[dangus]

I think it’s interesting how software has longevity expectations from some customers that physical products don’t have.

How long is a dinner or drinks supposed to last before you buy another one?

How long is your house supposed to last before you need to make repairs?

How long is gasoline supposed to last before you buy more?

Vacation? Movie tickets? Hotel rooms? Flights? Appliances? Clothes? Shoes? Furniture? Maybe ~10% of the things we buy can be “buy it for life” items.

It seems like a lot of people want more longevity out of software than simple physical objects.

Smartphones weren’t exactly mature 7-10 years ago and we all knew that. If it were me I’d just accept that I spent $1000 on software and got something out of it for the time being.

Life is full of things that are fleeting.

[goosedragons]

Are software consumables like food and gasoline? Do you throw away your entire house after 5 years? What about your books? Movies? Music? Photos? Art?

You can take a 20 year old+ copy of Windows software that shipped on a CD-ROM in a paper box and it'll probably work just fine on Windows 10, maybe it needs some compatibility setting checked or absolute worst case an XP or 2000 VM. Meanwhile what do you do with an 8 year old iOS app? Hunt down old devices on eBay that you hope you can get working?

[dangus]

I’m not saying there aren’t any products that last a lifetime, but it’s a lot less common than most people think.

Houses are a great example. They absolutely crumble without constant maintenance. Water heater every 10 years, roof every 20, hardwood refinishing as needed, paint, GFCIs wear out, every type of appliance and HVAC item, repairing drywall, caulking bathrooms, and the list goes on and on.

Physical media wears out. Book pages get sun and moisture damage, wear from use, discs rot, vinyls get damaged just by being played. Film and printed photos fade.

In the case of textbooks and other non-fiction, information itself can become outdated.

Sure, the advent of digital technology should mean data doesn’t suffer from the woes of the physical realm, but that’s not even really half of the discussion.

Even those old boxed pieces of software, simply getting them to run usually isn’t always helpful. Is my tax software from 1999 going to have any functional purpose? Will I be able to get a job as a graphic designer anymore if my tools support 256 colors? If someone else made a better PDF than Acrobat Reader 1.0 would I have any desire to use the copy I already own?

Another analogy: if I could be given a brand new classic car but it needed leaded gasoline and got 10 MPG, is the fact that it lasted a lifetime relevant to me for the purposes of daily driving?

Basically, what I’m saying is that “surviving” and “maintaining value” are different things, and that putting things into the buckets of of “consumable” and “durable” good is a little too binary compared to the real world.

Sure, the smartphone distribution model means that old applications aren’t as resilient as WIN32 apps, but that doesn’t automatically mean that the current model isn’t acceptably durable.

[0xabe]

I was just wishing today to install an old version of Garage Band that could run on an older Mac. But I don’t have it on a disc, and can’t see how to download old versions.

[Wowfunhappy]

Do you own Garageband on the Mac App Store? On the older Mac, download Garageband from the App Store's "purchased" page. You will be given an option to install the last compatible version. Note that you absolutely must do this from the purchased page of the App Store and not anywhere else!

[scarface74]

And can I run old Windows CE apps built on .Net Compact Framework on the latest greatest Microsoft produced phones?

[mensetmanusman]

If you hit the windows button, maybe your new start menu will show you many ads about how to get the latest thing working :)

Certainly some software is more like a book, while some is throw-away magazine type that is constantly being updated with no actual net progress in functionality (or backwards progress, like ads in the start menu).

[friendlyHornet]

These really aren't comparable, and I try to squeeze as much life from my device as possible

Side note: I lived in an apartment in a 400 year old building once, and once lived in a shared house that was 300 years old (both cases were in Germany). Both buildings were renovated and had repairs several times and in a very good condition, and living in them was a great pleasure.

[ls15]

How long is a book that you bought supposed to last until the license expires and you have to buy it again?

How long is a vinyl record that you bought supposed to last until the license expires and you have to buy it again?

How long is a wedding ring supposed to last until it needs to be replaced?

How long is my cast iron skillet supposed to work until it falls apart and I have to buy a new one?

[dangus]

Wedding rings need to be cleaned, and some common materials like rose and white gold are not finishes that last forever. Many popular stones are actually quite easily damaged. Settings can loosen and stones can fall out.

The mere act of playing a vinyl records damages it. It’s a terrible example.

All my college textbooks are unacceptably outdated except for basic foundational math and science, but today’s kids are actually taught basic arithmetic in more effective ways than how I learned it.

Even non-academic prose eventually needs to be translated or supplemented as vernacular changes. Religious texts come to mind: the Bible we know as the “King James Version” has been revised dozens of times. [1]

Cast iron skillets are items that fall into that 10% category of “can actually last a few lifetimes” but as I mentioned in my original comment, my point is that this is a rarity.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_James_Version, footnote 96

Give the original text a try: https://www.originalbibles.com/the-original-king-james-bible...

It’s decently readable, but archaic enough to be difficult to follow. Spellings like “yeere” instead of “year” are all over the place. And while this is 17th century text, you barely have to leave the 20th century to find prose that’s difficult to parse without updated language.

[ls15]

Yes, physical things degrade over time, but they don't just vanish without a warning when you update your phone.

Also, my grandparents had their rings until they died, my vinyl records from the 70ies play just fine and I have books from the 1950s that I would not deem outdated. The skillet will last for centuries maybe.

On the other hand, some of my favorite apps just stopped working without any warning after using them for three or four years, just because I updated my iPad. In one case I lost some of my work, because I could not open the file format anymore.

[dangus]

But of course time works differently for different objects, which is a main point of mine.

Modern consumer non-business smartphones aren’t even 20 years old as a concept.

Imagine getting an Apple II and expecting application compatibility with a Power Macintosh from the 90s. That’s the exact same timeframe we’re talking about in years, and that’s a massive change because computers weren’t all that mature as a technology in the 70s.

Sure, it is bad that App Store distribution introduces this problem. I’m not saying it’s not bad. However, I’m doubtful that future OS changes from here on out will introduce as many incompatibilities as the ones that took place during the time when smartphones were changing chip architecture to 64-bit, implementing new concepts surrounding sensor and device permissions, and other more fundamental shifts that would affect app compatibility.

On top of that, we’re also talking about a marketplace of apps with an average price of under a dollar.

There’s a damn good argument for PEBKAC (or PEBPAC) if you manage to spend $1000 in the App Store in a lifetime.

[mensetmanusman]

Zork still works, most software can certainly be ‘finished’ and requires no upgrades.

One of the current issues with mobile development is that moore’s law has finished, so any update that hits performance is actually a step back. However, SWEs get paid based on deploys, so everyone has an incentive to get things in the final OS and slow down the phone.

Oh well