How bad are Apple’s updates on the slowest devices?

Intro it's that time of year when all your Apple devices get the notification there's a new OS it is exciting because every year Apple adds handy features to their apps and services to make their devices more useful and there are quite a few announced at WWDC this year but it is also scary because what if you're on the tail end of that OS support running the oldest and slowest devices will the update make them worse to find out I downgraded [Music] yes I'm going to be switching to Apple's The Downgrade slowest supported devices not the oldest so that means I'm using the core i5 powered Mac Mini with only 8 gigs of memory rather than the still quite powerful iMac Pro which is getting the update and technically older I'm also switching to the 2020 I5 MacBook Air with 16 GB of RAM the 7th generation iPad and the iPhone 10r this should be interesting here's a list of all the new ALL the new features... we don't get featur features that apple is promoting in their new OS updates the biggest one of course is their apple intelligence AI features they won't be available when these operating systems roll out but that doesn't matter because Apple intelligence won't work on any of these older devices anyway neither will any of these features like live audio transcription in phone call recordings then there are a few more announced features that are coming eventually but won't be arriving at launch either like male categorization and finally there's the region lock features there are still a lot of features left but they really don't deserve equal billing Safari video picture and picture so what and so I updated using the iPhone 10r with iOS 18 iOS 18 on the iPhone XR public beta 5 after a few weeks with the previous rsion installed I can't say that I noticed it work any slower than before battery life still seems to be the same too which is bad because this iPhone is 6 years old now as for new features the most important in my opinion is RCs support even if Apple spent so little time announcing this back in June I almost missed it in case you're wondering RCS stands for Rich communication standard and it basically brings green bubbles into the 21st century so a lot of the features you're used to with blue bubbles read receipts typing indicators reliable group chats are available except encryption you can see if a chat is in RCS in the typing box though I kind of wish they made RCS have teal bubbles it really is exciting but I have one group of friends that all use Android phones RCS means we should finally be able to set up a reliable group chat yet two of them don't have RCS working properly which is surprising to me because I thought Google was advocating so hard for RCS adoption and even when everyone gets it set up the experience is inconsistent in terms of what the iPhone user sees and what the Android User sees RCS isn't the only thing Android users have that is finally coming to the iPhone there's also T9 dialing and the ability to not only place Apple icons anywhere on the home screen but recolor them as well I don't mind the dark mode icons but I really find the app icon tinting unacceptable hideous so should you update your iPhone yes but I'll explain more a bit later but first let me tell you about this video sponsor Squarespace Thanks Squarespace! if you want to make a website for Safari users there's no better One-Stop shop than Squarespace they've got this fluid engine that's site Builder that will help you get up and running quickly but there's more to running a website than building it because their analytic tools and 24/7 support means that business owners can tailor it precisely for their needs if you've ever looked for my face on the Linus Media Group website you've experienced the results of Squarespace so go to squarespace.com slmc address and save 10% off your first purchase all The iPad has the oldest chip but... right now to the iPad the slowest supporting iPad contains an A10 chip this chip is two generations older than the iPhone 10 RS in fact it's from from the iPhone 7 surprisingly despite this I found the iPad to be perhaps the least impacted by updating maybe I'm less demanding of my iPad than of the other devices but I kind of find it amusing that the oldest chip wise is the most robust so no downsides so what are the upsides of updating a calculator app I love how the basic calculator looks like those giant calculators you'd buy your parents as a gag gift and this even gets math notes too though I'm going to need some help to um to figure that out you guys do math right yes yeah so there's a new math feature on iPad OS where you can just write out math problems and'll calculate them just put in a formula a problem you're working on you just write it out unknown symbol what's the unknown symbol I don't know maybe my writing's too bad um do I have to tell it to factor it no but it did it right though right well it tells me that's the equation but I wanted to factor it into and that is the symbol it's getting it right is it saying it's unknown just I don't know I don't use Apple products tyan come help me is that even growable yeah of course it is it's probably W that's actually pretty cool would this be useful I mean look it's it's it's cool but like no I I would never use this no eh I would never use this all right well thank you sorry thanks P thanks for the the adventure thank you for [Music] helping without the new fancy chips to power the new fancy features there's not a lot more to report about on the iPad it gets a lot of the same Buffs the iPhone gets like a more informative and better organized Settings app but how Organize windows, iPhone windows about a real computer the slowest MacBook that will get Mac OS Sequoia is this 2020 MacBook Air that was released a mere 8 months before the Apple silicon transition to M1 if you bought one of these I am truly sorry the space gray Intel Mac Mini has had a bit more longevity but let me tell you even on the current OS Sonoma these devices are showing their age they get warm enough to keep me comfortable in the winter and this Mac Mini cannot even play back the aerial wallpaper without stuttering because the Intel Graphics are at 100% utilization there is less to report when it comes to updating Mac OS this time around the two big additions are windows style Windows management and iPhone mirroring dragging your window to the top or side corners of the screen to get it to fit within a predetermined area is great and was someone's idea for Windows 7 and 15 years later it's finally on the Mac it works just as you'd expect it would dragging to the top fills the screen to the side splits the screen and to the Corner quarters the window holding the option key will get you to those things more quickly and holding the window on the edge will move you to the next desktop which can be a bit annoying if you're slow like me I also don't know how to feel about the margin it creates between the windows feels like a waste of space iPhone mirroring is very useful though it basically turns your iPhone into a Mac app no matter where it is in a house it's pretty neat to be able to control your iPhone with a mouse clicking scrolling though you'll need a trackpad if you want to pinch to zoom notifications for your iPhone appear like other Mac ones too I got a signal notification and thought for a second that I installed the app on my Mac but nope iPhone mirroring booted up Apple's pretty good at making sure you get notifications on the devices that you're using so even though I have teams on both my Mac and iPhone so far every time I've received the teams notification it's opened on my Mac App instead of the iPhone mirroring great which is merciful too because it does take a while to reconnect if the connection has dropped there are other Oddities it floats on your desktop as a fullscreen feed but if you want to move it you'll have to move your mouse above it and wait for the border to appear it's also not resizable which is annoying because text is a little small these Macs are the most negatively The Intel Macs are showing their architecture impacted by the update I mean they were slow before but now uh for example when I'm going between a lot of tabs on the Mac Mini the computer just can't manage all of it in memory everything just stutters and it really feels like I'm trying to run through water because this MacBook air has 16 GB of memory it's not as annoying if you have the Mac Mini with only 8 GB I recommend spending the 50ish dollar to upgrade it because you actually can I'm curious how much longer Intel Max will be supported power PC support was removed with the release of snow leopard 4 years after the Intel transition started so it's nice that apple is giving these Macs some extra legs so overall do I recommend updating yes even with these Hardware limitations apple is providing the most useful features for us all with RCS support and iPhone mirroring the integration between these devices is Tighter and more convenient but let me tell you if there's anything I've learned from this exercise is that downgrading devices is not fun at all so when the time comes to upgrade to new hardware you most definitely will feel a difference I can't wait to go back to my old setup thanks for letting this Mac address last for so long I'm curious in the comments below what the oldest Apple device you have that supports this year's operating system is and how you feel about updating it and if you want to watch another video we did uh check out the one where I gave a Mac Studio to a fashion designer to see how well it works with their 3D rendering software