8 ms·

The EU should really go after this planned obsolescence bullshit. If you want to sell hardware, or license software for hardware, in the EU then you shouldn’t b

by devjab 3y ago

The EU should really go after this planned obsolescence bullshit. If you want to sell hardware, or license software for hardware, in the EU then you shouldn’t be allowed to stop supporting it after 7 years. It might’ve made sense in the world that was, where hardware would actually become obsolete. However when I look at my MacBook Air m1 with the smallest possible configuration and how it’s capable of doing anything I need for work as a software engineer (rust, c++, typescript, c#, python) “fast enough” I can’t see why I would need a new machine until it physically breaks down beyond repair. Then again, maybe the EU should just invest money in Ubuntu or similar as well as some office365/google education alternative and then run Linux on the “chromebooks” our schools buy.

lnsru 3y ago
Congrats. You just killed all small consumer hardware companies with 7 years software support. I mean all the EC crap costs alone €30k, then electronic waste taxes and software support on top. Let the Europeans play with wooden horses then.
- Avamander 3y ago
  All you have to do is not force your stuff to become waste. It doesn't mean major updates, but updating e.g. openssl shouldn't be that hard. If you can't guarantee that then why should the EU guarantee a market (and recycling) for your product? It's not fair.
  - wiz21c 3y ago
    If (for example) Debian can do it, I'm sure Google can. They just have to leave their platforms open. It's not like it's expensive.
- matthewmacleod 3y ago
  I mean, this is honestly kind of the goal. If you aren’t able to demonstrate that your hardware product isn’t going to burst into flames or damage the environment… maybe it’s better that it’s not for sale?
- josefx 3y ago
  Maybe they shouldn't release garbage onto the market? I have collected roughly a dozen systems over the years, they all run Debian 12 and with one exception everything works fine. That one exception being a special purpose Vista Ready "GPU" that forced even Vista to run in a compatibility profile for older hardware.
- devjab 3y ago
  Have you got some examples of this? I don't have a lot of non-big tech hardware, but my raspberry pi model b still receives updates.
- pjc50 3y ago
  The EU really needs to learn the idea of small business exemptions from the regulatory burden. It should be possible to sell a few hundred to a few thousand devices without having to deal with regulations aimed at hundreds of millions of devices.
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    The law is the same for everyone else in the other industries, and the little ones can manage, IT shouldn't be any different. Growing pains learning that quality and support comes with obligations.
    - pjc50 3y ago
      > the little ones can manage There's a chunk of small electronics businesses that don't exist because of the regulatory burden. The cost of compliance is fixed regardless of how large your production run is. CE costs almost prevented Raspberry Pi from existing! (this is why Europe could never compete with aliexpress, either)
      - pjmlp 3y ago
        No one can compete with Alien Express due to how IP laws work in China, and the production costs, thanks to everyone outsourcing their manufacturing there.
      - throwawaymobule 3y ago
        I thought the CE mark was just something you attested yourself. Are you talking about something else, or am I confusing it for something else?
nologic01 3y ago
Planned obsolescence is pure evil. A broken market, based on broken regulation, based on broken politics, based on broken morals. We need to find ways to reward the exact opposite mindset and behavior: planned permanence.
- incrudible 3y ago
  These chromebooks remain operational. As someone who does not plan on actively using the same computer for a decade, I am unwilling to pay a premium on any future purchases so that my museum pieces remain fully supported. Mind you, I have never thrown away a computer and keep a large collection of obsolete hardware.
  - nologic01 3y ago
    I could turn the argument around: People who want to churn devices should be paying a premium for any and all recycling costs (assuming perfect recycling is even possible). I am unwilling to pay with a permanently degraded environment so that some people satisfy their consumption urges. Clearly we shouldnt want to keep archaic stuff functional. But for some time now easily upgradeable/repairable hardware and software is effectively suppressed.
    - Libcat99 3y ago
      I'd take that a step further. Every item manufactured should have, at minimum, it's recycling or safe disposal cost included in the price. Let consumers make decisions based on the real costs.
      - em-bee 3y ago
        when you buy a new machine in europe, then the seller has to take back the old one for free. this at least applies to household appliances. i think it applies to computers too, but i am not sure. i think that approach solves the problem. it pushes the cost and responsibility of recycling or disposal to the seller of the new device. they will factor that into their calculation so the consumer pays for it.
MattPalmer1086 3y ago
There is a big difference between planned obsolescence and support periods. As long as a device can be repaired by the owner as much as practical and allows aftermarket operating systems or software to be installed on it, I don't see why a company should have unlimited liability for something they sold. If they made it so you are dependent on them though, then yeah, they should remain responsible.
- devjab 3y ago
  You have a good point. It took some consideration for me to use the term “planned obsolescence” because it really is a different and more nefarious thing. Like the ink printers who would squirt excess print into a sponge and then stop working when they had done it x amount of times, which could be fixed by resetting the count. I couldn’t come up with a better term for it though. Maybe planned abandonment? In either case the result is sort of similar on an enterprise level. Like here in Denmark we buy Chromebooks for school and use a lot of Google education, and while you can certainly have some privacy debates about that (and we have), the prospect of non-updated software is a different issue. EOL devices are replaced in those enterprise settings because of the security risk and the support burden they pose. In theory you could do things about it, but they are operated by IT departments of maybe 3 techies who also support all the other devices for the 5000+ employees in a municipality so it’s almost always cheaper to simply replace the devices. In the past this often made sense because the hardware was so old it couldn’t really run “new things”. It might even make sense for Chromebooks that are 7 year olds here in 2023, but it probably won’t make sense the next time. I don’t think the practice of Google will change voluntarily, so to me it sort of becomes “planned obsolescence” even though it’s not exactly the same thing as there is total transparency with the EOL on software updates. But you’re right, it’s not the same.
