[traceroute66]

Yawn. More Apple bashing that is not backed up by any facts.

Name me one widely deployed OS that promises its users patches ad-infinitum.

Microsoft certainly doesn't patch all older versions of Windows.

Neither do all the widely deployed Linux flavours, they all have clearly defined EOL policies.

Nor do the BSDs, e.g. OpenBSD has a "current plus previous" policy.

You have to draw a line in the sand somewhere in terms of patching historical versions. Promising your users you will patch all historical versions forever is not feasible, because it means you are promising you will patch all dependencies forever, and that will require a lot of massive teams of developers doing nothing all day but patching legacy software.

[k20CuozQmk]

>Microsoft certainly doesn't patch all older versions of Windows.

This is not about EOL OS releases, this is about Catalina (macOS 10.15, released in 2019).

Apple advertises Catalina as still supported, last update was 15.15.7 on October 25 of this year (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacOS_version_history#Releases).

>Neither do all the widely deployed Linux flavours, they all have clearly defined EOL policies.

The big difference here you forgot to point out is that you can almost always update to the next Debian (or whatever GNU/Linux distribution you use) Stable release with the hardware you ran on the last one.

You could also get new hardware from whatever vendor you want to since Debian (and any other GNU/Linux distribution) isn't vendor locked to a company that insists on selling you soldered RAM/SSDs and thermal throttling machines.

The Debian team also consistently honors their support cycles, unlike Apple.

>Nor do the BSDs, e.g. OpenBSD has a "current plus previous" policy.

Same thing as the GNU/Linux situation i mentioned above, the operating system is not vendor locked and you can almost always update to the next release with old (in the case of *BSD maybe even ancient) hardware, this is not true for macOS.

>You have to draw a line in the sand somewhere in terms of patching historical versions. Agreed, you have to draw the line somewhere.

The issue here is that Apple drew the line and then didn't even bother to honor it.

[jkepler]

Exactly on point regarding Debian. I've been running Debian stable since 2012 or 2013, and I've only upgraded my hardwear when a motherboard died or when I wanted a new laptop for reasons other than the OS.

[PeterisP]

This is not about EOL - the article is about Apple not patching security issues in two-year old supported OS versions (Catalina from 2019).

Microsoft certainly does patch all two years old versions of windows.

[traceroute66]

First, Big Sur was the first macOS to support ARM. Given recent developments at Apple, its no surprise their primary development focus is on OS Releases that have ARM support.

Second, as already pointed out by another poster in this thread, Apple provide free upgrades to newer OS versions for supported hardware (and the hardware support goes back a decent number of years[1]).

For the vast majority of people on Catalina, all they need to do is to upgrade to Big Sur, it is almost certain they are using compatible hardware[1].

[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211238

[PeterisP]

The key point for this IMHO is, as mentioned in the article "But it's also time for better communication on this subject. Apple should spell out its update policies for older versions of macOS, as Microsoft does, rather than relying on its current hand-wavy release timing".

If Apple properly supported Catalina, that would be great; if Apple explicitly said that Catalina is out of support / EOL and people need to upgrade to Big Sur, that could be reasonable; but if they keep the two-year-old release in some limbo that's kind of supported but poorly, that's simply poor support.

Apple needs to make a clear choice and publish a specific date for each of their releases up until which they commit to backporting security updates, so that people can know what is the expectation for e.g. Catalina, whether it is considered supported or not right now.

[rudian]

I really don’t get this. Apple does provide free updates for all. If you skip major versions, you’re shooting yourself in the foot and blaming Apple for allowing it.

Apple is giving you the update: Install it and now it’s up to date. They don’t have to support multiple versions of the same thing indefinitely.

The situations (devices) where the update isn’t possible (i.e. they’re outdated too early) can probably be counted on one hand.

[PeterisP]

I agree that they don’t have to support multiple versions of the same thing indefinitely, however they do have to say what they are supporting and for how long they're going to support what.

The fact that Big Sur was released does not automatically mean anything about the support for Catalina, because there are all kinds of reasons not to make a major version upgrade even if the hardware is still compatible with the new version; the major upgrades do break certain aspects of software and implement changes to functionality and UI, not just fixes for security bugs.

The core issue is that simple questions like "Is Catalina being supported as of 14th November 2021 or not" and "Which is the date when Big Sur support ends and you are expected to migrate to Monterey or later for security updates" deserve a clear answer from Apple, and it seems that they are refusing to answering that with any official, published policy.

[circularfoyers]

Only when using a release that is EOL is it shooting yourself in the foot in regards to security. It doesn't matter if the new release is free or not (Linux and BSD are), not everyone wants to track the latest release for whatever reason they like and there's no problem with that if it still receives timely security updates, which is a standard practice on every other OS. If Apple doesn't want to do this, it should be clearly stated. Otherwise as this behavior is outside of the norm, Apple should be rightly critised for it.

[captn3m0]

For iOS14, Apple provided users a prompt to optionally upgrade to 15 while guaranteeing security updates to ios14. This is the relevant text on the Apple website:

>iOS may now offer a choice between two software update versions in the Settings app. You can update to the latest version of iOS 15 as soon as it’s released for the latest features and most complete set of security updates. Or continue on iOS 14 and still get important security updates.

>https://www.apple.com/ios/ios-15/features/

Apple is not even meeting it's own guarantees.

[ccouzens]

The problem is they don't allow the latest MacOS on not very old hardware. If they allowed the latest OS there would be less call to keep the older versions patched.

> Name me one widely deployed OS that promises its users patches ad-infinitum.

> Microsoft certainly doesn't patch all older versions of Windows.

> Neither do all the widely deployed Linux flavours.

But the latest and greatest Windows and Linux releases are installable on older devices.

I extended the life of a 2011 iMac which stopped recieving updates from Apple by installing the latest Fedora.

Most Linux distributions draw the line at 32 bit hardware.

Windows 11 was controversial in that it dropped support for older computers. But this shows what the expectations are.

[josteink]

> But the latest and greatest Windows and Linux releases are installable on older devices.

This was certainly true until recently when Microsoft went all Windows 11, which only works on a small, whitelisted subset of X86-compatible CPUs and also mandated TPM 2.0.

Now only Linux offers semi-guaranteed support for older hardware.

[hu3]

To note: Windows 10 is still supported and will be up to 2025. And when that date arrives, Microsoft has a history of patching out of support Operating Systems. Mostly because they have large enterprise contracts which last longer than the EOL of their OS.

Also Microsoft provides an official guide on how to install Windows 11 on older hardware. My neighbor has Windows 11 on his 10 year old laptop running an i7 2500 and it's butter smooth.

[traceroute66]

> But the latest and greatest Windows and Linux releases are installable on older devices.

So is OS X Big Sur[1] and Monterey[2]

For the majority of people all they need to do is pull their finger out and upgrade the OS from Catalina to Big Sur or Monterey.

    [1]https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211238
    [2]https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212551

[ccouzens]

Those show about 8 years. My 2011 iMac was dropped by Mojave (7 years).

Modern computers should last a lot longer than that, especially if you can pass them on to users with less demanding requirements.

And fortunately Macs do last longer than that, but you have to install Linux or Windows to keep them up to date.