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Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

I think it's important to highlight Apple's mentality: That old devices are dead to them, and the pretending that they don't even exist anymore.

I have a house full of Apple hardware and none of them get updates from Apple anymore, and I can't manually update them without hackery (OpenCore) or wiping them to install Linux (where possible). Also, because third party app developers largely align with Apple's philosophy, less and less 3rd party software even works on my computers anymore. Heck, even Homebrew, which ships open source software that has always run on my devices, relegates my hardware into their "tier 3" garbage can[1].

The combination of Apple's and third party's disinterest counts as "killed by Apple" in my book.

1: https://docs.brew.sh/Support-Tiers

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This isn't really just an Apple mentality though. I have all kinds of old electronics and devices from Google, Samsung, Intel, WD, etc. that all fit this exact same description.

If you've ever tried to run a hardware business (or really any business), you know that it is not financially sound to continue to support old devices that have been superceded (sometimes more than once) by newer products that consumers are currently spending money on.

We can debate if this is the way things should be, the aspect of whether you truly "own" things, software escrow, and on and on. But the phenomenon itself is in no way unique to Apple. If anything, I have found that the usable lifespan of Apple hardware is, on average, longer than the usable lifespan of other name-brand electronics in similar categories.

Absolutely, we could easily have any number of killedby[manufacturer] websites. A device being "old" is a common reason/excuse manufacturers use to stop supporting it. Just making the point that Apple is not a special exemption.

Even in a smaller scale, the VFX consortium had to be created when Sun stopped giving support to that part of Hollywood. Their position in the industry, the trends they set, and the intertwining of software and the "Liberal Arts" they clearly do have power upon, makes them a special exemption. If it was only of hardware they would have been out of business decades ago.

Could delve in the sheer amount of data rot created by it and their drop of 32 bit support, but would be even more broad of it.

I always thought it was strange how intolerant Homebrew is of users who are not surfing the bleeding edge.

I held out using MacPorts for ages, but there came a point when I just could not reasonably expect to find the software I needed on MacPorts, but could on Homebrew, and so I switched. I wish Homebrew hadn't won that particular mindshare war. Moving from MacPorts to Homebrew felt like downgrading from an actual package manager to a duct-taped shell script.

The good news is that MacPorts is IMO better than ever. I previously did the MacPorts -> Homebrew switch, but recently moved back and am very happy with MacPorts.

I never moved to Homebrew, and never understood the appeal. It’s refreshing to see people coming back to MacPorts after the last decade.

If you ever try to install any packages from GH or an indie, you only get brew install/cask instructions. It's game over.

Regarding the appeal, this probably exists in Mac Ports, I do not know since you guys reminded me it still existed, but Brewfile lets me provision a new Mac very efficiently.

That's good to hear, thanks for letting me know. I might check it out again.

> Also, because third party app developers largely align with Apple's philosophy, less and less 3rd party software even works on my computers anymore.

I think it's more about 3rd party app developers attempting to improve their products and stay relevant.

If Apple releases a new framework or API that would make a developer’s app better, but it requires macOS 14 or later, are they not supposed to incorporate it?

I've noticed lots of 3rd party developers keep older versions of their apps available for older macOS versions.

On both macOS and iOS it is straightforward to target older devices while using the newer SDKs, and to use those new frameworks conditionally based on the user's OS. Of course, Apple's tooling makes this harder and harder to do, the older the targeted OS is.

> I think it's important to highlight Apple's mentality: That old devices are dead to them, and their pretending they don't even exist anymore.

Sorry but the HomePod wasn't "killed" just because they upgraded from gen 1 to gen 2. Gen 1 HomePod literally just got a software update a month ago with another on the way. The iPhone X wasn't "killed" just because they released the iPhone 11. This list is egregiously version-centric for things where it makes no sense.

They used to just kill those things with upgrades until they were forced not to.

Apple had much longer support lifetimes for their products than all their competitors long before talk of mandatory minimums started to reach actual governments.

Yeah. Still daily driving my two 8-year old OG HomePods. Compared to e.g., Sonos, who discontinued the Play:1 after 5 years, that's pretty good.

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