Ask HN: How do you install not the latest iOS version?
I would like to change the minimum deployment target of my iOS app and update my testing device from iOS 13 to 14 (instead of 16).
How do other iOS developers handle it? I really don't want to rely on the iOS simulator. You cannot on real hardware; Apple stops signing old OSes and there’s nothing you can do. Even recent jailbreaks haven’t gotten around this. You can extend the signing period a bit by using delayOTA https://dhinakg.github.io/delayed-otas.html One way to work around Apple forcing you to upgrade to the latest version is to buy older devices that are no longer supported. The iPhone 7 for example can't be upgraded past iOS 15. Unfortunately for this strategy, Apple tend to drop support for several devices at once, so there's no device whose final version is iOS 14, for example. With that said, if you're desperate, you could get new-in-box old devices, assuming those devices can still be activated (not all can). That’s the neat part, you don’t. (Memes aside, keep old devices around and never update them. And while not useful to you something like Corellium can be useful to check things in a pinch.) “One does not _simply_ not install the latest iOS” -Boromir Biggest flaw of iOS in my experience, I have lost over $1000 in apps not operable due to iOS updates. The apps work fine on my older iOS version devices which have since died due to battery issues. I think it’s interesting how software has longevity expectations from some customers that physical products don’t have. How long is a dinner or drinks supposed to last before you buy another one? How long is your house supposed to last before you need to make repairs? How long is gasoline supposed to last before you buy more? Vacation? Movie tickets? Hotel rooms? Flights? Appliances? Clothes? Shoes? Furniture? Maybe ~10% of the things we buy can be “buy it for life” items. It seems like a lot of people want more longevity out of software than simple physical objects. Smartphones weren’t exactly mature 7-10 years ago and we all knew that. If it were me I’d just accept that I spent $1000 on software and got something out of it for the time being. Life is full of things that are fleeting. Are software consumables like food and gasoline? Do you throw away your entire house after 5 years? What about your books? Movies? Music? Photos? Art? You can take a 20 year old+ copy of Windows software that shipped on a CD-ROM in a paper box and it'll probably work just fine on Windows 10, maybe it needs some compatibility setting checked or absolute worst case an XP or 2000 VM. Meanwhile what do you do with an 8 year old iOS app? Hunt down old devices on eBay that you hope you can get working? I’m not saying there aren’t any products that last a lifetime, but it’s a lot less common than most people think. Houses are a great example. They absolutely crumble without constant maintenance. Water heater every 10 years, roof every 20, hardwood refinishing as needed, paint, GFCIs wear out, every type of appliance and HVAC item, repairing drywall, caulking bathrooms, and the list goes on and on. Physical media wears out. Book pages get sun and moisture damage, wear from use, discs rot, vinyls get damaged just by being played. Film and printed photos fade. In the case of textbooks and other non-fiction, information itself can become outdated. Sure, the advent of digital technology should mean data doesn’t suffer from the woes of the physical realm, but that’s not even really half of the discussion. Even those old boxed pieces of software, simply getting them to run usually isn’t always helpful. Is my tax software from 1999 going to have any functional purpose? Will I be able to get a job as a graphic designer anymore if my tools support 256 colors? If someone else made a better PDF than Acrobat Reader 1.0 would I have any desire to use the copy I already own? Another analogy: if I could be given a brand new classic car but it needed leaded gasoline and got 10 MPG, is the fact that it lasted a lifetime relevant to me for the purposes of daily driving? Basically, what I’m saying is that “surviving” and “maintaining value” are different things, and that putting things into the buckets of of “consumable” and “durable” good is a little too binary compared to the real world. Sure, the smartphone distribution model means that old applications aren’t as resilient as WIN32 apps, but that doesn’t automatically mean that the current model isn’t acceptably durable. I was just wishing today to install an old version of Garage Band that could run on an older Mac. But I don’t have it on a disc, and can’t see how to download old versions. Do you own Garageband on the Mac App Store? On the older Mac, download Garageband from the App Store's "purchased" page. You will be given an option to install the last compatible version. Note that you absolutely must do this from the purchased page of the App Store and not anywhere else! And can I run old Windows CE apps built on .Net Compact Framework on the latest greatest Microsoft produced phones? If you hit the windows button, maybe your new start menu will show you many ads about how to get the latest thing working :) Certainly some software is more like a book, while some is throw-away magazine type that is constantly being updated with no actual net progress in functionality (or backwards progress, like ads in the start menu). These really aren't comparable, and I try to squeeze as much life from my device as possible Side note: I lived in an apartment in a 400 year old building once, and once lived in a shared house that was 300 years old (both cases were in Germany). Both buildings were renovated and had repairs several times and in a very good condition, and living in them was a great pleasure. How long is a book that you bought supposed to last until the license expires and you have to buy it again? How long is a vinyl record that you bought supposed to last until the license expires and you have to buy it again? How long is a wedding ring supposed to last until it needs to be replaced? How long is my cast iron skillet supposed to work until it falls apart and I have to buy a new one? Wedding rings need to be cleaned, and some common materials like rose and white gold are not finishes that last forever. Many popular stones are actually quite easily damaged. Settings can loosen and stones can fall out. The mere act of playing a vinyl records damages it. It’s a terrible example. All my college textbooks are unacceptably outdated except for basic foundational math and science, but today’s kids are actually taught basic arithmetic in more effective ways than how I learned it. Even non-academic prose eventually needs to be translated or supplemented as vernacular changes. Religious texts come to mind: the Bible we know as the “King James Version” has been revised dozens of times. [1] Cast iron skillets are items that fall into that 10% category of “can actually last a few lifetimes” but as I mentioned in my original comment, my point is that this is a rarity. