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> This only reconfirmed my parents’ belief that device makers deliberately make things go out of date so that you have to go buy new hardware every couple of ye

> This only reconfirmed my parents’ belief that device makers deliberately make things go out of date so that you have to go buy new hardware every couple of years. The article frames it as if the parents are naive here, but it seems like this is 100% right. Mom's chromebook and iPad not receiving updates is a perfect example of planned obsolescence.

brk 5y ago
Is it specifically planned obsolescence, or just case of technology evolving? Do you think Apple or Google, when making the decisions on browser upgrade-ability, anticipated javascript changes that would break common sites and force users to buy new hardware? To me this does not feel like planned obsolescence and feels more like a general case of "technology marches on".
- ugjka 5y ago
  If only you could install some other operating system on these devices and load the latest browser or even more!
- _dain_ 5y ago
  Is there any technical reason why that old hardware can't run the modern browser? I severely doubt it.
- noitpmeder 5y ago
  In the case of software updates it _is_ planned obsolescence. However, whether it is planned out of malice or out of cost (I imagine it costs some amount of money to continue to support old hardware) is up in the air.
- elondaits 5y ago
  Not even. JS developers should know to transpile their code to support users that for whatever reasons (from a long list) cannot run the latest JS version... or stick to truly standard things. The ?. operator was included in Edge, Safari, Chrome and Firefox early 2020. According to caniuse.com, only 90% of users have browsers that support it... but depending on who your audience is, it might be much less (e.g. if you target schools, or government, there might be computers locked in older OSs or browser versions... at least that's the case in my country).
  - tgv 5y ago
    It is lazy, indeed, but the whole ecosystem enables it. You install some yarn based framework installer, create a project, and before you know it, it sets something like "browser-support" at 95%. That number is estimated from dubious sources, and quickly eliminates older versions, and every update discards more versions.
    - Zardoz84 5y ago
      what I do it's generé a bundle for modern browsers, and another for IE11 (and by extension ancient versions of Firefox and Chrome) with the necessary polyfills
- krono 5y ago
  That really depends on their reason for preventing further software updates. If the hardware is actually, physically incapable of running later versions (AKA your Chromebook would crash and burn on boot), sure. Any other case it's corporate greed and/or laziness.
- BlueTemplar 5y ago
  While unavoidable for some web programs (but if your program is so complex, why aren't you compiling for the native OS ?), this sounds like the failure of the website to gracefully downgrade to work without JavaScript ?
- godDLL 5y ago
  A question, then. Li-ion battery arrangements inside those devices seem to hold about 80% of their usable capacity and voltage for about six months, with average usage patterns. A year after that this drops to 50% of original capacity, or below. This is known, if a bit too generalized. Yet those are not easily swapped out. And your CPU throttles, your WiFi throttles down with the battery, reducing usability. There is no "please change out the battery" alert for the user at any point. The marketing for these devices makes no mention like "you've got about a year of usage for this device before it becomes slow". In any of this there aren't any external factors to anticipate, unlike with the Javascript landscape example above. As a manufacturer you know your device usage patterns, you do collect some telemetry and some repairs data. You can make a projection. My point is, those are being sold in full knowledge of the facts of their limited lifetime. With no mitigation strategies, with no concessions for user-serviceable battery replacement or how to buy those batteries. There is no battery shelf at the Apple store. It isn't discussed much. There is no customer blowback to this product strategy. It could be, in bad faith argued that people are fine with buying something to replace it a year later. My question is, to you, are you arguing this in good faith? Do you really think this is fine to have something called a "product" where it is actually a service, with a limited term and no end-user serviceability? Is it OK to call something a "question" where I am asking you to ask yourself, and don't care to hear what the answer is, because I have already arrived at an opinion long time ago and see no reason to change it hence? Please don't be offended by this, it isn't intended to rile you in any way. I am only after some clarity, as I perceive your language to be confusing terms mightily and so making things seem more complicated than they end up being.
  - 43920 5y ago
    > Li-ion battery arrangements inside those devices seem to hold about 80% of their usable capacity and voltage for about six months, with average usage patterns. A year after that this drops to 50% of original capacity, or below. This is known, if a bit too generalized. What? Taking the example of Apple (since they make their battery ratings easily accessible, but other manufacturers are similar), iphone batteries are rated to hit 80% at 500 charge cycles, and ipad/macbook batteries are rated to 1000 cycles [1]. Assuming you discharge your battery from 100% to 0% every day (which is at the upper end of average usage), iphone batteries should last ~1.5 years, and macbook batteries around 3 years. Apple also has a pretty good battery replacement service, at least in comparison to other manufacturers. When my iphone battery wore out after ~3 years, I shipped it to Apple and paid $60, and they sent it back a few days later with a new battery. My macbook battery lasted ~4 years of heavy usage, and they did the same thing for ~$200. A user-swappable battery would definitely be easier (and cheaper), but the service they offer is good enough that it's still feasible to get a replacement and keep the device past the battery lifespan. [1] https://www.apple.com/batteries/service-and-recycling/ https://www.apple.com/batteries/service-and-recycling/
- pwdisswordfish9 5y ago
  technology marches on = planned obsolescence + plausible deniability
- redler 5y ago
  Unless you’re going to continue supporting updated software on existing devices until the end of time, there will always be a place on the time and feasibility curve where you’ll have to draw the line. So while that is indeed a plan, or becomes a plan as a device ages and practical realities begin to assert themselves, attributing it to a sort of corporate greed or malice seems reductive.
- xg15 5y ago
