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by k20CuozQmk 1681 days ago
>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.

1 comments

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.