4 ms·

Consistently, strategically EOL-ing/deprecating technologies, even through some painful transitions, is no small part of why Apple are in a good position today.

Consistently, strategically EOL-ing/deprecating technologies, even through some painful transitions, is no small part of why Apple are in a good position today. There's no way they could've pushed the iPhone out the door in 2007 if they were obsessively keeping all of their Mac software compatible across Intel/PPC or providing support to OS9 users (not that those are completely meritless). The de-emphasis of backward compatibility has been a tactical advantage against Microsoft.

gurkendoktor 14y ago
I read this all the time but I don't buy it. Hiring some maintenance programmers to take care of 10.6 or 10.7 security for X more years (and announcing that EOL date!) sounds pretty harmless. How would that hold Apple back at all? They have mountains of cash in the bank and those programmers wouldn't get into the way of 10.8 or 10.9 at all.
- bestes 14y ago
  That is the brute-force approach Microsoft uses. Corporations love it. I find the problem is that the "matrix" of possibilities you have to keep in mind as a programmer keeps getting bigger and bigger. You end up with the Adobe Flash effect (least common denominator) within your own OS or program or whatever. I would call that a very high price indeed.
- philwelch 14y ago
  If you can hire qualified systems programmers, you can put them to much more productive use than maintaining Mac OS 10.6 for another decade.
- saturdaysaint 14y ago
  Security patches, while not trivial or cheap, are vastly simpler than either the backward compatibility problems I described or the issue at hand with incompatible video drivers. You can't just add programmers to mate cutting edge OS kernel features (ie leveraging recent videocards) with old hardware. None of us can speak authoritatively on the case in point, but it seems painfully optimistic to think you can pull this off without introducing a lot of complexity. And then, what happens if the 10.8 team tweaks the kernel during a point update? Yep, better double or triple the testing team. "Oh, it looks like it'll take some work to get 10.8 working with all of our old AMD chipsets - either we delay release until fall (after Windows 8, unfortunately) or we put some of our "A" engineers on it." Complexity is the keyword. Complexity and mediocrity go hand in hand. Backward compatibility is a noble goal in many ways, but every generation back of software/hardware you try to maintain exponentially increases the complexity you deal with instead of putting a better new product in user's hands.
  - gurkendoktor 14y ago
    I was only thinking of security updates, new features can often be added by third parties and that leads to a healthy market that will fill the gaps on older OS versions. HN completely ignores the class of computer users who only need Safari, Mail and some variation of Word, and then live in these apps for years without any major upgrade. In my experience, these people don't even feel entitled to any upgrade and they don't add any complexity to any testing matrix. All they need are baseline security updates, and existing services better don't stop without a plausible reason (see MobileMe). I'm not thinking of MegaCorp here, but rather my own and friends' close relatives. The machine that got excluded from 10.8 after only 4 years was not a rev-A MacBook Air in the hands of some early adopters but a Mac Mini, the most traditional Mac money can buy. That really leaves little hope that all my "slow adopter" relatives will ever leave the Windowsverse.
harshpotatoes 14y ago
On the other end of the spectrum, I work with lab equipment that are more than 15 years old but still work great. The software which interfaces with it is old, but still works with Windows. Would such a thing be possible with Apple, or would Apple's insistence on upgrading every few years force the lab equipment to be replaced at significantly greater cost?
- jpxxx 14y ago
  Macs have never really been appropriate for embedded computation, and it doesn't come up much in practice. I work with people who work with lab software which is happily running OS X 10.2 Jaguar. It's no different than the XP box in the corner, as long as everyone understands that the checkbook has to come out when it breaks. On the other hand, the quarter million dollar cytometer is going to be running Windows NT 4 Embedded, and when that ATA-66 hard drive fails or the software becomes unable to talk properly with the modern world anymore, it's on the vendor to make it work again. The support typically blows, but it's their problem to handle and none of them are going to be relying on Apple's memory-hole platform.
- wmf 14y ago
  Apple maintained Classic compatibility from ~1984-2006 and Carbon PPC compatibility from ~2000-2010. It's a long time but it's not forever.
- pooriaazimi 14y ago
  They're not gonna come and take your lab equipments away, you know... Leave them on OS X Lion for a century and you'll be okay. Just like many have left their lab computers on Windows XP for a decade. As long as Lion gets security updates (2 years, minimum), there's absolutely no need for an upgrade. After that, you can just disconnect it from the Internet and use an stronger password.
  - eswangren 14y ago
    Because using a stronger password somehow nullifies security holes in an OS?