  "Technology marches on" would be if at some point, 4K became the dominant video resolution on the web and therefore, the laptop wouldn't be powerful enough to use most of YouTube. The example here is stupid because the laptop is perfectly capable of executing a .? operator - there is no insufficient hardware or similar things. The only reason it can't is because of artificial limitations put up by Google, likely on the risk that some other, unrelated features might fail otherwise. I don't think it's planned obsolescence in the sense that they specifically set out to brick the device - but they are certainly accepting that such devices becoming obsolete quickly in their planning.
  - brk 5y ago
    Having been involved in the design and specifications of a number of hardware products over the years, my experience has been different. You cannot predict all the possible future requirements of a product, the best you can do is make a reasonable effort. In this case the vendors likely could do some kind of patch/update to support .?, but surely there are a large number of other little things that have changed or been added over the years, not just .?. So, where does that slippery slope end? How many new features, and related regression testing should be put into older devices? Does the hardware vendor have a kind of ethical responsibility to continue to update it until it just absolutely cannot be carried along any longer? In hardware designs there are always a lot of hard trade offs made to keep the bill of materials as low as reasonably possible. As new components become available new capabilities for the devices become possible, and at some point you need to focus your primary R&D efforts on the newer stuff just for efficiency sake. My personal experience is that very few mainstream devices are really built with some kind of planned obsolescence. Instead, devices that become unsupported and unable to get current software updates are usually just victims of the basic drivers of modern business (profit, growth, etc.). Sure there are cases where the hardware vendor WANTS devices to expire early and force users to buy new ones, but when you look at the app store revenues of Apple or Google, I don't think they're sweating hardware revenue to the point they are implementing some form of planned obsolescence. They might even prefer that older devices were more cost effective to support in order to reduce the potential for churn to the alternate platform/ecosystem.
- mindslight 5y ago
  At the scale of a large company, nothing is specifically anything. There is continual random noise generation, that is then filtered through incentives for what sticks. In fact, one of the core mechanics of a corporation is diffusing explicit motivations such that no individual can be specifically blamed. However when talking about the overall emergent behavior, it still makes sense to talk in terms of explicit motivations.
- drath 5y ago
  > Do you think Apple or Google, when making the decisions on browser upgrade-ability, anticipated javascript changes that would break common sites and force users to buy new hardware Yes, they should, because these are the same people doing both
- zokier 5y ago
  Having predefined end-of-life date on a device is absolutely planned obsolescence in a literal sense; it is both planned and it makes the device obsolete and they definitely knew it would make the device obsolete when making the decision, doubly so in ipads case where user has no options to do anything about it (on chromebooks at least you could in theory install different OS afaik?).
- jerf 5y ago
  "Is it specifically planned obsolescence, or just case of technology evolving? " It is not a coincidence that "technology evolving" results in obsolescence. It is true that it is additional effort to support old devices, but it is a finite and feasible amount of effort. Plus, old devices are hard to support in part because of decisions made in the creation of those old devices that make them hard to support. Like many other engineering things, if companies decided to get better at supporting old devices, it might be hard at first but it would get easier and easier as they got practiced and built solutions around it.
- croes 5y ago
  So which part of the JavaScript changes needs new hardware?
- ramses0 5y ago
  I got bit by this obsolescence. My understanding of the gist of it: 1) Chromebook is a "secure platform" => including drivers, firmware, etc. etc. 2) Supporting "security" across the browser is the first point, but additionally, there's security required across the whole hardware footprint 3) "when it's too expensive to keep track of / backport security fixes" or "the latest kernel won't build anymore" => "Sorry, your device is obsolete." 4) The rise of evergreen browsers (specifically chrome-monopoly) is pushing the definition of what is worth updating / monkey-patching / transpiling. There's "ways" to update "stuff" but at that point you're basically using it as a linux device (subject to _linux's_ security and update stance) instead of a chromeos device.
jimbokun 5y ago
Didn't read it that way at all, thought the author was agreeing that his parents had made a good point.
spankalee 5y ago
This is one reason I'm very excited by Fuchsia - it should enable far longer usable lifetimes for devices with the kernel and drivers being updatable separately. If ChromeOS moved to Fuchsia I don't think we'd see stuck stale installs like this very much.
saila 5y ago
I don't know anything about Chromebook, but Apple devices get something like 7 years of updates, right? That seems pretty reasonable. The first gen iPad Air mentioned in the article was released over 8 years ago and was receiving security updates through most of last year. My mom was using a plastic MacBook from 2010 without major issues up until late 2020. That said, I do think Apple should give you the option to completely unlock unsupported devices so that you could install Linux or something.
- IshKebab 5y ago
  > something like 7 years of updates, right? That seems pretty reasonable. I think it is for OS updates, but not for something that should clearly be user-updatable like a browser. It's not like you can even install Firefox to get around it.
  - null_object 5y ago
    > It's not like you can even install Firefox to get around it There are plenty of browser alternatives still compatible with iOS12 and 8-year old iPad hardware. I have no idea how this myth has become so entrenched on HN.
    - quanticle 5y ago
      All iOS "browsers" are mere re-skins of the native Webkit browser control. When you install "Firefox" or "Chrome" on an old iPad, you're just getting the built-in Webkit with a different UI. That's fine if you care about bookmark synchronization or where the tabs are located on the screen, but it won't help with this problem.
    - pas 5y ago
      They don't support old iOSes, and you can't upgrade iOS obviously. So in effect these iPads are completely dead. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29895406 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29895406

