13 ms·

This is simply how Apple does things. They provide software support for ~10 years and then they drop it. Is it wrong? I’m not entirely sure. You can call that

by kmfpl 4y ago

This is simply how Apple does things. They provide software support for ~10 years and then they drop it. Is it wrong? I’m not entirely sure. You can call that greedy, but take a few things into consideration. Firstly, Apple provides highly specialized software that runs extremely well and efficiently on their own hardware. Continuously providing support for old hardware while simultaneously maintaining the same level of performance is simply not feasible. I challenge any software developer to achieve a similar goal. We are not talking about Linux here, where if you’re lucky, things work. Anyone’s that ever used macOS even once knows that things really work. Now, I assume this window of time between a new hardware’s release and the software drop for that given piece of hardware will increase over time, given that new hardware released by Apple nowadays is incredibly performant, this would allow longer software support. Frankly, my opinion is that 10 years of support is more than enough for anyone to consider renovating their hardware. Recently, in the last XNU kernel release (corresponding to macOS 13/iOS 16) the 32-bit part of the kernel has been entirely removed, meaning that XNU won’t support any 32-bit device anymore. This is really exciting to me, as I see the technology moving forward, without getting stuck on prehistoric hardware support.

FpUser 4y ago
>"Anyone’s that ever used macOS even once knows that things really work." I am not a regular Mac user but I was once asked by client to port my CI/CD related script so it can work for developers who use Macs. Script involved dealing with docker among other things. After dicking around for a while I've discovered deeply nested folder created by docker that was not supposed to exist after successful script completion. Do not remember all the details but this folder was a thorn. Short of sacrificing a virgin no matter what I tried I was not able remove it. Invoking search power of Google did not help either - plenty of recipes and suggestions and none worked. Finally after giving this Mac to system gurus and them dicking with it for a day I was told that they have failed so far it is no longer worth their time and they will reinstall the OS.
- lkois 4y ago
  Macs have a bunch of weird quirks where simple things simply do not work. I got a new mbp for work recently, second to my main windows gaming machine with 34" ultra wide 1440p monitor. And I've basically installed chrome, vscode, and a whole bunch of little packages to make basic hardware operate normally. There's an app to allow the track pad and mouse wheel scroll directions to be set differently. There's another to allow the mouse side buttons to work. It's a basic mouse. These are settings and compatibility issues that do not need to exist. But the most annoying is that the monitor is a bit blurry on the M1. I use vscode for a few mins before I realise there's a fuzziness to it. And apparently this is a known issue, because macs only scale properly for 4k resolutions. So there's another app to make it think its 4k or something. Helps a bit but not that well, and it's a trial. It's maddening. How the hell is anyone supposed to know that Apple has just decided that they won't be compatible with an entire category of bloody monitors, of all things.
  - halefx 4y ago
    Macs only look good at a 110 or 220 pixel density. 34" ultra wide 1440p has a pixel density of about 110 ppi, and that should work just fine. You might need to use a different cable, though. You should look your monitor up on rtings.com and search for notes on Mac compatibility. I have a MacBook Pro 14 that I use daily with a 34" ultra-wide 1440p gaming monitor, and I've never had a problem. I had a MacBook Pro 13 before the 14 that also worked without issue.
    - howinteresting 4y ago
      The problem is that macOS killed off subpixel anti aliasing, which is important to making text look good on 110ppi displays. So 220+ ppi displays are the only real option here.
      - webmobdev 4y ago
        Yeah, using non-Apple monitors with a mac is a pain. Try "Retina Display Manager" - https://github.com/avibrazil/RDM https://github.com/avibrazil/RDM - as it allows you to switch to the sharper HiDPI resolutions supported on your monitor.
