I realise I’m going to sound like a grumpy old man, so apologies in advance.

tl;dr – I want to downgrade iOS on a clean brand new iPhone 5S from 9.1 to 8.4.1 or below, somehow…

I’ve just sold my iPhone 5 and have a new, unused iPhone 5S waiting to use (I didn’t much fancy a bigger phone and didn’t need more tech). However, I attempted to set it up last night using my old MacBook, only to get a message telling me I need a more up-to-date iTunes. I can’t update iTunes because I’m on an old MacBook and I’ve got the most up-to-date OS X that will work with it. So in short my new phone is trying to sell me a new computer!

The point: is there any way I can downgrade the iOS 9.1 that is currently on the new phone back down to iOS 8, so that it will work with my old computer, at least until I buy a new one much later next year? Plus, for the moment, I’m not a fan of iOS 9’s whole all apps must talk to each other thing and its associated battery drain and slightly sinister thing where suddenly everything can see my location and my photos and tell me about the last thing I looked at on Amazon.

A few phones ago I jailbroke an iPhone 4, it looks like this is maybe possible but not possible with the new one; I haven’t installed anything yet on the new 5S and can’t see a way to get back below iOS 9 now Apple have stopped signing iOS 8 stuff.

Sorry I know this is one of “those” posts – I _have_ Googled it but there’s a hell of a lot of outdated stuff and useless comments out there. So if anyone has any advice, I’d appreciate it. Cheers!

Short answer no you can’t go back to iOS8.4.1. Apple stopped signing it ages ago so there is no official download available. I would be wary of any unofficial download from the less savoury parts of the web.
The privacy thing just needs methodical approach when setting the phone up. Say no to location services then use the privacy settings to enable or disable each app checking up on you.

I’m not a fan of iOS 9’s whole all apps must talk to each other thing and its associated battery drain and slightly sinister thing where suddenly everything can see my location and my photos and tell me about the last thing I looked at on Amazon

This sounds like a misunderstanding of the privacy settings in iOS. Yes things like Facebook and the various Google apps will slurp your life if you let them but this has little to do with the OS.

You can set up an iOS device without having a separate computer running iTunes. It’s not clear exactly what you’re trying to do but if you want to use the contents of the old phone to set up the new you should be able to back up the old one to iCloud and restore the new one from that backup.

iOS9 has all the latest battery saving features, the apps sharing info doesn’t “suck battery”. Yes there is the issue of apps “mis-using” info such as location or contacts but all of this is switched off by default – you get prompted when you install the app to see if you want to turn it on.

You don”t need iTunes althoughs its useful for music storage / upload if you have many music cd’s you’ve ripped. You can do iPhone backup to Cloud although tbh I prefer to iTunes.

I can’t help with iOS downgrade, you might try to google MacRumors forums. As per above there have been issues with rouge apps from Chinese developers for example so its your call

5S is still a very good phone, my wife is happily using hers.

It’s not clear exactly what you’re trying to do but if you want to use the contents of the old phone to set up the new you should be able to back up the old one to iCloud and restore the new one from that backup.

It’s a bit of a convoluted story – upgrading my iPhone 5 to iOS9 just made it generally more crap: battery life went down, silly things like when I got a message notification on the lock screen it no longer told me the sender’s name if they were in my contact book, just their phone number, the camera got inexplicably worse, I got the overall impression that the iOS 9 update was rushed out and not really designed to work with “older” phones like mine. So I was planning on doing a selective restore from my backup onto the new phone using iTunes – just contacts, mail, photos, etc., then reinstalling all the apps from the App Store.

…which I can’t do with the iOS9.1 on the new phone, thus why I want to downgrade it so it talks to my old computer, but also so it’s running a less “busy” iOS. Hope that makes sense! Although I’m further realising it’s probably not possible.

Not sure about the selective restore, but I’d be tempted to try a complete restore via iCloud and see what happens, and then delete and reinstall the apps if you’re not happy with the result. If you don’t like the result you can always do a factory reset to get you back to where you were.

I’m running iOS 9.1 on a 5S btw and I don’t find it “busy”, certainly no more than 8.x.

You might be able to get it done at an Apple shop, I was looking at a similar problem and remember reading somewhere that they can do it. Ios9 is by all accounts shite on iPhone5, if you can I’d be looking to downgrade to 7 if at all possible and you can live with possible restrictions on apps.

iOS9 is not shite on a 5S, it runs pretty well. I’m running 9.1 on my old 4S which is my backup/French local phone, battery life is fine and stuff works, certainly slower than my 6 but you’d expect that.

OP I am pretty certain an Apple store will not downgrade your iOS, its very much not supported.