United Airlines Made Its App Stop Working On My Phone, And What This Says About How Broken The Mobile Tech Space Is
from the garbage-in-garbage-out? dept
This post isn't really about United Airlines, but let's start there because it's still due plenty of criticism.
One day my phone updated the United App. I forget if I had trusted it to auto-update, or if I'd manually accepted the update (which I usually do only after reviewing what's been changed in the new version), but in any case, suddenly I found that it wasn't working. I waited a few days to see if it was a transient problem, but it still wouldn't work. So I decided to uninstall and reinstall, and that's where I ran into a wall: it wouldn't download, because Google Play said the new version wasn't compatible with my phone.
Wait, what? It used to run just fine. So I tweeted at United, which first responded in a surprisingly condescending and unhelpful way.
Hi, Cathy. We try to keep up to date with the latest technology and apologize if this has caused you any inconvenience. ^BK
— United Airlines (@united) July 28, 2018
Sometime later I tweeted again, and this time the rep at least took the inquiry seriously. Apparently United had made the affirmative choice to stop supporting my Android version. And apparently it made this decision without actually telling anyone (like, any of their customers still running that version, who might not have updated if they knew they would have to BUY A NEW PHONE if they wanted to keep running it).
Ranting about this on Twitter then led to an interesting argument about what is actually wrong with this situation.
But let's not let United off the hook too soon. First, even if United were justified in ceasing to support an Android 4.x capable app, it should have clearly communicated this to the customers with 4.x phones. Perhaps we could have refused the update, but even if not, at least we would have known what happened and not wasted time troubleshooting. Plus we would have had some idea of how much United valued our business...
Second, one of the points raised in United's defense is that it is expensive to have to support older versions of software. True, but if United wants to pursue the business strategy of driving its customers to its app as a way of managing that relationship, then it will need to figure out how to budget for maintaining that relationship with all of its customers, or at least those whose business it wants to keep. If providing support for older phones is too expensive, then it should reconsider the business decision of driving everyone to the app in the first place. It shouldn't make customers subsidize this business decision by forcing them to invest in new equipment.
And then there was the third and most troubling point raised in United's defense, which is that Android 4.x is a ticking time bomb of hackable horror, and that any device still running it should be cast out of our lives as soon as possible. According to this argument, for United to continue to allow people to use their app on a 4.x Android device would be akin to malpractice, and possibly not even be allowed per their payment provider agreements.
At this point we'll stop talking to United, because the problem is no longer about them. Let's assume that the security researchers making this argument are right about the vulnerability of 4.x and its lack of support.
The reality is, THE PHONES STILL WORK. They dial calls. They surf the web. They show movies. Display ebooks. Give directions. Hold information. Sure, at some point the hardware will fail. But for those wrapped in good cases that have managed to avoid plunging into the bath, there's no reason they couldn't continue to chug on for years. Maybe even decades. In fact, the first thing to go may be the battery – although, thanks to them often not being removable, this failure would doom the rest of the device to becoming e-waste. But why should it be doomed to becoming e-waste a moment before it actually becomes an unusable thing? Today these phones are still usable, and people use them, because it is simply not viable for most people to spend several hundred dollars every few years to get a new one.
And yet, in this mobile ecosystem, they'll need to. Not only to keep running the software they depend on, but to be able to use the devices safely. The mere ability to function no longer is enough to delineate a working device from a non-working one. The difference between a working device and a piece of trash is what the OS manufacturer deems it. Because when it says it's done maintaining the OS, then the only proper place for a phone that runs it is a landfill.
It is neither economically nor environmentally sustainable for mobile phones to have such artificially short lifespans. "Your phone was released in 2013!" someone told me, as if I'd somehow excavated it from some ancient ruin and turned it on. It's a perfectly modern device (in fact, this particular phone in my possession came into use far more recently than 2013), still holds a reasonable charge, and is perfectly usable for all the things I use it for (well, except the United app...). So what do you mean that I can't use it? Or that any of the other millions if not billions of people in the world running Android 4.x phones can't use them?
There are lots of fingers to point in this unacceptable state of affairs. At app makers who refuse to support older OSes. At app makers who make us use apps at all, instead of mobile web applications, since one of the whole points of the Web in the first place was to make sure that information sharing would not be device- or OS-dependent. At carriers who bake the OS into their phones in such a way that we become dependent on them to allow us OS updates. At the OS manufacturers who release these systems into the wild with no intention of supporting them beyond just a few years. And to various legal regimes (I'm looking at you, copyright law…) that prevent third parties from stepping in to provide the support the OEM providers refuse to anymore. Obviously there are some tricky issues with having a maintenance aftermarket given concerns with authentication, etc., but we aren't even trying to solve them. We aren't doing anything at all, except damning the public to either throw good money after bad for new devices that will suffer the same premature fate, or to continue to walk around with insecure garbage in their pockets. And neither is ok.
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Filed Under: backward compatibility, mobile apps, transparency
Companies: united
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It is simply easier and cheaper to simply buy a new phone.
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It uses the Linux kernel, yes.
I'm not sure how that's Linux-specific. You really shouldn't be compiling programs from source on any OS if you're not technically savvy.
This article isn't about compiling an app from source. It's about installing it from the Google Play store.
The Google Play Store has absolutely nothing to do with common GNU/Linux package management solutions like apt, dnf, or pacman. It's more similar to the way Apple packages a program with all its required libraries. (There are ways of doing this on Linux, too, including Flatpak and Snap.)
Whoa there, buddy, WINE has absolutely nothing to do with what we're talking about. You're so far off the rails now that I'd swear I was talking to a bot, except there aren't any links in your post.
Nobody's talking about trying to run a Windows-native app on Linux. I have no idea why you're even bringing WINE up. Did you read the article? Have you ever even used Android? You seem very, very confused.
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Hey, I’m a bitter Windows Phone user and even I have no idea what that guy is going on about.
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He can be both.
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Installing Windows programs on famously user-friendly iPhones is, of course, a breeze.
Oh, wait.
Besides, you seem to have some 20 year old assumptions about Linux. Modern Linux is way, way more user-friendly than any version of Windows. For a home user, there is one, and only one, reason to stay on Windows: games. For anything else, Linux is so far ahead it's not even funny.
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Response to: Anonymous Coward on Sep 6th, 2018 @ 3:48pm
Second, Android has a Linux kernel and the userland and the rest are all that famous Google Java clone.
Java - write once, run anywhere. Right?
