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Comment by highwaylights | Hacker News Reader

Even though I don't really use it, this really frustrates me.

Apple is moving iCloud further into macOS and making the Mac more akin to an Apple Chromebook with every release. Time Machine gets little to no love, and users are getting steered ever more strongly towards backing up data onto iCloud.

Even buying an Apple device isn't really buying a device anymore. You're really buying a transferable lease for 6-7 years on a device that has a hard stop to go to landfill after that time due to software obsolescence by way of unpatched vulnerabilities.

I don't actually dislike Chromebooks at all, but this is saddening when you've bought a computer to use it as a computer and any sense of ownership or agency is quietly clawed away.

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> Time Machine gets little to no love, and users are getting steered ever more strongly towards backing up data onto iCloud.

Is there a platform other than Linux that doesn't push integration with cloud services? Windows pushes OneDrive, and Google pushes Google Drive on their platforms.

Also, I would argue that Time Machine gets little to no love because it's nearly feature complete. It's dead simple to use, does what it says on the tin, and stays out of the way to the point I forget about it most of the time. Is there anything in particular that you feel that Time Machine is missing?

> Even buying an Apple device isn't really buying a device anymore. You're really buying a transferable lease for 6-7 years on a device that has a hard stop to go to landfill after that time due to software obsolescence by way of unpatched vulnerabilities.

Again, is there a platform other than Linux that isn't similar? Also, with the progress that the Asahi Linux project is making it should be very feasible to slap Linux on an M1 Mac as soon as it goes out of support.

> I don't actually dislike Chromebooks at all, but this is saddening when you've bought a computer to use it as a computer and any sense of ownership or agency is quietly clawed away.

I keep seeing vague hand wavy claims like this on HN, but I feel that Windows, Chromebooks, and Macs are still very open to tinkering.

> Also, I would argue that Time Machine gets little to no love because it's nearly feature complete. It's dead simple to use, does what it says on the tin, and stays out of the way to the point I forget about it most of the time. Is there anything in particular that you feel that Time Machine is missing?

I almost completely agree with this, but do like the scheduling features of the free third-party "TimeMachineEditor" tool, which lets you control the backup intervals, windows, and set an exclusion window. Otherwise, TM has been pretty flawless for me.

To give one example that is particularly troublesome:

Time Machine allows verification of backups when writing to a network share. When you write to an internal or external drive, you can’t verify your backup.

Any corruption to your backup over time can’t be detected so you can’t really trust that the backup is going to work when you need it.

On one hand, sure, there’s no way to verify historical file changes as the old versions are no longer on the current disk, but I should at least be able to verify that the current snapshot matches my current file system.

My 5 year old laptop supports Windows 11 which means that it will likely get updates for another 5-6 years from today. That's a total of at least 10-11 years of support.

This tends to vary by generation (my laptop is just new enough for official Windows 11 support) but I think in any case is quite impressive. And of course after 2028 or whatever I can throw Linux on it and use it for another few years.

I’d be surprised if it’s not longer. Windows 11 support wasn’t based on age of device like in the macOS world. They did a really good job (IMHO) of communicating the security rationale for having that line in the sand for people that asked that question.

> Again, is there a platform other than Linux that isn't similar?

Windows. If you buy a Windows computer it will retain software support for many, many years - and support for new versions is never arbitrarily withdrawn based on device age.

The only restriction I know of in the Windows 11 migration was that it would insist on TPM2 support (and for very good reasons).

Macs do have Asahi Linux in the pipeline, but the arbitrary withdrawal of support on the basis of not having bought an entirely new computer from the same vendor in X number of years is really anti-consumer, and I’m surprised it’s not illegal.

Even in the Windows world, if a new major version comes out you could pay to upgrade (even though I don’t believe end users have had to do that for several major releases now).

Doesn’t seem like Apple shutting down this old, likely unpopular feature is evidence of Apple turning the Mac into an “Apple Chromebook”.

There is no “hard stop” on the life time of a Mac. Yeah Apple will eventually stop updating the software but this has always been true. If anything this situation is much better that it ever has been with free OS updates.

