[kt103099]

What drives most of the limited backward compatibility is the amount of testing required. If you want to officially support new features on an older harder platform, you should test that they work. And fix any bugs found. And maybe some of those older machines don't have hardware for a new feature, so you have to devise a way to fail gracefully. At some point you just need to cut off the older platforms and move on. Similar reasons many web developer complained in the past about having to support old versions of Internet Explorer. No one accused anyone of 'planned obsolecense'.

BTW, the author of this article is not ignorant in these affairs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Sinofsky

[damnyou]

Apple makes far too much money for this to be a legitimate excuse.

[mthoms]

I thought the article illustrated very well why "money" should not be the prime consideration for supporting something (in the short to medium term). They're playing the long game.

[damnyou]

Tell that to all the game developers whose games can no longer be played on Catalina.

[wpm]

You act like dropping 32-bit was a surprise.

They had two years to get ready for 64-bit only, though the writing was on the wall for more than 5. They didn't. Either they didn't care, didn't find it worthwhile, or they didn't even exist anymore.

[mthoms]

Tell them what? Those developers already know that Apple is known for removing support for aging technologies way ahead of the curve. They also know that being willing to move fast and break backwards compatibility is what makes Apple, Apple. It's a major point of the article:

>There’s a whole book to be written about the “deal” a company makes to [...] promise compatibility. The reward of success is extremely high, but it is almost a Faustian bargain because you will absolutely cede the right to innovate

No one said that there weren't downsides to Apple's approach. The downsides are well known. And, as a user I'm slightly annoyed about the loss of 32-bit support. But if 32 bit support and backward compatibility is important, there's plenty of options including Windows, Linux or dual-booting MacOS versions [0].

Personally, I'm willing to suffer the short term pain of lost backward compatibility because I'm excited about the future of computing. As a user and developer I've already lived through 16->32->64 bit transitions (and similar disruptions). They suck at the time, but they're ultimately worth it. You can't stop progress.

[0] https://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/mac-software/dual-boot-mac...