  - glimshe 3y ago
    Windows and even macOS have longer support periods, so the market is already taking care of the problem. Google is notorious for short support periods (aren't Pixel phones supported for only 3 years?), so why is the government buying Chromebooks for schools without mandating longer support terms? Also, as the parent said, as long as you can "jailbreak" your device and install anything you want, support periods are simply a competitive advantage.
sieabahlpark 3y ago
[dead]
veave 3y ago
>Then again, maybe the EU should just invest money in Ubuntu or similar as well as some office365/google education alternative and then run Linux on the “chromebooks” our schools buy. As long as this is paid with the salaries of the EU busybodies instead of my own money I'm okay with it. Other than that, let us have free commerce, thank you very much.
modeless 3y ago
These Chromebooks are unlockable. Go ahead and keep using them with Linux forever, they are not e-waste. The real planned obsolescence issue is hardware that can't be unlocked, like iPads.
- K0nserv 3y ago
  I think this is the legislative way forward. Mandate that all devices should be unlocked and allow installing alternate operating systems, with the requisite documentation to build such operating systems published. This address two problems: device obsolescence and control over ones own device. I’m not particularly sympathetic to the idea of forcing Apple to drastically change iOS via legislation. However, it should be possible to install Android on iDevices for those who want a different privacy/control tradeoff than what Apple provides with iOS
  - kogepathic 3y ago
    > Mandate that all devices should be unlocked and allow installing alternate operating systems, with the requisite documentation to build such operating systems published. I develop for embedded devices and I don't see this working as intended. Embedded devices often have secure boot efuses burned during manufacturing. There's no way to reverse that later or install your own cert. Datasheets and SDKs for the chips are behind expensive support contracts and onerous NDAs. Industry and middleware vendors are absolutely opposed to giving away anything, even though many of them fork existing FOSS projects for their SDKs. We already have mechanisms to obtain source code, and yet there's no effective enforcement mechanism for companies that ignore GPL requests. I agree that more needs to be done to prevent planned obsolescence, but I do not believe lawmakers have the technical knowledge to write anything effective.
    - K0nserv 3y ago
      Not my area of expertise and I agree with your concerns about lawmakers, but with the input of experts, such as yourself, would it not be achievable? What I described is, after all, how desktop computers work. I can buy off the shelf components, assemble them, and install a variety of Linux distros or Windows. I don't quite understand why the same thing wouldn't be possible on mobile devices.
treprinum 3y ago
Your M1 will expire roughly in 10 years when Apple stops supporting macOS upgrades and maybe 2 more years until no recent software would run on it. It's not that much different to expiring Chromebooks.
- modeless 3y ago
  It's actually worse because there's no open source version of macOS. There are at least four options available to continue running an up-to-date version of Chrome on an out-of-support Chromebook (1. Lacros, 2. Chrome OS Flex, 3. Chromium OS, 4. Any old Linux with Chrome installed). There are zero ways to continue getting Safari updates on an out-of-support Apple device.
  - tuyiown 3y ago
    You're right for iOS, but you can have distros running on intel macs, and given the attention and engineering success of asahi linux, you'll probably be able to run to date software on macs with linux kernel for a long time.
    - aikinai 3y ago
      You can also run OpenCore and install any version of MacOS, even those past the support window.
- LeonM 3y ago
  My 2010 x86 MBP still receives MacOS updates and runs every piece of software just fine. With the browser being the most important software for the target audience of a chromebook, I think the life could be expanded a lot as long as you can update the browser. Sure, you won't receive OS security updates, but browsers do a pretty good job at sandboxing anyway. A 15 year old laptop with a modern browser should be plenty secure as long as you do everything in the browser. Obviously, you don't want to do any professional work on a 10 year old laptop, but for the chromebook audience why not?
  - 3y ago
olalonde 3y ago
That's not what planned obsolescence is. The Chromebooks keep being functional, they just don't keep receiving new software updates. > If you want to sell hardware, or license software for hardware, in the EU then you shouldn’t be allowed to stop supporting it after 7 years. What might actually happen in response to such legislation: 1) Chromebooks will just become more expensive for every additional year of mandated support and become prohibitively expensive if the support has to be forever. 2) Chromebooks will continue to be "supported" with cosmetic/poorly tested updates. 3) Chromebooks will ship without the "Automatic Update" feature.
chongli 3y ago
The EU should really go after this planned obsolescence bullshit They are doing so. One of their biggest plans is to force manufacturers to include user-replaceable batteries. This should extend the life of laptops by several years at least.
- tomjen3 3y ago
  Screw the batteries, its the tiny amount of RAM that is going to kill the laptops. We need to make it so that soldered on RAM can only be sold if the laptop ships with at least a certain amount of RAM. Should properly be 16 now, then 32 in 3 years. You could ban it entirely, but there are some advantages to soldered on RAM, such as higher possible max speeds.
