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Comment by jerich | Hacker News Reader

Apple should hire a couple hackers to create “end-of-life” firmware for their obsolete devices; give them new life as super-specialized devices. Part green program, part customer delight, even some wacky art projects.

Maybe if an iMac doesn’t have a video input—have it boot as an AirPlay-only monitor.

I’ve got 2 old EOL appleTV boxes sitting in a drawer—again, one last firmware update to make them dedicated AirPlay receivers.

Take my 2011 MacBook Air and make it a dedicated Notes machine/word processor—all it does it run notes and sync with iCloud.

Obsolete iPad picture frame is an obvious one.

They can work on the “Reuse” side of the 3R’s of waste reduction (with reduce and recycle, right?)

PS, I’m available, 9 years embedded SW experience ;)

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I have an obsolete Epson scanner (an expensive one!) and an iPad from 2012. Neither are usable anymore, officially. The iPad won't install more than a handful of apps from the App store, and both Epson and Microsoft refuse to supply drivers for old scanners even though I'm sure they're little different to the ones they use for the latest model.

So I grabbed a raspberry pi, installed Apache, PHP and phpsane (heavily hacked) and now my scanner has an iPad for a control panel, and I can scan dozens of documents without turning on my computer. Then I can access the whole thing across the network (samba file shares for docs, or the scanner interface).

My SIL who was junking the scammer after upgrading to Windows 11 thinks it's a better solution than the new scanner she bought to replace it.

Such hacks shouldn't only be possible with years of tech experience though.

I love this post , true hacker spirit!

This is only part of your post, but VueScan is very good for older scanners on newer OSes. It’s paid software but I like it, avoids the landfill.

Nothing wrong with an older scanner after all - the tech was already impressive 10 years ago!

> "Apple should hire a couple hackers to create “end-of-life” firmware for their obsolete devices; give them new life as super-specialized devices."

They've actually done this in a few cases! There's a whole generation of obsolete Airport Express Wifi base stations that got a final firmware update which gave them AirPlay 2 functionality. Now they're still quite sought after as a device to make old stereos/speakers wirelessly compatible with the latest Apple devices. Especially if you have stereo eqipment that can take optical (TOSLINK) audio input.

Handy, I hope I have mine still!

> They’ve actually done this in a few cases!

Besides the AirPort Express, were there other devices that were issued EOL updates?

I was so confused when I noticed people could still use those devices recently.

I think my AirPort Extreme got a pretty late update a few years ago too, I assume security related

Oh nice. I didn’t know about the Airplay 2 update, but I’ve been using an old Airport Express to airplay for this old audio receiver I have for ages. And I’ve got a spare I hold onto in case this one ever shits the bed.

And while we’re on the topic — its amazing how many hifi audio receivers I see being thrown away, stuff that is still top-of-the-line for sound quality, but is now considered “obsolete” purely based on connectivity options — ie not having a direct bluetooth/wifi ability, when one could easily buy a separate device for that and hook it up.

Exactly what I do!

I build quite a bunch of Pi e.g for multiroom setups:

- some output directly via the jack (which is okay quality wise as long as you don't push the gain/stay at line level, the device downstream being the one doing amp)

- others have an iqaudio hat (either DAC for when the internal jack doesn't cut it or people want 24/192 or Amp+ to drive passive speakers)

And I didn't notice til recently but the Amp+ has onboard headers for balanced output, so with a bit of soldering one can add, say, XLR to the thing.

Then throw in some room eq via an impulse response and you get a device that rivals off the shelf stuff that cost one to two orders of magnitude more, plus you get to not throw away perfectly good hardware.

Similarly I've smartified a crapton of dumb+ devices with a bunch of Shelly stuff (notably Plug S are dead easy): washing machine, water heater, mechanical ventilation, light switches, thermostatic valves...

+ And in a few cases smart ones too, except I compared what I can do with the first party offering and my hackjob, and it's nuts that not only the first party shit is never local when technically it could totally be, but that my hacked-together BS is more useful than the first party option, on top of being 100% local.

That would be amazing.

This reminds me of the offline email client HP built on EFI.

Cathode Ray Dude - https://youtu.be/ssob-7sGVWs?si=qjyf5lm_9PrzPPeE

Oh god, I have one of those laptops on my shelf. Such a wild feature.

Fun thing: I bought a board + enclosure for an iPad screen from AliExpress. I had a 2011 iPad to which I had no practical use. I did have to break the iPad (RIP) so I could detach the screen, but in return I got a really nice crisp display with mini-HDMI ports, cool!

> Obsolete iPad picture frame is an obvious one.

I have a 2011 iPad that I watch videos on in the Gym. It's not everything it used to be, but I can stream videos on Prime, though it had a tendency to crash on offline Netflix, and I watch downloaded videos in VLC.

So "picture frame" seem a little drastic to me.

Tim - I know you’re here - please hire this person! :)

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