gurkendoktor 14y ago

I read this all the time but I don't buy it. Hiring some maintenance programmers to take care of 10.6 or 10.7 security for X more years (and announcing that EOL date!) sounds pretty harmless. How would that hold Apple back at all? They have mountains of cash in the bank and those programmers wouldn't get into the way of 10.8 or 10.9 at all.

bestes 14y ago
That is the brute-force approach Microsoft uses. Corporations love it. I find the problem is that the "matrix" of possibilities you have to keep in mind as a programmer keeps getting bigger and bigger. You end up with the Adobe Flash effect (least common denominator) within your own OS or program or whatever. I would call that a very high price indeed.
philwelch 14y ago
If you can hire qualified systems programmers, you can put them to much more productive use than maintaining Mac OS 10.6 for another decade.
saturdaysaint 14y ago
Security patches, while not trivial or cheap, are vastly simpler than either the backward compatibility problems I described or the issue at hand with incompatible video drivers. You can't just add programmers to mate cutting edge OS kernel features (ie leveraging recent videocards) with old hardware. None of us can speak authoritatively on the case in point, but it seems painfully optimistic to think you can pull this off without introducing a lot of complexity. And then, what happens if the 10.8 team tweaks the kernel during a point update? Yep, better double or triple the testing team. "Oh, it looks like it'll take some work to get 10.8 working with all of our old AMD chipsets - either we delay release until fall (after Windows 8, unfortunately) or we put some of our "A" engineers on it." Complexity is the keyword. Complexity and mediocrity go hand in hand. Backward compatibility is a noble goal in many ways, but every generation back of software/hardware you try to maintain exponentially increases the complexity you deal with instead of putting a better new product in user's hands.
- gurkendoktor 14y ago
  I was only thinking of security updates, new features can often be added by third parties and that leads to a healthy market that will fill the gaps on older OS versions. HN completely ignores the class of computer users who only need Safari, Mail and some variation of Word, and then live in these apps for years without any major upgrade. In my experience, these people don't even feel entitled to any upgrade and they don't add any complexity to any testing matrix. All they need are baseline security updates, and existing services better don't stop without a plausible reason (see MobileMe). I'm not thinking of MegaCorp here, but rather my own and friends' close relatives. The machine that got excluded from 10.8 after only 4 years was not a rev-A MacBook Air in the hands of some early adopters but a Mac Mini, the most traditional Mac money can buy. That really leaves little hope that all my "slow adopter" relatives will ever leave the Windowsverse.

harshpotatoes 14y ago

On the other end of the spectrum, I work with lab equipment that are more than 15 years old but still work great. The software which interfaces with it is old, but still works with Windows. Would such a thing be possible with Apple, or would Apple's insistence on upgrading every few years force the lab equipment to be replaced at significantly greater cost?

jpxxx 14y ago
Macs have never really been appropriate for embedded computation, and it doesn't come up much in practice. I work with people who work with lab software which is happily running OS X 10.2 Jaguar. It's no different than the XP box in the corner, as long as everyone understands that the checkbook has to come out when it breaks. On the other hand, the quarter million dollar cytometer is going to be running Windows NT 4 Embedded, and when that ATA-66 hard drive fails or the software becomes unable to talk properly with the modern world anymore, it's on the vendor to make it work again. The support typically blows, but it's their problem to handle and none of them are going to be relying on Apple's memory-hole platform.
wmf 14y ago
Apple maintained Classic compatibility from ~1984-2006 and Carbon PPC compatibility from ~2000-2010. It's a long time but it's not forever.
pooriaazimi 14y ago
They're not gonna come and take your lab equipments away, you know... Leave them on OS X Lion for a century and you'll be okay. Just like many have left their lab computers on Windows XP for a decade. As long as Lion gets security updates (2 years, minimum), there's absolutely no need for an upgrade. After that, you can just disconnect it from the Internet and use an stronger password.
- eswangren 14y ago
  Because using a stronger password somehow nullifies security holes in an OS?