Hi @codev,
I wish I could welcome you to our community under better circumstances.
I’m afraid my words are going to sound rather hollow in response, but I do understand the frustration you’re feeling.
There is a problem inherent to the process of software evolution, and people often say “Your software doesn’t support my phone anymore, but this similar software does; why?”. Unfortunately, there’s no easy answer.
We appreciate that your community is hurting. We can plainly see distress and anguish from your members at the prospect of being cut off from their support system.
Having to go to the library to use the computer is no substitute at all for accessing your support network as and when you need it, as well as the difference between using a public space and sharing and contributing from the comfort and privacy of your own home.
This troubles us given that our mission is to make online discussion easier for everyone and preserve that discussion long-term.
We are, like you, frustrated that people can’t use devices until they literally fall apart. Black box devices like iPhones, however, must continue to be supported and updated by the vendor or they are actively dangerous to use . We note that Apple is only providing very limited updates for the most serious iOS 12 vulnerabilities at this point and Safari is years out of date at this point.
We discuss these critical choices at length internally. We do our best to support them as long as possible until it becomes a technological challenge that would be immensely complicated to maintain over time. It’s not easy to balance these choices to make sure they work best for most communities without sacrificing our security standards or ease of use.
Unfortunately, any choice like this has drawbacks, and your message is a painful and honest example of the problems we hope to avoid as much as possible.
We can’t outright retrace our steps, but we will continue to discuss this internally. Discourse won’t work on some devices anymore, and this will happen again as time moves on. Please note that we have already extended our support for IOS 12 by a year and did our best to warn users support would soon be removed.
The question remains: How do we help solve this problem for your members who need to access and participate in your forum?
Can you start by helping us understand the device usage breakdown (with specific model information) in your community as best you can?