  - josephg 3y ago
    16gb? The average consumer shouldn’t need anywhere near that much ram for general web browsing, email and document editing. Ram isn’t like money. It doesn’t get worse over time. My computer in college in 2004 did all the things the average user needs - I could watch videos online and browse the web just fine. Why should consumers today need to pay for faster hardware to do the same set of tasks?
    - tomjen3 3y ago
      They don't need that today, but only the cheapest laptops are sold with less than 8gb today, so if they are to last for 10 years you need 16gb today, because that is also what you are going to be stuck with in ten years. Your annecdotes about what was required of a laptop twenty years ago are very relevant if you are connected to the same web you were twenty years ago. Most consumers aren't.
      - josephg 3y ago
        What websites need that much RAM? Even reddit's redesign is only using up 200mb in firefox for me at the moment. Spotify's desktop app is using 500mb - which I'll grant is pretty wasteful given its not even playing music. Honestly, 8gb of ram is fine for an awful lot of people. Why should regular users need more ram? Even assuming software (like Teams) does chew up users' RAM, the idea that we should push that problem onto the consumer is backwards. Instead of asking consumers to pay more for their devices, developers should just stop being so lazy with our software. My mum shouldn't need to buy a new laptop every few years if her computing needs don't change. Its sloppy and wasteful.
ilyt 3y ago
This is not planned obsolescence tho, this is just "well, we don't sell it anymore so we don't support it". Someone have to pay for the ongoing support. I think the most that should be required from manufacturer is opening up the boot (so alternatives can be EASILY installed), and ship drivers with permissive license.
- dtx1 3y ago
  To me, thats the minimal necessary solution in case of a vendor going bankrupt but there should be a mandatory minimum Support window after the last sale of a device by the manufacturer and that should be non-trivial for security issues (say 10 years).
  - stevehawk 3y ago
    "And that, my boy, is how we killed the market for hardware startups. We raised the barriers to entry to the point that no one was willing to compete with the giants."
    - dtx1 3y ago
      "And that, my boy, is how we figured out that you can make laws that scale with company size, thus keeping hardware startups from that requirement but making sure big megacorps couldn't abuse their market position"
- brmgb 3y ago
  > Someone have to pay for the ongoing support. It’s a question of incentive. Right now, supporting software is costly for a long time because very little attention is given to making software maintenance cheap. That’s why it’s reasonable to force company to offer long term support after sells. It means they will have to design software so that it remains viable with a minimum of changes for a long time. Things that don’t make sense today because of their costs like formally proving code and design suddenly become important and as there is an incentive to make it cheaper to be competitive we should see new investments in this field which is currently quite neglected. Overall it’s a net gain for all of us. In exchange for marginally more expensive computers for a bit (or less profits if that’s how companies want to compete), we will end up with safer more robust software and longer lived appliances. It would be a major step in the right direction. As someone trained as an engineer, I still think that the software industry tolerance for subpar under-engineered and tested solutions is shameful.
ilyt 3y ago
This is not planned obsolescence tho, this is just "well, we don't sell it anymore so we don't support it". Someone have to pay for the ongoing support. I think the most that should be required from manufacturer is opening up the boot (so alternatives can be EASILY installed), and ship drivers with permissive license after they stop updating it
mox1 3y ago
Here is the problem with that. If Google does continue to support the product “forever”, then 20 years from now when a major vulnerability is exposed, they will have to fix it or perform a recall or something. I saw this first hand when the large medical device company I worked for put in extraordinary effort to support a legacy product, well past its original intended lifepsan. It was costing a lot to keep support reps trained, make supplies, keep engineers around, etc. etc. Then the FDA decided that there was a “security vulnerability “ and we had to recall all of them. Well yes no shit the device with a 25 year old wireless protocol has some issues. After that, the executives realized that legacy product on the roster was just a giant risk, and we now explicitly End Of Life things….
- greggsy 3y ago
  It’s strange that cars can operate without vendor support for 100+ years. What happens when a vulnerability arises through the 2010 infotainment console?
  - perceptronas 3y ago
    Your car gets stolen. Older cars get absolutely no support for their software
  - mox1 3y ago
    The KIA executives are having the exact same conversation right now after being required to recall vehicles from 2011[1]. I don't have a good answer for this, but requiring a company to "fix" something 12 years later that is tough. This is how planned obsolescence becomes a corporate strategy. 1. https://www.drive.com.au/news/kia-hyundai-theft-us-immobiliser-recall/ https://www.drive.com.au/news/kia-hyundai-theft-us-immobilis...
- NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
  Curious though, were the medical devices implanted? Transhumans become upset when vivisected.
somsak2 3y ago
how is the M1 at all relevant? it's not even 3 years old and the cheapest configuration upon release was over $1k. you're comparing it to these Chromebooks that were $400 7 years ago! of course the Chromebooks, even at point of release, weren't very future proof.
pjmlp 3y ago
Thankfully there aren't that many EU schools into buying Chromebooks phenomen, it is still pretty much parents buy regular laptops.
paxys 3y ago
So: - We own machines once we purchase them, and Google must get their hands off of them. - Google must continue to support the device with free software updates for 50 years after it is sold. Why not just legislate that Google must deposit $1000 in my bank account every month while we are at it?