michaelcampbell 4y ago
> We are not talking about Linux here, where if you’re lucky, things work. What percentage of the Internet is even possible due to this, if you're to be believed, barely working and then only by luck, OS? I get the Apple cultiness, but we don't need it here.
- saagarjha 4y ago
  Linux on a server and Linux on your laptop are very different experiences.
  - ehutch79 4y ago
    If comments on HN are anything to go by, linux on the desktop is perfect and easily usable by any office worker. I'm sure if you walk up to Susan in accounting, handed her an arch install usb, she'll have tmux and neovim up and configured by lunch! In all seriousness though. I'm not sure a lot of HN commenters (probably myself included) have any actual perspective on how a normal person wants to interact with their computers, or what business need from desktop endpoints. The fact that anyone things that editing source is a good way to configure a window manager (dwm) is mind boggling.
  - michaelcampbell 4y ago
    Fair point, but I've run *buntu on various laptops (old and new) and desktop(s) my son and I constructed from stuff chosen from pcpartpicker.com not 3 months ago. "It's just worked". Every time.
- kitsunesoba 4y ago
  They’re probably talking about most desktop Linux distributions, which are less stable than what servers are running both because servers run distros with packages that are older and more polished and because servers don’t usually have hardware with notoriously troublesome drivers (e.g. Broadcom, Nvidia, some Realtek stuff, etc). Of course desktop users can tailor their machines to use with Linux and also run something like Debian but it’s more likely they’re using whatever computer they happened to have and running Ubuntu (or one of its many derivatives), Fedora, or Arch which are indeed more likely on average to break. I know because I’ve seen it happen several times in my own usage.
gorbypark 4y ago
My ~6 year old MacBook Pro (13" late 2016 model (with touchbar), purchased new in 2017) is no longer "supported" (no Ventura). As far as I can tell, linux does not support WiFi or audio on it, so it's pretty much a piece of trash as far as being a laptop once apps stop supporting macOS Monterey.
- metaltyphoon 4y ago
  I known its crazy… maybe bootcamp?
- chrisandchris 4y ago
  How many of these apps will drop support for Monterey within the coming year(s)? How many of your apps will actually stop working when there are no updates? I think that if a Laptop lives for 6-8 years, that's quite good. If you don't think so, maybe Windows is a better fit for you because you can purchase fove (cheap) laptops for the price of one Mac. If you "need" your Mac for work, I think replacing it every 6-8 years shouldn't be an issue.
  - goosedragons 4y ago
    Why buy 5 Windows laptops for the price of one Mac when one PC laptop can be supported for 2-3 times as long? You can run Windows 10 on a ThinkPad T60 from 2006. Windows 10 will get support until 2025. That's 19 years support from one machine. Use a Linux distro and get even more. Why spend more for a Mac if you get less useful life and are constantly having to repurchase software from OS upgrades breaking stuff?
    - leviathant 4y ago
      As a lifelong Intel/MS user in my early 40s, I've been staring down an M1 Mac Studio and thinking hard about this. I had a 2006 Dell Inspiron Laptop that I got for less than $1000 from the Dell Outlet, that came with Vista XP, and through various promotions had been able to upgrade the OS all the way to Windows 10, legitimately - and I think I might have only paid $60 for the Win 7 upgrade. About six year ago, I donated the laptop (the internal wifi card was spotty, and with 4gb of RAM, it wasn't much for multitasking). Similarly, I've got a Dell Desktop with an i7 processor that's 11 years old, which through the magic of SSDs and the occasional video card upgrade, continues to do a solid job with the creative work I do in Photoshop, multitrack audio, Sketchup, and Twinmotion. Ten years ago, I started using a Macbook Pro at work because internally, we switched to Ruby on Rails for the ecommerce platform we built. I was asked if I wanted to keep working in Windows, but basically everyone building in RoR was on a Macbook, so why swim against the current? I'll spare a this vs that comparison, and leave it to say that (muscle memory for