Not allowing downgrades is the biggest contributor to smartphones becoming e-waste.
Apple should be forced to do this by law, but only after they discontinue software support. If they're willing to continue making small, incremental patches when necessary (such as to fix this obvious bug) then it's fine that they can still block downgrades. But at EOL? They should be legally required to allow old software to be installed.
This also impacts software compatibility - any 64-bit device that is now EOL that got updated to iOS 11 or newer is forever barred from running 32-bit apps just because people are worried that someone might take that old device and downgrade it as an attack?
The average person should always stay updated to the latest version for security reasons. But the power users should be able to choose which version they run, at least on devices that aren't currently supported at all.
Daily reminder that the first two iPhones and the first iPod touch had zero firmware signing, and you could freely install any supported version at any time, and can still do so today. That being the case has probably harmed 0.00001% of people at most
I have heard many replace their phones due to dropping them and becoming unusable. But everyone uses a case now and the build quality is generally better that one mishap does trash the phone. Most people I know getting new phones now did so bc their old phone "got too slow to be usable." I believe that's a matter of new OS versions really are much heavier. Both my last 2 phones I had upgraded bc I went one version too far and had a nearly bricked phone.
Any phone that gets more support than it should have, such that the only OS you can install is too slow to make using the device enjoyable, makes it more likely for the device owner to throw that device out, and then it becomes e-waste.
It also harms software preservation. Sure, we have IPSWs for every single public build of iOS that exists (and if you dig around, probably a ton of betas and even internal builds). But you can't really do anything with any of them once you get to the point in the iOS product line where things were sufficiently hardened
Apple should be forced to do this by law, but only after they discontinue software support. If they're willing to continue making small, incremental patches when necessary (such as to fix this obvious bug) then it's fine that they can still block downgrades. But at EOL? They should be legally required to allow old software to be installed.
This also impacts software compatibility - any 64-bit device that is now EOL that got updated to iOS 11 or newer is forever barred from running 32-bit apps just because people are worried that someone might take that old device and downgrade it as an attack?
The average person should always stay updated to the latest version for security reasons. But the power users should be able to choose which version they run, at least on devices that aren't currently supported at all.
Daily reminder that the first two iPhones and the first iPod touch had zero firmware signing, and you could freely install any supported version at any time, and can still do so today. That being the case has probably harmed 0.00001% of people at most