I really didn’t expect that the first real rant here was going to feature Apple. The reality is that I have much bigger problems right now to rant about than this one. But this is somehow special because it feels a little bit like if a dear friend was doing something that you really don’t like, was betraying you and they keep doing it. I hope this end up changing.
Hey Apple!!!
It’s me, your loyal customer for more than 10 years.1 I just figure out that after updating some of my devices to the latest software you were offering on them, I just lost features in other older device. No, I don’t mean that I didn’t get any of the new and shining features on my old devices, but I lost features I already had.
I’ve updated to Safari 13 on my MBP and on my iPad. In the former one, I just updated Safari since I just need to keep working on macOS 10.14.6 for professional reasons and on my latter one I updated the whole OS to the last version of iPadOS 13.2.2.
However, my iPhone, an old 5s that is still working pretty well, can’t be updated beyond 12.4.2 because you decided that it isn’t worth supporting it with your last software. It’s fine and I totally understand that you could consider it a vintage model. The device has really pay off the investment I did on it and it’s still running strong after more than 5 years since it was released. In other words, I’m pretty much happy with it.
Yet… instead of not adding features to the Phone, you decided to remove them. I can no longer sync my phone with the rest of my devices. No tabs, no bookmarks, no passwords2 on Safari. It’s now an island, or rather someone left cast-away in an island with no contact from others.
It’s my understanding that it has been the core idea of Apple to add features to its devices, year after year until they are replaced for new device or they are not longer able to hold the last version of the software. However, I never thought that the core idea of Apple was to strip the devices of capabilities because they can no longer be updated.
This haven’t happened me one, but twice times, counting this one. First one was with Book app syncing on my old MBP 2011 —witch retired quite recently— and where I lost also the ability to sync book after I updated my iPad to the last version.
I recommend you to reconsider… and consider this on your future updates. Updates should not stripe devices of capabilities, they should always add them. Or at the very least not remove them.
This is filed as a bug because I’m assuming this has been a bug. Not only on the iCloud or iOS software, but in the core principles of Apple. Something isn’t working as at expected.
-
Yeah… I know that for you a customer of just 10 years is nothing, since you have a 50 years history and some of your customers are as old as that. ↩
-
I have to say that since I wrote this, bookmarks and I guess passwords, has synced again on my old phone. Still, tabs are not syncing, in one way or another, which is a feature lost. ↩