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This type of problem has been around for a decade. Once an Apple product is no longer produced, driver support completely falls by the wayside. There is simply

This type of problem has been around for a decade. Once an Apple product is no longer produced, driver support completely falls by the wayside. There is simply no direct business value to make sure the update works well on all devices. I have a 2020 Intel Macbook Air and I am going to be extremely conservative upgrading to Big Sur, and in fact may not do it at all since Apple seems to support security updates for years on older releases.

pmontra 6y ago
Maybe there is no direct business value but maybe indirectly some of the people hit by this problem could wonder if they should buy their next laptop from a different manufacturer or advise their friend to do so. By the way my HP laptop from 2014 did well with every single Ubuntu LTS from 12.04 (I bought at the beginning of the year) to 20.04.
- rubicon33 6y ago
  My Samsung Series 9 was bricked on it's first Ubuntu LTS update. Learned a hard lesson that day.
  - pmontra 6y ago
    Something like this? https://www.anandtech.com/show/6713/samsung-laptops-bricked-by-booting-linux-using-uefi https://www.anandtech.com/show/6713/samsung-laptops-bricked-...
    - rubicon33 6y ago
      Wow. Yes. Just wish I had read this prior to updating. Lost everything back in 2013. Sucked.
      - pmontra 6y ago
        I always wait at least a few months before upgrading to a new version, to let Canonical and the community sort out bugs and be reasonably sure that nothing breaks or to have workarounds. By the way, did you ever recover the laptop or your data?
chongli 6y ago
There is always business value to support and backwards compatibility. Think of how much goodwill Microsoft has built up for their backwards compatibility. Heck, the story of the version of Doom that runs on DOS->Win3.1->Windows 10 hit the front page today! Now think of how little goodwill Google has, due to their pernicious habit of killing off popular products that don't meet their very high standards for revenue production. Why does Microsoft dominate the enterprise and not Google? I think the above has almost everything to do with it. Apple has kind of walked the middle road between Microsoft's extreme backward compatibility and Google's "kill off everything that doesn't earn at least a billion". They support old hardware a lot longer than Google, but they also break a lot of things with their OS updates. Apple also has a pretty legendary track record of successfully shifting CPU architectures without breaking popular apps at the time, something that's pretty much unheard of elsewhere.
- barnacled 6y ago
  >Apple also has a pretty legendary track record of successfully shifting CPU architectures without breaking popular apps at the time, something that's pretty much unheard of elsewhere Which other SW/HW companies have switched CPU architecture? I am not sure there is a point of comparison here, and there has only been 1 case so far, the M1 is upcoming and we don't know yet how well that will work. Linux works pretty well with client qemu specified as the architecture handler for non-native binaries too :)
  - chongli 6y ago
    Only one case so far? Apple has taken the Mac from Motorola 68000-series chips to PowerPC to Intel x86 and now to the ARM-based M1. That’s 4 different architecture in less than 4 decades.
    - barnacled 6y ago
      I mentioned M1 and specifically excluded it since it is unreleased. Is that fully released such that I can buy it right now? Apple site says 17th Nov. Can't know if it breaks things until it is released. I also said 'architecture change' so by your count that would be 2. But Rosetta was only for PowerPC to x86 wasn't it? There seems to have been emulation for the 68x chips but was it seamless without breaking anything? I mean any company could change architecture but rely on a customer using an emulator that isn't really not breaking things. So by my count, 1, but if I am wrong and the 68x translation was equally as seamless and breakless than 2. But to say it was unheard of you need to reference all the other companies that transitioned architecture and broke stuff. I can't think of another general computing supplier who did that but I might be wrong - can you give an example?
CharlesW 6y ago
> Once an Apple product is no longer produced, driver support completely falls by the wayside. This is the first time I've heard that, and I've never experienced it. If you have a compilation of "driver support disappears" issues, I'd like to read it. It's very common for folks to be using 5- and 6-year-old Macs with a recent version of macOS. macOS Big Sur supports 7-year-old Macs.
- alwillis 6y ago
  Once an Apple product is no longer produced, driver support completely falls by the wayside. I've done Mac IT for a long time and I've never seen this be the case. To be honest, I've experienced this a ton of times with Windows, where the only driver available was for an older version of Windows and not the one the customer has. I have a nearly 10-year old iMac and I never experienced what you're talking about.
  - walshemj 6y ago
    Apple as well as Windows dropped support for a few class compliant audio cards awhile back so I have a £200 sound card that is just dead weight
    - alwillis 6y ago
      Wonder if the Apple thing was the vendor not upgrading their drivers to be compatible with current operating systems. Apple has warned developers for several years that support for 32-bit apps (for example) was going away. Same thing with kernel extensions.
      - walshemj 6y ago
        This was a "class" compliant sound card we are talking about here.
- kefyras 6y ago
  Early 2008 MacBook4.1 with GMA X3100 originally shipped with 10.5 were only supported up to 10.7, and Lion was hot garbage.

