Apple should keep providing security updates for the latest version supported on any machine.
There are lots of macs stuck at macOS High Sierra (the last one that supports GPUs without metal), and none of them are receiving any security update.
There are lots of macs stuck at macOS High Sierra (the last one that supports GPUs without metal), and none of them are receiving any security update.
No luck with High Sierra though. Its last update was in Nov 2020.
Apple is notable for providing ZERO official guidance on how long various versions receive security updates. Officially they just say you must be on the latest version. At the moment they're still releasing updates back to Catalina on macOS and iOS 12 for all the devices still stuck on that version. But they make no claims on how long that will continue.
Only solution is to use Big Sur installation using Hackintosh patches and to run it on mine computers.
How one knows that BigSur for instance isn't already compromised by one of those wonderful capabilities for code execution as they provide update only now ?
>PCs came with dedicated reset buttons for a reason!
They still do! Windows 9x did suck, Windows NT however was amazing, it is like the most Linux like of all the Windows. How could they release Windows ME...
EDIT: Correction, I said 8.5. Sleepy.
The few viruses that were around were mostly annoyances.
I just had it in "computer class" to play crappy math games that hurt my eyes but they never crashed, and I wasn't a professional. I used Photoshop in 2003 or so, I think it was OSX by then, and never had an issue if you call photoshop and internet usage "professional" work.
And I still miss it.
The problem was that creative users had no concept of "some extensions just aren't compatible with others".
There were plenty of bugs in QuarkXPress, Photoshop and Illustrator to make our Macs bomb, and the fundamental lack of memory protection, process isolation and preemptive multitasking in Mac OS meant that the whole system was wobbly from the bottom up.
Also, my post wasn't meant as a comparision between Win95 and Mac OS. I just responded to a question about what Mac OS was like to work with on a daily basis in the decade of the 90s. Win95 wasn't around for half of it.
Your experience does not match my own.
I had way more issues supporting users on Windows, at least until Windows 98SE landed.
It was a happy day indeed when Windows 2000 finally landed with memory protection, process isolation and preemptive multitasking.
(Until, as you point out, Windows 2000 came around. Then I started working on Mac and PC simultaneously.)
That’s not different from the situation with Windows. An Intel 386DX CPU with 4 MB of system RAM and 50–55 MB of hard disk space won’t see Windows security updates, either, anymore.
What is different is that Apple is less clear in support periods and often more aggressively leave older hardware behind.
I don’t think you can require them to support things forever, but requiring everyone to be clear about it at time of sale, or requiring X years of support would be good ideas, IMO.
Why you can't require them to support things forever ? Why not? It was their choice to lock completely those devices they sell.
I think as long as device is looked and you cannot have root access and install own software of course you can required them to support those things forever until they provide unlock for them at least, no?
Yes. And that is also part of the problem. They also don't patch reported vulnerabilities nor provide a clear path for the community to fix themselves.
> What is different is that Apple is less clear in support periods and often more aggressively leave older hardware behind.
Yes, that amplifies the problem a lot. Many of the abandoned machines are 10-year old but still very suited for daily use. They have 64-bit Core i processors with decent amounts of RAM (such as 8 GB).
Perhaps it's time to question this practice and discuss the issue with potentially making such devices illegal? At least when company doesn't provide software?
Shouldn't then Apple made be legally obligated to provide root access for the devices it no longer supports?
Otherwise it's what? You buy device then it's not functioning anymore just because they decide so. Doesn't it look like some kind of a fraud/scam ? How it's called then?
I mean if one owns computer/iphone and cannot install own software there since those devices are locked and Apple do not provide their software with security updates what an owner of the machine should do?
All of the Macs stuck at High Sierra can also run Windows or Linux.
What about current M1 model after few years?
Btw what about IPhones/ IPads? Can they run linux?
Macs can run another OS by design.
I do not think I did. See above ... "I mean if one owns computer/iphone ... "
>Macs can run another OS by design.
If you are talking about previous models, to the certain degree yes except GPUs if I am not mistaken.
But current M1 Mac as far as I understand it doesn't boot anything else unless it boots first from the internal storage and only then "external OS loader" which should be authorized too at least once by Apple.
You can say that "Macs can run another OS by design." but design in which they authorize anything while do not provide full specs of HW interfaces for "another OS" I can't call so.
The drivers to do so exist now.
"Strictly speaking, the things can boot off of DFU (USB device mode) too, but to make that useful for regular boot you need to ask Apple, as currently you cannot boot a normal OS like that as far as I know, only their signed restore bundles (which is how you fix an M1 Mac if you wipe the SSD)." (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26116017)
When did Intel release the full specs for the hidden OS that runs on the Management Engine in x86 chips?
>[Intel] processors are running a closed-source variation of the open-source MINIX 3. We don't know exactly what version or how it's been modified since we don't have the source code. We do know that with it there Neither Linux nor any other operating system have final control of the x86 platform.
