Gripe to HN: Abandoned Hardware

I'm excited by what companies like Framework (frame.work) are doing here. For example they built their main board in a way that when it's too old/outdated for main laptop use, it can become like a very powerful raspberry pi that you can repurpose. I hope to see more things like that coming, and with the growing awareness of the problems of e-waste, I am optimistic.

For phones & other general computers, anything not supported should have to have a way to unlock the bootloaders & other constraints that keep users from maintaining their own devices.

In a better world there'd be mandatory open source measures once a company stops supporting something. You HAVE to let users maintain it, if you wont.

I happen to take good care of my hardware, but I have so many great items (at least to me) that just won't run properly because they lack required supported software or contact with some defunct server. The gTar was latest thing I found in my basement that I can't use because the iOS app is no longer available. If it's no longer profitable, it would be so nice if the software source code was available so someone could update it to run on modern current operating systems.

Like old iPhones still stuck on iOS 10? I feel you. Can’t update apps because they need the latest iOS but the phone can’t update and stuck in an old version. Planned obsolescence

It's the anti-reuse/anti-recycling approach advanced by Microsoft through software alone, but in co-operation with their earliest hardware partners who wanted to sell more gear in the future before then-current models had finally failed to operate electronically.

Took a while but Apple eventually caught up as a hardware/software company itself.