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Are the same people making a stink about Microsoft doing this also making a stink about Apple doing practically the same every time they release a new MacOS ver

Are the same people making a stink about Microsoft doing this also making a stink about Apple doing practically the same every time they release a new MacOS version? How long should hardware be supported? Indefinitely? Should Microsoft still target 286's? Pentium III's?

afavour 3y ago
Like it or not Microsoft has built a reputation for itself as supporting devices for a very long time. A reputation Apple definitely doesn’t have. So, no, I don’t think the same level of stink is warranted because people know what they’re getting with the Apple ecosystem when they sign up.
tivert 3y ago
> Are the same people making a stink about Microsoft doing this also making a stink about Apple doing practically the same every time they release a new MacOS version? Yes, some of them. Though of course there are people who make stink about Microsoft and not Apple because they don't use Apple products. > How long should hardware be supported? Indefinitely? Yes. Or at least approximately as long as Linux does. Especially since it's no longer the 80s/90s and we're not seeing anywhere near the kind of rapid and significant hardware improvements the PC industry saw back then [1]. Microsoft is an extremely successful company with 221,000 full time employees, they have the capacity to do this. [1] Over the last couple decades, I've declined scheduled PC refreshes a couple times after checking the specs, because the "refreshed" PC was literally almost the same as my current one (like a small CPU bump and a bit more memory). For completely selfish reasons it made more sense to just keep the old one and maybe buy some more RAM than go through the trouble of migrating my stuff.
doubled112 3y ago
It is hard to know where to draw the line. I'm sure they used some telemetry to decide which machines were too much work. The only shocker on my machines is my first gen Ryzen build. I guess 8c/16t and 32GB RAM isn't enough to run Windows anymore?
- vel0city 3y ago
  Just saying "I've got this many CPUs and this much RAM" means nothing if the processor just doesn't support some feature deemed important. I've got multi-socket, multi-core, many-gig-of-RAM boxes that can't run modern Linux kernels (and thus most modern Linux distros) due to lacking CPU features required these days.
  - toast0 3y ago
    Could be worse. They actually gave us plenty of info. 8 core first gen Ryzen is very specific. Windows 11 probably doesn't like it because no TPM (most likely the motherboard has a port for one, but parts may not be available). There's a small list of processors that could be: Ryzen 1700, Ryzen 1800, with or without X/Pro, or maybe a Threadripper 1900X. Much better than "I've got an i7 why is this slow" "I don't know, it works great on my Pentium", where the first person has an i7-620UE, a 2.13 Ghz 2 core Arrandale (Westmere?) from 2010, and the second person has a Pentium Gold G7400, a 3.7Ghz 2 core Alder Lake from 2022. Turns out 12 years of improvements and moving from mobile to desktop makes a huge difference. Of course, someone with a pentium could also have a processor from 1993-2022, so that's a much worse name without qualifiers.
    - throwaway48476 3y ago
      The Ryzen 2700x is the same CPU as the 1700X, just a 12nm die shrink yet it is supported. The TPM requirement is asinine and not necessary.
  - doubled112 3y ago
    The sibling comment had it right, it's a Ryzen 7 1700X. The BIOS has been since updated to support fTPM, and that seems to enable upgrading other machines I have. That Ryzen CPU launched in 2017, which means it existed 4 years before the newest Windows wasn't supported. Really, it's this time frame that surprised me. What do we consider a modern kernel? Debian is still shipping a i386 port that should run on a Pentium II. It's old enough to order a beer at a restaurant. "Nearly all x86-based (IA-32) processors still in use in personal computers are supported. This also includes 32-bit AMD and VIA (former Cyrix) processors, and processors like the Athlon XP and Intel P4 Xeon. However, Debian GNU/Linux bookworm will not run on 586 (Pentium) or earlier processors."
cesarb 3y ago
> How long should hardware be supported? Indefinitely? Should Microsoft still target 286's? Pentium III's? One obvious cut-off point is support for 64-bit software (the AMD64 ISA). Another is a minimum speed and memory capacity. People are complaining because, in many cases, these "no longer supported" CPU models are faster than the allowed CPU models, and they accept more than enough RAM.
- vel0city 3y ago
  > One obvious cut-off point is support for 64-bit software (the AMD64 ISA) But there are still millions of 32-bit CPUs out there which could be used but are landfill fodder now. Think of all the e-waste! > these "no longer supported" CPU models are faster than the allowed CPU models, and they accept more than enough RAM There's far more to hardware requirements than clock rate and memory capacity. If the hardware doesn't support some feature deemed important adding another stick of RAM won't solve the problem.
  - grujicd 3y ago
    32-bit CPU is not a good example because it's obsolete in a realistic sense, not by some artificial requirement. It doesn't support enough RAM not to choke when few browser tabs are opened. Perhaps sadly that modern web page requires that much RAM, but that doesn't mean it's not true.
    - vel0city 3y ago
      Windows supported more than 4GB of RAM for some editions of 32-bit Windows. Windows Server Enterprise 2003 supported 64GB of RAM on 32-bit processors supporting PAE.
toast0 3y ago
> How long should hardware be supported? IMHO, until there's a good reason to depend on a feature they don't have. For cpus, that's usually an instruction that makes things possible or much more efficient. 286s were obsoleted by the 386's 32-bit and virtual modes. Pentium III was obsoleted by 64-bit mode, if not some version of SSE. It looks like the 24H2 release of Windows 11 is going to require SSE 4.2, POPCNT is nice, and I guess they want to depend on it. Seems ok for an instruction that's been in processors for over a decade. Personally, I don't find the TPM requirement essential, especially since windows seems to work fine without a tpm; whereas I'd bet the builds that rely on POPCNT won't work without it. One could hook the bad instruction exception and backfill with a software implementation to count bits, but I think it's ok to skip.
- Narishma 3y ago
  > 286s were obsoleted by the 386's 32-bit and virtual modes. And yet it took nearly a decade for the 386s to displace them in the market.
  - toast0 3y ago
    Well sure, it took time for there to be a large enough installed base of 386s to be willing to release software that wouldn't run a 286. And time to write software that made use of the new modes. But when you had to retire your 286, it was because it couldn't run 32-bit software. Or because you really needed to multitask some dos stuff.
grujicd 3y ago
Problem is mid-high end Windows PC from 10 years ago with SSD and enough RAM is indistinguishable from 2024 PC for many, many workloads. Btw. I'm alternating between 2012 i7 and 2023 i7 on a daily basis and wish difference would be larger for me but it's not. It's not like a situation with 286/386/486 at all. There are zero benefits in upgrading these machines for majority of users. Sure, if you do video encoding or something similar difference can be huge. But for general development, document editing, multimedia/browsing, it's all the same. That's why this forced upgrade stinks. And Apple stinks too, but we're not arguing that here.
eviks 3y ago
Yes How many 286s are out there?