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_James_Version, footnote 96 Give the original text a try: https://www.originalbibles.com/the-original-king-james-bible... It’s decently readable, but archaic enough to be difficult to follow. Spellings like “yeere” instead of “year” are all over the place. And while this is 17th century text, you barely have to leave the 20th century to find prose that’s difficult to parse without updated language. Yes, physical things degrade over time, but they don't just vanish without a warning when you update your phone. Also, my grandparents had their rings until they died, my vinyl records from the 70ies play just fine and I have books from the 1950s that I would not deem outdated. The skillet will last for centuries maybe. On the other hand, some of my favorite apps just stopped working without any warning after using them for three or four years, just because I updated my iPad. In one case I lost some of my work, because I could not open the file format anymore. But of course time works differently for different objects, which is a main point of mine. Modern consumer non-business smartphones aren’t even 20 years old as a concept. Imagine getting an Apple II and expecting application compatibility with a Power Macintosh from the 90s. That’s the exact same timeframe we’re talking about in years, and that’s a massive change because computers weren’t all that mature as a technology in the 70s. Sure, it is bad that App Store distribution introduces this problem. I’m not saying it’s not bad. However, I’m doubtful that future OS changes from here on out will introduce as many incompatibilities as the ones that took place during the time when smartphones were changing chip architecture to 64-bit, implementing new concepts surrounding sensor and device permissions, and other more fundamental shifts that would affect app compatibility. On top of that, we’re also talking about a marketplace of apps with an average price of under a dollar. There’s a damn good argument for PEBKAC (or PEBPAC) if you manage to spend $1000 in the App Store in a lifetime. Zork still works, most software can certainly be ‘finished’ and requires no upgrades. One of the current issues with mobile development is that moore’s law has finished, so any update that hits performance is actually a step back. However, SWEs get paid based on deploys, so everyone has an incentive to get things in the final OS and slow down the phone. Oh well You could have a new battery installed. I can't. The screw won't come out. I've tried two different repair shops and none of them were able to remove one of the bottom screws to open the phone. If you really wanted to you could probably use a small drill bit and drill the screw out and then only use a single screw to secure the screen to the body. Screws can be carefully drilled out. Yes I’ve done this. Yes on an iPhone. Yes it ended happily. I've had to drill out a screw on a nexus 6 at home. That damn phone had somewhere north of 20 screws holding the back together. One got stripped and I drilled into it till the head came off and it was a post instead of a screw from then on. Repair shops just didn't want to bother. Find the one who with a dremel and people actually wanting your money. That's screwed up. I'm curious how you managed to spend $1000 on apps? Ha, I hope there is a museum in 100 years that has the original iphone with that app installed and running continuously until the end of time. Big app etite! There were some >800$ sound monitoring apps to do FFT analysis and data output. Enterprise I was under the impression the vast majority of enterprise software is either on a subscription, or you pay for it through their dashboard and then install the app, especially if the alternative means Apple takes a 30% cut. So you have apps that you paid real money for, but they haven't been updated in at least half a decade? Isn't it worrying that the developer doesn't care enough to check out their code, compile and resubmit? As a developer, I can tell you it usually isn't that simple. The vast majority of 10+ year old apps wouldn't compile with modern xcode, and even if they did they won't meet the stores requirements anymore. For a small app with a small userbase, the maintainance cost isnt worth it. Yea, of course it you update it once in 10 years it's a huge chore. But if you have an app that people actually pay money for, I think it's bad business to not spend the few hours a year to update it to the latest XCode. And if you don't care, just delist it from the store so people don't buy your abandonware. These apps worked fine, and were for specific types of measurements. They weren’t broken, they were finished. Apple just pulled the rug. Actually, everyone benefits except the consumers when this happens, because push comes to shove, they will just release a new one with the same price or as a SAAS. I totally see the benefit of windows in these situations. Many developers care enough to create an updated version ("v2") that users have to buy in order to use the app again. For reference, 90% of iOS users are on at least 15.5 https://gs.statcounter.com/ios-version-market-share/all/unit... How many users are actually on iOS 14 since every device that can run iOS 14 can run iOS 15? I’d say a good majority of the jailbreak community is still on iOS 14. Although XinaA15 and *ra1n allow people to jailbreak (on limited versions for the former) iOS 15, fakeroot (and more-so XinaA15’s jankyness) mean that if you’re looking for a stable, compatible jailbreak, iOS 14.x is the way to go. which is both a triumph and a tragedy I know it’s not directly relevant, but maybe consider dropping iOs 14. All devices that can run iOS 14 can also run iOS 15, and it’s much easier to find devices that run iOS 15 to test with. Any iPhone 6s, SE or 7 will do. Impossible from ios13->14 if you haven’t downloaded blobs already, and 14 isn’t being signed. The best you can do at the moment is to jailbreak and use futurerestore to go to slightly lower ios 16 beta versions Probably a bit late, but I think if you want to preserve an iOS version before updating, you have to back it up with the sync tool. At least that is how you do it when installing beta versions and want to rollback, if you don't have the backup, you're out of luck. the Simulator has improved a lot over recent years I've found. We couldn't use it for ages as accessing metal would cause it to crash, I noticed late last year this no longer happens, making it a viable solution for us again. You ask Apple for permission to do it because they are the owners of the device, not you. Their answer is no, and that's the end of that. You can get an old device, wait until it fills up with caches/logs/other opaque data that just can't be deleted for whatever reason, and updates will fail due to insufficient free space. Or just download a large file to the same effect probably Using few devices with old iOS. I'm currently running one device on 14.8.1, other on 15.X and third on latest.