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Apple should keep providing security updates for the latest version supported on any machine. There are lots of macs stuck at macOS High Sierra (the last one t

• rubyist5eva 5y ago
  Apple doesn't support software - they support hardware. When they stop supporting a particular piece of hardware, you're SOL.
• sroussey 5y ago
  I have a machine still rockin MacOS 9. No security updates either, though also not much of a target…
  • grishka 5y ago
    And any app can run arbitrary code with kernel privileges by design.
    • GhettoComputers 5y ago
      Did anything bad happen?
      • grishka 5y ago
        I haven't ever used classic Mac OS when it was current, and I don't know anyone who did, but I do remember Windows 9x crashing and locking up being an almost daily occurrence. PCs came with dedicated reset buttons for a reason!
        • GhettoComputers 5y ago
          I did, it was all intranet, I mentioned this in another post, but they didn't have the same threats as we do today. >PCs came with dedicated reset buttons for a reason! They still do! Windows 9x did suck, Windows NT however was amazing, it is like the most Linux like of all the Windows. How could they release Windows ME...
          • eru 5y ago
            All modern Windows versions since XP have NT lineage.
            • GhettoComputers 5y ago
              They have other issues now, mostly performance, but not as many crashes at least. Its like saying all modern Intel CPUs are descended from Core M, but I don't know if it adds any relevant information, its mutated a lot and its very different, but at least it doesn't crash like 95, 98, 98 Plus! and ugh ME.
        • wpearse 5y ago
          My memory of Mac OS 7.1 was that it was rock solid. When it did bomb it wasn’t a surprise — you knew it was coming because you’d been messing around in ResEdit or playing with the debugger.
          • Angostura 5y ago
            Or installing a hundred conflicting INITs
          • mattl 5y ago
            System 7.1 -- it didn't become Mac OS until sometime in the 7.5 era. EDIT: Correction, I said 8.5. Sleepy.
            • technothrasher 5y ago
              7.5/7.6 was the switch-over to the "Mac OS" name.
              • mattl 5y ago
                Yep, sorry. Sleepy :)
      • smilespray 5y ago
        Macs running classic MacOS were famously unstable for professional work. I got used to restarting my Mac when getting a cup of coffee as preventative maintenance. The few viruses that were around were mostly annoyances.
        • GeekyBear 5y ago
          Nah. Once you got creative users to stop installing scads of extensions, Macs were way more stable than Win95 boxes. The problem was that creative users had no concept of "some extensions just aren't compatible with others".
          • smilespray 5y ago
            It's not as simple as that. We ran a tight ship, extension-wise. There were plenty of bugs in QuarkXPress, Photoshop and Illustrator to make our Macs bomb, and the fundamental lack of memory protection, process isolation and preemptive multitasking in Mac OS meant that the whole system was wobbly from the bottom up. Also, my post wasn't meant as a comparision between Win95 and Mac OS. I just responded to a question about what Mac OS was like to work with on a daily basis in the decade of the 90s. Win95 wasn't around for half of it.
            • simondotau 5y ago
              It’s slightly weird and unnerving to realise that modern macOS is older today than classic MacOS was when it was obsoleted.
              • smilespray 5y ago
                Unnerving indeed. How time flies.
              • grishka 5y ago
                And it's been through 2 CPU architecture transitions.
  • GhettoComputers 5y ago
    Whats it for?
• varenc 5y ago
  They also released an update for Big Sur and Catalina: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201222 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201222 No luck with High Sierra though. Its last update was in Nov 2020. Apple is notable for providing ZERO official guidance on how long various versions receive security updates. Officially they just say you must be on the latest version. At the moment they're still releasing updates back to Catalina on macOS and iOS 12 for all the devices still stuck on that version. But they make no claims on how long that will continue.
  • mobilio 5y ago
    I'm also locked on High Sierra... Only solution is to use Big Sur installation using Hackintosh patches and to run it on mine computers.
  • trailbits 5y ago
    They seem to support the current version and the previous two before that. So Mojave is not getting support, but Catalina is at this time. But be careful what you wish for -- the last Catalina security update broke software using openGL accelerated graphics for Apple computers with integrated Intel HD4000 graphics. This includes Google Earth, Google Street view, AutoDesk, RStudio and many web apps. So a lot of people have had to revert to older unsupported MacOS versions just to get any work done.
    • angulardragon03 5y ago
      Yup, this is a well known secret among anybody who supports Macs - Apple typically supports the latest release and the two immediately preceding it. iOS is a different story though, as they sometimes go back a few versions to fix CVEs.
  • lovelyviking 5y ago
    >They also released an update for Big Sur and Catalina: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201222 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201222 How one knows that BigSur for instance isn't already compromised by one of those wonderful capabilities for code execution as they provide update only now ?
• GhettoComputers 5y ago
  You can hack it to do it, but I am wondering what virus/security problem worries you?
  • bilkow 5y ago
    I'm worried by many of the security issues fixed by the linked official apple release notes, including CVE-2021-30939, which indicates that it may be possible for a computer to be compromised by opening images or maybe even accessing its metadata, and many privilege escalations allowing user apps to acquire kernel privileges.
• Someone 5y ago
  I think they do. There are machines for which there isn’t any version supported on that machine, though. That’s not different from the situation with Windows. An Intel 386DX CPU with 4 MB of system RAM and 50–55 MB of hard disk space won’t see Windows security updates, either, anymore. What is different is that Apple is less clear in support periods and often more aggressively leave older hardware behind. I don’t think you can require them to support things forever, but requiring everyone to be clear about it at time of sale, or requiring X years of support would be good ideas, IMO.
