7 ms·

Obviously. Yet people keeps buying from them.

chrisseaton 4y ago
There are benefits to getting on with version updates. When I do software for macOS I know that the culture is I don't have to test on 10 old versions that people might be running. It's reasonable in macOS to just say 'you obviously have to be running the latest version' which simplifies so much, and allows me to get on with more of what matters.
- highwaylights 4y ago
  But the rest of that sentence is “.. unless your machine is slightly older in which case just throw it in the Bin and drop another $2k on a new one like it’s no big deal.”
  - chrisseaton 4y ago
    Run a different operating system, or run it air-gapped, or sell the machine back to Apple and let them recycle it. I don't know why you'd choose to 'throw it in the bin' that's insane. I think it's pretty great how Apple will buy back my laptop from me for 1/4 the price after a few years. Other manufacturers don't seem to do that.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - dividedbyzero 4y ago
      Weird, last time I checked I was quoted 300-ish Euros on a >3000 Euro Intel MBP from 2020 in good condition, still getting updates and probably will keep getting them for years to come.
      - chrisseaton 4y ago
        > in good condition, still getting updates and probably will keep getting them for years to come Lol so what is the problem? Why would you bin it?
        dividedbyzero 4y ago
        > Lol so what is the problem? Apple's offer after two years is a lot less than the quarter of the retail price that was mentioned by parent and will probably be much worse still by the time they deprecate them. Just not as attractive an option as parent made it seem, at least for me if I wanted to get rid of it.
        highwaylights 4y ago
        I get that you’re saying it shouldn’t literally be thrown in the bin - but your argument is utterly terrible. Getting an offer of 10% of the purchase price to buy back a laptop after two years is offensive.
        chrisseaton 4y ago
        I can’t understand being offended by buying a laptop with a pretty well-known maintenance policy. If it wasn’t the right purchase for you that’s a fault in your research and you shouldn’t be offended by it.
        lxgr 4y ago
        We are talking about the end of life (in terms of no longer receiving macOS updates) here, right? That timeframe is much longer than two years.
    - blowski 4y ago
      I'm with you on this. You've got to choose between price, performance, flexibility, maintainability, upgradability, reliability, etc. These are the trade-offs you make. When people "why is this still a thing?" sometimes it sounds like they're asking "why do I have to make trade-offs at all?" which really doesn't make any sense.
  - acdha 4y ago
    Not in any factual universe. Those systems will see close to a decade of support - more than long enough for the usable service life of the hardware in many cases and certainly not out of line with the competition. The difference is just that you are expected to update the OS multiple times over that period.
    - highwaylights 4y ago
      The point of the thread is that they won’t see anywhere close to a decade of support at all, and that any OS older than the latest released version will get some updates if it isn’t too complicated.
      - acdha 4y ago
        Not backporting every feature is not the same as being unsupported. Ask what worked on your machine when you bought it which no longer works with the n-1 release version of the APFS driver? It is interesting to look at what changes between releases, which is why blog posts like this get attention but it’s not a problem report - notice how there isn’t anyone saying something like “I took an external drive and it didn’t work on my 2013 Mac?”
- ryandrake 4y ago
  It would be good to consult actual metrics about the population size on each old OS version and on each old device. It might surprise you. I used to argue constantly with the "Apple Culture Guy" at an app company I worked for. They always wanted to target only the latest few OS versions, and chop off support for the old ones. Yes, most of our users were on the latest version. But there was a very long tail of users on the trail of older devices/OS's, adding up to more than 10%. Would a salesman answer his phone and tell 1 out of 10 of his leads to fuck off? No, so why would we do it to our existing customers? Sure enough, every time we cut off an old device or OS, we'd get customers complaining and giving bad reviews. But then, Mr. Apple Culture guy would look at the dashboard and say "See? Nobody is using that version anymore!" No shit, it's because we cut it off and those users bailed on us, genius. Backwards compatibility is one of the greatest services you can give to your customer. Cutting off support for old versions simply because you're too lazy to maintain that support is just telling those customers to fuck off and find a competitor. The code simplifications/savings that you get from dropping old versions are seldom worth that. They often amount to one or two more lines with an if() statement.
  - chrisseaton 4y ago
    But it costs to support those old versions. At just 10%, it may well not be worth it.

