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These days I feel as if machines are deliberately phased out even when they are in perfectly working condition. I have two macbooks (white plastic) one with Ti

These days I feel as if machines are deliberately phased out even when they are in perfectly working condition. I have two macbooks (white plastic) one with Tiger installed and another with Leopard an iPad 1 ( They all are in working condition) Its a shame to not be able to use the machines just because it is not supported. I would assume that they are good enough for a kid to surf websites and help do his/her homework. Listen to songs while browsing pdfs . Lack of support should not mean that perfectly usable hardware is junked. After covid, there are a lot of kids in Indian villages whoes education is dependent on online education. Maybe these laptops could be made usable for them. ( Not everyone can afford a mobile phone) Please do let me know if your linux installs will work for my case as well ( your case covers the Macbook Pro instead of just macbooks) PS: I myself use i3wm on a lenovo machine. ( Not very happy with Lenovo but its ok ok )

danans 6y ago
> I have two macbooks (white plastic) one with Tiger installed and another with Leopard an iPad 1 ( They all are in working condition) Its a shame to not be able to use the machines just because it is not supported. That hardware isn't as valuable as you might think it is. The last plastic Macbook was made in 2010. It's value as a productivity tool is very limited today. That said, e-Waste is a major problem, which is why in recent years, in the west, companies are required to collect a "recycling fee" on purchase of computer equipment to pay for the eventual recycling of the physical devices. Coincidentally, this was in part prompted by images of children in India and other developing countries picking over toxic E-waste from the west. However, it's not really feasible for a company to support a device as old as your 2010 plastic Macbook from a software perspective, because software evolves too rapidly to run well on hardware that old. These are not desktop workstation towers for which you can swap out every component for newer ones. > After covid, there are a lot of kids in Indian villages whoes education is dependent on online education. Maybe these laptops could be made usable for them. The demands of common 2020 computer use-cases will render the hardware/software unusable, even when running a recent Linux distro. So they will probably not be useful for remote-education. Basic things like watching educational videos will likely be painfully slow - if they work at all - constrained by the hardware's ability to decode and display the video. If you do get these common use cases working on that old a device (which would be a fun and worthy hacking project by itself), if you give it to someone else to use, you will also have to deal with the problem of supporting it, and then ensuring their responsible disposal (i.e. not in the village organic waste dump) when they do reach the end of their usable lives. None of this is trivial to accomplish.
- suchoudh 6y ago
  Very intresting take on the situation. Thanks for taking time to comment.

danans 6y ago

> I have two macbooks (white plastic) one with Tiger installed and another with Leopard an iPad 1 ( They all are in working condition) Its a shame to not be able to use the machines just because it is not supported. That hardware isn't as valuable as you might think it is. The last plastic Macbook was made in 2010. It's value as a productivity tool is very limited today. That said, e-Waste is a major problem, which is why in recent years, in the west, companies are required to collect a "recycling fee" on purchase of computer equipment to pay for the eventual recycling of the physical devices. Coincidentally, this was in part prompted by images of children in India and other developing countries picking over toxic E-waste from the west. However, it's not really feasible for a company to support a device as old as your 2010 plastic Macbook from a software perspective, because software evolves too rapidly to run well on hardware that old. These are not desktop workstation towers for which you can swap out every component for newer ones. > After covid, there are a lot of kids in Indian villages whoes education is dependent on online education. Maybe these laptops could be made usable for them. The demands of common 2020 computer use-cases will render the hardware/software unusable, even when running a recent Linux distro. So they will probably not be useful for remote-education. Basic things like watching educational videos will likely be painfully slow - if they work at all - constrained by the hardware's ability to decode and display the video. If you do get these common use cases working on that old a device (which would be a fun and worthy hacking project by itself), if you give it to someone else to use, you will also have to deal with the problem of supporting it, and then ensuring their responsible disposal (i.e. not in the village organic waste dump) when they do reach the end of their usable lives. None of this is trivial to accomplish.

suchoudh 6y ago
Very intresting take on the situation. Thanks for taking time to comment.