[throwaway27448]

> Apple would prefer that you tell your customers to stop being poor and buy a new computer.

This is certainly an interesting way to characterize dropping support for old hardware. What is a reasonable way to go about hardware deprecation in your view?

[ryukoposting]

When a company obsoletes a hardware platform, as Apple will do with this update, it is their moral duty to open the platform. Release the necessary source code, blobs, and docs to allow independent actors maintain their equipment, or maintain that equipment on behalf of its owner.

Apple won't. We all know that. The Broadcom wi-fi chips and the subtle differences in their embedded architecture vs. conventional PCs means x86 Macs will never be adequately supported without Apple's stewardship.

[protimewaster]

I think one thing that rubs people the wrong way is that Apple has basically infinite money at this point. They're not dropping support for old hardware because they don't have the resources to maintain the support. They're just doing it because they want to, and that's kinda lame.

Especially when I can keep getting both feature and security updates for Windows on hardware that's the same age (or older) as the EOL Apple hardware.

[ryandrake]

This isn't even just an Apple attitude. The whole macOS and iOS software ecosystem has this "nothing before the prior two OS releases exists anymore" attitude, and it is absolutely infuriating. It is absolutely possible and not a huge lift to support prior operating systems, but Mac developers just don't tend to care or do it.

The reasonable way to go about hardware deprecation is to not do it until that hardware is Truly Gone™, buy some actual definition of Gone that isn't an arbitrary number of years or versions.