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"If you install any Linux distribution and then desire to install a program that did not come with the distribution you most likely will have problems"
Yeah, that "double click on the APT/RPM to install" is really hard compared to the "go to your software repo and click on the program you want" in most modern desktop distros.
Not that this has the slightest thing to do with the issue at hand, or even anything to do with Android, but the ignorant sure do love to spout nonsense about Linux...
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I think this misses the point, and it's an even bigger issue with the IoT: acceptable security changes over time.
So a device's ability to function safely on the Internet is tied to its ability to update to new secure software.
Unfortunately, United (and many other apps) delegate a lot of their security functions to the OS, and Android 4 has now had its security broken wide open.
It's the same reason why I've got an old PPC Mac Mini running that potentially can do just fine at browsing the web. Except it can't, because the web browsers it supports use a version of SSL/TLS that has been deprecated in modern web servers. And most parts of the Internet now require HTTPS to connect.
There's no easy solution to this problem; over time, network-based services using deprecated software will fail. But... as you point out, the up-side is that the phone will still work as a phone; you just won't be able to use it to manage a number of cloud-based services that people have come to depend on.
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Part of me wishes that items that are disposable should be taxed on the cost to recycle into a new item. We used to have 10 year warranties on things. Now we have 1 year.
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Re: Re: Reversed Causality?
If you're a handset manufacturer, planned obsolescence is a feature not a bug. You almost never see a release full version upgrade to a phone OS. All of the IoT manufacturers, including phone manufacturers are putting profits ahead of security. So eventually we're going to have an internet pandemic where such a large % of devices on the internet are vulnerable that the whole network comes crashing down. Imagine a DDOS where half the internet is hooked into the botnet.
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You can get a modern and (somewhat) secure browser for Mac OS X on PPC. It's called TenFourFox
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Response to: Anonymous Coward on Sep 6th, 2018 @ 3:52pm
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Re: Response to: Anonymous Coward on Sep 6th, 2018 @ 3:52pm
The costs (time, effort, money) to continue supporting older technology grows exponentially as new devices & versions are released.
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Re: tl;dr
Surely only linearly.
Geometrically, at most.
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No apps.
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Re: Windows phones?
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Re: Re: Windows phones?
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Idea
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Re: Idea
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The App Internet seems to make things far less secure then the older browser based Internet. What is more secure, a single properly patched browser with 100 bookmarks or 100 single use apps each with their own update schedule and policy? Plus it is a lot harder for the end user to set the privacy settings on a hundred apps vs 1 browser.
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I find that often times apps just perform a few of the more common functions, but you still have to go to the site to perform the more advanced tasks.
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That said, and I'm going to be very very blunt here, if using android 4.x or a rooted phone is in violation of terms with your payment provider, how the -bleep- do you manage to take payments over the web from a general computer that I, the end user, may or may not have root access to, and may have or have not granted any given program that level of access, at my whim?
Put another way, I'm verrrry sad to see this mess being what it is.
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An App for just about everything else
The text editor I use on Android is sub-par in contrast to the text editor I have for Windows. It doesn't have a spellchecker or HTML codes, nor will it highlight known word types. I haven't been able to find a text editor with these features.
Nor have I been able to find anything to convert web shortcuts for Windows Explorer into web shortcuts for Android, so that I can index them through (say) Dropbox or Google Backup and Sync (previously known as Google Drive).
The mouse controls for Android don't allow for reversing the left and right buttons (which is important to me, since I use computers left-handed), and last I checked (granted it was last year) there weren't any app offerings for a full-featured mouse controller that allowed for proper customization (e.g. using all five buttons and the four-way scroll wheel)
I've also not been able to get an autohotkey runtime library for Android, which would solve the above problem with the mouse.
So as Munroe observed about Rule 34 there are a lot of apps for all sorts of purposes, but often there's a conspicuous dearth of the specific apps we want.
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Walled app gardens are yin and yang but ultimately the owner of a device must be in charge - no carrier, no google, no apple. These are too powerful, along with the information potentially in them, to entrust to others with what we trust is our own, data and device.
The "mobile" world, while not completely beyond repair, is not on the right path and needs correction.
.. oh and United just sucks all around so perhaps you should just choose another provider. Really.
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The app gives far more control over things like presentation, data usage, and performance. With an app you also don't have to worry about supporting 12 different browsers and trying to force them to present your application the way you want them to.
The web browser is a very powerful tool for simply presenting information over the internet, but at the end of the day an application running natively is far better for many other purposes.
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Collecting as much infomation about the user as is possible.
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"The real reason most likely isn't security but that an app lets the company more easily gather data from the client's phone(personalized tracking device) then a website does."
This is exactly the reason. The overwhelming majority of websites that push you to use a mobile app instead of viewing the site in a web browser are offering an app that's literally just a glorified web browser designed to look at one specific website, one that also gives them much more data-harvesting capabilities about how you use their site.
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A computer generation is about 18 months. Any device that can surf the web is arguably a computer for these purposes. A human generation is about 25 years -- comparing the two, a 2013 phone in 2018 is equivalent to a 65-70 year old human.
If your phone has hit retirement age, why would anyone be surprised that it's time to retire it?
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Reverse that
Then I upgraded my phone. The add-free version, that I paid for, was no longer available. Wouldn't download on the new phone because of incompatible something. Only the "free" add driven app could be downloaded. But if I wanted to get rid of the adds, there was a "Premium" available via ongoing subscription. Deleted that and found something else.
But TWC had no problem taking my paid content away and selling it back to me!
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Re: Reverse that
My fourth-gen iPod Touch is running just fine.
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Re: Re: Reverse that
As it was, I had to run on on a Sunday to the nearest store that had the model I wanted. I actually can't perform my normal job duties without a smart phone anymore.
