Why do Apple and Google give support for only a few years?

[Xeno.of.athens]

I use Android on my phone and it gets 4 years of system updates from Samsung and an additional 2 years of security updates, and Apple will give you, on average, 6 years of updates for iOS, MacOS, and other OSes that they offer. But Microsoft guarantees 10 years life cycle for each edition of Windows and usually offers upgrade from an old OS to a newer one. Why does Microsoft offer superior support? Surely Apple is rich enough to offer better.

 

[Wookiee]

It's a very wide combination of things, partially driven by greed.

In IT we have a software/hardware development software that feed into each other as a vicious cycle. When new hardware comes out, software companies want to take advantage of those features. So they jam as many features as they can justify that use that hardware. Similarly, when new software comes out, hardware companies need to produce accessible hardware with enough of their own features that can keep the symbiotic relationship going.

Then we also have the user-demand issue. Every time a company brings out [x] feature, every other company thinks they need to bring out that feature whether users actually want/need it or not. This is especially worse in the mobile world where everyone looks to Apple, Google and Samsung as the "innovators". To keep on top of these new software features, the new hardware has to come with it or the phone gets slowed down - computers suffer less from this because the hardware isn't as complex.

Finally. phones aren't really "built to last". You have a battery you're constantly using every day, screens that are getting wear and burn from being on all the time, storage limitations, app bloatedness. If you get 4 years out of a phone, you're doing well, but you're ultimately due for a new one, regardless of how well you take care of it. I've played around with custom Android builds designed to give "more life" to these phones. Between the battery, and obsolete hardware, you're essentially just keeping it on life support. That's just part of the modern world.

For the other side of this, Microsoft pushes a new version of Windows every couple of years and supports them for roughly 10, you're correct. But this is largely because of how much they're used for day-to-day stuff that can result in being open to vulnerabilities and viruses. It's a massive ecosystem, compared to the rectangle that you replace every few years. Yes, phones can be vulnerable to viruses, but there's less of an attack vector for them. Your computers are literally connected directly to other computers, file shares, and other things that will literally cause life to grind to a halt (at least corporately) if they die. Your little pocket rectangle, you just trash and go to the shop and buy another one.

As for MacOS, I'd have to look into the lifecycle, but one thing I will give Apple - their Mac hardware tends to survive for a while as long as it's taken care of. iPhones? Not so much.

 

[Xeno.of.athens]

If you get 4 years out of a phone, you're doing well, but you're ultimately due for a new one, regardless of how well you take care of it.

I paid double the cost of my Minipc with 32 GB RAM, 1TB SSD, and a healthy AMD Ryzen™ 9 5900HX for a Samsung S23 Ultra; admittedly the phone has fancy cameras and a fancy screen while the Minipc does not, but There is a lot in the Minipc that is more useful for me than is the case with the phone; yet the phone offers only 4 years of OS updates and 2 years of security updates after that while the Minipc has Windows 11 Pro which has a 10 year life cycle and will, without doubt include upgrades to Windows 12 and 13 when they are released. If the hardware for the Minipc lasts I could keep it going for 20 or more years but the phone will lose its battery within 5 years and even if replaced it will sink into obsolescence by 2029. Such is life nowadays; one pays top dollar for the phone and receive best service for the PC.

 

[Wookiee]

I paid double the cost of my Minipc with 32 GB RAM, 1TB SSD, and a healthy AMD Ryzen™ 9 5900HX for a Samsung S23 Ultra; admittedly the phone has fancy cameras and a fancy screen while the Minipc does not, but There is a lot in the Minipc that is more useful for me than is the case with the phone

Buy a very high res screen and cameras, factor in the costs of producing the miniature phone hardware... you're probably breaking even, if not ahead, with the phone.

yet the phone offers only 4 years of OS updates and 2 years of security updates after that while the Minipc has Windows 11 Pro which has a 10 year life cycle and will, without doubt include upgrades to Windows 12 and 13 when they are released.

You're still going to have dead components, processors lacking features that won't be supported by newer software (eg TPM2.0 required for Windows 11), hardware exploits, etc. Also the free upgrades from 7->10 and 10->11 is a very new Microsoft turnaround over the course of their history. We can't guarantee they'll stick with it.

If the hardware for the Minipc lasts I could keep it going for 20 or more years but the phone will lose its battery within 5 years and even if replaced it will sink into obsolescence by 2029. Such is life nowadays; one pays top dollar for the phone and receive best service for the PC.

Well... that's always been the way with technology. Even desktop computers. Just because your computer still works 15 years later, doesn't mean it's still appropriate depending on what software it's running and what you need it to do.