It can reimage your computer's firmware even if it's powered off. Let me repeat that. If your computer is "off" but still plugged in, MINIX can still potentially change your computer's fundamental settings.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/minix-intels-hidden-in-chip-op...
"macOS on ARM is very clearly a descendant of the way iOS works. It's just macOS userspace on top of an ARM XNU kernel, which was already a thing. The way the boot process works, etc. is clearly iOS plus their new fancy Boot Policy stuff for supporting multiple OSes and custom kernels." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28181976
I think after M1 it will be more and more confusing to see them too much separately.
You knew this getting these devices. You didn’t buy it and except to be able to run android on iPhone did you?
> Perhaps it's time to question this practice and discuss the issue with potentially making such devices illegal? At least when company doesn't provide software?
Why? I don’t see a huge benefit. I don’t love it, but it’s not like you can’t run old versions or it stops working. Do you expect them to give you software updates forever once you buy it? Apple is one of the best at updating mobile.
If it was up to me I’d like to have the paid updates model again, it would stop forcing upgrades, I’m not fond of the security comes with features model, and I think it would force them to have more support for other versions, they expect everyone to always update.
Then again if you don’t like the product, don’t buy it. Many Android phones lets you do all of that, and once I set up an iMessage server to route it I’ll switch completely.
>I mean if one owns computer/iphone and cannot install own software there since those devices are locked and Apple do not provide their software with security updates what an owner of the machine should do?
What security problem are you worried about? I never update iOS from the version it came from and had never been hacked ever, I’d love to hear of anyone with that experience, I have never heard of it happening once, same with my android devices although I root. Maybe my Adblocks, blacklist, or the VPN on mobile prevents it anyway, on my home network I rely on my router to protect my devices.
Do you have a realistic fear, which exploit? Why is it scary? Best practice is to stop assuming you have any safety, updates or not, lots of unpublished backdoors, lots of ways to hack you if they really wanted to.
That said, I’ve upgraded the video cards and applied an EFI “fix”, so it runs later releases with full FV2 boot support (hence the EFI “fix”).
High Sierra runs well on this device.
Well, that range covers three different CPU architectures(!) and at least one complete file system rewrite.
But your point is fair - to the layperson there hasn't been much change.
The exercise proves that hardware is irrelevant to an operating system
> and at least one complete file system rewrite.
Which filesystem was completely rewritten, and why? Unless you're referring to AFS... which wasn't rewritten, but developed.
> But your point is fair - to the layperson there hasn't been much change.
Pretty sure not a whole lot has changed for the experienced expert, either. What has incrementally changed (but not so much it's unrecognizable) is the graphical user interface. A GUI is not an operating system.
You know what I meant and the distinction is irrelevant in this case, so don't be that guy. The point is, a lot of impressive engineering resources have gone in to the OS over the years. In particular the seamless transition (due to Rosetta x 2) from Motorola -> Intel -> Apple Silicon (among other things) so the statement that MacOS 10 -> 12 has little fundamental difference is a bit hyperbolic.
Anyways, I'm not sure why you're trying to start an argument but I'm not interested. You sound way more uhhh... passionate about this topic than I care to be.
NeXTSTEP was compiled to run on 68k, x86, RS6000, and Spark, it didn't change the version number. Tiger and Leopard ran on PowerPC and Intel. Snow Leopard ran both 32-bit and 64-bit with distinct kernels. Big Sur and Monterey run on Intel and ARM. In each instance, these are the same OS at the same version running on different platforms. But in each instance, it is still the same operating system, regardless of any differences in the code on any particular platform. The hardware is irrelevant.
There are technologies introduced and some simultaneously deprecated at each increase of a macOS version number. Most of this has to do with the user interface, but there are some changes to the OS having little to do with the user interface. These changes, however, are incremental point increases, at best, not version whole number advances, which Apple has inexplicably ticked forward every year since 2012. What are the differences between Monterey and Mountain Lion that warrants their distinction? Ignoring platform, shown irrelevant above, they merely appear very different, along with a few inconsequential new or removed features, but they are more alike than they are different. So I think Apple has employed version numbering as marketing rather than marking milestones of significant advancement. Microsoft has done this too, in spades. Sure, Vista and Windows 8 are unrecognizable, but they are both still fundamentally NT, and not distinct operating systems.
No, but tone does. As does uncharitably interpreting comments.
And I never said hardware itself mattered, I said the level of software engineering in seamlessly transitioning MacOS across different architectures was impressive and resource consuming. Rosetta (executed flawlessly twice) in particular is an incredible feat. As were Time Machine (effortless backups), full disk encryption (seamless and transparent) at the time they were released. Not world changing, sure - but what OS feature in the past 20 years is?
>Apple has inexplicably ticked forward every year since 2012. What are the differences between Monterey and Mountain Lion that warrants their distinction?