brk 5y ago

Is it specifically planned obsolescence, or just case of technology evolving? Do you think Apple or Google, when making the decisions on browser upgrade-ability, anticipated javascript changes that would break common sites and force users to buy new hardware? To me this does not feel like planned obsolescence and feels more like a general case of "technology marches on".

ugjka 5y ago
If only you could install some other operating system on these devices and load the latest browser or even more!
_dain_ 5y ago
Is there any technical reason why that old hardware can't run the modern browser? I severely doubt it.
noitpmeder 5y ago
In the case of software updates it _is_ planned obsolescence. However, whether it is planned out of malice or out of cost (I imagine it costs some amount of money to continue to support old hardware) is up in the air.
elondaits 5y ago
Not even. JS developers should know to transpile their code to support users that for whatever reasons (from a long list) cannot run the latest JS version... or stick to truly standard things. The ?. operator was included in Edge, Safari, Chrome and Firefox early 2020. According to caniuse.com, only 90% of users have browsers that support it... but depending on who your audience is, it might be much less (e.g. if you target schools, or government, there might be computers locked in older OSs or browser versions... at least that's the case in my country).
- tgv 5y ago
  It is lazy, indeed, but the whole ecosystem enables it. You install some yarn based framework installer, create a project, and before you know it, it sets something like "browser-support" at 95%. That number is estimated from dubious sources, and quickly eliminates older versions, and every update discards more versions.
  - Zardoz84 5y ago
    what I do it's generé a bundle for modern browsers, and another for IE11 (and by extension ancient versions of Firefox and Chrome) with the necessary polyfills
krono 5y ago
That really depends on their reason for preventing further software updates. If the hardware is actually, physically incapable of running later versions (AKA your Chromebook would crash and burn on boot), sure. Any other case it's corporate greed and/or laziness.
BlueTemplar 5y ago
While unavoidable for some web programs (but if your program is so complex, why aren't you compiling for the native OS ?), this sounds like the failure of the website to gracefully downgrade to work without JavaScript ?
godDLL 5y ago
A question, then. Li-ion battery arrangements inside those devices seem to hold about 80% of their usable capacity and voltage for about six months, with average usage patterns. A year after that this drops to 50% of original capacity, or below. This is known, if a bit too generalized. Yet those are not easily swapped out. And your CPU throttles, your WiFi throttles down with the battery, reducing usability. There is no "please change out the battery" alert for the user at any point. The marketing for these devices makes no mention like "you've got about a year of usage for this device before it becomes slow". In any of this there aren't any external factors to anticipate, unlike with the Javascript landscape example above. As a manufacturer you know your device usage patterns, you do collect some telemetry and some repairs data. You can make a projection. My point is, those are being sold in full knowledge of the facts of their limited lifetime. With no mitigation strategies, with no concessions for user-serviceable battery replacement or how to buy those batteries. There is no battery shelf at the Apple store. It isn't discussed much. There is no customer blowback to this product strategy. It could be, in bad faith argued that people are fine with buying something to replace it a year later. My question is, to you, are you arguing this in good faith? Do you really think this is fine to have something called a "product" where it is actually a service, with a limited term and no end-user serviceability? Is it OK to call something a "question" where I am asking you to ask yourself, and don't care to hear what the answer is, because I have already arrived at an opinion long time ago and see no reason to change it hence? Please don't be offended by this, it isn't intended to rile you in any way. I am only after some clarity, as I perceive your language to be confusing terms mightily and so making things seem more complicated than they end up being.
- 43920 5y ago
  > Li-ion battery arrangements inside those devices seem to hold about 80% of their usable capacity and voltage for about six months, with average usage patterns. A year after that this drops to 50% of original capacity, or below. This is known, if a bit too generalized. What? Taking the example of Apple (since they make their battery ratings easily accessible, but other manufacturers are similar), iphone batteries are rated to hit 80% at 500 charge cycles, and ipad/macbook batteries are rated to 1000 cycles [1]. Assuming you discharge your battery from 100% to 0% every day (which is at the upper end of average usage), iphone batteries should last ~1.5 years, and macbook batteries around 3 years. Apple also has a pretty good battery replacement service, at least in comparison to other manufacturers. When my iphone battery wore out after ~3 years, I shipped it to Apple and paid $60, and they sent it back a few days later with a new battery. My macbook battery lasted ~4 years of heavy usage, and they did the same thing for ~$200. A user-swappable battery would definitely be easier (and cheaper), but the service they offer is good enough that it's still feasible to get a replacement and keep the device past the battery lifespan. [1] https://www.apple.com/batteries/service-and-recycling/ https://www.apple.com/batteries/service-and-recycling/