afavour 3y ago

Like it or not Microsoft has built a reputation for itself as supporting devices for a very long time. A reputation Apple definitely doesn’t have. So, no, I don’t think the same level of stink is warranted because people know what they’re getting with the Apple ecosystem when they sign up.

tivert 3y ago

> Are the same people making a stink about Microsoft doing this also making a stink about Apple doing practically the same every time they release a new MacOS version? Yes, some of them. Though of course there are people who make stink about Microsoft and not Apple because they don't use Apple products. > How long should hardware be supported? Indefinitely? Yes. Or at least approximately as long as Linux does. Especially since it's no longer the 80s/90s and we're not seeing anywhere near the kind of rapid and significant hardware improvements the PC industry saw back then [1]. Microsoft is an extremely successful company with 221,000 full time employees, they have the capacity to do this. [1] Over the last couple decades, I've declined scheduled PC refreshes a couple times after checking the specs, because the "refreshed" PC was literally almost the same as my current one (like a small CPU bump and a bit more memory). For completely selfish reasons it made more sense to just keep the old one and maybe buy some more RAM than go through the trouble of migrating my stuff.

doubled112 3y ago

It is hard to know where to draw the line. I'm sure they used some telemetry to decide which machines were too much work. The only shocker on my machines is my first gen Ryzen build. I guess 8c/16t and 32GB RAM isn't enough to run Windows anymore?