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It's Planned Obsolescence
Example time: I STILL have a Gen1 iPad. I still does everything I purchased it to do, but 3/4 of the apps, THAT I PAID FOR are "locked out" even though they work just fine there is an update available for a version of iOS that my device cannot support. The trouble first started when the Gen2 iPad hit store shelves, after a few iOS updates Apple stopped supporting Gen1 hardware, but before that even happened I was getting locked out of apps simply for not running right out and buying a new iPad. I actually have a service manual (PDF) that I paid a car manufacturer's legally licensed publisher for (the car in queston is a 1966 T-bird so it is 50ish years old and there is not a huge market for service manuals), then I had to pay another company (not Adobe) to use their PDF reader program(what you young whippersnappers call "an app") because it was the ONLY ONE capable of reading said PDF because of the embedded DRM, I ALSO had to pay the DRM manufacturer for a license for the DRM "key" for the app. SO I have a legal copy on my windows XP laptop (that started its life as a Windows ME laptop) and a legal copy on my Gen1 iPad (guess what one of the first apps to try and lock me out was, no the lockout didn't last long, letting the battery die cleared the cache), NOW IF I want to transfer it to say my phone, a new tablet, or a new computer I have to pay the same manufacturer for more "Licenses," then I have to pay the same app creator for a new version of the app, then I have to pay DRM creator for a new key... All things I have already purchased, all things that were not indicated when I bought the service manual. Now I can print as many hard copies as I want - There are no restrictions on printing hard copies, but the fine print in the updated license agreement (that you can't even access until you access the software and therefore must agree to in order to even see, since opening said software constitutes your acceptance of the agreement...) says that you agree NOT to scan the printed pages -or- use any means to create a new pdf containing any of the information, in whole or part, contained in said service manual. NOW the company that I bought my service manual through, well to put it nicely, they shut-up shop, more specifically their parent company and "publisher" decided they wanted out of that market for financial reasons, there is a different publishing company pimping the exact same service manual from 19bloody66, but for 12x (NOT Exaggerating) the price I originally paid, The company that encoded the DRM is out of business, the only company still in existance from the whole convoluted process is the pdf reader app, and last I checked the app stores hadn't updated any of their apps in over a year. So I have a legally obtained file, with only two "obsolete" devices that still function... decently... able to access the data, the original vendor no longer exists so I can't get a new license to transfer to a new piece of hardware, which qualifies as unnecessary replacements of items that still work that I can't afford, and a legal system that will brand me a criminal, smack me with fines and possibly jail time if I am caught attempting to circumvent a DRM that itself isn't even on the market anymore and whose registered creator isn't even around, they didn't get bought out, they got shut down. The only part of that convoluted DRM food chain still in existence is the PDF reader app's company... and they don't even support my Galaxy S6 smartphone (to the point I can't even download it from the PlayStore), because my phone is "too OLD"
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Re: It's Planned Obsolescence
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Re: Re: It's Planned Obsolescence
Are you sure you don't mean Granny from The Beverly Hillbillies?
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At app makers who make us use apps at all, instead of mobile web applications
Is this a thing? The only time I've seen this is in apps which are essentially flash browser games, which have rather significant practical issues to run on mobile devices (not to mention that if we want to talk about security nightmares, flash is actually the Devil). United certainly doesn't do this. (I guess technically many local applications do this e.g. notes, some calendars, calculators, but that's because they operate locally and therefore can't).
At app makers who refuse to support older OSes
While this example was certainly handled and communicated terribly, that's been the case in desktop programs for multiple decades so there isn't anything new here. Even most open source programs don't do this, so the interest really doesn't seem to be there. Honestly, you're four OS generations back and still have very high levels of support. I have an XP laptop somewhere whose hardware still works as well, but it gets no support at all. Of course if I actually wanted to use it, I'd update the OS for a large amount of money. Lucky you, with your free updates and all.
At the OS manufacturers who release these systems into the wild with no intention of supporting them beyond just a few years At carriers who bake the OS into their phones in such a way that we become dependent on them to allow us OS updates. that prevent third parties from stepping in to provide the support the OEM providers refuse to anymore
Ironically, none of these really apply that much in reality. Apple is extremely good at supporting older devices. Android is (mostly) open source and therefore has the support you want separate from carriers/OEMs. If you want to complain that said Android options are too complicated, that is just saying that the third parties that are stepping up to fix these issues aren't doing it well enough. And considering the difficulties Linux still has after so many decades, it seems likely that third parties just aren't all that interested in doing this.
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>And yet, in this mobile ecosystem, they'll need to."
So, root your phone and install a ROM with a newer version.
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For the average person, it's more of a hassle to learn how to root the phone than to just buy a new phone or do nothing.
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Follow that Link.
Near the top will be a link to supported devices.
Each support device will link to it's page which will have the directions needed to install for that device.
For the "average joe's": your mileage may vary depending on how well the device is supported, how well you can read&follow directions, and how hard the hardware manufacture made it to install custom OS's
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After-market distribution
Even LineageOS only supports a small subset of rather contemporary phones.
There are separate forks of LineageOS to support older phones:
https://legacyxperia.github.io/
https://www.unlegacy-android.org/projects/unlegacy-android/wik i
Contrast this to the situation with true open-source Linux distributions, that run on ANY PC that was manufactured in the last 20 years (some exceptions may apply: only a few distributions are still available for 32bit systems. But these ALSO feature the newest software).
In my opinion the manufacturers of the phones are to blame. They should support the newest Android on their phones for 10 years at least. Why the manufacturers? Because they are the ones that modify the basic Android to the point you have to have a special Android-distribution for their specific phone.
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Re: After-market distribution
They are to blame, but your proposed solution just makes us further dependent on them. Some of them won't be around in 10 years.
The solution is what you hinted at in your previous paragraph: make it so phones can run standard distributions. It's not that hard, they just have to quit locking the bootloader and including hardware that requires proprietary drivers. (To potential phone purchasers: make sure your phone is unlocked and is supported by some community distribution, even if you never plan to reflash it.)
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Re: Re: After-market distribution
All phones with Oreo-at-start are support Project Treble and MUST run regular AOSP.
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Because Cathy, I feel your pain. Until this July, I was using a "legacy" device from 2011, Motorola Droid RAZR. While the battery was not supposed to be user accessible, I did my research and successfully swapped out the battery, twice. I learned how to back-up, install a custom bootloader and flash a 5.x ROM and later 6.x ROM that developers had continued to work on for practice and enjoyment. Android is open source, just because official support has ended doesn't mean you are entirely at their mercy.
I couldn't afford a new phone, and my good ol' RAZR had plenty capable hardware to run the newer operating systems. Again, I did my research to make sure I understood the steps and that I found ROMS that were stable and met my needs. I literally could not afford to brick my device, so I was scared to take the plunge. It really wasn't that difficult, mostly just learning the lingo, and it extended the life of that phone quite a few years.
Most devices are more on the disposable side, especially since wireless carriers scaled back most of their subsidy programs that made people accustomed to getting a new device for free, or very cheap, every two years. People still want a new phone for cheap on a regular basis, so hardware quality lower.
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Re: tl;dr
LineageOS gets you farther; it supports up to Android v7 on my phone. But eventually, old phones reach a point where they don't support modern versions of Android, even if you're using a custom ROM.
Plus, rooting your phone and running a custom firmware (though I recommend it for users who are savvy enough to do it) doesn't solve the problem of arbitrary limitations on app compatibilities. You may even find some of your apps refusing to run because your phone is rooted.