  • lovelyviking 5y ago
    >I don’t think you can require them to support things forever, but requiring everyone to be clear about it at time of sale, or requiring X years of support would be good ideas, IMO. Why you can't require them to support things forever ? Why not? It was their choice to lock completely those devices they sell. I think as long as device is looked and you cannot have root access and install own software of course you can required them to support those things forever until they provide unlock for them at least, no?
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • jtbayly 5y ago
      Agreed. But that wouldn’t change anything about the macs under discussion. They aren’t locked and never were.
  • bilkow 5y ago
    > That’s not different from the situation with Windows. Yes. And that is also part of the problem. They also don't patch reported vulnerabilities nor provide a clear path for the community to fix themselves. > What is different is that Apple is less clear in support periods and often more aggressively leave older hardware behind. Yes, that amplifies the problem a lot. Many of the abandoned machines are 10-year old but still very suited for daily use. They have 64-bit Core i processors with decent amounts of RAM (such as 8 GB).
• lovelyviking 5y ago
  That is why locked devices without ability to have root access and full control over them is a problem. At some point they simply do not provide software while blocking you from providing own software. Perhaps it's time to question this practice and discuss the issue with potentially making such devices illegal? At least when company doesn't provide software? Shouldn't then Apple made be legally obligated to provide root access for the devices it no longer supports? Otherwise it's what? You buy device then it's not functioning anymore just because they decide so. Doesn't it look like some kind of a fraud/scam ? How it's called then? I mean if one owns computer/iphone and cannot install own software there since those devices are locked and Apple do not provide their software with security updates what an owner of the machine should do?
  • GeekyBear 5y ago
    > That is why locked devices without ability to have root access and full control over them is a problem. At some point they simply do not provide software while blocking you from providing own software. All of the Macs stuck at High Sierra can also run Windows or Linux.
    • lovelyviking 5y ago
      >All of the Macs stuck at High Sierra can also run Windows or Linux. What about current M1 model after few years? Btw what about IPhones/ IPads? Can they run linux?
      • GeekyBear 5y ago
        You seem to have confused iOS devices with Macs. Macs can run another OS by design.
        • deleted 5y ago
          [deleted]
        • lovelyviking 5y ago
          >You seem to have confused iOS devices with Macs. I do not think I did. See above ... "I mean if one owns computer/iphone ... " >Macs can run another OS by design. If you are talking about previous models, to the certain degree yes except GPUs if I am not mistaken. But current M1 Mac as far as I understand it doesn't boot anything else unless it boots first from the internal storage and only then "external OS loader" which should be authorized too at least once by Apple. You can say that "Macs can run another OS by design." but design in which they authorize anything while do not provide full specs of HW interfaces for "another OS" I can't call so.
• greggsy 5y ago
  The consumer doesn’t purchase a lifetime support contract when they buy the hardware. Should MS continue to support XP for home users? That said, Apple did provide some support for iOS 12.x recently, which was unusual.
  • bilkow 5y ago
    Security is not support. If they distributed defective software (with security vulnerabilities), they should fix reported vulnerabilities or at least provide a clear and canonical path for the community to fix it themselves. Yes, it also applies to MS and possibly many other companies.
    • nomel 5y ago
      > they should fix reported vulnerabilities One could claim that they do, always, in the newer versions of the OS, which are almost universally incremental improvements based on the older versions. Not supporting old hardware is something that all companies [1] eventually must do, since resources are limited. I don't think Apple or Windows would be a good choice, if openness is a feature you're looking for. 1. https://lwn.net/Articles/769468/ https://lwn.net/Articles/769468/
      • bilkow 5y ago
        > Not supporting old hardware is something that all companies eventually must do I get it, but macOS does not need to do anything hardware-specific to fix security vulnerabilities, they'd only need to patch the old version (which already supports that hardware) and release an update, and only if someone reports a vulnerability. If they planned to group hardware deprecations only every X versions (let's say they'll remove hardware every 5 years), they would have very little work to do to keep those old versions safe. > I don't think Apple or Windows would be a good choice, if openness is a feature you're looking for. I agree, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't also push for them to be better. Personally I love linux but I also need mac for iOS development.
• Klonoar 5y ago
  I would question why anybody is still running High Sierra at this point. Any hardware that far back has to be miserable to daily drive.
  • beebmam 5y ago
    It doesn't have to be that way. Linux works great on extremely old hardware
    • Klonoar 5y ago
      But it is that way, and it's not changing.
  • rogual 5y ago
    I can only speak for myself, but I'm running Mojave because there are 32-bit apps I need to use for my current project, which any newer version of MacOS will refuse to run.
    • Maursault 5y ago
      If you have any interest in compiling 32-bit applications, you'll need to downgrade or set up another machine with High Sierra. Mojave will still run 32-bit applications with a warning, but it can not build for i386, will build only for x86_64.
  • GhettoComputers 5y ago
    Based on what? CPUs haven’t significantly improved performance for 10 years.
  • jsjohnst 5y ago
    12 core Xeon Mac Pro @ 3.33ghz w/ 128gb RAM and PCIe SSD. Yep, it’s “miserable”. ;) That said, I’ve upgraded the video cards and applied an EFI “fix”, so it runs later releases with full FV2 boot support (hence the EFI “fix”).
  • roody15 5y ago