Or get a newer phone? Or not do that, for that matter. As long as there's no major security issues and you don't feel a pressing need for hardware or software improvements not available on older models, why upgrade at all?
Why I can use my 12-year-old laptop with latest Linux kernel while a phone is not updated after <5 years? Maybe for you it's a good balance between repairability and novelty, but for me it's planned obsolescence harming the nature.
> As long as there's no major security issues and you don't feel a pressing need for hardware or software improvements not available on older models, why upgrade at all?
There are always major security issues. Look at how often they appear in browsers.
Phone hardware's been growing up considerably faster than PC hardware over the last decade-plus, I think, but you're right that planned obsolescence exists and there's a tradeoff.
For me, these are professional tools, and reliability therefore outweighs just about everything else in my consideration of what to use. Tools that don't reliably help me complete the task at hand are the wrong tools, no matter what their other virtues, and nothing else I've tried has been more reliable in that sense than Apple hardware - granted, I haven't had as good a time with the Touch Bar-era laptops, but even they have still been head and shoulders over any past or present Windows laptop I've tried, and I'm not even going to talk about my experience with Linux on laptops because I have enough problems today without attracting a crowd of angry partisans. And from what I hear about the M1 laptops, Apple seem to have gotten their act together, in any case.
Outside work, I still need the appliances I use in daily life to be reliable. Apple's phones aren't up to the standard I prefer, but they come closer to that than anything else I've tried, so they're what I prefer in that regard too. I would like it if they seemed likely to ever again make a phone that's comfortably sized for my hands, but nobody else does either, so that's life, I guess. It's a lot of why I learned how to repair my SEs and where to get parts for them. When it's no longer tenable for whatever reason to keep using them, I'll figure out what to do next. Probably that will be a newer iPhone, because I don't think it's likely anyone else will come along to compete on the combination of compatibility, reliability, and active concern for privacy that matters most to me. I think it would be great if someone did, though.
In any case, as I think we've both said in this conversation, there are tradeoffs, and these are mine. I generally assume that other people who talk here about using an iPhone have made that decision after a process of consideration not wholly dissimilar to mine, and that anyone regularly on Hacker News probably has a good sense of alternatives given how they're regularly discussed here.
> For me, these are professional tools, and reliability therefore outweighs just about everything else in my consideration of what to use.
Can't argue here, Apple is indeed the only choice in such case.
> and I'm not even going to talk about my experience with Linux on laptops because I have enough problems today without attracting a crowd of angry partisans.
I bet you did not use laptops designed for Linux and instead installed it on some Lenovo. I've been having solid experience with a laptop sold with preinstalled Linux. But Apple is still probably more solid.
> I don't think it's likely anyone else will come along to compete on the combination of compatibility, reliability, and active concern for privacy that matters most to me. I think it would be great if someone did, though.
I'll admit I haven't tried a laptop designed for Linux compatibility. It's a tempting thought, actually. But, and I realize this may sound absurd to some, I also have some very specific form factor and physical durability requirements for a laptop, namely that it fit into and withstand the stresses of the laptop sleeve built into a Lowepro Flipside 500 camera backpack.
Wildlife photography matters to me enough that I'd switch careers if I thought I could make it pay, which is sadly next to impossible. None of the equipment that backpack is built for does me any good if I leave it at home, and some of the best wildlife shots I've ever gotten have been on breaks at work. So a laptop has to be able to ride along, and I've never found anything but a Mac that can do so and still have a good enough spec for the work I do.
On the other hand, I expect to be taking on full-remote jobs for the foreseeable future, between my own preferences and the effect of the pandemic on the industry. So maybe I can think about going back to a satchel for carrying work equipment on the likely infrequent occasions when I need to be onsite somewhere, and that would let me relax the "thin and sturdy" requirement that's partly kept me on Macs for a while now.
I'll freely admit, there's a lot not to like about the MacOS UI. It would be nice to have a daily driver running KDE again, and not have Emacs be a second-class citizen in the windowing system.
