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Comment by SyneRyder | Hacker News Reader

I have two 10-year old PCs in active use on my desk right now - both are running Windows 10, one is playing back Netflix right now while I type this on a third (brand new) machine.

The kicker? Those two 10-year old "PCs" are actually MacBooks. They still run fine & do everything I need those machines to do - but I had to install Windows 10 on them, because Apple stopped supporting their own hardware. A machine that maxed out at Snow Leopard is capable of running Windows 10... I think that says something about the way Apple now treats its customers.

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I don't think it's fair to expect Apple to support 32-bit processors anymore. OS X will run on Core2Duo, which is nearly 10 years old. My parents' iMac is a 2006 and runs El Cap.

I think it's understandable, but also interesting when juxtaposed with Microsoft still making 32-bit versions of Windows 10 in 2016. They're supporting the same hardware that Apple won't, and also an additional 10 years of security updates (Windows 10 End-Of-Life for those 32-bit machines is October 14, 2025 [1]).

I also have a 64-bit Core 2 Duo that Apple no longer supports. OS X Lion was the last release for the 2007 MacBook 3,1.

[1] http://windows.microsoft.com/en-au/windows/lifecycle

It is interesting, but perhaps it doesn't mean much in the end. All it really signifies is that Macbooks are PC-compatible. Microsoft is under a lot more pressure to support 32-bit processors, as they're still kicking around - Apple meanwhile only have to support their own hardware.

I would also say that Microsoft's End-Of-Life security update promises mean a lot less now that they've demonstrated willingness to subvert that system to force-upgrade people.

stop denying apples active agency in their policies and cultivated culture...

they are actively pro-consumerism they are actively pro-waste

they actively don't care about your slighly older product. you are advocating holding them to a lesser standard of culpability and support than M$ and I find it ridiculous.

There's a palpable issue here. One shouldn't try to deny it.

> I don't think it's fair to expect Apple to support 32-bit processors anymore.

It might not be fair to expect it, but it's absolutely fair to count it against how Apple supports their customers.

I don't understand what you mean. Are you saying that Apple doesn't support their customers well because they don't spend time writing software for 10 year old hardware?

Once you have cross-platform support, keeping it is not very hard. And most of their code works on 32-bit Arm. So it would not be an unreasonable burden.

Computers have slowed down. Basic support for for 10 years is not a crazy idea.

You cannot have 100% platform support of 100% quality 100% of the time. Compromise has to be made. If you're not making an explicit compromise by mercilessly cutting platform support, you're implicitly compromising schedule and quality. Apple have always been the best by far at prioritizing quality, and making hard choices, well above and beyond anybody within any industry they enter. They have always fixed the most painful problems first, and leaving the less important ones to later or never. They are willing to leave a gap in their lineup for two or three quarters because an SKU would fail some obscure quality metric[1][2]. Even so, thy have already had some unpleasant bug creep over the past few years[0]. It's not like they are leisurely coasting and twiddling their fingers — had they been supporting old hardware, software on new hardware would have been measurably worse.

[0] https://marco.org/2015/01/04/apple-lost-functional-high-grou... [1] http://www.pcworld.com/article/226520/Apple_Explains_White_i... [2] iPhone 6S available 25 September 2015, iPhone SE available 31 March 2016

>had they been supporting old hardware, software on new hardware would have been measurably worse

Might not have been measurable, and might just cost an extra engineer without really harming anything.

If they had gone 64-bit-only, I'd be much more in agreement with you. But if you're still supporting a 32 bit platform, you have a lot of restrictions put on you, and the marginal cost of keeping support for a second 32 bit platform is not a big deal.

You vastly underestimate both how different these old systems are, how many resources it takes to support every additional platform, that the burden increases non-linearly, and what kind of weird release-blocking bugs those extra platforms may introduce, delaying fixes and hogging resources.

At minimum, slow systems require gracefully degrading GUI, which increases complexity by an order of magnitude. The graphics card capabilities are a much better first approximation than the word width.

If it took just a few extra engineers, or a few thousand, to fix the bugs that they have, Apple would have done it. The Mythical Man-Month, and all that.