There are benefits to getting on with version updates. When I do software for macOS I know that the culture is I don't have to test on 10 old versions that people might be running. It's reasonable in macOS to just say 'you obviously have to be running the latest version' which simplifies so much, and allows me to get on with more of what matters.

highwaylights 4y ago
But the rest of that sentence is “.. unless your machine is slightly older in which case just throw it in the Bin and drop another $2k on a new one like it’s no big deal.”
- chrisseaton 4y ago
  Run a different operating system, or run it air-gapped, or sell the machine back to Apple and let them recycle it. I don't know why you'd choose to 'throw it in the bin' that's insane. I think it's pretty great how Apple will buy back my laptop from me for 1/4 the price after a few years. Other manufacturers don't seem to do that.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - dividedbyzero 4y ago
    Weird, last time I checked I was quoted 300-ish Euros on a >3000 Euro Intel MBP from 2020 in good condition, still getting updates and probably will keep getting them for years to come.
    - chrisseaton 4y ago
      > in good condition, still getting updates and probably will keep getting them for years to come Lol so what is the problem? Why would you bin it?
      - dividedbyzero 4y ago
        > Lol so what is the problem? Apple's offer after two years is a lot less than the quarter of the retail price that was mentioned by parent and will probably be much worse still by the time they deprecate them. Just not as attractive an option as parent made it seem, at least for me if I wanted to get rid of it.
      - highwaylights 4y ago
        I get that you’re saying it shouldn’t literally be thrown in the bin - but your argument is utterly terrible. Getting an offer of 10% of the purchase price to buy back a laptop after two years is offensive.
        chrisseaton 4y ago
        I can’t understand being offended by buying a laptop with a pretty well-known maintenance policy. If it wasn’t the right purchase for you that’s a fault in your research and you shouldn’t be offended by it.
        lxgr 4y ago
        We are talking about the end of life (in terms of no longer receiving macOS updates) here, right? That timeframe is much longer than two years.
  - blowski 4y ago
    I'm with you on this. You've got to choose between price, performance, flexibility, maintainability, upgradability, reliability, etc. These are the trade-offs you make. When people "why is this still a thing?" sometimes it sounds like they're asking "why do I have to make trade-offs at all?" which really doesn't make any sense.
- acdha 4y ago
  Not in any factual universe. Those systems will see close to a decade of support - more than long enough for the usable service life of the hardware in many cases and certainly not out of line with the competition. The difference is just that you are expected to update the OS multiple times over that period.
  - highwaylights 4y ago
    The point of the thread is that they won’t see anywhere close to a decade of support at all, and that any OS older than the latest released version will get some updates if it isn’t too complicated.
    - acdha 4y ago
      Not backporting every feature is not the same as being unsupported. Ask what worked on your machine when you bought it which no longer works with the n-1 release version of the APFS driver? It is interesting to look at what changes between releases, which is why blog posts like this get attention but it’s not a problem report - notice how there isn’t anyone saying something like “I took an external drive and it didn’t work on my 2013 Mac?”
ryandrake 4y ago
It would be good to consult actual metrics about the population size on each old OS version and on each old device. It might surprise you. I used to argue constantly with the "Apple Culture Guy" at an app company I worked for. They always wanted to target only the latest few OS versions, and chop off support for the old ones. Yes, most of our users were on the latest version. But there was a very long tail of users on the trail of older devices/OS's, adding up to more than 10%. Would a salesman answer his phone and tell 1 out of 10 of his leads to fuck off? No, so why would we do it to our existing customers? Sure enough, every time we cut off an old device or OS, we'd get customers complaining and giving bad reviews. But then, Mr. Apple Culture guy would look at the dashboard and say "See? Nobody is using that version anymore!" No shit, it's because we cut it off and those users bailed on us, genius. Backwards compatibility is one of the greatest services you can give to your customer. Cutting off support for old versions simply because you're too lazy to maintain that support is just telling those customers to fuck off and find a competitor. The code simplifications/savings that you get from dropping old versions are seldom worth that. They often amount to one or two more lines with an if() statement.
- chrisseaton 4y ago
  But it costs to support those old versions. At just 10%, it may well not be worth it.