keyboard shortcuts aside) I eventually was okay with working on a Mac. It also gave me a lot more exposure to Apple culture, for better and for worse. A lot of it was insufferable idolatry and ideological pontification - but I started to understand, if not necessarily agree with, the product lifecycle in Apple. I had a 2013 Macbook Pro, it was still working fine, but I traded it last year towards my first iPad (now that they had USB-C and more of a creative focus than a consumption focus, I was willing to take the plunge) It's a lot like leasing cars. I'm someone who tries to drive a car into the ground, proverbially - I do regularly maintenance though, so it's more like after 10-15 years, the safety improvements on modern vehicles outweigh the cost advantage of driving something I paid off a decade ago. Back to Apple - once they got serious about recycling, the pattern became: you spend a bunch of money up front, and then you just keep trading your hardware in for the latest version. I would hold onto my iPhone for three product cycles because I spent a lot of money on it and I was going to eek out every last cent. But with Apple, you have a large initial outlay, and you can leverage the trade-in as almost a kind of hardware subscription. They've got a solid backup/recovery process that makes this really, really simple. And I kinda get it, the way I kinda get why some people lease cars instead of buy. Get a Mac with AppleCare and upgrade it every year or two, and that premium you pay essentially means you don't have to think too hard about breaking your computer, and you're always within a year or two of the latest, greatest hardware. It still costs more, no doubt about that. But like with a leased car, you kinda don't have to worry about maintenance. With cars and computers, I do a lot of work myself, but I'm getting to a point in life where I just don't care about doing that anymore, and I have better financial resources, and I'm thinking real hard about going with size, power, and performance of a Mac Studio, knowing that it means reshaping my relationship with computers. The fact that they've been reducing or eliminating proprietary connectors in recent years has played a very large factor in swaying me in this direction too, I'd add, while knowing that it's still very much Apple culture to charge you $30 for $0.35 worth of cable.
lapcat 4y ago
> This is simply how Apple does things. They provide software support for ~10 years and then they drop it. Monterey was released in 2021 and dropped support for my 2014 MacBook Pro, so that's only 7 years. It's fair to say that you can continue to run macOS N-1 and N-2, which would add years of life, but the author of the linked article is trying to argue that you're not safe unless you're running the latest major version.
- kmfpl 4y ago
  Well, that’s 7 years of major updates with all the security fixes. Moreover, Apple continues to release minor versions for devices that are not supported anymore, in order to fix major flaws that are actively exploited ITW (see iOS from 12.4.2 to 12.5.6, those are a lot of minors released over the years to address 0d ITW, same thing happens with macOS)
- dangus 4y ago
  But then you get a few more years of your software not being 100% current but still getting a good chunk of the security updates and generally being compatible with current software, which adds up to that full 10 years. Your MacBook Pro is compatible with the OpenCore Legacy Patcher: https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/MODELS.html https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/MODELS.ht...
howinteresting 4y ago
I've used macOS professionally for years and it absolutely does not Just Work. I greatly prefer Linux, which also doesn't Just Work, but at least exposes enough knobs that you can fix what doesn't work. Unlike on Mac where you have to disable SIP just to get started fixing it.
godDLL 4y ago
I can't disagree. On the other hand, if thinking about the world as it is and not about the abstract, I'd have to say that none of what Apple did since 2015 has anything to make me upgrade my hardware. So I have like 6-8 computers that are all more than 7 years old by now. I'm not looking for new hardware. And looking at the software they've released in those years, I'm not looking forward to new software. Methinks I ate myself, thanks Apple. You got me spoiled. And you can't compete.

