New York federal court alleges that Apple's iOS 9 mobile operating software significantly slows down the iPhone 4S. According to the complaint: "The update significantly slowed down their iPhones and interfered with the normal usage of the device, leaving Plaintiff with a difficult choice: use a slow and buggy device that disrupts everyday life or spend hundreds of dollars to buy a new phone. Apple explicitly represented to the public that iOS 9 is compatible with and supports the iPhone 4S. And Apple failed to warn iPhone 4S owners that the update may or will interfere with the device's performance."
Compatibility with the baseband processor might be an issue since its firmware is usually upgraded at the same time and downgrades can be risky. The baseband is pretty scary really, a huge black box that runs underneath the regular phone OS and has total control over it. Also, it would be re-introducing security problems that were fixed in later iOS versions, which might come with its own liability problems. Plus, it would re-enable old jailbreaks that were fixed in the later versions.
That said, as a 4s user I think this complaint is overblown and is some lawyer looking for a big class action payday. I do turn off the superfluous animations however, so maybe it's partially my fault that I'm not being tremendously inconvenienced. I guess I'm mostly hoping that Apple doesn't stop supporting older versions of the iPhone. I have an original model iPhone as well and most apps on the app store no longer work, even if they aren't big 3D extravaganzas. They're simply compiled against a version of iOS that is too new for that old phone. Pretty annoying when a simple to-do list app won't even work because your phone is too old.
I read the internet for the articles.
The only graph you need to know about Android security
In case you don't want to click, it's a chart of percentage of in use android phones with a known vulnerability. And it's real bad for android.
Evidently people like the android model where a text message can pwn you... and you can't do anything about it because your update needs to go through your carrier and your manufacturer who both have incentives to make you buy a new phone.
It's not so much carrier but carrier tech. CDMA doesn't allow calls and data at the same time. GSM does.
Enough already with the "fragmentation" bullshit. It is a LOT easier to create an app that works well on the Android tablet my grandma bought in 2011 and on my fancy new Moto X than an app that works on an iPod Touch bought in 2011 and an iPhone 6 with retina.
Apple software and hardware is disposable and has a life expectancy of 4 years, if that. Meanwhile at the office we have a legacy piece of shit 20 years old VB5 application and it works on Windows 10.
lucm, indeed.