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One recent thing happened here that makes me sympathetic to this attitude. A few years back I bought an older mac mini to build iphone apps on. Wasn't fancy,

One recent thing happened here that makes me sympathetic to this attitude. A few years back I bought an older mac mini to build iphone apps on. Wasn't fancy, was 2nd hand but it did the job. Then Apple decided they wouldn't release OS updates for it. Then because of that, it suddenly got impossible to install pretty much anything. I usually develop in .net, but that no longer is supported, and won't run. So Apple turned the thing into a shiny brick effectively. A company with billions of cash idling in the bank won't support older hardware? They could literally afford to do it until the sun explodes. At this point, they are just giving people the finger simply for the hell of it. I'll bet debian will run on there and I won't ever buy another mac.

anoncow 5y ago
2012 Mac mini is a very capable machine. Had to switch to Ubuntu after Catalina started lagging on it though.
augustk 5y ago
I still use a Mac Mini from 2009 as my main computer although I have upgraded the hard drive to a solid state disk and expanded the memory from 2 GB to (maximum) 8 GB. I run Debian on it with the window manager Blackbox. Other World Computing has great upgrade instruction videos for all models.
city41 5y ago
Apple is one of the most user hostile companies there is, yet they seem to completely lack that reputation. Their marketing team is phenomenal.
basisword 5y ago
Of all the complaints you could have about Apple, supporting software updates on legacy devices isn't really one. The iPhone 6s which was released in 2015 will receive this years iOS 15 release. The 2014 Mac mini will support the upcoming macOS release. My Apple devices tend to be usable at least 2-3x as long as similar devices from other manufacturers.
- smackeyacky 5y ago
  I know it's a bit much to single out Apple on this, I have older hardware from other manufacturers that will never run Windows 10 and Windows 11 won't run on some current Microsoft hardware. But Apple don't have that much hardware to support, it's not like they have thousands of variations of mac minis. I find it frustrating that the decision to make this machine unuseable was a reminder that a company like Apple is really in charge, not the owner of the device. Its like the razor companies always changing the cartridge formats so your razor handle becomes useless and you're forced to buy a new one or go back to safety razors. Its the waste that bothers me most. I am back to safety razors for shaving and Linux is the closest equivalent.
muststopmyths 5y ago
I have had luck running newer MacOSes on my 2008 Macbook Pro with http://dosdude1.com/software.html http://dosdude1.com/software.html The machine isn't really usable with the current OSes, being dog slow at everything. But you do bring up an interesting point. I have had the same issues with Windows on older hardware. Which makes me wonder why hardware with 2.5-3GhZ CPUs and SSDs is not enough to run a current version of an OS even with 4-6 GB of RAM.
- JKCalhoun 5y ago
  Probably the same reason for both companies: at some point doing regression testing encompassing a decade or more of old hardware becomes untenable. Developers are always happy when they can deprecate old systems because their new code can assume the shiny new fast hardware and full-featured API of the new OS. QA is even happier.
- tuatoru 5y ago
  "Security". Newer CPUs have hardware for AES decryption and other such stuff. Hardware can do it about 100x faster than software. OS manufacturers have spread "security" all through their stack.

anoncow 5y ago

2012 Mac mini is a very capable machine. Had to switch to Ubuntu after Catalina started lagging on it though.

augustk 5y ago

I still use a Mac Mini from 2009 as my main computer although I have upgraded the hard drive to a solid state disk and expanded the memory from 2 GB to (maximum) 8 GB. I run Debian on it with the window manager Blackbox. Other World Computing has great upgrade instruction videos for all models.

city41 5y ago

Apple is one of the most user hostile companies there is, yet they seem to completely lack that reputation. Their marketing team is phenomenal.

basisword 5y ago

Of all the complaints you could have about Apple, supporting software updates on legacy devices isn't really one. The iPhone 6s which was released in 2015 will receive this years iOS 15 release. The 2014 Mac mini will support the upcoming macOS release. My Apple devices tend to be usable at least 2-3x as long as similar devices from other manufacturers.

smackeyacky 5y ago
I know it's a bit much to single out Apple on this, I have older hardware from other manufacturers that will never run Windows 10 and Windows 11 won't run on some current Microsoft hardware. But Apple don't have that much hardware to support, it's not like they have thousands of variations of mac minis. I find it frustrating that the decision to make this machine unuseable was a reminder that a company like Apple is really in charge, not the owner of the device. Its like the razor companies always changing the cartridge formats so your razor handle becomes useless and you're forced to buy a new one or go back to safety razors. Its the waste that bothers me most. I am back to safety razors for shaving and Linux is the closest equivalent.

muststopmyths 5y ago

I have had luck running newer MacOSes on my 2008 Macbook Pro with http://dosdude1.com/software.html http://dosdude1.com/software.html The machine isn't really usable with the current OSes, being dog slow at everything. But you do bring up an interesting point. I have had the same issues with Windows on older hardware. Which makes me wonder why hardware with 2.5-3GhZ CPUs and SSDs is not enough to run a current version of an OS even with 4-6 GB of RAM.

JKCalhoun 5y ago
Probably the same reason for both companies: at some point doing regression testing encompassing a decade or more of old hardware becomes untenable. Developers are always happy when they can deprecate old systems because their new code can assume the shiny new fast hardware and full-featured API of the new OS. QA is even happier.
tuatoru 5y ago
"Security". Newer CPUs have hardware for AES decryption and other such stuff. Hardware can do it about 100x faster than software. OS manufacturers have spread "security" all through their stack.