Finally even if there was a hard stop Apple will gladly recycle your product. No need for it to go to a landfill.

replaced my MacBook Pro after 10 years, not having the latest OS didn't bother me at all with it. Only had to spend $100 on a new battery for it after 5 years. in total, came out to $10.83 a month for the life of my MBP and it still works i just finally needed the ARM version for something.

My experience has been similar. I'm still using my early 2013 MPB with original battery (it has been saying replace battery for last 2 years but I have not bothered). It still gets security updates and works perfectly fine for everyday personal use. I used iPhone 5 for 5 years, then iPhone 7 Plus for another 5 years, now on iPhone 12 which will easily last 5 years. Btw, at each upgrade the phone was perfectly fine and traded in for good value and I decided to upgrade because they genuinely had better and more useful hardware to go with upgraded software. For data backups and cloud services, I use different things for photos vs files vs music etc. I'm not locked into iCloud and I don't find apple is coercing either.

How do you backup photos without iCloud?

I know it's possible, and I have a janky solution myself, but it really seems like iCloud is the only way to go without going through lots of hoops and still having a solution that's imperfect at best.

Google Photos does a great job.

How does it work? Not that I'd move from iCloud to Google, but I'm curious. Does it integrate with the Photos app in some way?

Depends on use case. You can probably get by just fine on unsupported software depending on what you’re doing.

If you’re really careful not to enter any bank/credit card/personal information it’s probably fine to use an unsupported laptop, but then you’re having to consider how much you trust your own computer which you didn’t before.

Scratches head.

  [ISL@home:~]$ lscpu | grep -i intel
  Vendor ID:                       GenuineIntel
  Model name:                      Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3330 CPU @ 3.00GHz
  [ISL@home:~]$ uname -a
  Linux home 6.1.0-6-amd64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Debian 6.1.15-1 (2023-03-05) x86_64 GNU/Linux
  [ISL@home:~]$

The i5-3330 went EOL in 2014, released in 2012. An up-to-date first-class Debian system on decade-old hardware is just a sudo apt update; sudo apt dist-upgrade away.

It is a real bummer that the major hardware vendors choose not to open up their devices when they reach end of life. Phones and old hardware are frequently viable for double their enforced service-lives or longer.

I love this about Linux.

I do kind of wonder if Linux’ real problem is just that the Venn diagram of things people care about is all over the place and Linux just fails at the edge cases.

I’ve used Linux for a bunch of projects, and use it every day in a VM for work, but I wouldn’t dare to use it for my daily driver and I don’t think my niche needs are ever likely to be something that gets picked up. Shame for me, but the nature of open-source.

Out of curiosity, what kinds of niche needs might those be?

Trust features mostly.

macOS and Windows have a lot of features to lock user directories away from rogue software, and Macs have notarization and certificate revocation (which I believe is coming to Windows too unless I’m mistaken).

Notarization/revocation isn’t really philosophically FOSS compatible so I don’t ever see things like this making it’s way to Linux either.

And what Mac has ever stopped getting security updates after 6-7 years?

The 2016 (first TouchBar year) is one of the shorter ones for newest-OS-support, only running up to macOS 12 (Monterey). That was released in 2021 and got its latest security update on 2023-06-21.

Going back further, the 2014 Macbook Pro supports macOS 11 (Big Sur), which was released in 2020 and also got a security update on 2023-06-21.

You have to go back to macOS 10.15 (Catalina) released in 2020 to find a version that hasn't had a security update this year. Which MBP models are stuck at Catalina? Mid 2012 to early 2013. That's 7-8 years with the newest OS, then another 2ish years of security updates.

10 years is far from perfect, but it's a heck of a lot better than 6.

Past macOS versions get some security fixes for undocumented time. There were vulnerabilities not patched in past versions. I don't remember examples unfortunately.

I don’t think it’s fair to count security updates as continued support, as soon as the software/applications you are using drops support for your old version, you can’t use it anymore, forcing you to buy new hardware. It doesn’t matter that you have security updates when you can’t run the software you need.

