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Comment by hoppp | Hacker News Reader

This mentality is why I dont buy apple products. At least the unsupported macs can use linux at some point, but then I prefer to have a linux machine from the start.

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I have a sort-of controversial opinion about this: on the contrary, this is one of the reasons I really love using a mac.

As a developer, it’s super-annoying that Apple is so aggressive in deprecation stuff, it forces us to frequently spend a bunch of extra time and energy updating our stuff to make sure it’s compatible woth latest macOS.

As a user though, this means that the experience of actually using a mac feels fresh and modern, and there’s a unity in design language that isn’t available anywhere else. It doesn’t take much digging in Windows settings to find windows that feel straight out of Windows 98, because Microsoft is so terrified of breaking things. macOS just feels better because of Apple’s aggressive deprecation policies, and I very much prefer it.

Until you use the command line and realize Apple is still shipping some crusty ancient GPL2 version of a tool from 2006.*

I found Apple's aggressive change as a user also frustrating. I don't WANT to constantly be rebuying apps and hunting down alternatives to abandoned programs to keep doing what I was doing yesterday.

*Yes, I know why. I don't care.

What do you buy then? I'm yet to know a brand that offers that long support

My work machine is from tuxedo computers. They sell spare parts too. I just changed my battery, all I needed was a screwdriver.

I had one of those for a bit.. It has like half a day of battery power. And in about 50% of the cases it didn't hibernate properly. That being said: It's probably one of the better Linux laptops. Which says about everything that needs saying :/

My Librem 14 suspends and wakes up correctly 100% of the time (I didn't test hibernation). Battery life is the only downside of good Linux laptops.

That and a crap trackpad. Mean people could call those two point more than 90% of the reason to choose a Laptop ;)

What? By then the most recent intel mac will be what, 6 years old? And will continue to get security updates for the foreseeable future? Do you expect them to still be making new OS versions for PowerPC as well?

Yes. Linux and some Bsd variants still have PowerPc builds. Check out NetBSD.

If I were you I’d think of it as a trade-off between legacy support and being able to innovate. Sounds like you have some very particular views about priorities which may not be consistent with reality for businesses.

What is good for business is not necessarily good for the consumer.

I will not care about a multi trillionaire company's bottom line.

Projects like NetBSD are innovative because they work on all devices.

While Apple hardware is innovative because its cutting edge, MacOS is mid at best.

I'd be with you if Apple didn't bake cloud related features into their OS. From memory, screen time management for a family member required an up to date device for instance. I also wonder if they can still be used for Apple's 2FA.

More things can be done through the web interface than before, but it's still not web first, and not being able to push a button because your OS is 6 years old is pretty frustrating.

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