Actually, even thinking further about this, eventually the radio in your phone will be out of step with what your carrier will provide. In Australia we have 3G cells getting turned off to replace them with 5G. There'd still be a not insignificant amount of people with phones that don't support 5G. It's just what happens as technology progresses, the older stuff has to make room for it.

 

[Xeno.of.athens]

Actually, even thinking further about this, eventually the radio in your phone will be out of step with what your carrier will provide. In Australia we have 3G cells getting turned off to replace them with 5G. There'd still be a not insignificant amount of people with phones that don't support 5G. It's just what happens as technology progresses, the older stuff has to make room for it.

Isn't that also frustrating; to have 2G removed a while ago, now 3G will go, will 4G last? Samsung S23 Ultra does 5G and 3/4Gs too, but to have governments shut down parts of the spectrum - allegedly to make room for new services in the freed-up bandwidth - is annoying. Soon my ancient Nokia flip phone will be unusable as a phone!!!

 

[Wookiee]

Isn't that also frustrating; to have 2G removed a while ago, now 3G will go, will 4G last? Samsung S23 Ultra does 5G and 3/4Gs too, but to have governments shut down parts of the spectrum - allegedly to make room for new services in the freed-up bandwidth - is annoying. Soon ly ancient Nokia flip phone will be unusable as a phone!!!

As someone who has lived in a rural area my whole life, and is a sysadmin for an agricultural company that spans a large region including "middle of nowhere" kinds of places - this is actually a very good thing.

These places have farmers with literally no internet options. Shutting down older cells to allow for faster bandwidths and populating regions with more towers is a good thing. Until StarLink, satellite internet wasn't great and the difference between a working 4G connection or having StarLink to our 3G connections and/or other satellite providers is stark.

 

[Neostarwcc]

Phones are a lot different than desktops though. Microsoft providing 10 years of support for an OS is because usually, unless you're buying a $200 piece of junk from Walmart that shouldn't have the current operating system on it in the first place. Usually computers advance much faster and better than cell phones.



Like my tablet/phone I find my desktop needs to be upgraded every 4 years with my graphics card I upgrade every 1-2 years. This is because there are constantly newer and considerably better technology every 3-4 years and graphics cards get 2-3x better every year or two. I consider myself an idiot to not upgrade my desktop so frequently. Microsoft supports an os for 10 years because it's quite easy for them to do so. But again, Microsoft comes out with a new OS about every 3-4 years. So them supporting an os for 10 years is kind of stupid and too long imo. They just got rid of Windows 7 support not too long ago and the OS was FAR too old with Windows 10 for example being leaps and bounds better than 7. Both for security reasons and for support reasons. Most computers today would be a waste of money if they were using 6+ year old OS's.

But with the release of Windows 11 (and soon 12) Windows 10 is going the way of the dodo and most users are using w11 until 12 comes out sometime next year.


Phones on the other hand aren't advancing as fast as desktops. Many still use 4k displays which are now an almost 12 year old technology. 8k is the much newer technology which is getting more and more advanced with every passing year. It's just sad that phones are basically the same devices as they were in the early 2010s while desktops are leaps and bounds better than they were a decade ago. Cell phones got faster internet but that's about it. They got slightly larger screens but that's about it. They still stream music, have internet, and have the same basic features that they did I'm the 2000s. Just sad and I can see why cell phone companies don't want to support a cellphone for longer than 2 years. Especially when virtually no changes come out in that 2 year time frame.

 

[Wookiee]

Microsoft comes out with a new OS about every 3-4 years. So them supporting an os for 10 years is kind of stupid and too long imo. They just got rid of Windows 7 support not too long ago and the OS was FAR too old with Windows 10 for example being leaps and bounds better than 7. Both for security reasons and for support reasons. Most computers today would be a waste of money if they were using 6+ year old OS's.

But with the release of Windows 11 (and soon 12) Windows 10 is going the way of the dodo and most users are using w11 until 12 comes out sometime next year.

There's a tonne of business reasons not to upgrade. When you're supporting a lot of industrial software/hardware and/or in-house applications that are millions of dollars to replace, you're generally in favour of sticking with what works.

We had 4 computers we had to keep isolated (and still do for practical reasons) because they were attached to 4 machines that cost more than $10k each and had to run Windows 7, until we were able to upgrade everything last year.

End users, yes, should be replacing computers more often and upgrading to whatever the latest release is. But There are many business reasons that rely on keeping old versions of Windows, as sad as it is. Heck, we only 2 years ago got rid of a Server 2003 client because we were only just able to replace the critical piece of software we were keeping it for.