by kmfpl 4y ago

FpUser 4y ago

>"Anyone’s that ever used macOS even once knows that things really work." I am not a regular Mac user but I was once asked by client to port my CI/CD related script so it can work for developers who use Macs. Script involved dealing with docker among other things. After dicking around for a while I've discovered deeply nested folder created by docker that was not supposed to exist after successful script completion. Do not remember all the details but this folder was a thorn. Short of sacrificing a virgin no matter what I tried I was not able remove it. Invoking search power of Google did not help either - plenty of recipes and suggestions and none worked. Finally after giving this Mac to system gurus and them dicking with it for a day I was told that they have failed so far it is no longer worth their time and they will reinstall the OS.

lkois 4y ago
Macs have a bunch of weird quirks where simple things simply do not work. I got a new mbp for work recently, second to my main windows gaming machine with 34" ultra wide 1440p monitor. And I've basically installed chrome, vscode, and a whole bunch of little packages to make basic hardware operate normally. There's an app to allow the track pad and mouse wheel scroll directions to be set differently. There's another to allow the mouse side buttons to work. It's a basic mouse. These are settings and compatibility issues that do not need to exist. But the most annoying is that the monitor is a bit blurry on the M1. I use vscode for a few mins before I realise there's a fuzziness to it. And apparently this is a known issue, because macs only scale properly for 4k resolutions. So there's another app to make it think its 4k or something. Helps a bit but not that well, and it's a trial. It's maddening. How the hell is anyone supposed to know that Apple has just decided that they won't be compatible with an entire category of bloody monitors, of all things.
- halefx 4y ago
  Macs only look good at a 110 or 220 pixel density. 34" ultra wide 1440p has a pixel density of about 110 ppi, and that should work just fine. You might need to use a different cable, though. You should look your monitor up on rtings.com and search for notes on Mac compatibility. I have a MacBook Pro 14 that I use daily with a 34" ultra-wide 1440p gaming monitor, and I've never had a problem. I had a MacBook Pro 13 before the 14 that also worked without issue.
  - howinteresting 4y ago
    The problem is that macOS killed off subpixel anti aliasing, which is important to making text look good on 110ppi displays. So 220+ ppi displays are the only real option here.
    - webmobdev 4y ago
      Yeah, using non-Apple monitors with a mac is a pain. Try "Retina Display Manager" - https://github.com/avibrazil/RDM https://github.com/avibrazil/RDM - as it allows you to switch to the sharper HiDPI resolutions supported on your monitor.

michaelcampbell 4y ago

> We are not talking about Linux here, where if you’re lucky, things work. What percentage of the Internet is even possible due to this, if you're to be believed, barely working and then only by luck, OS? I get the Apple cultiness, but we don't need it here.

saagarjha 4y ago
Linux on a server and Linux on your laptop are very different experiences.
- ehutch79 4y ago
  If comments on HN are anything to go by, linux on the desktop is perfect and easily usable by any office worker. I'm sure if you walk up to Susan in accounting, handed her an arch install usb, she'll have tmux and neovim up and configured by lunch! In all seriousness though. I'm not sure a lot of HN commenters (probably myself included) have any actual perspective on how a normal person wants to interact with their computers, or what business need from desktop endpoints. The fact that anyone things that editing source is a good way to configure a window manager (dwm) is mind boggling.
- michaelcampbell 4y ago
  Fair point, but I've run *buntu on various laptops (old and new) and desktop(s) my son and I constructed from stuff chosen from pcpartpicker.com not 3 months ago. "It's just worked". Every time.
kitsunesoba 4y ago
They’re probably talking about most desktop Linux distributions, which are less stable than what servers are running both because servers run distros with packages that are older and more polished and because servers don’t usually have hardware with notoriously troublesome drivers (e.g. Broadcom, Nvidia, some Realtek stuff, etc). Of course desktop users can tailor their machines to use with Linux and also run something like Debian but it’s more likely they’re using whatever computer they happened to have and running Ubuntu (or one of its many derivatives), Fedora, or Arch which are indeed more likely on average to break. I know because I’ve seen it happen several times in my own usage.

gorbypark 4y ago

My ~6 year old MacBook Pro (13" late 2016 model (with touchbar), purchased new in 2017) is no longer "supported" (no Ventura). As far as I can tell, linux does not support WiFi or audio on it, so it's pretty much a piece of trash as far as being a laptop once apps stop supporting macOS Monterey.