pwdisswordfish9 5y ago
technology marches on = planned obsolescence + plausible deniability
redler 5y ago
Unless you’re going to continue supporting updated software on existing devices until the end of time, there will always be a place on the time and feasibility curve where you’ll have to draw the line. So while that is indeed a plan, or becomes a plan as a device ages and practical realities begin to assert themselves, attributing it to a sort of corporate greed or malice seems reductive.
xg15 5y ago
"Technology marches on" would be if at some point, 4K became the dominant video resolution on the web and therefore, the laptop wouldn't be powerful enough to use most of YouTube. The example here is stupid because the laptop is perfectly capable of executing a .? operator - there is no insufficient hardware or similar things. The only reason it can't is because of artificial limitations put up by Google, likely on the risk that some other, unrelated features might fail otherwise. I don't think it's planned obsolescence in the sense that they specifically set out to brick the device - but they are certainly accepting that such devices becoming obsolete quickly in their planning.
- brk 5y ago
  Having been involved in the design and specifications of a number of hardware products over the years, my experience has been different. You cannot predict all the possible future requirements of a product, the best you can do is make a reasonable effort. In this case the vendors likely could do some kind of patch/update to support .?, but surely there are a large number of other little things that have changed or been added over the years, not just .?. So, where does that slippery slope end? How many new features, and related regression testing should be put into older devices? Does the hardware vendor have a kind of ethical responsibility to continue to update it until it just absolutely cannot be carried along any longer? In hardware designs there are always a lot of hard trade offs made to keep the bill of materials as low as reasonably possible. As new components become available new capabilities for the devices become possible, and at some point you need to focus your primary R&D efforts on the newer stuff just for efficiency sake. My personal experience is that very few mainstream devices are really built with some kind of planned obsolescence. Instead, devices that become unsupported and unable to get current software updates are usually just victims of the basic drivers of modern business (profit, growth, etc.). Sure there are cases where the hardware vendor WANTS devices to expire early and force users to buy new ones, but when you look at the app store revenues of Apple or Google, I don't think they're sweating hardware revenue to the point they are implementing some form of planned obsolescence. They might even prefer that older devices were more cost effective to support in order to reduce the potential for churn to the alternate platform/ecosystem.
mindslight 5y ago
At the scale of a large company, nothing is specifically anything. There is continual random noise generation, that is then filtered through incentives for what sticks. In fact, one of the core mechanics of a corporation is diffusing explicit motivations such that no individual can be specifically blamed. However when talking about the overall emergent behavior, it still makes sense to talk in terms of explicit motivations.
drath 5y ago
> Do you think Apple or Google, when making the decisions on browser upgrade-ability, anticipated javascript changes that would break common sites and force users to buy new hardware Yes, they should, because these are the same people doing both
zokier 5y ago
Having predefined end-of-life date on a device is absolutely planned obsolescence in a literal sense; it is both planned and it makes the device obsolete and they definitely knew it would make the device obsolete when making the decision, doubly so in ipads case where user has no options to do anything about it (on chromebooks at least you could in theory install different OS afaik?).
jerf 5y ago
"Is it specifically planned obsolescence, or just case of technology evolving? " It is not a coincidence that "technology evolving" results in obsolescence. It is true that it is additional effort to support old devices, but it is a finite and feasible amount of effort. Plus, old devices are hard to support in part because of decisions made in the creation of those old devices that make them hard to support. Like many other engineering things, if companies decided to get better at supporting old devices, it might be hard at first but it would get easier and easier as they got practiced and built solutions around it.
croes 5y ago
So which part of the JavaScript changes needs new hardware?
ramses0 5y ago
I got bit by this obsolescence. My understanding of the gist of it: 1) Chromebook is a "secure platform" => including drivers, firmware, etc. etc. 2) Supporting "security" across the browser is the first point, but additionally, there's security required across the whole hardware footprint 3) "when it's too expensive to keep track of / backport security fixes" or "the latest kernel won't build anymore" => "Sorry, your device is obsolete." 4) The rise of evergreen browsers (specifically chrome-monopoly) is pushing the definition of what is worth updating / monkey-patching / transpiling. There's "ways" to update "stuff" but at that point you're basically using it as a linux device (subject to _linux's_ security and update stance) instead of a chromeos device.