by devjab 3y ago

lnsru 3y ago

Congrats. You just killed all small consumer hardware companies with 7 years software support. I mean all the EC crap costs alone €30k, then electronic waste taxes and software support on top. Let the Europeans play with wooden horses then.

Avamander 3y ago
All you have to do is not force your stuff to become waste. It doesn't mean major updates, but updating e.g. openssl shouldn't be that hard. If you can't guarantee that then why should the EU guarantee a market (and recycling) for your product? It's not fair.
- wiz21c 3y ago
  If (for example) Debian can do it, I'm sure Google can. They just have to leave their platforms open. It's not like it's expensive.
matthewmacleod 3y ago
I mean, this is honestly kind of the goal. If you aren’t able to demonstrate that your hardware product isn’t going to burst into flames or damage the environment… maybe it’s better that it’s not for sale?
josefx 3y ago
Maybe they shouldn't release garbage onto the market? I have collected roughly a dozen systems over the years, they all run Debian 12 and with one exception everything works fine. That one exception being a special purpose Vista Ready "GPU" that forced even Vista to run in a compatibility profile for older hardware.
devjab 3y ago
Have you got some examples of this? I don't have a lot of non-big tech hardware, but my raspberry pi model b still receives updates.
pjc50 3y ago
The EU really needs to learn the idea of small business exemptions from the regulatory burden. It should be possible to sell a few hundred to a few thousand devices without having to deal with regulations aimed at hundreds of millions of devices.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  The law is the same for everyone else in the other industries, and the little ones can manage, IT shouldn't be any different. Growing pains learning that quality and support comes with obligations.
  - pjc50 3y ago
    > the little ones can manage There's a chunk of small electronics businesses that don't exist because of the regulatory burden. The cost of compliance is fixed regardless of how large your production run is. CE costs almost prevented Raspberry Pi from existing! (this is why Europe could never compete with aliexpress, either)
    - pjmlp 3y ago
      No one can compete with Alien Express due to how IP laws work in China, and the production costs, thanks to everyone outsourcing their manufacturing there.
    - throwawaymobule 3y ago
      I thought the CE mark was just something you attested yourself. Are you talking about something else, or am I confusing it for something else?