metaltyphoon 4y ago
I known its crazy… maybe bootcamp?
chrisandchris 4y ago
How many of these apps will drop support for Monterey within the coming year(s)? How many of your apps will actually stop working when there are no updates? I think that if a Laptop lives for 6-8 years, that's quite good. If you don't think so, maybe Windows is a better fit for you because you can purchase fove (cheap) laptops for the price of one Mac. If you "need" your Mac for work, I think replacing it every 6-8 years shouldn't be an issue.
- goosedragons 4y ago
  Why buy 5 Windows laptops for the price of one Mac when one PC laptop can be supported for 2-3 times as long? You can run Windows 10 on a ThinkPad T60 from 2006. Windows 10 will get support until 2025. That's 19 years support from one machine. Use a Linux distro and get even more. Why spend more for a Mac if you get less useful life and are constantly having to repurchase software from OS upgrades breaking stuff?
  - leviathant 4y ago
    As a lifelong Intel/MS user in my early 40s, I've been staring down an M1 Mac Studio and thinking hard about this. I had a 2006 Dell Inspiron Laptop that I got for less than $1000 from the Dell Outlet, that came with Vista XP, and through various promotions had been able to upgrade the OS all the way to Windows 10, legitimately - and I think I might have only paid $60 for the Win 7 upgrade. About six year ago, I donated the laptop (the internal wifi card was spotty, and with 4gb of RAM, it wasn't much for multitasking). Similarly, I've got a Dell Desktop with an i7 processor that's 11 years old, which through the magic of SSDs and the occasional video card upgrade, continues to do a solid job with the creative work I do in Photoshop, multitrack audio, Sketchup, and Twinmotion. Ten years ago, I started using a Macbook Pro at work because internally, we switched to Ruby on Rails for the ecommerce platform we built. I was asked if I wanted to keep working in Windows, but basically everyone building in RoR was on a Macbook, so why swim against the current? I'll spare a this vs that comparison, and leave it to say that (muscle memory for keyboard shortcuts aside) I eventually was okay with working on a Mac. It also gave me a lot more exposure to Apple culture, for better and for worse. A lot of it was insufferable idolatry and ideological pontification - but I started to understand, if not necessarily agree with, the product lifecycle in Apple. I had a 2013 Macbook Pro, it was still working fine, but I traded it last year towards my first iPad (now that they had USB-C and more of a creative focus than a consumption focus, I was willing to take the plunge) It's a lot like leasing cars. I'm someone who tries to drive a car into the ground, proverbially - I do regularly maintenance though, so it's more like after 10-15 years, the safety improvements on modern vehicles outweigh the cost advantage of driving something I paid off a decade ago. Back to Apple - once they got serious about recycling, the pattern became: you spend a bunch of money up front, and then you just keep trading your hardware in for the latest version. I would hold onto my iPhone for three product cycles because I spent a lot of money on it and I was going to eek out every last cent. But with Apple, you have a large initial outlay, and you can leverage the trade-in as almost a kind of hardware subscription. They've got a solid backup/recovery process that makes this really, really simple. And I kinda get it, the way I kinda get why some people lease cars instead of buy. Get a Mac with AppleCare and upgrade it every year or two, and that premium you pay essentially means you don't have to think too hard about breaking your computer, and you're always within a year or two of the latest, greatest hardware. It still costs more, no doubt about that. But like with a leased car, you kinda don't have to worry about maintenance. With cars and computers, I do a lot of work myself, but I'm getting to a point in life where I just don't care about doing that anymore, and I have better financial resources, and I'm thinking real hard about going with size, power, and performance of a Mac Studio, knowing that it means reshaping my relationship with computers. The fact that they've been reducing or eliminating proprietary connectors in recent years has played a very large factor in swaying me in this direction too, I'd add, while knowing that it's still very much Apple culture to charge you $30 for $0.35 worth of cable.

lapcat 4y ago

> This is simply how Apple does things. They provide software support for ~10 years and then they drop it. Monterey was released in 2021 and dropped support for my 2014 MacBook Pro, so that's only 7 years. It's fair to say that you can continue to run macOS N-1 and N-2, which would add years of life, but the author of the linked article is trying to argue that you're not safe unless you're running the latest major version.

kmfpl 4y ago
Well, that’s 7 years of major updates with all the security fixes. Moreover, Apple continues to release minor versions for devices that are not supported anymore, in order to fix major flaws that are actively exploited ITW (see iOS from 12.4.2 to 12.5.6, those are a lot of minors released over the years to address 0d ITW, same thing happens with macOS)
dangus 4y ago
But then you get a few more years of your software not being 100% current but still getting a good chunk of the security updates and generally being compatible with current software, which adds up to that full 10 years. Your MacBook Pro is compatible with the OpenCore Legacy Patcher: https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/MODELS.html https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/MODELS.ht...

howinteresting 4y ago

I've used macOS professionally for years and it absolutely does not Just Work. I greatly prefer Linux, which also doesn't Just Work, but at least exposes enough knobs that you can fix what doesn't work. Unlike on Mac where you have to disable SIP just to get started fixing it.

godDLL 4y ago

I can't disagree. On the other hand, if thinking about the world as it is and not about the abstract, I'd have to say that none of what Apple did since 2015 has anything to make me upgrade my hardware. So I have like 6-8 computers that are all more than 7 years old by now. I'm not looking for new hardware. And looking at the software they've released in those years, I'm not looking forward to new software. Methinks I ate myself, thanks Apple. You got me spoiled. And you can't compete.