You've moved the goal posts. The comment I replied to was:
>Fundamentally there is very little difference between Mac OS X 10.0 Cheetah and macOS 12 Monterey.
Anyways, I'm no Mac fanboy so it feels weird trying to hype MacOS up. My only point was that the above statement comes across as more than a little hyperbolic.
I'm not entirely sure how to counter your argument since you've provided no criteria for how much the OS should have changed over the years. You've only said it hasn't changed enough. That's a bit vague. What OS meets your criteria? What obvious feature is MacOS lacking? What's your gold-standard benchmark for what an OS should be?
To be clear, I agree with you that many (most) MacOS changes are marketing-driven fluff. But I also fail to see any significant advancements in other OS's that MacOS sorely needs.
In fact, you did list migrating platforms to support macOS versioning, which can be interpreted as saying the hardware matters enough to advance versioning.
Goal posts weren't moved (farther apart, they were moved closer together). This is not the same thing as the meaning of the idiom "moving goal posts," especially because no goal was met.
> since you've provided no criteria for how much the OS should have changed over the years.
This is actually a good example of moving goal posts, because it is beyond the scope of supporting the argument. It is perfectly ordinary that something be proved as less than ideal without providing what a perfect or better ideal is.
> But I also fail to see any significant advancements in other OS's that MacOS sorely needs.
This is a straw man and skew to the argument, which is simply that calling annual upgrades a new operating system due to new GUI features doesn't make one OS distinct from it's previous incarnation, but they are instead, at best, incremental point increases of the same operating system (which is actually what Apple does, 10.5, 10.6, etc.). I'm not sure where you got the notion that I was arguing anything beyond that, arguing anything beyond decrying the Adobe-style marketing strategy of labelling the same software as though it were new and innovative. With Mac OS X, OS X and macOS, the kernel hardly changes and the user land barely changes if at all, and even the window manager barely changes. What mostly changes is a few GUI features deprecate while adding a list of new GUI features; what changes between macOS versions is superficial and incremental.
And it is merely my opinion, not a claim of some fundamental truth. So let me tell you what you're going to do, you're going to have better days and not sweat it so much.
Well, I didn't ignore the argument, nor did I attack you personally (your tone is not your personality, is it?). So you're misusing "ad hominem".
Second, on a human level, I pointed out that your argument came across as curt and unnecessarily argumentative. You can choose to do with that feedback what you will. As in "hey, sorry, I didn't intend it like that" or "NAH-Nah you committed a technical foul therefore I win the argument!". It's your choice, but when people make observations about how you're coming across - it might be wise to assume they mean that genuinely.
>Goal posts weren't moved (farther apart, they were moved closer together). This is not the same thing as the meaning of the idiom "moving goal posts,"
You're plainly wrong. Further apart or narrower doesn't matter - what matters is you changed the scope of your argument to make it easier to support. Your original comment covered 2001-2021, you then casually changed it to 2012-2021 without explicitly acknowledging you were changing the argument.
That is textbook goal post moving. Textbook.
The rest of the argument is simple - you're saying MacOS hasn't changed enough. I'm saying - relative to its peers it has changed about the same amount. If you can tell me some great advancements that other OS's have had during the same time frame that MacOS lacks that would go a long way to supporting your argument. I'm actually curious on this (since for example - I don't follow Windows too closely).
Similarly, I can say Samsung (or whatever) TV's haven't advanced that much in the past 20 years. But if I can't point out a single feature or advancement they are lacking compared with their peers then it's not really a strong argument. It just sounds like I'm angry with Samsung for some reason.
>This is a straw man and skew to the argument, which is simply that calling annual upgrades a new operating system due to new GUI features
You're incredible. Actually screaming "straw man" in the same sentence you're saying Apple (or literally anybody) calls its point releases "a new operating system". Amazing.
You're now 0 for 2 in use of the term "fallacy".
>So let me tell you what you're going to do, you're going to have better days and not sweat it so much.
I'm fine. As previously mentioned, you're the one who sounds angry.
That said, Apple did provide some support for iOS 12.x recently, which was unusual.
Yes, it also applies to MS and possibly many other companies.
One could claim that they do, always, in the newer versions of the OS, which are almost universally incremental improvements based on the older versions.
Not supporting old hardware is something that all companies [1] eventually must do, since resources are limited.
I don't think Apple or Windows would be a good choice, if openness is a feature you're looking for.
I get it, but macOS does not need to do anything hardware-specific to fix security vulnerabilities, they'd only need to patch the old version (which already supports that hardware) and release an update, and only if someone reports a vulnerability. If they planned to group hardware deprecations only every X versions (let's say they'll remove hardware every 5 years), they would have very little work to do to keep those old versions safe.
> I don't think Apple or Windows would be a good choice, if openness is a feature you're looking for.
I agree, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't also push for them to be better. Personally I love linux but I also need mac for iOS development.