About the only place you can get apps without risking some kind of malicious behavior is F-Droid -- and its selection is much more limited than Play's or Amazon's.
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Re: How does the average joe do this?
Why are people expected to be experts on their own computers?
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Re: Re: How does the average joe do this?
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The generally accepted solution (and YES there are problems with it, but the alternative is basically trashing that circa 2013 phone) is installing something like LineageOS (and YES non-techies... if they can read and then follow the directions they read, can install LineageOS on SOME phones, the ones that are well supported). The root problem comes from manufactures abandoning their products long before they reach effective/hardware end of life. There are a lot of things that would make this situation MUCH better but most of them are of a more technical nature and about the relationship between manufactures and the floss community.
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Open source is the answer
I understand this doesn't address the meat of the editorial, but it will as an end-result remove the immediate source of frustration.
Thanks for all you do.
Ehud
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Re: Open source is the answer
Yes I said nearly the same thing right above, this comment made me realize something else.
That is: In conjunction with (Possibly) installing LinegaeOS (or another F/LOSS alternative) I would recommend that any future phone purchases are bought with an eye for which projects support that phone.
I personally NEVER run stock, for many reasons, partly because updates are frequently slow, partly because both the phone manufacture and possibly the carrier can inject what ever code they want, and partly because LineageOS has MUCH better privacy/security settings than stock AOSP (the android google provides to phone manufactures).
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Re: Re: Open source is the answer
My own personal phone is a 4 year old Moto-G4. It runs Android 8.1.0 reliably, quickly, and solidy. The stock Moto [Lenovo] ROM is at 8.0 with security fixes from last year.
I don't know what Ms. Gellis is using for hardware, but if it's able to be upgraded, there's probably something there for it.
I agree as well that when purchasing a phone one of the PRIMARY CRITERION should be "can I put an FOSS version of Android on this?" If it's locked down, just pass on the phone. It may be the "best performer" today, but just like Ms. Gellis discovered, years later the lack of upgrades will leave it as an expensive monthly-billing doorstop.
Respectfully,
Ehud
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Re: Re: Open source is the answer
Not strictly true. The lead developer from CopperheadOS (Android security ROM) has said on reddit that AOSP is more secure/trustworthy than LineageOS.
Also, if your rom comes with carrier bloatware - you aren't running AOSP.
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The answer seems simple
It would roughly be like being upset that VHS players can't play DVDs. A pretty luddish rant against the march of technology combined with a sense of entitlement.
No one is saying you have to keep up, but you need to manage your expectations of what you think you're owed.
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Re: The answer seems simple
It's not a static system, and leaving your device alone (not making changes), is the same as ensuring that it will inevitably break (BTW I consider easily exploitable security holes as broken)
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Re: The answer seems simple
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Re: The answer seems simple
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Re: The answer seems simple
She already stated that she didn't deliberately update the app. She also stated that she just wanted to continue using the old version, or at least have ample warning that the app would no longer be available on that phone from the next update.
"It would roughly be like being upset that VHS players can't play DVDs"
No, it's really not. It's more like saying that you've just been told that your VCR will stop playing particular movies and you need to buy a DVD player in order to continue watching them.
It would be nice of you didn't misrepresent the arguments when responding to them.
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Re: The answer seems simple
However, I do have to thank you for lightening up a pretty rough day. The irony of your misunderstanding combined with a bad analogy and namecalling was actually amusing enough to make me chuckle.
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Oh Cathy, Honey...
...seriously though, while my initial response was to troll this comment thread relentlessly, I cannot in good faith do so, because, well, sadly, you bring up many many good points.
I first had the same issue 3 years ago when my working-perfectly-fine Uber app stopped working on my working-perfectly-fine but outdated iPhone.
Now having the same issue with my current phone. Slowly but surely, apps like Pokeman Go and Grindr are starting to spaz out, and/or not update properly nearby shirtless hunks. Surprisingly, Zynga's increasingly annoying Words With Friends still works. ...somehow, I guess desperation is actually the mother of invention, not necessity. Which brings me to my proto-point:
You want to say it. You're on the edge of the cliff, you are looking over, but for some unknown reason you fail to actually jump over and into Galt's Gulch. Why won't you just verbalize it?!
Here, I will do it for you: This is in effect a failure of unrestrained capitalism. If the self-proclaimed king of corporate concern trolls, Apple, cannot restrain its own greedy wasteful predilections, then what possible hope is there for Anarcho-Libertarianism?
The market is not responding. How can this be? Well, maybe, just maybe, the government should step in, and stop Apple from forcing everyone in it's sick twisted 'ecosystem' from implementing environmentally wasteful and/or just plain annoying corporate policies in the actual ecosystem.
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Re: Oh Cathy, Honey...
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Re: Re: Oh Cathy, Honey...
Monthy Pythons Flying Circus.
(sorry, couldn't resist)
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Re: Oh Cathy, Honey...
Yeah, opinion blogs tend to be filled with opinions and peoples' personal experience. Plus, nobody forces you to read any of the stories, let alone spend half an hour typing up a response.
"my initial response was to troll this comment thread relentlessly"
Nice for you to admit you're just an idiot for once.
Also, I love the way that you still go on an ignorant rant and try to make a story that's got nothing to do with Apple into something about them.
"Now having the same issue with my current phone"
Wait... so, you not only have the same experience but agree with her, yet you still felt the need to attack her and others for 7 paragraphs? What a strange, sad person you are.
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Re: Re: Oh Cathy, Honey...
You can agree with someone concerning the problem and disagree concerning the solution.
My only criticism, if you can call it that, is that the while the author correctly identifies the issues, she refuses to explicitly state the broken philosophical and economic ideas which led to these issues in the first place.
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It's the business model
Now part of the difficulty is that the technology has grown tremendously during its existence. A certain part of that growth required new hardware to keep up with the new software capabilities, and the reverse as well, new hardware capabilities paved the way for new software capabilities. In some instances one could add on a piece of hardware if it didn't already exist on their system. The reverse hasn't always been true. It wasn't always possible to just add some software as some of the new software required better hardware to run properly. Some guy named Moore made some projections about this process.
Back to my issue and the time frames involved. The industry grew and expected the market to keep up, or rather depended upon the market keeping up in order for them to survive. But in that process, some things got built that were good enough. It satisfies my needs, I don't need any more. But the industry, both hardware and software (and now outside companies) find ways to take it away...because they need the churn.
