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It seems that Apple has historically concentrated more on pushing towards the future instead of dragging legacy support with them. In the long run this means t

by brk 16y ago

It seems that Apple has historically concentrated more on pushing towards the future instead of dragging legacy support with them. In the long run this means that users who don't make the investment to stay current hardware-wise often lose out on being able to take advantage of the latest features. This certainly creates a good cash flow situation for Apple, but my guess is that the cost-avoidance side is equally lucrative. Not having to run QA tests for hardware that is 3 revisions back, and possibly still running original or near-original code has got to look good on the bottom line as well. Also, knowing that you can leave any mistakes or oversights in the past, and keep drivers for massively old legacy items out of the code base probably just makes for a better overall experience for everyone. I once worked with one of the guys who was a kernel developer for Windows95. According to him, a lot of the Windows bloat and slowness at startup was directly attributed to massive hardware base they had to maintain support for. IMO, I personally like the fact that Apple doesn't waste a lot of time and effort on worrying that every new feature is fully back-portable to everything they've shipped in the last 5 years.

rbanffy 16y ago
This is not even close to a good, sound or technical reason. The reason I asked is because, as far as I know, the processor and the amount of memory is the same for 1st generation and 2nd generation hardware. I wonder if Apple is artificially limiting the availability of their software just to force fashion victims to buy new hardware. And calling the hardware base iOS has to support "massive" is quite an overstatement. That's the enormity of 7 models.
- brk 16y ago
  This is not even close to a good, sound or technical reason Well, "good" is a little subjective. I am purely speculating here, but I doubt that Apple compiled something into the code to make it simply not run on first gen hardware. IE: there must be something about that hardware platform that makes it different enough from current-gen hardware that supporting it adds some amount of back-end effort. Perhaps the reason has to do with one of the other factors I mentioned, a "mistake" or shortcoming in the first-gen hardware that requires more internal hacks and work-arounds in the code than they are willing to support. It's not like this sort of thing is unique to Apple. Some of the first-gen Droid phones are not going to see the 2.2 update. Yes, there may be more hardware variants and changes among the Droid phones, but it is still a relatively new platform abandoning not-that-old hardware.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    It's either a hardware difference or Apple artificially restricting where it installs to increase hardware sales. It would not be the first time - the first iMacs are capable of running up to MacOS X 10.4, provided they have enough memory. I have successfully ran 10.4 on a beige G3. The installer, however, checks the hardware against a list of "forbidden" (if I remember the term used in the .plist file) machine types. Here is a similar story, regarding 10.5: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20071026083746346 http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=200710260837463...

by brk 16y ago

rbanffy 16y ago

This is not even close to a good, sound or technical reason. The reason I asked is because, as far as I know, the processor and the amount of memory is the same for 1st generation and 2nd generation hardware. I wonder if Apple is artificially limiting the availability of their software just to force fashion victims to buy new hardware. And calling the hardware base iOS has to support "massive" is quite an overstatement. That's the enormity of 7 models.

brk 16y ago
This is not even close to a good, sound or technical reason Well, "good" is a little subjective. I am purely speculating here, but I doubt that Apple compiled something into the code to make it simply not run on first gen hardware. IE: there must be something about that hardware platform that makes it different enough from current-gen hardware that supporting it adds some amount of back-end effort. Perhaps the reason has to do with one of the other factors I mentioned, a "mistake" or shortcoming in the first-gen hardware that requires more internal hacks and work-arounds in the code than they are willing to support. It's not like this sort of thing is unique to Apple. Some of the first-gen Droid phones are not going to see the 2.2 update. Yes, there may be more hardware variants and changes among the Droid phones, but it is still a relatively new platform abandoning not-that-old hardware.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  It's either a hardware difference or Apple artificially restricting where it installs to increase hardware sales. It would not be the first time - the first iMacs are capable of running up to MacOS X 10.4, provided they have enough memory. I have successfully ran 10.4 on a beige G3. The installer, however, checks the hardware against a list of "forbidden" (if I remember the term used in the .plist file) machine types. Here is a similar story, regarding 10.5: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20071026083746346 http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=200710260837463...