Hacker News Reader

Comment by MBCook | Hacker News Reader

This was interesting.

When reading something like this I can’t help but wonder what the big PC makers do, but figuring that out seems like it would be pretty daunting given the large number of models even a single vendor makes.

Having so few models, plus firmware updates in the OS, probably made figuring this out so much easier than it would be in PC land.

Also: poor 2019 iMac. It’s a nice model but came out right before the Apple Silicon transition. It’s lifetime was never going to be what it could have been.

View on HN

> wonder what the big PC makers do

Just some anecdotal evidence:

- Dell XPS 13 from 2014 was getting bios updates until 2019 when I sold it.

- Asus AM4 motherboard was getting updates for 4 years. Mainly for new CPU models.

- 1 year old AM5 motherboard from gigabyte has to be used with original firmware, newer is quite unstable.

- Minisforum miniPC gets about 1 year of updates. Firmware download is via Mediafire (file sharing service). There are no downloads for 3 years old device.

I do not thibg bios is too big issue, most things like CPU vulnerabilities are patched in linux.

> CPU vulnerabilities

These are another source of obselence. Intel generally sets an "End of Servicing Updates" date at seven years post-launch.

>Also: poor 2019 iMac. It’s a nice model but came out right before the Apple Silicon transition.

There was nothing stopping Apple from supporting it far longer. It's not like they're a start-up short on cash with limited budgets. It's their own HW for Pete's sake, not someone else's like Microsoft or Linux has to.

It's still supported.

Probably not for long. 2017s stopped being supported last year 2019s are on the chopping block.

Apple's hardware support timelines are 5 years from last sale date for "vintage" status, and 7 years for "obsolete" status. One should probably assume that firmware support especially and possibly software support will follow similar timelines.

Same with the 2019 16" MacBook Pro with Intel i9 processor. I switched to a M1 Max 16" MacBook in 2022 and use the Intel one with Windows 10 installed on Bootcamp.

>Also: poor 2019 iMac. It’s a nice model but came out right before the Apple Silicon transition. It’s lifetime was never going to be what it could have been.

I find it interesting that seemingly every other vendor does their best to maintain backwards compatability or at least some support.

Apple: Nope, go buy our new stuff $$$ :)

Apple fans: okay :)

That model is still supported by the current and next OS versions. In the end we're talking about having ~7 years of updates vs ~10.

(Sent from my Intel NUC that stopped getting GPU drivers after a year.)

Appropriate username, but unfair take.

I'll promptly admit my bias: I've been on macs as my daily driver for 20 years. But that's for a reason — the hardware is great, the software is good, and the support for old hardware is honestly amazing. I do lots and lots of hand-me-downs to parents, siblings, the spouse, and lots of those devices still work, with the latest OSes, years and years down the line. I have a friend that just replaced an old 13" Macbook that was 12 years old and working great.

Find me a company that does that and is as good in terms of build quality and I'll be immediately interested.

>the support for old hardware is honestly amazing

I disagree. As an example, Macs stuck on 11 (Big Sur) stopped getting updates in 2023.[1] That includes Macs released until ~2014-2015, which are still usable in terms of hardware.[2]

I wouldn't call that amazing at all.

[1]https://endoflife.date/macos

[2]https://support.apple.com/en-us/103260

They did provide security updates even after eol same goes for the first iPhone SE which is over 10 years of now. For feature updates you might be right…

It's perfectly fair. When you live by the sword of proprietary and industry-unsupported protocols, you die by that sword as well. Apple products have faced this time and time again, with version updates killing 32-bit program support or pushing the OpenGL depreciation line.

Because Apple doesn't have to compete on merits (as your comment points out), they just have to convince you to upgrade on a regular basis. Their routine depreciation and deliberate gimping of old hardware is evidence that Apple does not want you to keep using their devices once they tell you its time to stop.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com