Looking at the automotive industry as a sort of parallel example, cars tend to be turned in after a certain amount of time. Yet there are decades old cars still on the road. Some of them for show purposes only, but others in daily use. The ability to update or repair a car or for that matter rebuild or restore one has been around...well since they were invented. The new tech is however a bit more complex, and the ability to repair or rebuild or restore isn't always made easy by the manufacturers, and in some instances is proactively blocked and discouraged.
So, for me, I understand the first ten or twenty years of the technology boom as needing a certain amount of churn as the capabilities, both hardware and software, needed more, and the change was rapid. Today there just isn't the same amount of growth that obsoletes either hardware or software, but the mindset of the industry has not changed. They still want the same churn. The market is beginning to resist, and will likely resist more in the future.
So the question becomes, when will the industry right size itself so that it can continue to exist yet still serve the market even if they want to hang onto their stuff, hardware and/or software, for more time? As pointed out in the article and several comments, not everyone can buy a new phone every two years, and the phones (or other hardware) should be eminently repairable by any Tom, Dick, or Henrietta. It should be built to last. It will die, and it will be replaced. But that should be on our terms, not theirs.
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If automakers made motorcars this way?
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Re:
Her app still worked. The phone still worked. There was no need to support the app. Everything was working. The RUP cycle had been completed. No more iterations were necessary.
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Re:
LOL - wth does that mean?
Lets see, you have to defrag after so many OS upgrades? - LOL Because it can not update the OS properly?
"lone holdouts that force every web dev to support some archaic versions of IE."
- Blame it on IE, why not? It used to be that the tech folks maintaining web sites would test their interfaces with all browsers while maintaining backward compatibility, apparently this has become too large and/or difficult a task.
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Re: Re:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_fragmentation
"Blame it on IE, why not?"
Indeed, why not? It was their refusal to stick to standards and try and force incompatible stuff on to developers that still haunts IT departments to this day. Some of them still have to support IE6, because not even MS wanted to continue supporting some of their harebrained ideas.
They have improved, but a lot of the headaches people still face today are directly down to what MS did with IE in the late 90s/early 00s.
"It used to be that the tech folks maintaining web sites would test their interfaces with all browsers while maintaining backward compatibility"
They still do, they just tend to ignore non-mainstream browsers with low usage in favour of the ones that a majority of their userbase will be using. Why spend 99% of your testing trying to get something to work with a browser less than 1% of your customers use, rather than just tell those people to change?
"apparently this has become too large and/or difficult a task"
Do you know how many different browsers and versions of those browsers there are? Of course it is. Unless you're using very basic HTML, you cannot write a site that will be modern enough for daily use today but still work on the first version of Netscape. So, they don't try, they say "upgrade to a new browser".
Would you rather be using a modern website, or one that can conform to before stylesheets were invented?
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Re: Re: Re:
A website should be able to degrade gracefully if a cosmetic feature like CSS is missing (though "modern" practice is to just ignore all that). In most cases I would prefer to use a "basic" site. If I'm checking whether a flight's on time, all I need is a list of flight numbers and times; if the page is more than a few kilobytes, something's gone wrong.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
Anyway, whatever your personal position, they are going to be testing for a subset of what 90% of their customers use more than they are going to be testing for older versions that few people still use.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Testing graceful degredation wouldn't be testing for that per se. It would also cover "unknown" situations, like maybe 2 years from now a browser adopts a really strict Javascript origin policy that stops your page from loading JS. Or your image host disappears, or some browser vendor decides not to pay an MPEG license, or someone's using assistive technology you didn't see before...
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Re: Re: Re:
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Re: tl;dr
Hi, web developer here. Your analogy is bad and you should feel bad.
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There is a trend here...
{Insert country music here}
"'cause United breaks their app"
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Oddly enough...
My 10 year old flip phone works. It dials calls. Holds information.
It doesn't do anything else, but I have a desktop for that. It runs Vista, it can still play Minecraft and Civilization IV, and still handles text editing, email, browsing. And as I locked it down when I got it, it has a smaller attack surface than Windows 10 does, even if the New Hotness is kept updated regularly where Vista is dead.
It doesn't have the beef to play Fallout IV or Civilization VI, but I have friends for that...
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Re: Oddly enough...
That is entirely irrelevant to the subject at hand, but THANK YOU for playing! Also did you happen to buy an antique chair at that time, because the Forum Of Irrelevant Has-Beens is calling your name.
E
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Re: Oddly enough...
So, you don't do anything on the move? Good for you, I suppose, but I always find it weird when people denigrate others for doing *more* with their tech than they do. If you found a way to get things done without needing the new tech, fine. Boasting that you have different needs to others, or simply do a lot lot less in life, is a little strange.
"It runs Vista"
So, you are boasting that you switched from XP but never wanted to install the update when they took Vista out of beta and rebranded it as 7? OK, whatever you fancy, I suppose, but you shouldn't be feeling proud that you decided to keep running the commercial test of a broken product. This makes it sound less like you opted to stay away from upgrades 10 years ago, and more like you were just too poor to buy the things you actually wanted or needed since that point.
"It doesn't have the beef to play Fallout IV or Civilization VI, but I have friends for that.."
So, it's not that you're proud to not want or need the newer tech, you're just proud that you can freeload it of others when you want it? OK, I guess.
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Re: Re: Oddly enough...
Cool story, but what does it have to do with the post you replied to? Nothing in there is close to "denigration" or "boasting".
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Software industry perspective
I work in the software industry, and have some insight into the thinking here. There are two main reasons for dropping support for older phones: (1) support costs, and (2) security changes.
It costs time and money to support older versions of phone OSes. You need to maintain test devices for each significant OS version, and each change needs to be tested on all versions to make sure it works consistently. If you look at Google's figures on Android OS version share, versions prior to 4.4 KitKat make up around 4.4% of all users and versions prior to 5.0 Lollipop make up 13% of all users.
If you're writing software, you've gotta make a decision about whether that bottom 4.4% / 13% of the market are worth chasing after. If they don't bring in any significant amount of revenue, they may not be worth the extra support cost.
On the security angle, the big thing here is TLS version support. Android versions prior to 5.0 Lollipop didn't have good (or any) support for TLS v1.2. The current security community opinion is that anything older than TLS v1.2 is considered to broken to use, and some industry regulations (e.g. PCI DSS) state that you cannot use older TLS versions.
There are possible workaround that allow TLS v1.2 to be used on older devices, but again this comes down to market share and support. Is that bottom 13% of the market really worth the effort?
