deepflame the thing is I already rolled back to 17.1.1 and I just want to stay here. If I update to 17.4, I’ll not be able to go back anymore.

      15 days later

      twomee yep, it’s very likely that once dithering is introduced in an iOS “small update” version, it will continue to stay there until there is a “big update” aka iOS 18.0 coming up. Sorry that the ipad is not usable for you now.

        I had similar problems with versions of iOS 15 and iOS 16 causing the same issues. I summarized it here in this post.

        https://ledstrain.org/d/2683-severe-symptoms-updating-old-iphone-started-a-summary-of-goodbad-versions

        Please e-mail Apple Support and Apple Accessibility about this. https://support.apple.com/en-euro/111749

        I sent them everything I posted here. Didn't really get an "actionable" response from them but did get a few responses saying they would get this information to the appropriate teams at Apple. Not sure what will come of it but the more people they hear from the better.

        The fact that a simple software update can make previously "good" devices unusable gives me a little hope that maybe it would be a easy fix for Apple to offer a setting to turn off whatever has been introduced in the software.

        I contacted Apple many times about this, and they don’t seem to have a concrete reply on this topic. They say that they’ll be looking into it, but that’s all you get.

        iOS 14 and earlier versions are the ones that people can definitely use. Starting from iOS 15, they introduced something which I believe that is temporary dithering. The symptoms are very strong with some certain colors, which further reinforces my thought (colors that the panel cannot display properly without dithering).

        We need customer protection organization in this matter. We cannot just send email individually to Apple and expect them to resolve it. They never will.

        3 months later

        The iOS 18 beta version is out. Has anyone tried it to see if there’s any eyestrain?

        From my experience, if it’s anything like the previous iOS versions, then the first iterations (eg 18.0, 18.1) should be easier on the eyes than later ones. But this is never guaranteed; eyestrain can just appear since the very first iteration.

        It’s a very risky thing to update iOS nowadays.

          my iOS 14.x device is starting to drop support for many apps I used. I am going to have to upgrade eventually and it really bums me out. I can't find any information of apple utilizing a truly 10 bit display any time soon for their iPhones. The only display technology I have seen in the pipeline is a way to focus the light from the pixels to make the display appear brighter which will also save battery life. None of that likely helps any of us. Hopefully one of these days, they will finally use a true 10 bit display. Chips are getting more powerful.

            I think Apple forces developers to use a minimum SDK version, a requirement which is steadily increased over time until apps no longer work on devices with old firmwares. It is a pure software requirement. At least that's how I understood it, but even if this reason is slightly wrong in the end what matters is that if you don't update the OS, eventually new apps and even new app versions won't work on the device anymore. This is the biggest reason I don't buy such devices anymore. I can still use my old 2016 Android 7 device with the latest apps. Perhaps some of them won't work anymore one day if the Android app developer ever decides to drop support for older Android versions due to some new Java features that he wants his app to use but that are missing from older Java Runtime Environments, but at least no one forces him to do so. That said, I have seen some apps drop Android 6 support recently. So in the end it's a matter of time, but the time window on iOS is especially short.

              KM i can still technically set minimum version to iOS 12 (here's an example of someone else's app i found that launched this year with 12.0 minimum version) but the issue is a lot of popular frameworks devs use already force minimum versions

              in addition to that, one of the biggest flaws with iOS itself is tying the browser version to the OS version. if your app has any screens or links to any pages that are powered by certain 2020s era web frameworks, they basically can only run on iOS 14/15 and up. whereas on android, Android 5 got browser updates all the way to 2021 and can actually run those same modern websites that can't even load on iOS 13. i ran into this issue myself and had to set my minimum version to 14.0 for the time being

              (for example, sure, my iPad mini 2 technically got 6 years of software updates from iOS 7 to iOS 12. on the other hand, my 1st gen Moto G i bought for $80 the same year only got 1 update from Android 4 to 5.

              yet, in reality, my iPad is next to useless now as it's forever stuck on a 2018 browser version. many pages simply appear as a white screen. meanwhile, my Moto G stuck on a 2014 Android version can still load and interact with modern websites through a 2021 version of Chrome although obviously it's very slow)

              also, anyone who wants to use SwiftUI instead of UIKit on iOS (i.e. they might have hired devs who only know SwiftUI) or wants to use a SwiftUI library is already locked to at least iOS 15 or later in order to get most functionality

              (Note that the Swift programming language itself technically supports all the way back to iOS 8, but then you'd only be able to write UIKit code with it. Swift*UI* is a more modern UI framework with a bunch of time-saving features like "live updating previews without needing to recompile" that launched with iOS 13. However, it didn't have enough features to actually be stable enough to use until 15ish. That's when it started becoming super popular. Outside of SwiftUI, I'm pretty sure Apple's current "enforced" minimum version for UIKit apps is iOS 12, same with any web-powered apps as long as they are built to still load on a non-updated 2018/2019 version of WebKit)

              meanwhile, android's close equivalent to SwiftUI, Jetpack Compose (which is written in Kotlin, and is meant to replace a previous framework that used Java and XML), supports all the way back to Android 5. this is because any missing Jetpack Compose functionality gets bundled with the app, vs. iOS where an app needs to rely on the OS itself to provide all the neccessary SwiftUI functionality

                  TemporalDithering I’m assuming it may have to do with security or features only offered in more current versions. I don’t think it’s hardware as I can update my phone but I’m super scared to do so.

                  When I try to update most apps, I get a banner that IOS version X.X is required.

                    Clokwork at this point I think it would make sense to evaluate Android devices instead. keeping your old iOS devices will still be good enough for most ecosystem stuff like iCloud/AirDrop/AirPlay/iMessage even without modern browser support, but if you're needing to load newer webpages, i really only see there would be a chance that could be comfortable today on a device that's not made by Apple

                    even older Android devices can work. for example my Android phone from 2016 with a 720p IPS LCD and LineageOS enables me to fully access modern websites with "decent enough" speeds on a phone with near-zero eye strain https://ledstrain.org/d/2838-lineageos-181-made-my-2016-android-comfortable-again (although I can't put a SIM card into my specific device anymore as 3G shut down in the US and it was never compatible with US 4G)

                      I truly may have to switch. I got so stuck in the ecosystem that it’s tough but I just may have to switch sooner than later.

                        Clokwork Yeah, my plan is to fully switch to both Windows and Android by the end of the year. I've used Mac since ~2009 but the absolutely terrible 2021 14" MacBook Pro screen was the last straw -- I just knew that Apple would just keep going in that direction. Thankfully, support for RCS messaging on iOS is perfectly timed…

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