They still support slow systems, just ones that happen to be 64 bit. You're being ridiculous when you say a few thousand engineers couldn't do it. This could be almost completely separate from ongoing development. man-month would not be a problem.

> Are you saying that Apple doesn't support their customers well because they don't spend time writing software for 10 year old hardware?

This isn't even close to what he said, and it only makes sense if you have an extremely reductive black-and-white view of the world. There are places on the spectrum between "perfect support" and "absolute shit support", and the phrase "count against" simply implies that supporting decade old hardware is a notch higher than the same support setup without that advantage.

AMD has had 64 bit processors for 13 years. When the opteron released it was faster than intel too.

This. The computer that by far gets the most use in my house is a 2009 Mac Book Pro. I've upgraded the hard drive to an SSD so it's still quite snappy. The monitor is still bright and colorful. All the keyboard keys still have good action. The mouse pad physical click is the only thing that has fizzled out and I could fix that for $100.

So yeah, it doesn't look great when Apple says "replace your 5 year old computer" but as a whole, they do a great job of making products that last. Also, news flash, they are in the business of making money.

Most likely you can fix the trackpad click quite easily yourself. There are some annoying 3-wing screws holding the battery but besides that there isn't much in the way.

There's one single screw that sets the trackpad's click sensitivity. I loosened the click even during the warranty period because it was too strong (and loud) for my taste. A tiny bit of rotation and ideally loctite to fix it.

Check to see if the battery is swollen -- that happened a lot with those machines, and typically interfered with the trackpad click.

Yup, had this with my 2006 MacBook, and a new battery fixed it.

(Incidentally, when I last went to buy a replacement battery from an Apple Store, they wouldn't let me install it myself even though the polycarbonate MacBooks had user replaceable batteries. They insisted I bring in my MacBook and leave it with them overnight to have a Genius install it. I ended up cancelling it and getting a NewerTech battery replacement, which is both cheaper & has better battery life than the Apple model.)

They used to. Retina Macbooks? Zero upgrade path. Can't even replace the batteries in them without risking your life. And eventually Apple stop providing battery replacements, and your machine is dead.

My PC, however, has components that are oh, 10 years old? Sure, it has a 1-year old motherboard, CPU, 3 year old RAM, a 2 year old GPU, and a mix of SSDs and HDDs, but the case I bought in 2006, as with my MX518 mouse.

This kind of longevity of components is good for us. Throwing out your appliance every 5 years because Apple decided to solder RAM instead of sacrifice 1mm of thinness and provide a slot is good for Apple, and Apple alone.

Interesting. I have a mid-2011 iMac. I ran Win 7 in Bootcamp for a few years until upgrading to 8.1 last month because Apple said Windows 10 wasn't supported on my machine.

Have you had any problems?

Compulsive Lying Disorder ?

hehe

Well, I have a better one for you: I am still running windows 7 on an late 2006 iMac. Works like a charm (and better than any version of OSX on it).

I have two issues that can be worked around (this is for the 2006 MacBook 1,1, which requires Windows 10 32-bit). The first is that the Apple Bootcamp drivers refuse to install under Windows 10 due to Apple blocking it - I had to modify the install to bypass the Windows version check.

The main glitch is that the backlight doesn't always activate on login. The first Windows logo appears, but at login the brightness is set to zero. I can type in my password, hit enter & then the backlight activates on logging in. So it's just a glitch, but it is annoying, and I wish either Apple or Microsoft would fix it.

Otherwise, it's fine and everything else seems to work - Boot Camp Assistant works, and even the Apple Remote works to control volume. I don't think I've tried the webcam though. But I have got Cortana to work (even on a 10 year old MacBook!) and it's been fun calling out across the room to ask it questions. It's a little fiddly to get running, but it definitely works.

Thanks! That's really helpful.

Have you ever tried to do any multimedia application or driver development on windows? What a friggen nightmare compared to OSX. That support for old machines comes at a price.

Edit: that said I am a little sad Im gonna have to do something about my 2007 mac mini now that chrome is ending support for lion.

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