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Re: Software industry perspective
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Re: Software industry perspective
This makes it extremely difficult to allow the OS to be upgraded, because the kernel cannot be upgraded independently of the drivers. Any change to the driver interface prevents the kernel from being updated.
It's only recently that Google have implemented their own Android HAL over the Linux kernel, which will help ensure that the OS can be updated independently. Not many devices support this yet, and it's only been available with Android 8.0 Oreo and newer, but it'll help to stop these devices from becoming obsolete in the future.
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Re: Re: Software industry perspective
Linus has much better support for old devices and open source drivers, to the extent that I can lug an old LaserJet 4 into a Raspberry Pi, via an USB to parallel adapter, install cups, and have it Available on the network.
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Re: Software industry perspective
I expect the phone manufacturers to support modern operating systems on their old phones.
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Re: It costs time and money to support older versions of phone O
Consider that the Linux kernel will run on an absolutely bewildering variety of hardware, both new and old. Instead of fighting that, why not take advantage of it?
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Re: It costs time and money to support older versions of phone O
For example, I recently installed LineageOS on my wife's old (unused) Samsung phone. The most recent firmware version from Samsung is Android 5.0.1. The version of LineageOS I installed was Android 8.1, which is only 1 version behind the latest.
The biggest problem is getting people to update their old phones in this way. It's quite a technical process, and if you don't know what you're doing there's a fair chance of turning your phone into a shiny paperweight. But if you can make your way through, it's definitely worth the effort.
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Apparently you've just now been affected by horrible software.
It's been industry standard procedure since mid-80s at least to cause and then ignore problems. They don't care. The money rolls in regardless. -- Why don't you SUE THEM?
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Re:
Apparently, the same logic making fun of old iconoclastic technophobes, such as yourself, can be applied to the author with such retorts as:
"Quit living in the past! Just get a new phone!"
Still, I wonder, given the complete lack of logical reasoning skills in most of the readership here, would anyone actually notice?
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Re:
What about people who fuck up their lives through phone calls?
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Re:
Please explain how living without apps will cause shit and frustration. How did the pilgrims survive? If you do not like apps - cool, but why can't others use them, why do you care?
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Re: Re:
Most of them died.
However, the larger point you are missing, is that the author had an app and a phone was working perfectly fine.
Then out of nowhere, without recourse, she was told "Nope! Girl you need to upgrade to another $1000 phone before you will allowed to use our shitty H1B coded Airline app."
Naturally, she was upset.
Arguments to the effect of "In my day if you wanted to use a phone you had to go to the segregated whites only General Store and pay 5 cents at the counter" are fun little tales but sadly miss the point entirely.
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How did the pilgrims survive?
Most of them died young of dysentery, influenza and tooth decay. They were also reduced to settling near fresh water sources, and were prone to famines during years with drought or bad winters.
Technology really is a wonderful thing, and I can confidently say technology as a monolithic entity, given the discoveries that propel bad technologies often also propel good ones, or they push each other forward.
As for United's app, backwards compatibility is a feature that historically generates customer loyalty, which is why (say) Microsoft Word is set up not only to import old word documents, but prior versions are kitted up with mods to import documents from more recent versions.
In this case United, which is a monopoly for a fuckton of commute lines, doesn't care. They don't care for the same reason they don't really care about bad publicity when an innocent person gets dragged of the flight to make a seat for a VIP: If you want to fly, you're probably going to have to fly United.
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Re: How did the pilgrims survive?
BINGO!
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Re: tl;dr
Stop living your life through your computer. I no longer have any sympathy for people whose computers fuck up their lives or cause them distress. There is a simple fix for that. Use a pocket calculator to do math. If you can't live without apps, well, accept the shit and frustration that goes along with that.
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an imperfect solution that can (maybe) work
Yeah I know united can block on the server side the older versions from working. But it's worth a try.
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Forced updates with awful arbitrary changes and bad, unalterable UX decisions are fun as well.
I finally got a device several years ago when they finally seemed worthwhile as a light computing platform with better reasons to use, but they still piss me off. Been long enough now that i am ready to root or replace the rom. App vendors... well that is another story. "We can't continue to support your device." Well, give me back the last version, which worked fine, you asshats.
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Here's the call for a solution.
Hi Cathy,
The Dutch digital watchdog Bits of Freedom has posted this article on the problem with update. You might find it interesting.
https://www.bof.nl/2018/06/27/12-much-needed-updates-for-security-updates/
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Service With A Smile!
Six months later Cingular was swallowed by AT&T. Once we got past the initial billing-scam games, I found the service adequate. I needed: A) to make and receive PHONE CALLS, and B) to exchange the occasional text with my daughter. No Internet required; I have two home PCs and a laptop to cover that. As technology progressed, I found I got by perfectly well without a phone that would walk the dog, do the dishes or undress the neighbour's wife-simultaneously. I laughed at fools spending hundreds and hundreds of dollars on the "latest" "smartphone", which of course became obsolete within a year. I went with this for nine years; suddenly one morning I found I had to go outside to the street, to be eaten by gnats as the sun came up, to obtain service.
Later that day AT&T very rudely confirmed what my tech-knowledge made me suspect: the corporate giant, with NO warning, decided to "upgrade" its system for 4G service--meaning the cell-tower 700 yards from my home no longer handled my old reliable 2G; the erstwhile service had been relegated to a tower probably ten miles away. A very smarmy, rude-ass power-drunk "customer service" animal
informed me that AT&T just couldn't remain "behind the times, just for (my name used here, in third-person)". I told them they should give me a free upgrade to a compatible device; she emphatically told me "AT&T doesn't give free phones away to ANYone!" I responded acknowledging the fact that AT&T had unilaterally decided to stop our 9-year old business arrangement, so as such I would be immediately switching to another carrier (Verizon), and they needn't bother sending me a final bill; I would not be paying anything toward an expired business arrangement. The customer-disservice animal attempted to reply as I hung up my friend's updated AT&T smart-phone.
Verizon promised my home-cellphone delivery in 48 hours; it arrived in 24. My 3G was immediately activated, replete with all kinds of bells & whistles I don't really need, but they are there anyway. Verizon verbally committed to no future planned-obsolescence; that was exactly three years ago. Flip-phone, minimal cost, that makes and receives PHONE CALLS, and the text works fine for my daughter & me. It does access Internet even, after a fashion, but it feels almost abusive to do so. Among other features it has a world clock, a "tip calculator", a camera & photo storage crammed full with pix of my beautiful granddaughter (all of which I have also easily sent to my two primary e-mail accounts). Hell, it probably can walk the dog and/or wash the dishes, I just haven't explored it that far yet. Service is $5 per month cheaper than AT&T. I have the same phone number I have had since landline service was initiated in 1998.
