[andrewmutz]

Hacker news holds Apple and Google to different standards, so I doubt this post will get much traction. (I'm still angry about how I must use an iPhone if I want to be able to text high quality video to people I don't know very well)

[ajdude]

Apple has done a much better job at maintaining their stuff compared to Google. Even this list is mostly just old hardware that fell out of service.

And even then, I can still sync my 20+ year old firewire ipod with the most recent Apple Music (formally iTunes) on my m4 MacBook with the right converter.

[Jeremy1026]

A lot of the Software listed is just stuff the has a new name or merged into another piece of software now too.

iTunes -> Apple Music

Apple TV Remote App -> Apple TV Remote in Control Center

Dashboard -> Desktop Widgets

Find My Friends -> Find My

iPhoto -> Photos

Game Center app -> Games/Apple Arcade

Newsstand -> Apple News

iChat -> iMessage

Final Cut Studio/Server -> Final Cut Pro

AppleTalk -> AirDrop

as just a few examples.

[kalleboo]

Sadly they finally dropped support for Firewire in macOS 26, BTW. The USB models still work though.

[azan_]

Well, even looking at the list it's clear that there's huge difference between things killed by apple and by google. E.g. there's lots of hardware for which there's just no genuine market, e.g. iPod touch. I'm surprised it was killed only in 2022. Lots of software was just incorporated into other products. It's completely different compared with what google does.

[rayiner]

Right. Like, Apple sold a DVD drive until 2024?

[austinthetaco]

unfortunately they hold it in the wrong direction. At least when it comes to updates and feature retention apple is one of the leaders. Even this website posted here shows that most of the software stuff is just rolled into other native apps instead of being abruptly cancelled (lookin at you google) with no recourse where to go.

[tpmoney]

> I'm still angry about how I must use an iPhone if I want to be able to text high quality video to people I don't know very well

You’re mad at the wrong people in this case though. iMessage can do high quality video and images because it’s a separate channel from the telecoms. RCS can now do high quality video and images too because it’s a newer standard and was built for that (and iPhones do support RCS now). But for normal “text” messages using the MMS/SMS systems, your quality is capped by the carriers and the carries have ridiculously (relative to current standards) low size limits. AT&T limits them to 1MB [1]. Verizon limits you to 1.2MB for images and 3.5MB for video [2] and T-Mobile limits you to 1MB for outbound and 3MB for inbound. Low quality is just baked into those paths and there’s nothing Apple (or Google) can do about it other than build parallel messaging systems

[1]: https://www.att.com/support/article/wireless/KM1041906/

[2]: https://www.verizon.com/support/knowledge-base-14641/

[3]: https://www.t-mobile.com/support/devices/device-troubleshoot...

[andrewmutz]

Apple has absolutely been dragging its feet on RCS. The DoJ explicitly accused them of degrading cross-platform messaging to protect their smartphone dominance. Internal Apple communications revealed that executives were worried that bringing iMessage to Android would "remove an obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones."

Apple is clearly the bad guy on the RCS issue.

[codetiger]

Google killed more messenger app/services than the entire software count listed in this list. Obviously exaggerating but might be close to true