Windows is much better in that there aren’t yearly releases obsoleting machines every year. You can run the latest version of Windows 10 on hardware older than 10 years.

Grandparent comment said "You're really buying a transferable lease for 6-7 years on a device that has a hard stop to go to landfill after that time due to software obsolescence by way of unpatched vulnerabilities" and I was mostly looking at the second part of that

But for the first part, for a huge number of people all you need is a web browser and Microsoft office, which is supported on the 3 latest macOS versions, about the same window as the macOS security updates

Like I said it's not perfect but it's much better than 6 years

Even this isn’t the whole picture though as unpatched OS vulnerabilities would still leave you vulnerable as a consumer.

It’s been well documented that security support for versions of macOS less than the absolute latest is really lacking.

When you don’t patch out every serious known zero-day, there’s really no point patching any of them. The device is already compromised.

That means the updates are really only 6-7 years, with an arbitrary cessation.

There’s no reason that Apple should be stopping OS support for older devices unless there’s a compelling reason to do so.

Next year they’ll argue that macOS Whatever only supports Macs with secure enclaves to keep users safe, so that gives them a pass for 2024, but really it’s just continued forced obsolescence as they’ll carry on axing machines for no reason in 2025.

> You're really buying a transferable lease for 6-7 years on a device that has a hard stop to go to landfill after that time due to software obsolescence by way of unpatched vulnerabilities.

If you define a lease as a period of time where a device gets security patches, has this ever not been the case?

> has this ever not been the case?

Windows XP got patches for over 10 years IIRC. It was a different time, but you did ask "ever"

I'm not really seeing a big enough difference between 7 and 10 years to call one ownership and the other leasing to be honest

…so it still has a hard stop, just 3-4 years further into the future?

Windows 10 was released in July 2015 and is currently set to receive updates until October 2025. That's a little over 10 years.

And with previous generations of Windows there was nothing really stopping you from upgrading to a newer OS on the same old hardware - although you might run into serious performance issues with a modern Windows OS on 10+ year old hardware. But you could also switch to plenty of other OSes. I assume that's also an option for 7+ year old Macs?

XP got patches for so long just because many many governments and very large corporations convinced microsoft to keep extending it.

by the same metric the iPhone 5s still got some patches even this year [1], which makes it "supported" for 10 years

[1]: https://support.apple.com/en-en/HT213597

I can also run modern Linux distributions on 20 year old hardware.

The "landfill" comment was likely just about how software support periods have become so short, meaning for the current crop of computing devices (including actual computers, phones, tablets) the hardware itself almost always outlasts the company's support period for official software updates, which is disgraceful. I have drawers full of old phones that turn on, display is perfect/bright, battery is reasonably strong, can connect to WiFi, everything works, except the company threw their arms up and gave up on software support.

What's the comparison, Windows?

Well, sucks if you bought a Windows 10 device with an Intel 7th Gen processor in the first half of 2017. You will only be getting... ~8 years, just like Apple more or less; even if most PCs will probably last longer than that.

As for, "well we can install Linux..." that doesn't make even a measurable dent in e-waste.

Plus we can install Linux applies to Macs as well. It basically just runs on Intel ones more or less and for Apple Silicon there is the Asahi Project.

I mean, kind of?

You can still install Windows 11 on the 7th gen chip, they just don’t make it easy to encourage people to upgrade to secure systems. It’s not at all arbitrary though, in the way Apple culls supported machines.

> You can still install Windows 11 on the 7th gen chip, they just don’t make it easy to encourage people to upgrade to secure systems. It’s not at all arbitrary though, in the way Apple culls supported machines.

"It’s not at all arbitrary though," - Literally Windows 11's launch was filled with months of controversy because the developers admitted the 8th Gen cutoff was arbitrary. Later we got some theories that it might have been MBEC support but not all supported processors have MBEC.

> As for, "well we can install Linux..." that doesn't make even a measurable dent in e-waste.

Only if you insist on thrashing the device after you're done with it. Be a sport an sell it or donate it to someone who will install Linux on it if you can't and you'll see that 'e-waste' (what a word...) problem disappear as quick as you can say 'linux'.