A slobbering AT&T rep did contact me the beginning of the following week, all over herself apologizing and offering to ship me a free upgrade-phone overnight. I told her, sorry, too little too late. If they had no more respect than that for me after nine years, I could certainly return the sentiment.
Oh yeah, AT&T did forward my final bill to a collection agency, the lowest of scum by definition. That was bounced around to at least half a dozen other scum-agencies, before it disappeared. Every time one of these clown-cars would deposit something on my credit report, I informed the credit agency in question that AT&T had unilaterally chosen to end the 9-year business arrangement, therefore the account was no longer valid. Worked like a charm every time! No dings on my credit, and as I told AT&T three or four times, AT&T can go fuck itself.
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Re: Service With A Smile!
Really? Because I've found that I can't live anymore without that last feature. ;)
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Re: Re: Service With A Smile!
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Re: Service With A Smile!
To your point, AT&T decided (rightly so) that their legacy GSM network was too inefficient and decided to transition to 3G/LTE. Granted, there should have been more communication from AT&T about the customer impact and more efforts made to mitigate said impact. However, this is a trend that's occurring worldwide. An example is the current deployment of VoLTE (voice over LTE) and Wireless Calling. Heck, even some carriers have LTE-capable flip phones. Soon, 5G networks will be commonplace and all the legacy 2G/3G networks will be decommissioned. Would I have the right to get all bent up and demand my carrier give me a 5G phone? Absolutely not.
Technology must evolve or it becomes stagnant and its users become vulnerable to security and performance issues that inevitably crop up. That means that most devices WILL have to be replaced. A case can be made about how "unfair" it is, but such changes are inevitable, given how our understanding of technology improves.
When 5G becomes mainstream and more networks transition to it, I'm going to have to shell out more money for a new iPhone. Am I relishing it? No, but I recognise that I'll have to do it eventually.
Many may not agree with my statement here, but change is a fact of life.
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You should thank them
So let's look at blame here.
United is actually doing the right thing. It's not just about saving costs (though that is a factor), but about not wanting their customers connecting to the their service from a device is more likely compromised than not.
That brings us to Google. You could argue Google should still be supporting 4.x Android. Their decision to move on was, again, only partly driven by costs. Android 4.x is in that space where they can't update anything without carrier permission, and carriers have notoriously dragged their feet in this area. Each later version of Android has added been more modular and allowed Google to update more of the device without passing through the carrier gateway. Android 5.0 is also not safe, but last I checked 5.1 was okay, and it was released in 2014.
It's hard to entirely blame the carriers here, either. They're the ones usually left holding the bag when an update doesn't work on an end user device. For them, holding back updates is about not breaking things on their network. Also about selling new phones with new contracts, but again, that's not the whole picture.
So we're left the phone makers. The Samsung's, HTCs, and Motorola's of the world. Why don't they push more OS updates to devices? And that's a good question. This is largely about costs. And also about planned obsolescence. But it's also about how hardware capabilities advance in lock-step with software demands, and how the later software releases are often designed to take advantage of features only available in newer chips. Really, though, I think this group is holding the largest part of the blame.
But Android 4? Really? And you call yourself a journalist? If you're serious about your craft, you ought to at least be on Marshmallow.
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Re: You should thank them
The first version of Android 4 is late 2011 and there have been some serious security concerns since there that were addressed. A lot of the functionality of the app is likely on their actual website too, so you may still be able to do a lot of what you have been doing on your device, just via a web browser (though again, on an older browser on Android 4).
For stuff such as non-commerce apps such as games or basic functionality utilities it can be frustrating to lose support for a device, especially if it is an update that disables it with no way to roll back. But for a payment terminal for a company, unfortunately you have to accept that they are going to do periodic security updates because they absolutely do not want any liability for security breaches resulting in supporting old infrastructure with known security issues.
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Re: Re: You should thank them
How is that strange? Did the Pharaoh announce to the slaves they would be building his pyramid?
Apple employees are much too important to be bothered with such things. When they want you to know something, they will announce it at their annual cult meeting.
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Re: Re: Re: You should thank them
It does illustrate how interested in the actual conversation you are, however.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: You should thank them
...and by Google, I of course mean Apple.
Hey, it's nearly 5:30pm on a Friday, I'm entitled to be distracted!
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: You should thank them
> "It is somewhat strange that the download does not warn you about needing to upgrade"
How is that strange? Did the Emperor of India announce to the Dalit slaves that they would be building the Taj Mahal?
Google employees are much too important to be bothered with such things. Sundar Pichai is like a God. A God doesn't speak to mortals directly. If you have questions perhaps you can channel his spirit through one of his emissaries at the Google customer self-service portals.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: You should thank them
So... why then did you say this?
"Apple employees are much too important to be bothered with such things"
What about other phone and OS manufacturers, are they all like this or is there one you approve of?
Not to mention that Google probably have very little to do with the upgrade path of the device that Cathy is talking about. It's more likely that she's running a device with bespoke addons that Google don't control that the manufacturer opted not to upgrade than it is an issue with stock Android. Ironically, had Apple been the target of the article, your comment would have made more sense than it does now.
Not only did you decide to attack the wrong company in your comment, your comment is nonsense even if you had targeted the correct one!
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: You should thank them
Now that Steve Jobs is dead, there is very little difference between the two companies, and is exactly why they can be used interchangeably.
Both companies employee a small, delusional self important teams which come up with use cases, user interfaces, and entire ecosystems out of thin air, with little to nothing to do with how people actually use or want to use their products.
>"What about other phone and OS manufacturers, are they all like this or is there one you approve of?"
Grrrrrrl Please! Like what?! Ubuntu Phones? Windows OS? You are seriously delusional, or perhaps you are experiencing a Mandela Effect.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: You should thank them
At least you admit you attacked the wrong people.
"Both companies employee a small, delusional self important teams which come up with use cases, user interfaces, and entire ecosystems out of thin air, with little to nothing to do with how people actually use or want to use their products"
So, that's why they revolutionised a market with little competition and dominated it within a few years of launch...
"Grrrrrrl Please! Like what?! Ubuntu Phones? Windows OS"
Yes, among others. So, are you saying you would not have the same criticism of those existing competitors, or that you only criticise the dominant players?
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Re: Re: Re: You should thank them
Certainly you are not including the slaves in china building iphones.
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If they did thryd stop sexually molesting children in the aircraft toilets, authorizing staff to punch peoplecin the face (and issuing those staff with promotions and pay ruses once 'thd heat is off').