jimbokun 5y ago

Didn't read it that way at all, thought the author was agreeing that his parents had made a good point.

spankalee 5y ago

This is one reason I'm very excited by Fuchsia - it should enable far longer usable lifetimes for devices with the kernel and drivers being updatable separately. If ChromeOS moved to Fuchsia I don't think we'd see stuck stale installs like this very much.

saila 5y ago

I don't know anything about Chromebook, but Apple devices get something like 7 years of updates, right? That seems pretty reasonable. The first gen iPad Air mentioned in the article was released over 8 years ago and was receiving security updates through most of last year. My mom was using a plastic MacBook from 2010 without major issues up until late 2020. That said, I do think Apple should give you the option to completely unlock unsupported devices so that you could install Linux or something.

IshKebab 5y ago
> something like 7 years of updates, right? That seems pretty reasonable. I think it is for OS updates, but not for something that should clearly be user-updatable like a browser. It's not like you can even install Firefox to get around it.
- null_object 5y ago
  > It's not like you can even install Firefox to get around it There are plenty of browser alternatives still compatible with iOS12 and 8-year old iPad hardware. I have no idea how this myth has become so entrenched on HN.
  - quanticle 5y ago
    All iOS "browsers" are mere re-skins of the native Webkit browser control. When you install "Firefox" or "Chrome" on an old iPad, you're just getting the built-in Webkit with a different UI. That's fine if you care about bookmark synchronization or where the tabs are located on the screen, but it won't help with this problem.
  - pas 5y ago
    They don't support old iOSes, and you can't upgrade iOS obviously. So in effect these iPads are completely dead. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29895406 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29895406