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Comment by jppope | Hacker News Reader

Apple is the master of planned obsolescence.

I see people say this but I can’t see that it it true. This current lockdown in New Zealand has 2011 and 2013 Macbook airs in daily use and they are working perfectly. There is an iPad 2 in daily use also.

Those devices have had hard lives.

I haven’t got any other electronics with anything approaching this longevity (unless you count espresso hardware). Presumably others are having a very different experience.

i basically can't use my ipad mini from 2012 anymore because the apps in the app store usually need a newer OS version than possible. A laptop from 2012 with Windows (whatever version) wouldn't have these problems whatsoever. I know it's another device type but it shouldn't really matter, both are computing devices.

There are absolutely windows apps that won't run on your 2012 laptop too, it's just less likely you would run into them. Lack of DX 10 and higher APIs as well as lack of things like AVX instructions will prevent certain applications from running at all.

That's a 3rd party developer problem, not Apple problem. It's like blaming GM for not making leaded gasoline for your 1950s car.

Because you happen to be using the good old Apple's MacBook. I mean a 2011 MacBook Air could still be sold for $120 2nd hand.

2016 Macbook has the worst reselling price out of all MacBook History. I think this tells a bit.

I don't know how you can say this after looking at the state of android. Beyond that, my macbooks have _vastly_ outlived any Windows laptop I've ever owned.

Yeah this argument comes up constantly. Sure Apple does a lot of nasty stuff that should be banned. But when I look around at the rest of the market, everyone else is doing the exact same things but 10x worse.

I think Apple cops most of the blame for being the most recognizable name despite having the least planned obsolescence of the OEMs.

They do a pretty bad job of it if it's planned. My '12 MacBook Air works great (aside from needing a new battery) and I can still boot plenty of even older Macs, going back to a Quadra.

I'll do you one better - I still have a 2008 MacBook Pro that I use daily, it works fine. Also a 7 years old iPad Mini 2 that still gets security updates. Yes, planned obsolescence indeed.

I have Android tablets from 2014 and an ipad air 2 from 2014. The Android tablets haven't seen any updates since 2016 and are unusably slow while the iPad air 2 still gets the latest updates on day one with the brand new ipads and feels perfectly usable and sees daily use.

I disagree. My family's cost of electronics plummeted when I switched all of us to iOS. This is due to longer device lifetime and fewer broken devices.

Anecdotal for sure, but my kids and most Android devices lead to numerous broken electronics, be it screen, micro USB charging port issues, or detached SMDs. My 5 year old going into Kindergarten has been merciless to his iPad Mini and it is still trucking along, after multiple years. My OG iPad Pro is still my daily driver for media consumption and is going on six years old.

They really aren’t. They laptops last a very long time and you will be provided with OS upgrade way longer than you could reasonably upgrade most other laptops, while still have reasonable performance.

A bunch of people here are talking about having 2010-2015 Macs running, in contrast you don't see too many PC laptops of that vintage.

You seem to be ignoring all of the people who are posting here saying that their older MBPs are running Big Sur without performance impact. Obviously something is going on on those machines that are having performance issues, but it’s certainly not planned obsolescence or inevitable. There may some shared situation that is the cause for just those machines or they may each have their own issues causing a similar impact. Hard to tell without specifics.

Do you mean of master planners of recycling? Since rest of manufacturers mostly just make toxic plastic waste, not something that can be used 4x longer and then safely recycled...

my 2011 13" macbook pro, still chugging along... maybe there is Quality control issues on 2015->2021 models, but the 2011-2013 era seem good? less infatuation on thinnest laptop ever woo /s

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