4 ms·

I don’t know how I feel about it. I’ve been on one side, looking at usage numbers of older iOS versions, and arguing that low single digit percentages were fine

by e28eta 5mo ago

I don’t know how I feel about it. I’ve been on one side, looking at usage numbers of older iOS versions, and arguing that low single digit percentages were fine to stop supporting with the new version. On the other hand, I view my kindle as an appliance, and I don’t need it to have updated functionality. I think this is true of many electronics: digital cameras, printers, misc USB peripherals, etc. I believe Amazon could easily support the APIs it uses, and keep delivering me books that I’ve paid for or borrowed. Financially, I suspect the kindle devices have a much longer lifetime than iPhones do, and Amazon is still making $$ off of old kindles. If there were TLS concerns, a partial disablement (ex: can’t buy books from the device) would be way more acceptable than a complete cutoff. I’ve seen suggestions that it’s a DRM issue, and if that’s the primary motivation, it’s pretty disappointing.

Aloha 5mo ago
I'm supporting a 30 year old product, the oldest one in the field are 20+ years old, we still support them. I'm just in the process of developing a lifecycle policy, being able to cut off support for a 12 year systems would make my life much more full of joy.
- happyopossum 5mo ago
  Presumably that “support” you officer is tied to a nice fat multi-year support contract, no? You can’t equate that to providing ongoing updates and support for a $100 hardware device indefinitely.
  - Aloha 4mo ago
    It is, but I cant build them spares (not even thru broker bought parts) anymore. At some point you have to force the customer to say goodbye.
- _doctor_love 5mo ago
  (This may be a very ungenerous reading of your comment, so my apologies if this is not what you mean.) The phrase that jumps out at me is: > being able to cut off support for a 12 year systems would make my life much more full of joy I think this is a nearly-poetical capturing of the core problem. The focus is on the joy and well-being of the maintainer, not the impact to all the people who will be impacted by this change. Possibly some people rely on these devices and it adversely impact their joy and livelihood when support is ended. This happens over and over again in tech.
  - andrekandre 5mo ago
    > Possibly some people rely on these devices and it adversely impact their joy and livelihood when support is ended. This happens over and over again in tech. its true and i agree with you as a user on the other hand, some software gets harder and costlier to support the longer its out there (think spec changes, security issues, updates in law etc), and even paying a normal subscription for it can cause roi to go negative, especially when factoring in opportunity cost for a business (help the old users or spend that time/money making a new feature for the majority) my thought on it is if its a subscription, maybe for some software, the longer someone uses the old version the subscription cost could go up slowly, or if its a one-time purchase, after x years they could just buy a support ticket or something...? for ad-supported software i have no ideas...
    - lwhi 5mo ago
      This reminds me of the time we needed to support IE6.
      - lukan 5mo ago
        We only had to, because some buerocrats certified IE6 for some processes and did not bother to update with the real world that moved beyond that piece of garbage. So ... thanks for bringing back bad memories.
        lwhi 5mo ago
        Gives me PTSD too!
  - Aloha 5mo ago
    How long should a hardware and software product be expected to last? Try estimating doing win11 updates on a 20 year old piece of delphi spftware with hardware full go custom ASICs be expected to lsat?
    - mystraline 5mo ago
- protocolture 5mo ago
  I have a customer that had to be talked into ending support for a product they built in the 80s and provided unlimited, material cost only, repair plan for. They replaced the product, but they kept buying the parts and updating the software for the old one. And customers were absolutely still sending back their broken ones getting at cost replacements. It was like looking at a well engineered, thoughtfully maintained hole in the bottom of a cruise liner.
- Zambyte 5mo ago
  There are other people who can and will support it. Let them.
  - NetMageSCW 5mo ago
    There are companies that will make deals with tens of thousands of book publishers and provide storage and access for millions of books, magazines and comics? I suppose they will do it for free?
    - Zambyte 5mo ago
      How do you know what Aloha does?
      - Aloha 4mo ago
        I dont think they read any of the parallel posts. For (others) reference the oldest bits of code in our software are from the mid-late 90’s and the oldest systems still paying for support rely on parts to build that is not available at any price, its all just made of unobtainium, whereas I can sell them a brand news that does everything they have today and more.
Twirrim 5mo ago
I'm not sure if they ever changed away from it, but early generation kindles were running an old version of embedded java (4 I think? Pre-generics), that was already quite painful to deal with, with the team having to maintain their own forks, build tools etc. because nothing supported it. Reportedly there wasn't a way to actually upgrade the version either. While I wish they'd support them longer, I'm not surprised that they've finally decided it's not worth it.
NotPractical 5mo ago
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by e28eta 5mo ago

