How Apple Decides Which Products Are 'Vintage' and 'Obsolete' (medium.com) 128
Maddie Stone, writing for OneZero: For the past eight years, I've been working mainly on a late 2012 iMac. I'm no Luddite, but the computer has held up well over the years, and I've never felt the need to replace it. Recently, though, my iMac developed its first serious tic: The fan has started to power on loudly every time the computer goes to sleep. While the computer is long past warranty, I decided to call up Apple to see if the company could offer any help. When I did, I learned my iMac is considered "vintage" and was told Apple won't touch it. [...] According to Apple, "vintage" devices are those that the company discontinued selling more than five and less than seven years ago. Once Apple hasn't sold a product for seven years, it's considered "obsolete," meaning the company won't offer any repair services. But vintage products exist in a liminal space: Despite what I learned when I called Apple Support, Apple Stores as well as AASPs (Apple Authorized Service Provide) can, in theory, repair them for you "subject to availability of inventory, or as required by law," according to Apple.
In practice, people in the repair community told me Apple isn't particularly interested in fixing vintage tech. "The AASPs I've spoken to in the past have told me they don't bother with customers looking to repair older devices," said Rob Link, a right-to-repair advocate who owns a company that sells repair parts for older devices including iPhones, iPods, and iPads. In the past, Link said, he would call up AASPs to see if they had older parts to sell "but I would stop when no one did." "If you're taking in a vintage piece of equipment [to an AASP], outside of them still having something sitting on the shelf from years before, you're not going to be able to get service," said Adrian Avery-Johnson, the owner of Bridgetown Electronics Repair, an independent repair shop located in Portland, Oregon.
In practice, people in the repair community told me Apple isn't particularly interested in fixing vintage tech. "The AASPs I've spoken to in the past have told me they don't bother with customers looking to repair older devices," said Rob Link, a right-to-repair advocate who owns a company that sells repair parts for older devices including iPhones, iPods, and iPads. In the past, Link said, he would call up AASPs to see if they had older parts to sell "but I would stop when no one did." "If you're taking in a vintage piece of equipment [to an AASP], outside of them still having something sitting on the shelf from years before, you're not going to be able to get service," said Adrian Avery-Johnson, the owner of Bridgetown Electronics Repair, an independent repair shop located in Portland, Oregon.
well, in this case (Score:5, Interesting)
Reset NVRAM
Get a copy of MacsFanControl.
He'll be all set.
But yeah the idea of not providing for repair of perfectly good stuff -- AND not allowing secondary market parts the way the auto industry has to -- is horrible.
Re:well, in this case (Score:5, Insightful)
And Apple has been designing later products to intentionally be unrepairable by the customer. Special tools are needed, parts are expoxied, batteries not replaceable, etc. Apple only pretends to be a green company, but they really want customers to keep buying new stuff and to throw away the olds stuff (or recycle, which means Apple throws them away, there is zero recycling).
Well, stop buying Apple, duh... (Score:1)
Apple charges high prices, as if they're selling you a durable good. But they're not durable -- they're disposables, as evidenced by Apple's design efforts and "we don't care" attitude towards their older products. If you're buying a disposable, why are you paying such a price premium?
My main computer is a Raspberry Pi 4 now. If it craps out, I paid so little for it that I really don't care, I'll just buy a new one. But so far, it hasn't crapped out on me at all, and it's actually getting better over time a
Re: Well, stop buying Apple, duh... (Score:2)
Not sure what your point is: this also describes my Mac.
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"Not sure what your point is: this also describes my Mac."
Most Macs can't be replaced for under $50 -- and have their OS moved by swapping SD cards.
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Re: Well, stop buying Apple, duh... (Score:2)
Never felt the need to root my iOS device, but backup and restore on to another device using iTunes is a cinch.
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Just replaced my Android device, almost everything was moved seamlessly to my new device after signing in. The exceptions were a couple of programs that I didn't download from Google, and they were easy to backup and restore and some mp3's that I had copied to the device, which were easy to copy over.
There was also the option from the manufacturer to move everything via Bluetooth which I didn't bother trying as I now have internet at home. It sounds nice that you could just backup by plugging into your comp
Re: Well, stop buying Apple, duh... (Score:2)
Windows is a product that has made Microsoft a lot of money over the years, and they use product activation to try to protect that revenue stream. Less than ideal experience for users though. For Apple, they make their money on the hardware, and subsequently the OS has been free for a long time (you've pair for it through the hardware cost). Apple want rapid update on their latest OS because that helps make their ecosystem work better and probably reduces their costs somewhat too, so they make that part
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My main computer is a Raspberry Pi 4 now. If it craps out, I paid so little for it that I really don't care, I'll just buy a new one.
