[HN Gopher] How iOS 15 makes apps launch faster
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       How iOS 15 makes apps launch faster
        
       Author : jshchnz
       Score  : 96 points
       Date   : 2021-07-05 19:42 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (medium.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (medium.com)
        
       | jtbayly wrote:
       | But only if you make your app incompatible with all older iOS
       | versions? Seems to me like not many people will benefit from
       | this.m for some time to come.
        
         | munk-a wrote:
         | As someone with a device locked on iOS 10 this makes me very
         | happy. I have a desktop computer I bought in 2008 which is
         | running Windows 10 and happy as a clam - and yet all my apple
         | devices from before 2018 are essentially now bricks.
        
           | jackson1442 wrote:
           | What model? iPhone 6S was released in 2015 and will be able
           | to run iOS 15.
        
           | edgeform wrote:
           | > before 2018 are essentially now bricks
           | 
           | Quit being overly antagonistic, you know this is hyperbole
           | because you are
           | 
           | > someone with a device locked on iOS 10
        
             | saurik wrote:
             | I feel like you think this means munk-a is merely refusing
             | to update past iOS 10, but there are devices that simply
             | can't. (The ones stuck specifically on iOS 10 forever are
             | the iPhone 5 and 5c.)
        
               | lilyball wrote:
               | iPhone 5 is 9 years old, iPhone 5C is 8.
        
               | munk-a wrote:
               | Oh sorry to clarify 2018 is when my partner got their
               | most recent Apple device which will be able to run this
               | update fine - our previous device is a Retina iPad from
               | 2012. Re-reading my wording yea, I can see how that read
               | as hyperbolic, sorry about that!
        
               | bingidingi wrote:
               | these devices are nearly 10 years old
        
               | extra88 wrote:
               | Claiming devices from before 2018 are essentially bricks
               | is still hyperbole because the iPhone 5c was released
               | long before that, 2013. The iPhone 6s, released in 2015,
               | will run iOS 15.
               | 
               | I think the original message was poorly worded, I think
               | they were imagining that devices that can't run iOS 15
               | would essentially be bricks because every app maker would
               | build their apps in this way that only works on iOS 15
               | devices. Of course, this will not happen. It has long
               | been the case that developers need to balance the
               | advantages of using techniques enabled in newer OS
               | versions against the advantage of supporting a wider
               | range of OS versions.
        
               | edgeform wrote:
               | Calling them 'essentially bricks' is calling them
               | functionless, which they are not.
               | 
               | The iPhone 5/5c was released nine years ago. I'm just not
               | crying for it. If your app dev isn't updating for iOS 15,
               | you're stuck with the old version anyway. Sorry your
               | decade-old device can't use the latest technology.
        
               | endemic wrote:
               | I wouldn't mind so much if I could have access to older
               | software that still runs on the device.
        
               | munk-a wrote:
               | This is a real problem for my device - I essentially
               | can't download any "new" software since the app store
               | only appears to make versions incompatible with the
               | newest OS available - and my device (a 2012 iPad 4 Retina
               | to be precise) refuses to update past iOS 10.3.3
        
           | busymom0 wrote:
           | > apple devices from before 2018 are essentially now bricks
           | 
           | That's not correct. My iPhone 6S is getting iOS 15 update
           | too.
        
             | shinycode wrote:
             | My iPad Pro from 2017 works like the first day, I wanted to
             | update but besides a nicer design there is not need to
             | update it's just super fast at everything
        
           | oarsinsync wrote:
           | My iPhone SE is from 2016 and is getting iOS 15.
           | 
           | What device do you have from 2017 that even shipped with iOS
           | 10?
        
           | tehnub wrote:
           | My iPad Air 2 will run IPadOS 15 and that was released in
           | 2014.
        
         | sond813 wrote:
         | There's also a linker flag that lets you use this format on
         | older OS versions. It seems to work (I tested as far back as
         | iOS 13.4.1) but couldn't find any documentation to guarantee it
         | won't cause issues
         | https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/683596
        
         | lilyball wrote:
         | That's always been true of these sorts of changes. But new apps
         | often target the latest OS, and it's common for existing apps
         | to target "current minus one", so it will only take a year or
         | two for existing maintained apps to start benefitting from
         | this.
        
       | can16358p wrote:
       | What about submitting Bitcode when uploading to App Store
       | Connect? Would it take advantage of the change and build an
       | optimized binary for iOS 15 while still supporting the old way on
       | pre-iOS 15 and deliver the appropriate binary upon download?
        
         | sond813 wrote:
         | The mach-o format supports a "fat binary" that contains
         | multiple architectures and then the App Store can only deliver
         | one of those architectures to a particular device. Bitcode lets
         | Apple recompile a different architecture slice using this
         | format. However, since this change is unrelated to the
         | architecture it can't take advantage of this format.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | dwighttk wrote:
       | I hope this works in my old iPad... I've been noticing quite a
       | bit of slowness these days
        
         | cheschire wrote:
         | Not sure which model you have but it looks like they're
         | supporting the same models as iPadOS 13 and 14
         | 
         | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPadOS_15#Supported_devices
        
       | br3n0_m4rqu3s09 wrote:
       | :(
        
       | nvr219 wrote:
       | Kind-of related because this article is on medium... Any downside
       | to me blocking `||accounts.google.com/gsi/iframe/select` via
       | ublock origin? Will this break my use of google drive or search
       | engine?
       | 
       | I hope not because I'm doing it anyway. Medium.com makes me barf.
       | Which is sad because it hosts some great content.
        
         | edgeform wrote:
         | It appears to be related to sign-in flow[1], but may not affect
         | signing in via Google.com or other Google-hosted services
         | directly. It's the API for "Sign in with Google", far as I can
         | tell here.
         | 
         | [1]: https://developers.google.com/identity/gsi/web
        
           | nvr219 wrote:
           | Thanks
        
         | the_duke wrote:
         | For medium I recommend just blocking Javascript.
         | 
         | No signup popups, fast loads.
        
         | cyral wrote:
         | The Sign in with Google dialog even shows for me, a logged in
         | user..
        
       | plorkyeran wrote:
       | Things like this make me wish that we could submit multiple
       | builds to the app store with different deployment targets and
       | have it install the highest supported one. They've made a few of
       | these runtime improvements over the last few years that could
       | make apps faster and smaller, but in practice very few of the
       | apps I have installed take advantage of them because they prefer
       | to maintain compatibility with older versions instead.
        
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       (page generated 2021-07-05 23:00 UTC)