Who knows they MIGHT want to reconsider hiring convicted terrorists and murderers and bank robbers because background checks are 'too expensive'
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Android also does not natively support downloading older versions of software as far as I am aware, so the only real way to safely maintain older, working software is to root the phone and install advanced backup software so you can save the actual APKs.
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Humbug!!
If you are a working adult you probably rely on your phone. But the industry's nonchalant handling of updates implies they have a different view of the situation, one that sacrifices utility and security for convenience. It's as if nobody needs a phone for anything other than playing games or looking at Facebook.
This disjuncture between our needs and the industry's offerings seems insurmountable. The entire industry is geared towards entertainment and profit.
I feel like throwing my phone away but I won't. Health reasons require I keep it. I'm concerned that installing a different OS may affect the phone function.
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If it ain't broke, don't fix it
This holds doubly and triply true for software updates. There are countless stories on the web, and on this site, about how an update (usually Windows) broke someone's computer or forced an app to stop working or whatever else. Okay, sure, the company usually fixes the update within a day or 2, but that doesn't help anyone who has a dead computer right now.
Yes, I know software updates include security patches, but each person should weigh the risks: is there a higher change that a "remote user could exploit a vulnerability in a Windows ocx file" (or however Microsoft puts it) or there a higher chance that the update could break something?
As an example, I don't remember the last time I installed Windows 7 updates. But the last time I did it, Windows started displaying the menus on the left instead of the right. It took me 2 hours to figure out how to search Google to even get a usable answer.
(The solution was that the Windows update read my Intous tablet as a pen input device and decided to set all the menus to display on the left for no reason. There's an option in the Pen & Tablet Control Panel to set the direction of the menus.)
Anyway, United should follow the lead of Chrome, Firefox, and other companies and make their software use more and more system resources so that users are forced into getting newer hardware just to keep up. Then United could put out the usual press release saying "For a better user experience, please use the latest phone." Then it's not their fault people are still using older phones. /s
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Old Versions
Stuff improves, things change, companies want to do things they can't do if their software must support ageing system software.
The real problem is phone makers who make the affirmative decision to stop upgrading most phones' software after two years of production. Even if the older phones are still perfectly capable of running updated software.
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Re: Old Versions
A phone with an OS released in 2013 that was supported through 2017 isn't really analogous to a desktop with an OS released in 1995 that was supported through 2001.
If you want to compare a phone to a desktop, this would be a little more akin to a current Windows program not running on Windows Vista.
Except that there are still very significant differences between the two situations. For starters, phone apps are often just stripped-down websites. There's no technical reason why a standards-compliant website shouldn't run in a standards-compliant browser. Is the United app using HTML or CSS features that weren't present in the last supported version of Chrome for Android v4? I doubt it.
Second: on a Windows desktop, you would not expect a program to automatically update itself into an unusable state, without any option for acquiring and reinstalling the previous, working version.
(Sadly, that is now a common problem on Macs.)
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Old system support
The habit of backwards (and forewards) comparability, I think, comes from the position of serving businesses. From my years doing tech support, I remember any half-working system that might be turned into a web-browser terminal or a data-entry station would.
As such Microsoft (and IBM and Digital Research) all worked to make their stuff as interconnectable and interchangeable as possible.
The consequences for not doing so was readily evident. Either businesses would not upgrade for fear of destabilizing their working (if poorly so) system, or they'd upgrade, and resort to pirating OSes and productivity software when they couldn't afford the extra expense updating everything simultaneously.
It was definitely in the best interest of operating system and productivity software providers to make everything work with everything else, even when nothing is using the same version.
Android and OSx were both made with home systems in mind, with the notion that no IT person would be available to fix incompatibilities, as such it does a lot of automatic updating leaving to app providers to do the technical legwork.
The risk is they don't always, but the gamble is that automatic maintenance will solve more problems than a lack of maintenance, since non-IT savvy users will happily let their systems go unmaintained until it dies from insecurity, fragmentation, register decay or whatever.
And yes, it seems some companies are using these effects as built-in obsolescence. Heck, iPhones were intentionally slowing down to encourage their parishioners to upgrade to latest models. Also, I think that's part of the Win10 model is to use mandated OS updates to push hardware and software updates to retain compatibility.
My own bank continues to struggle with providing an app (through which I deposit checks) that is compatible with my phone and my tablet, or stays consistent with my phone.
As such I've ended up on long protracted calls to Customer Service where they don't know what's going on either. It's gotten better, slowly: I haven't had to make such a call for months now.
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Re: Old system support
I don't have an issue with automatic app updates in principle.
I do have a problem with an app auto-updating to a version that's not supported in the current environment. I also have a problem with old versions of apps getting memory-holed so that it's impossible to manually reinstall an earlier version.
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Re: Re: Old Versions
Per conversation elsewhere in these comments, it's probably using TLS 1.2 or later, which wasn't (necessarily?) supported on 4.x Android versions. So not HTML or CSS features, but a HTTP(S) feature.
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Re: Old Versions
And MSDOS 6 ones as well, complete with green screen monitor.
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I have an older system, which still has XP on it. I've heard all the arguments about it being insecure, but it still works and I don't have a spare $500+ to buy a new system right now. Recently, Google's stupid recaptcha stopped working for me in both the older version of Firefox that I use and the latest version of Palemoon available for XP. This had the effect of locking me out of certain websites. Other captchas work fine, but recaptcha has been a PITA for quite some time now. Even when it works, you have to go through about 6-7 challenges before it accepts your answers.
I ended up downloading a copy of Opera, which for now seems to work OK. I don't like it as an everyday browser though.
"Just get a new computer!" My friend has Windows 10 and he's always having problems with it. Besides not being able to run the latest software, I have less trouble with XP than he has with Win10. I could get a refurbished Win7 system, but MS will be dropping support for that in a couple years and then all the software authors will start abandoning it a few years after that. :(
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updates
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New information
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United App on Android 5.0.1
Hi,
On Monday March 18th the United app on my Samsung S4 (Android 5.0.1) stopped working after an update. When I attempt to use the app it starts and then immediately shuts down with the message: "Unfortunately, United Airlines has stopped."
I uninstalled the app and reinstalled four different times. I have also downloaded and installed a previous version of the app two different times. The previous version won't start either, with a message something to the affect... United Airlines not available. (From what I read the current app should work with the 5.0 Android.)
I spoke with customer support last Friday and to date I have no new information. And, after an automatic update last night the app is still toast.
What a waste.
Anyone else experience something similar?
Jeff
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