Apple is damned if they do and damned if they don’t. If Apple decides a device is too slow to run a new major version of the OS, the decision will be condemned by people like u/jheriko. If Apple does let a 4 year old model run the new major release, people like u/gcb0 will complain that it’s slow.

Meanwhile, a three year old phone (iPhone 4) can run iOS 7 and run it well, albeit without fancy animations and parallax effect. I don’t know of any three year old Android phones that run Android 4.4.

Disclaimer: I think both platforms are shit in their own way. I prefer Android, though I actively hate it every day.

> I don’t know of any three year old Android phones that run Android 4.4.

I don't know either (not saying there aren't any). But the (lack of) support isn't Android vs. iOS. It's Apple vs Samsung vs Motorola vs Sony vs ...

For example i own Goog, err.. Motorola phone about as old as iPhone 4 and the most recent version it runs is 2.2 (AKA unusable crap). I use 2.3 via CM and there are 4.x builds available. On the other hand, Sony phones from 2011 (perhaps only some) received update to 4.1. This is just two manufacturers, out of many.

(i am not a fan of android at all and much prefer ios)

its trivial to solve. test the os update on old devices and don't push os updates to old phones if it destroys the user experience. i'm not going to condemn them for not ruining my user experience...

my issue is the fact that they change their tools and processes to make it impossible to support e.g. iPhone 1 if you want to. My app will run lovely on an iPhone 1 or 3G, but I can not make a version that runs on these phones as well as an iPhone 5. This is a choice, not a technical constraint or avoiding maintenance costs - I'm very sure its /more/ expensive to do this than not.

i'm fairly sure that its part of their strategy to encourage you to use the latest devices. lots of apple consumers seem to be aware that 'apple don't give a crap about you if you use their old stuff' - i've heard this opinion unprovoked from very un-tech-savvy types much more often than once.

if you work with the apple tech much yourself its an obvious recurring theme - they all but explicitly tell you not to support old devices and then do make it actually impossible beyond a certain point.

this is just not the case for android or even windows or any other platform/os except for perhaps games consoles which are special - if i want i can make an app run across all android versions and have one entry in google play and supporting old versions of windows is trivial work usually. apple have the worst ecosystem for this by miles and miles - nobody else comes close

...and actually old android phones do run 4.4 - you have to put it there manually perhaps, but this is at least possible. it actually has performance benefits on older phones too... which is how it should be. the fact that each ios release is significantly slower isn't down to new features or niceness its programmer sloppiness.