[rched]

Doesn’t seem like Apple shutting down this old, likely unpopular feature is evidence of Apple turning the Mac into an “Apple Chromebook”.

There is no “hard stop” on the life time of a Mac. Yeah Apple will eventually stop updating the software but this has always been true. If anything this situation is much better that it ever has been with free OS updates.

Finally even if there was a hard stop Apple will gladly recycle your product. No need for it to go to a landfill.

[wlesieutre]

And what Mac has ever stopped getting security updates after 6-7 years?

The 2016 (first TouchBar year) is one of the shorter ones for newest-OS-support, only running up to macOS 12 (Monterey). That was released in 2021 and got its latest security update on 2023-06-21.

Going back further, the 2014 Macbook Pro supports macOS 11 (Big Sur), which was released in 2020 and also got a security update on 2023-06-21.

You have to go back to macOS 10.15 (Catalina) released in 2020 to find a version that hasn't had a security update this year. Which MBP models are stuck at Catalina? Mid 2012 to early 2013. That's 7-8 years with the newest OS, then another 2ish years of security updates.

10 years is far from perfect, but it's a heck of a lot better than 6.

[highwaylights]

It’s been well documented that security support for versions of macOS less than the absolute latest is really lacking.

When you don’t patch out every serious known zero-day, there’s really no point patching any of them. The device is already compromised.

That means the updates are really only 6-7 years, with an arbitrary cessation.

There’s no reason that Apple should be stopping OS support for older devices unless there’s a compelling reason to do so.

Next year they’ll argue that macOS Whatever only supports Macs with secure enclaves to keep users safe, so that gives them a pass for 2024, but really it’s just continued forced obsolescence as they’ll carry on axing machines for no reason in 2025.

[sumuyuda]

I don’t think it’s fair to count security updates as continued support, as soon as the software/applications you are using drops support for your old version, you can’t use it anymore, forcing you to buy new hardware. It doesn’t matter that you have security updates when you can’t run the software you need.

Windows is much better in that there aren’t yearly releases obsoleting machines every year. You can run the latest version of Windows 10 on hardware older than 10 years.

[wlesieutre]

Grandparent comment said "You're really buying a transferable lease for 6-7 years on a device that has a hard stop to go to landfill after that time due to software obsolescence by way of unpatched vulnerabilities" and I was mostly looking at the second part of that

But for the first part, for a huge number of people all you need is a web browser and Microsoft office, which is supported on the 3 latest macOS versions, about the same window as the macOS security updates

Like I said it's not perfect but it's much better than 6 years

[highwaylights]

Even this isn’t the whole picture though as unpatched OS vulnerabilities would still leave you vulnerable as a consumer.

[pseudalopex]

Past macOS versions get some security fixes for undocumented time. There were vulnerabilities not patched in past versions. I don't remember examples unfortunately.

[ISL]

Scratches head.

  [ISL@home:~]$ lscpu | grep -i intel
  Vendor ID:                       GenuineIntel
  Model name:                      Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3330 CPU @ 3.00GHz
  [ISL@home:~]$ uname -a
  Linux home 6.1.0-6-amd64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Debian 6.1.15-1 (2023-03-05) x86_64 GNU/Linux
  [ISL@home:~]$ 

The i5-3330 went EOL in 2014, released in 2012. An up-to-date first-class Debian system on decade-old hardware is just a sudo apt update; sudo apt dist-upgrade away.

It is a real bummer that the major hardware vendors choose not to open up their devices when they reach end of life. Phones and old hardware are frequently viable for double their enforced service-lives or longer.

[highwaylights]

I love this about Linux.

I do kind of wonder if Linux’ real problem is just that the Venn diagram of things people care about is all over the place and Linux just fails at the edge cases.

I’ve used Linux for a bunch of projects, and use it every day in a VM for work, but I wouldn’t dare to use it for my daily driver and I don’t think my niche needs are ever likely to be something that gets picked up. Shame for me, but the nature of open-source.

[plaguehammer]

Out of curiosity, what kinds of niche needs might those be?

[highwaylights]

Trust features mostly.

macOS and Windows have a lot of features to lock user directories away from rogue software, and Macs have notarization and certificate revocation (which I believe is coming to Windows too unless I’m mistaken).

Notarization/revocation isn’t really philosophically FOSS compatible so I don’t ever see things like this making it’s way to Linux either.

[spaceguillotine]

replaced my MacBook Pro after 10 years, not having the latest OS didn't bother me at all with it. Only had to spend $100 on a new battery for it after 5 years. in total, came out to $10.83 a month for the life of my MBP and it still works i just finally needed the ARM version for something.

[vinay_ys]

My experience has been similar. I'm still using my early 2013 MPB with original battery (it has been saying replace battery for last 2 years but I have not bothered). It still gets security updates and works perfectly fine for everyday personal use. I used iPhone 5 for 5 years, then iPhone 7 Plus for another 5 years, now on iPhone 12 which will easily last 5 years. Btw, at each upgrade the phone was perfectly fine and traded in for good value and I decided to upgrade because they genuinely had better and more useful hardware to go with upgraded software. For data backups and cloud services, I use different things for photos vs files vs music etc. I'm not locked into iCloud and I don't find apple is coercing either.

[cassianoleal]

How do you backup photos without iCloud?

I know it's possible, and I have a janky solution myself, but it really seems like iCloud is the only way to go without going through lots of hoops and still having a solution that's imperfect at best.

[vinay_ys]

Google Photos does a great job.

[cassianoleal]

How does it work? Not that I'd move from iCloud to Google, but I'm curious. Does it integrate with the Photos app in some way?

[highwaylights]

Depends on use case. You can probably get by just fine on unsupported software depending on what you’re doing.

If you’re really careful not to enter any bank/credit card/personal information it’s probably fine to use an unsupported laptop, but then you’re having to consider how much you trust your own computer which you didn’t before.