nologic01 3y ago

Planned obsolescence is pure evil. A broken market, based on broken regulation, based on broken politics, based on broken morals. We need to find ways to reward the exact opposite mindset and behavior: planned permanence.

incrudible 3y ago
These chromebooks remain operational. As someone who does not plan on actively using the same computer for a decade, I am unwilling to pay a premium on any future purchases so that my museum pieces remain fully supported. Mind you, I have never thrown away a computer and keep a large collection of obsolete hardware.
- nologic01 3y ago
  I could turn the argument around: People who want to churn devices should be paying a premium for any and all recycling costs (assuming perfect recycling is even possible). I am unwilling to pay with a permanently degraded environment so that some people satisfy their consumption urges. Clearly we shouldnt want to keep archaic stuff functional. But for some time now easily upgradeable/repairable hardware and software is effectively suppressed.
  - Libcat99 3y ago
    I'd take that a step further. Every item manufactured should have, at minimum, it's recycling or safe disposal cost included in the price. Let consumers make decisions based on the real costs.
    - em-bee 3y ago
      when you buy a new machine in europe, then the seller has to take back the old one for free. this at least applies to household appliances. i think it applies to computers too, but i am not sure. i think that approach solves the problem. it pushes the cost and responsibility of recycling or disposal to the seller of the new device. they will factor that into their calculation so the consumer pays for it.

MattPalmer1086 3y ago

There is a big difference between planned obsolescence and support periods. As long as a device can be repaired by the owner as much as practical and allows aftermarket operating systems or software to be installed on it, I don't see why a company should have unlimited liability for something they sold. If they made it so you are dependent on them though, then yeah, they should remain responsible.

devjab 3y ago
You have a good point. It took some consideration for me to use the term “planned obsolescence” because it really is a different and more nefarious thing. Like the ink printers who would squirt excess print into a sponge and then stop working when they had done it x amount of times, which could be fixed by resetting the count. I couldn’t come up with a better term for it though. Maybe planned abandonment? In either case the result is sort of similar on an enterprise level. Like here in Denmark we buy Chromebooks for school and use a lot of Google education, and while you can certainly have some privacy debates about that (and we have), the prospect of non-updated software is a different issue. EOL devices are replaced in those enterprise settings because of the security risk and the support burden they pose. In theory you could do things about it, but they are operated by IT departments of maybe 3 techies who also support all the other devices for the 5000+ employees in a municipality so it’s almost always cheaper to simply replace the devices. In the past this often made sense because the hardware was so old it couldn’t really run “new things”. It might even make sense for Chromebooks that are 7 year olds here in 2023, but it probably won’t make sense the next time. I don’t think the practice of Google will change voluntarily, so to me it sort of becomes “planned obsolescence” even though it’s not exactly the same thing as there is total transparency with the EOL on software updates. But you’re right, it’s not the same.
- glimshe 3y ago
  Windows and even macOS have longer support periods, so the market is already taking care of the problem. Google is notorious for short support periods (aren't Pixel phones supported for only 3 years?), so why is the government buying Chromebooks for schools without mandating longer support terms? Also, as the parent said, as long as you can "jailbreak" your device and install anything you want, support periods are simply a competitive advantage.

sieabahlpark 3y ago

[dead]

veave 3y ago

>Then again, maybe the EU should just invest money in Ubuntu or similar as well as some office365/google education alternative and then run Linux on the “chromebooks” our schools buy. As long as this is paid with the salaries of the EU busybodies instead of my own money I'm okay with it. Other than that, let us have free commerce, thank you very much.

modeless 3y ago

These Chromebooks are unlockable. Go ahead and keep using them with Linux forever, they are not e-waste. The real planned obsolescence issue is hardware that can't be unlocked, like iPads.