vel0city 3y ago
Just saying "I've got this many CPUs and this much RAM" means nothing if the processor just doesn't support some feature deemed important. I've got multi-socket, multi-core, many-gig-of-RAM boxes that can't run modern Linux kernels (and thus most modern Linux distros) due to lacking CPU features required these days.
- toast0 3y ago
  Could be worse. They actually gave us plenty of info. 8 core first gen Ryzen is very specific. Windows 11 probably doesn't like it because no TPM (most likely the motherboard has a port for one, but parts may not be available). There's a small list of processors that could be: Ryzen 1700, Ryzen 1800, with or without X/Pro, or maybe a Threadripper 1900X. Much better than "I've got an i7 why is this slow" "I don't know, it works great on my Pentium", where the first person has an i7-620UE, a 2.13 Ghz 2 core Arrandale (Westmere?) from 2010, and the second person has a Pentium Gold G7400, a 3.7Ghz 2 core Alder Lake from 2022. Turns out 12 years of improvements and moving from mobile to desktop makes a huge difference. Of course, someone with a pentium could also have a processor from 1993-2022, so that's a much worse name without qualifiers.
  - throwaway48476 3y ago
    The Ryzen 2700x is the same CPU as the 1700X, just a 12nm die shrink yet it is supported. The TPM requirement is asinine and not necessary.
- doubled112 3y ago
  The sibling comment had it right, it's a Ryzen 7 1700X. The BIOS has been since updated to support fTPM, and that seems to enable upgrading other machines I have. That Ryzen CPU launched in 2017, which means it existed 4 years before the newest Windows wasn't supported. Really, it's this time frame that surprised me. What do we consider a modern kernel? Debian is still shipping a i386 port that should run on a Pentium II. It's old enough to order a beer at a restaurant. "Nearly all x86-based (IA-32) processors still in use in personal computers are supported. This also includes 32-bit AMD and VIA (former Cyrix) processors, and processors like the Athlon XP and Intel P4 Xeon. However, Debian GNU/Linux bookworm will not run on 586 (Pentium) or earlier processors."

cesarb 3y ago

> How long should hardware be supported? Indefinitely? Should Microsoft still target 286's? Pentium III's? One obvious cut-off point is support for 64-bit software (the AMD64 ISA). Another is a minimum speed and memory capacity. People are complaining because, in many cases, these "no longer supported" CPU models are faster than the allowed CPU models, and they accept more than enough RAM.

vel0city 3y ago
> One obvious cut-off point is support for 64-bit software (the AMD64 ISA) But there are still millions of 32-bit CPUs out there which could be used but are landfill fodder now. Think of all the e-waste! > these "no longer supported" CPU models are faster than the allowed CPU models, and they accept more than enough RAM There's far more to hardware requirements than clock rate and memory capacity. If the hardware doesn't support some feature deemed important adding another stick of RAM won't solve the problem.
- grujicd 3y ago
  32-bit CPU is not a good example because it's obsolete in a realistic sense, not by some artificial requirement. It doesn't support enough RAM not to choke when few browser tabs are opened. Perhaps sadly that modern web page requires that much RAM, but that doesn't mean it's not true.
  - vel0city 3y ago
    Windows supported more than 4GB of RAM for some editions of 32-bit Windows. Windows Server Enterprise 2003 supported 64GB of RAM on 32-bit processors supporting PAE.

toast0 3y ago

> How long should hardware be supported? IMHO, until there's a good reason to depend on a feature they don't have. For cpus, that's usually an instruction that makes things possible or much more efficient. 286s were obsoleted by the 386's 32-bit and virtual modes. Pentium III was obsoleted by 64-bit mode, if not some version of SSE. It looks like the 24H2 release of Windows 11 is going to require SSE 4.2, POPCNT is nice, and I guess they want to depend on it. Seems ok for an instruction that's been in processors for over a decade. Personally, I don't find the TPM requirement essential, especially since windows seems to work fine without a tpm; whereas I'd bet the builds that rely on POPCNT won't work without it. One could hook the bad instruction exception and backfill with a software implementation to count bits, but I think it's ok to skip.

Narishma 3y ago
> 286s were obsoleted by the 386's 32-bit and virtual modes. And yet it took nearly a decade for the 386s to displace them in the market.
- toast0 3y ago
  Well sure, it took time for there to be a large enough installed base of 386s to be willing to release software that wouldn't run a 286. And time to write software that made use of the new modes. But when you had to retire your 286, it was because it couldn't run 32-bit software. Or because you really needed to multitask some dos stuff.

grujicd 3y ago

Problem is mid-high end Windows PC from 10 years ago with SSD and enough RAM is indistinguishable from 2024 PC for many, many workloads. Btw. I'm alternating between 2012 i7 and 2023 i7 on a daily basis and wish difference would be larger for me but it's not. It's not like a situation with 286/386/486 at all. There are zero benefits in upgrading these machines for majority of users. Sure, if you do video encoding or something similar difference can be huge. But for general development, document editing, multimedia/browsing, it's all the same. That's why this forced upgrade stinks. And Apple stinks too, but we're not arguing that here.

eviks 3y ago

Yes How many 286s are out there?