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Comment by gum_ina_package | Hacker News Reader

Can you imagine if Microsoft did something like this? Leaving 20% of all Windows users unsupported!

For me, it's just another example of the kinds of things Apple can get away with and no one bats an eye. 20% of all Mac users must upgrade or risk being unsecure. So what the upgrades are free? What if you have a critical piece of software that isn't compatible with the latest OS X? Or what if your hardware can't support an upgrade?

EDIT: Some people are making comparisons to MS dropping XP support, but I don't think that's a fair comparison since XP was released in 2001 and Snow Leopard in 2009.

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I assume you're referring to the 30% of Windows users (XP) that will be left unsupported and unprotected in April of this year?

Snow Leopard release date: August 28, 2009

Windows XP release date: October 25, 2001

Also, hardware bought that had Windows XP on it would be ancient today. We're talking Pentium 4s here.

Mac hardware from 2009 is still very capable for what most people use it for: office suite, email and web browser.

(I could argue a optimized Windows XP computer from that era could still do well with today's software, but if someone is still using Windows XP on 10 year old hardware, it's probably running subpar)

Mac hardware from 2009? My early 2011 MacBook Pro came with Snow Leopard and it has an i7. It's still plenty fast enough to run several VMs, an IDE and do real(TM) work on it.

My work laptop w/XP is less than 4 years old and has an i5.

windows xp was released very long ago, snow leopard is much more recent.

I guess you would compare OSX version with service packs though, but I don't think that's fair.

Honestly Apple is playing the obsolescence card much more aggressively than microsoft, because they can. I installed Mavericks on my 2GB RAM macbook pro, and my laptop is already obsolete, it's very sluggish. I would GLADLY trade mavericks for windows XP. And I'm sure Windows 7 runs very well with that amount of ram.

The upgrade to newer OS X versions is free. So ...

absolutely not, i had to pay to upgrade Leopard to the next OS.

You can upgrade to OS X Mavericks from Snow Leopard (10.6.8), Lion (10.7), or Mountain Lion (10.8). (for free)

https://www.apple.com/osx/how-to-upgrade/

If you only had Leopard you had to spend $20 to get Snow Leopard first before getting the update to Mavericks.

Edit: I should say that not all Snow Leopard machines can be upgrade to Mavericks, a bunch of the 2006 models can't.

Only on recent hardware. My dad had an older iMac that was aged, but not unusable. He got a new iPhone, which required the newest version of iTunes, which further required an upgrade of the OS to 10.8, which was blocked because he didn't meet minimum system requirements.

It's free, but only after you pay for new hardware.

Exactly what happened to me. Ended up using the new iTunes in a VM running... Windows XP. How's that for irony. iTunes couldn't run on Leopard, but could run on something much older and in a resource-limited VM. Obviously my Core2 Duo was still capable of running iTunes.

I finally had to buy a Mac mini just so I could do iOS development. But every Mac I buy now, I just have to plan on running Linux on it in a few years.

I think you should be very concerned ahead-of-time if your software isn't compatible with newer versions.

Then it's time to buy new or upgrade software. Apple give developers years of warning for EOLing APIs

Apple computers can never run older versions of OS X than whatever was the latest when the model was released. If you are tied to a specific version of OS X you are sitting on a ticking bomb because if your hardware fails there will be no way to downgrade a new Macintosh.

Yes, except when the ticking bomb explodes it will upgrade your operating system rather than you know... destroying stuff.

If upgrade/downgrade issues are your primary concerns when purchasing hardware then Apple is probably not the right hardware vendor for your needs.

I don't disagree with what you said in any way; all I said was that if your business depends on running a specific OS X version, well, you are going to be in trouble soon.

If Apple users were concerned with long-term support, they would be Microsoft users. Microsoft will make every compromise in favor of backwards compatibility, for good or for ill for new users. Apple will just tell you to upgrade.

Hehe. ;-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_system...

How dare they discontinue support on an OS that they've given you a free replacement for??? Really? When MS completely kills the XP updates do you really think they will start handing out free copies of Win8.1?

How the fudge is this something that Apple gets away with when nobody else upgrades you to a pay-for, latest OS for free?

Yeah, it sucks when software becomes unsupported and you might have to update or change in the smallest degree and there are plenty of reason to hate Apple (stupid walled garden, OpenNI, etc) but this isn't one of those reason.

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