K0nserv 3y ago
I think this is the legislative way forward. Mandate that all devices should be unlocked and allow installing alternate operating systems, with the requisite documentation to build such operating systems published. This address two problems: device obsolescence and control over ones own device. I’m not particularly sympathetic to the idea of forcing Apple to drastically change iOS via legislation. However, it should be possible to install Android on iDevices for those who want a different privacy/control tradeoff than what Apple provides with iOS
- kogepathic 3y ago
  > Mandate that all devices should be unlocked and allow installing alternate operating systems, with the requisite documentation to build such operating systems published. I develop for embedded devices and I don't see this working as intended. Embedded devices often have secure boot efuses burned during manufacturing. There's no way to reverse that later or install your own cert. Datasheets and SDKs for the chips are behind expensive support contracts and onerous NDAs. Industry and middleware vendors are absolutely opposed to giving away anything, even though many of them fork existing FOSS projects for their SDKs. We already have mechanisms to obtain source code, and yet there's no effective enforcement mechanism for companies that ignore GPL requests. I agree that more needs to be done to prevent planned obsolescence, but I do not believe lawmakers have the technical knowledge to write anything effective.
  - K0nserv 3y ago
    Not my area of expertise and I agree with your concerns about lawmakers, but with the input of experts, such as yourself, would it not be achievable? What I described is, after all, how desktop computers work. I can buy off the shelf components, assemble them, and install a variety of Linux distros or Windows. I don't quite understand why the same thing wouldn't be possible on mobile devices.

treprinum 3y ago

Your M1 will expire roughly in 10 years when Apple stops supporting macOS upgrades and maybe 2 more years until no recent software would run on it. It's not that much different to expiring Chromebooks.

modeless 3y ago
It's actually worse because there's no open source version of macOS. There are at least four options available to continue running an up-to-date version of Chrome on an out-of-support Chromebook (1. Lacros, 2. Chrome OS Flex, 3. Chromium OS, 4. Any old Linux with Chrome installed). There are zero ways to continue getting Safari updates on an out-of-support Apple device.
- tuyiown 3y ago
  You're right for iOS, but you can have distros running on intel macs, and given the attention and engineering success of asahi linux, you'll probably be able to run to date software on macs with linux kernel for a long time.
  - aikinai 3y ago
    You can also run OpenCore and install any version of MacOS, even those past the support window.
LeonM 3y ago
My 2010 x86 MBP still receives MacOS updates and runs every piece of software just fine. With the browser being the most important software for the target audience of a chromebook, I think the life could be expanded a lot as long as you can update the browser. Sure, you won't receive OS security updates, but browsers do a pretty good job at sandboxing anyway. A 15 year old laptop with a modern browser should be plenty secure as long as you do everything in the browser. Obviously, you don't want to do any professional work on a 10 year old laptop, but for the chromebook audience why not?
- 3y ago

olalonde 3y ago

That's not what planned obsolescence is. The Chromebooks keep being functional, they just don't keep receiving new software updates. > If you want to sell hardware, or license software for hardware, in the EU then you shouldn’t be allowed to stop supporting it after 7 years. What might actually happen in response to such legislation: 1) Chromebooks will just become more expensive for every additional year of mandated support and become prohibitively expensive if the support has to be forever. 2) Chromebooks will continue to be "supported" with cosmetic/poorly tested updates. 3) Chromebooks will ship without the "Automatic Update" feature.

chongli 3y ago

The EU should really go after this planned obsolescence bullshit They are doing so. One of their biggest plans is to force manufacturers to include user-replaceable batteries. This should extend the life of laptops by several years at least.

tomjen3 3y ago
Screw the batteries, its the tiny amount of RAM that is going to kill the laptops. We need to make it so that soldered on RAM can only be sold if the laptop ships with at least a certain amount of RAM. Should properly be 16 now, then 32 in 3 years. You could ban it entirely, but there are some advantages to soldered on RAM, such as higher possible max speeds.
- josephg 3y ago
  16gb? The average consumer shouldn’t need anywhere near that much ram for general web browsing, email and document editing. Ram isn’t like money. It doesn’t get worse over time. My computer in college in 2004 did all the things the average user needs - I could watch videos online and browse the web just fine. Why should consumers today need to pay for faster hardware to do the same set of tasks?
  - tomjen3 3y ago
    They don't need that today, but only the cheapest laptops are sold with less than 8gb today, so if they are to last for 10 years you need 16gb today, because that is also what you are going to be stuck with in ten years. Your annecdotes about what was required of a laptop twenty years ago are very relevant if you are connected to the same web you were twenty years ago. Most consumers aren't.
    - josephg 3y ago
      What websites need that much RAM? Even reddit's redesign is only using up 200mb in firefox for me at the moment. Spotify's desktop app is using 500mb - which I'll grant is pretty wasteful given its not even playing music. Honestly, 8gb of ram is fine for an awful lot of people. Why should regular users need more ram? Even assuming software (like Teams) does chew up users' RAM, the idea that we should push that problem onto the consumer is backwards. Instead of asking consumers to pay more for their devices, developers should just stop being so lazy with our software. My mum shouldn't need to buy a new laptop every few years if her computing needs don't change. Its sloppy and wasteful.

