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Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

We've all gone through it :-( Happy users of the (really good) software until our hardware gets "too old" and the inevitable rug pull.

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You have no idea what rug pull means, do you?

Uncompensated volunteers dropping support for a 7 year old device that is shortly going to be unsupported by the manufacturer isn't a rug pull.

Entitlement can be wild, volunteers are volunteers. Consumers of volunteer output are free to support their use cases themselves on their own time. Find an ARM Mac used (like an M1) and upgrade.

As I replied in another comment[1], it's their software, their choice. Homebrew devs are doing the volunteer work, so they get to decide the support period and when to pull the rug out. I'll still shake my fists about it, because it's personally my biggest problem with the entire software industry's attitude, not just open source.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49687331

You're right, expecting other people to do your work for your for free is indeed a problem with the industry!

> Find an ARM Mac used (like an M1) and upgrade.

And throw away perfectly good hardware.

If it no longer is supported by software, it’s no longer perfectly good. Certainly, if you want to spend your time on supporting unsupported hardware based on personal belief, that’s a choice, and it’s your time. Compare to the cost of replacing the hardware. Time is not free, it is the ultimate non renewable resource. We are all slowly dying one day at a time, is that how you want to spend your time?

Recycle old gear when the math no longer maths and move on.

>We are all slowly dying one day at a time, is that how you want to spend your time?

Mindless consumption isn't going to extend your life.

Tinkering and building for fun brings joy, joy is the point of life. Tinker mindfully. “Tinker and build what matters, to you.”

In general I agree, but recycling old power hungry gear may be better for the environment in the long term.

So discard a working and perfectly good Macbook to be replaced by a new one manufactured by the World’s #1 CO2 emitter and transported probably halfway around the world in a container ship burning dirty bunker fuel.

Per unit costs are pretty low, and old Intel gear particularly energy guzzling.

That hardly happens on desktop/laptop Linux. Seems like a proprietary OS problem tbh.

You're definitely right about that. I'll admit it. If you're not the kind of person who likes to throw all your electronics out every few years to spend $thousands on new ones then the Apple ecosystem is not for you.

It's a weird situation in that the standards for mobile devices like cell phones and tablets are on the floor compared to those for PCs, so Apple's same 6-year cutoff feels respectable for smartphones but miserly for laptops.

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