Aside from the legal technicalities and motivations of the parties in this case, the goal of prolonging the usable life of computers is incredibly laudable. Th

Aside from the legal technicalities and motivations of the parties in this case, the goal of prolonging the usable life of computers is incredibly laudable. The continuing process by which otherwise functional hardware is made into trash simply because the market incentives don’t motivate the manufacturers to prioritize this is (borderline) tragic. The way updates of operating systems require ever more powerful hardware drives me crazy. If prolonging the use of hardware was an explicit goal of the companies that make the operating systems, not only could a huge amount of waste be kept out of landfills, we could have devices whose performance increases over time.