ilyt 3y ago

This is not planned obsolescence tho, this is just "well, we don't sell it anymore so we don't support it". Someone have to pay for the ongoing support. I think the most that should be required from manufacturer is opening up the boot (so alternatives can be EASILY installed), and ship drivers with permissive license.

dtx1 3y ago
To me, thats the minimal necessary solution in case of a vendor going bankrupt but there should be a mandatory minimum Support window after the last sale of a device by the manufacturer and that should be non-trivial for security issues (say 10 years).
- stevehawk 3y ago
  "And that, my boy, is how we killed the market for hardware startups. We raised the barriers to entry to the point that no one was willing to compete with the giants."
  - dtx1 3y ago
    "And that, my boy, is how we figured out that you can make laws that scale with company size, thus keeping hardware startups from that requirement but making sure big megacorps couldn't abuse their market position"
brmgb 3y ago
> Someone have to pay for the ongoing support. It’s a question of incentive. Right now, supporting software is costly for a long time because very little attention is given to making software maintenance cheap. That’s why it’s reasonable to force company to offer long term support after sells. It means they will have to design software so that it remains viable with a minimum of changes for a long time. Things that don’t make sense today because of their costs like formally proving code and design suddenly become important and as there is an incentive to make it cheaper to be competitive we should see new investments in this field which is currently quite neglected. Overall it’s a net gain for all of us. In exchange for marginally more expensive computers for a bit (or less profits if that’s how companies want to compete), we will end up with safer more robust software and longer lived appliances. It would be a major step in the right direction. As someone trained as an engineer, I still think that the software industry tolerance for subpar under-engineered and tested solutions is shameful.

ilyt 3y ago

mox1 3y ago

Here is the problem with that. If Google does continue to support the product “forever”, then 20 years from now when a major vulnerability is exposed, they will have to fix it or perform a recall or something. I saw this first hand when the large medical device company I worked for put in extraordinary effort to support a legacy product, well past its original intended lifepsan. It was costing a lot to keep support reps trained, make supplies, keep engineers around, etc. etc. Then the FDA decided that there was a “security vulnerability “ and we had to recall all of them. Well yes no shit the device with a 25 year old wireless protocol has some issues. After that, the executives realized that legacy product on the roster was just a giant risk, and we now explicitly End Of Life things….

greggsy 3y ago
It’s strange that cars can operate without vendor support for 100+ years. What happens when a vulnerability arises through the 2010 infotainment console?
- perceptronas 3y ago
  Your car gets stolen. Older cars get absolutely no support for their software
- mox1 3y ago
  The KIA executives are having the exact same conversation right now after being required to recall vehicles from 2011[1]. I don't have a good answer for this, but requiring a company to "fix" something 12 years later that is tough. This is how planned obsolescence becomes a corporate strategy. 1. https://www.drive.com.au/news/kia-hyundai-theft-us-immobiliser-recall/ https://www.drive.com.au/news/kia-hyundai-theft-us-immobilis...
NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
Curious though, were the medical devices implanted? Transhumans become upset when vivisected.

somsak2 3y ago

how is the M1 at all relevant? it's not even 3 years old and the cheapest configuration upon release was over $1k. you're comparing it to these Chromebooks that were $400 7 years ago! of course the Chromebooks, even at point of release, weren't very future proof.

pjmlp 3y ago

Thankfully there aren't that many EU schools into buying Chromebooks phenomen, it is still pretty much parents buy regular laptops.

paxys 3y ago

So: - We own machines once we purchase them, and Google must get their hands off of them. - Google must continue to support the device with free software updates for 50 years after it is sold. Why not just legislate that Google must deposit $1000 in my bank account every month while we are at it?