[htamas]

Unfortunately they have other ways to deprecate your device: App Stores won't work, apps won't talk to their backend with older versions or just straight up won't launch. Even Homebrew stopped supporting my 2015 Macbook I have for personal use.

[JumpCrisscross]

> they have other ways to deprecate your device

This is a wild take for a company known for the long lives of its devices.

[1shooner]

Right, I think that was the point being made: I've had a closet of Apple hardware with no technical problems, but made useless due to Apple's software decisions.

[JumpCrisscross]

> I've had a closet of Apple hardware with no technical problems, but made useless due to Apple's software decisions

You can do this to any product. (As can you undo it by wiping and reinstalling an old image.)

[1bpp]

With older Apple hardware you can usually find a working OS image, but Apple specifically is very strict with minimum OS versions for apps and deprecating APIs so that older iOS and macOS versions end up unable to install any software that hasn't had an older version archived somewhere, even if there's no real reason it shouldn't run on the hardware. You can only get older compatible versions of apps in the App Store if you happened to have purchased them before, again for no real reason other than inconvenience

[JumpCrisscross]

> that older iOS and macOS versions end up unable to install any software that hasn't had an older version archived somewhere

iOS, sure. After a certain point, you need to be fine with simple functionality (but, I’ll add, more than adequate for most users, which means someone else could find use and value for what you treat as junk).

But macOS? What software? Everything I’m thinking of is graphics adjacent and significantly benefits from faster hardware. For almost everything else, a browser suffices.

[classified]

> for what you treat as junk

No, what Apple made into junk by remotely flipping a switch. On an older iOS, you cannot log into your Apple ID any more, which then means you cannot update the OS any more. So you cannot upgrade, but you also cannot use the old OS for anything that requires you to be logged into your Apple account (which is practically everything). But you still get nagged at every turn that you need to log in and upgrade!

[mat_b]

I downgraded an old Macbook last year to see if I could get it running fast again. I couldn't install all sorts of things. So many things that I gave up.

[eek2121]

I don't know where this whole "Apple is slowing down my device" comes from, but it is misguided at best, and outright false at worst. My decades old iPod Touch, for example, still works today without performance issues. My oldest iPhones have no performance issues either, and they are (respectively) 9 and 10 years old. Do they still receive updates? Of course not! Neither do any of the other devices I have from the same era. My PC, built around the same time, doesn't even support Windows 11, and hasn't received a single BIOS update since 2020.

Apple was slowing down phones for a while, however, the general public entirely misunderstood why: At a certain point, the battery could not maintain the voltages required to keep the phone operating properly at all (if you understand silicon, you will understand why...CPU needs 1.5v, battery can provide 1.4v...and boom!), so Apple did the most graceful thing they could and they down clocked the phones rather than letting them abruptly turn off. That led to millions of people in a certain era of iPhone being able to use their phones...just more slowly...vs not being able to use them the second voltage > supply voltage...which basically means any remotely demanding app. They were (rightfully) sued because they made the change without informing the user first. They didn't have to touch the phones, period. They tried to allow the phones to be used/data recovered from gracefully.

Don't misunderstand me, I am not willing to defend the practices of any business at all, especially Apple (I've worked from, and walked away from, some despicable companies in my time as an engineer), however Apple went above and beyond to let folks continue to use their devices. If you think otherwise, I've a box full of android and non Android phones and tablets that the likes of Google, Samsung, LG, HTC, etc. all quickly abandoned.

For comparison, the Google Pixel 3a (among others) was released the same year and saw it's last major OS update in 2022. iPhone 11? Still receives updates to this day. No, they aren't slowing the phone down. Trust me, my non technical spouse would have complained super loudly by now. More importantly, I, as her tech support person would've. She is on 26.2 right now.

There is a time and place to bash Apple, however hardware/software support definitely isn't the place. If you think that the current OS/update you have installed is purposefully and intentionally slowing your phone in order to push you to update, please feel free to publish your testing and results...and make sure you isolate every other variable like filling up internal storage, running 50,000 apps at once, expecting any application made within the past 6-7 years to peform at top speed, etc.

Also make sure you aren't falling for things such as confirmation bias or worse: you simply parrot what others say because your decade old phone, much like your decade old PC,feels slower now than it did a decade ago, when apps and games were simpler, and didn't embed entire browser engines in order to display content.

Cheers, btw, and I mean no disrespect to anyone. Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays.

[mat_b]

I have a 4 year old M1 macbook pro running macos 12. It runs as good as when it was new. So you honestly think that if I upgrade it to macos 26 it wont start lagging? I am extremely confident that it will. Even without changing the other software running on it.

[askbjoernhansen]

Probably for a day or two as various indexes and caches are rebuilt in the background, and then not.

I use 26.x on an "original" 8GB M1 MacBook Air and it's as fine as it ever was.

(I also have a MBP, various Mac Mini's and other desktops, so it's not that I'm just used to everything being slow).

[butlike]

FWIW, my work M1 is on macos 26 and it runs just fine

[1shooner]

Honestly, the closet I mentioned were late PPC to mid Intel era. Those machines (putting aside the architecture changes) regularly outlived their ability to practically run the latest Mac OS, full stop. I am not even willing to say that wasn't intentional, because it was so conspicuous. Perhaps it wasn't 'designed' to do that, but minimally, I can say Apple did not maintain what I would consider minimum performance standards for the hardware they claimed their OS to support.

Maybe that's ancient history now, but from what it sounds like, they still have users that distrust their releases. When you say "I don't know where this is coming from" then a few lines later describe the known practice and the reason, well there you are. I guess it's a brand trust thing, and it sticks.

[StopDisinfo910]

These two things are not exclusive:

- Apple used to provide updates for longer than the rest of the industry.

- Apple has a history of using updates to make old devices less usable (see battery-gate or the current issue with Liquid glass).

Nothing wild there.

Other companies are now catching up on supports because the EU made longer support window mandatory. We will see how this pans out for Apple.