I'm one of those someone's by the way, not having bought any new laptop or server since 2001. I'm typing this on a 'late 2009' 27" iMac running Debian, parked next to a Thinkpad P-50 running Debian, traffic is going out through a virtual router on the DL380 G7 under the stairs running Debian. My children use machines running Debian as does my 85yo mother. Some of my friends have also seen the light and moved to Linux running on used machines, generally all it takes is to put an SSD in place of the spinning drive and the things 'fly'.

Some others here are comparing to Windows but the parent commenter here was saying it was a shift for Apple, so here's a snapshot of that from a machine I used to own:

10.3 Panther required a G3 or better and USB, which (in laptop-land) dropped the pre-Lombard G3 Powerbooks from 1998. So the 2003 OS dropped 1998 machines, so just 4 years of coverage.

"Security vulnerabilities" weren't exactly the same thing in those days as they are today, with less online apps, but in a way it was also more obsolete more quickly because hardware moved quickly: you could have a 233Mhz to 300Mhz 1998 G3, but the new 2003 Powerbook G4s were clocked at 867Mhz-1.25Ghz - nearly 4x across the board.

I get more usage out of 5+ year old Macs now than I ever did in the past.

The seamless incorporation of iCloud into the MacOS file system has given my current laptops (6+ yrs old) 2-3 additional years of useful life.

Being able to access the same files across MacOS and iOS without doing anything special is amazingly convenient.

Actually they recently rewrote Time Machine to work with APFS. A rather big change.

> Time Machine gets little to no love

Time machine works without questions, and handles restores with perfection for users who don't know what a file system may or may not be. What features do you feel is missing?

Not every piece of software needs constant updates, sometimes they are feature complete.

FWIW I'm typing this on a mid-2012 MacBook Pro that shows NO signs of imminent failure.

> You're really buying a transferable lease for 6-7 years on a device that has a hard stop to go to landfill after that time due to software obsolescence by way of unpatched vulnerabilities.

I'm still rocking an iPhone 7 Plus and it's still getting updates even though it's seven years old. If anything the main thing that seems like it'll make me upgrade eventually is the battery life. It's not lasting anywhere near as long as it used to.

Although it looks like I can still get that replaced from Apple, so I might just do that.

looks like iphone 7 didn't get ios 16 - is that right?

depending on what you do with it, it may work well enough for a while longer, but at some point, some activities won't be supported - banking/finance apps are the big ones I know will stop supporting earlier ios versions sooner or later. My bank's app requires ios 14 min. I suspect they may bump that to 15 or 16 in the next year or so.

Ah that might be true. I think I am on iOS 15 still. I haven't noticed, though.

I'm not saying it won't eventually happen, just that right now it seems to be working fine for everything I need it to do.

> You're really buying a transferable lease for 6-7 years on a device that has a hard stop to go to landfill after that time due to software obsolescence by way of unpatched vulnerabilities.

I'm still using my 2012 MBPs for various purposes, such as playing videos and music for the whole family or music creation. Yes, I can't put newer versions of software on it, but I'm quite happy with what I bought. I just replace the battery every couple of years (because in these old models - I can!).

Counterpoint: Time Machine just works and doesn't need any love; the only thing I'd like to see is for it to be able to backup to iCloud – something you view as a downside.

My only gripe is their largest iCloud offering is 2TB - would love to see some expansion there.

You can get 4TB, although it’s a bit cumbersome: https://appleinsider.com/inside/icloud/tips/how-to-get-4-tb-...

Not available to every country.

Interesting workaround!

Do you know if this works across shared drives too? Say one shares a 2tb plan with someone else; would both parties need the addition $10 “premier” plan to utilize 4tb?

On the other hand, I’d worry about this being getting patched and losing access. Seems like unintended behavior tbh

I haven’t tried myself yet - we are still under 2TB

>software obsolescence by way of unpatched vulnerabilities.

The 5s from 2013 had a patch in January.

Time Machine was basically completely rewritten less than 3 years ago lol

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