pmontra 6y ago

Maybe there is no direct business value but maybe indirectly some of the people hit by this problem could wonder if they should buy their next laptop from a different manufacturer or advise their friend to do so. By the way my HP laptop from 2014 did well with every single Ubuntu LTS from 12.04 (I bought at the beginning of the year) to 20.04.

rubicon33 6y ago
My Samsung Series 9 was bricked on it's first Ubuntu LTS update. Learned a hard lesson that day.
- pmontra 6y ago
  Something like this? https://www.anandtech.com/show/6713/samsung-laptops-bricked-by-booting-linux-using-uefi https://www.anandtech.com/show/6713/samsung-laptops-bricked-...
  - rubicon33 6y ago
    Wow. Yes. Just wish I had read this prior to updating. Lost everything back in 2013. Sucked.
    - pmontra 6y ago
      I always wait at least a few months before upgrading to a new version, to let Canonical and the community sort out bugs and be reasonably sure that nothing breaks or to have workarounds. By the way, did you ever recover the laptop or your data?

chongli 6y ago

There is always business value to support and backwards compatibility. Think of how much goodwill Microsoft has built up for their backwards compatibility. Heck, the story of the version of Doom that runs on DOS->Win3.1->Windows 10 hit the front page today! Now think of how little goodwill Google has, due to their pernicious habit of killing off popular products that don't meet their very high standards for revenue production. Why does Microsoft dominate the enterprise and not Google? I think the above has almost everything to do with it. Apple has kind of walked the middle road between Microsoft's extreme backward compatibility and Google's "kill off everything that doesn't earn at least a billion". They support old hardware a lot longer than Google, but they also break a lot of things with their OS updates. Apple also has a pretty legendary track record of successfully shifting CPU architectures without breaking popular apps at the time, something that's pretty much unheard of elsewhere.

barnacled 6y ago
>Apple also has a pretty legendary track record of successfully shifting CPU architectures without breaking popular apps at the time, something that's pretty much unheard of elsewhere Which other SW/HW companies have switched CPU architecture? I am not sure there is a point of comparison here, and there has only been 1 case so far, the M1 is upcoming and we don't know yet how well that will work. Linux works pretty well with client qemu specified as the architecture handler for non-native binaries too :)
- chongli 6y ago
  Only one case so far? Apple has taken the Mac from Motorola 68000-series chips to PowerPC to Intel x86 and now to the ARM-based M1. That’s 4 different architecture in less than 4 decades.
  - barnacled 6y ago
    I mentioned M1 and specifically excluded it since it is unreleased. Is that fully released such that I can buy it right now? Apple site says 17th Nov. Can't know if it breaks things until it is released. I also said 'architecture change' so by your count that would be 2. But Rosetta was only for PowerPC to x86 wasn't it? There seems to have been emulation for the 68x chips but was it seamless without breaking anything? I mean any company could change architecture but rely on a customer using an emulator that isn't really not breaking things. So by my count, 1, but if I am wrong and the 68x translation was equally as seamless and breakless than 2. But to say it was unheard of you need to reference all the other companies that transitioned architecture and broke stuff. I can't think of another general computing supplier who did that but I might be wrong - can you give an example?

CharlesW 6y ago

> Once an Apple product is no longer produced, driver support completely falls by the wayside. This is the first time I've heard that, and I've never experienced it. If you have a compilation of "driver support disappears" issues, I'd like to read it. It's very common for folks to be using 5- and 6-year-old Macs with a recent version of macOS. macOS Big Sur supports 7-year-old Macs.

alwillis 6y ago
Once an Apple product is no longer produced, driver support completely falls by the wayside. I've done Mac IT for a long time and I've never seen this be the case. To be honest, I've experienced this a ton of times with Windows, where the only driver available was for an older version of Windows and not the one the customer has. I have a nearly 10-year old iMac and I never experienced what you're talking about.
- walshemj 6y ago
  Apple as well as Windows dropped support for a few class compliant audio cards awhile back so I have a £200 sound card that is just dead weight
  - alwillis 6y ago
    Wonder if the Apple thing was the vendor not upgrading their drivers to be compatible with current operating systems. Apple has warned developers for several years that support for 32-bit apps (for example) was going away. Same thing with kernel extensions.
    - walshemj 6y ago
      This was a "class" compliant sound card we are talking about here.
kefyras 6y ago
Early 2008 MacBook4.1 with GMA X3100 originally shipped with 10.5 were only supported up to 10.7, and Lion was hot garbage.