Aloha 5mo ago

I'm supporting a 30 year old product, the oldest one in the field are 20+ years old, we still support them. I'm just in the process of developing a lifecycle policy, being able to cut off support for a 12 year systems would make my life much more full of joy.

happyopossum 5mo ago
Presumably that “support” you officer is tied to a nice fat multi-year support contract, no? You can’t equate that to providing ongoing updates and support for a $100 hardware device indefinitely.
- Aloha 4mo ago
  It is, but I cant build them spares (not even thru broker bought parts) anymore. At some point you have to force the customer to say goodbye.
_doctor_love 5mo ago
(This may be a very ungenerous reading of your comment, so my apologies if this is not what you mean.) The phrase that jumps out at me is: > being able to cut off support for a 12 year systems would make my life much more full of joy I think this is a nearly-poetical capturing of the core problem. The focus is on the joy and well-being of the maintainer, not the impact to all the people who will be impacted by this change. Possibly some people rely on these devices and it adversely impact their joy and livelihood when support is ended. This happens over and over again in tech.
- andrekandre 5mo ago
  > Possibly some people rely on these devices and it adversely impact their joy and livelihood when support is ended. This happens over and over again in tech. its true and i agree with you as a user on the other hand, some software gets harder and costlier to support the longer its out there (think spec changes, security issues, updates in law etc), and even paying a normal subscription for it can cause roi to go negative, especially when factoring in opportunity cost for a business (help the old users or spend that time/money making a new feature for the majority) my thought on it is if its a subscription, maybe for some software, the longer someone uses the old version the subscription cost could go up slowly, or if its a one-time purchase, after x years they could just buy a support ticket or something...? for ad-supported software i have no ideas...
  - lwhi 5mo ago
    This reminds me of the time we needed to support IE6.
    - lukan 5mo ago
      We only had to, because some buerocrats certified IE6 for some processes and did not bother to update with the real world that moved beyond that piece of garbage. So ... thanks for bringing back bad memories.
      - lwhi 5mo ago
        Gives me PTSD too!
- Aloha 5mo ago
  How long should a hardware and software product be expected to last? Try estimating doing win11 updates on a 20 year old piece of delphi spftware with hardware full go custom ASICs be expected to lsat?
  - mystraline 5mo ago
protocolture 5mo ago
I have a customer that had to be talked into ending support for a product they built in the 80s and provided unlimited, material cost only, repair plan for. They replaced the product, but they kept buying the parts and updating the software for the old one. And customers were absolutely still sending back their broken ones getting at cost replacements. It was like looking at a well engineered, thoughtfully maintained hole in the bottom of a cruise liner.
Zambyte 5mo ago
There are other people who can and will support it. Let them.
- NetMageSCW 5mo ago
  There are companies that will make deals with tens of thousands of book publishers and provide storage and access for millions of books, magazines and comics? I suppose they will do it for free?
  - Zambyte 5mo ago
    How do you know what Aloha does?
    - Aloha 4mo ago
      I dont think they read any of the parallel posts. For (others) reference the oldest bits of code in our software are from the mid-late 90’s and the oldest systems still paying for support rely on parts to build that is not available at any price, its all just made of unobtainium, whereas I can sell them a brand news that does everything they have today and more.

Twirrim 5mo ago

I'm not sure if they ever changed away from it, but early generation kindles were running an old version of embedded java (4 I think? Pre-generics), that was already quite painful to deal with, with the team having to maintain their own forks, build tools etc. because nothing supported it. Reportedly there wasn't a way to actually upgrade the version either. While I wish they'd support them longer, I'm not surprised that they've finally decided it's not worth it.

NotPractical 5mo ago

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