Ha!
That's called "Conspicuous Consumerism", just like buying disposable lighters, instead of buying a refillable one.
And it means you are ultimately part and parcel of the same problem!
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Exactly. Repair and reuse are the greenest forms of recycling.
Re:well, in this case (Score:4)
'intentionally unrepairable' includes more than the examples listed by GP.
- Laptop keyboards that are riveted to the top case, so a replacement costs $900.
- Non-removable SSD and RAM (ie the components that require replacement most often) in most products.
Epoxy makes disassembly vastly more difficult and error-prone. It's used because it shaves 3 seconds off the assembly time and potentially 0.5 mm of the device's thickness. Even mobile devices are perfectly capable of being made repairable. My Palm TX came apart with 4 screws, and was no thicker than a 'one wrong move and you've cracked the screen' iPhone.
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Reset NVRAM
Get a copy of MacsFanControl.
He'll be all set.
But yeah the idea of not providing for repair of perfectly good stuff -- AND not allowing secondary market parts the way the auto industry has to -- is horrible.
Don't ever buy any home entertainment gear from Toshiba, then!
A friend of mine had a perfectly-good Toshiba TV that was about 5 years old. A custom IC that provided the HDMI output had died.
No information available whatsoever. No manuals (even the user manual!). No service documentation. And no parts availability. Period. Not even at the "Board Level".
But I agree, Probably the SMC chip has lost its configuration. Since the fan doesn't run at full-speed all the time (you would be able to tell, trust me!), th
In related news (Score:3)
The Ford dealer doesn't want to touch my 1979 Fairmont.
Re:In related news (Score:4)
The problem with Apple Tech is there are so few models to choose from.
Often the older model Apple product , has a necessary or useful that is no longer available. Floppy Drive, CD Drive, Removable Battery, Audio Ports, Firewire...
While the general population may not need the tech, you may need that tech, and you may had choose Apple products to build the solution.
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The Ford dealer doesn't want to touch my 1979 Fairmont.
And who wanted to touch one in 1979? :-) Learned to drive in one of those.
On the plus side there is plenty of room to access stuff under the hood and most of the maintenance is within HS auto shop capabilities.
Re:In related news (Score:5, Insightful)
Somebody can fix your Ford Fairmont, there are auto mechanics all across the country, no special authorization needed from Ford to do the repairs. No one can fix your broken Apple product. Even Apple can fix them much of the time and instead gives you replacements. Now a "vintage" model might have more repair options then newer products that are designed to be discarded when anything malfunctions.
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Nonsense, there plenty of shops that will work on old gear including Apple's. I've fixed relative's old Apple gear too.
There is no reason Apple should work on obsolete gear, money loser for them since most their customers refresh every few years.
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Nonsense, there plenty of shops that will work on old gear including Apple's. I've fixed relative's old Apple gear too.
There is no reason Apple should work on obsolete gear, money loser for them since most their customers refresh every few years.
Right on both points. But more right on the first one, as there are many people (me included) who either buy used Apple gear, or keep their new Apple gear for a long, long time; because it still works great.
Heck, I just bought a 2011 iMac for $150 offa eBay a few months ago, to use as a Security system/Media Server. An entire i7-based computer that runs macOS and monitor for the price (and footprint) of a monitor alone. Who can beat that?
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Basically anyone else.
For what you spent, you could buy a computer that doesn't take half an hour to boot or reboot (doing a full reboot on a modern, brand new Mac is excruciatingly slow, timed it, showed it to service techs).
I was told by the Geniuses that the extreme boot times (up to 45 minutes) are due to the T2 chip being a single point bottleneck for everything.
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Nonsense, my wife's 27 inch i-mac I bought used boots fine, and only $400. Who the hell cares about boot time anyway, practically a strawman argument since can just put a machine to sleep.
What? (Score:1)
You're telling me there are no independent shops that will repair Apple products?
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Sure there are. The "authorized" ones will not touch them, though, because they're not supposed to get parts out of Apple's supply network. That kinda sucks, because you can often get the exact same replacement part without Apple branded packaging for 1/3rd the price.
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You're telling me there are no independent shops that will repair Apple products?
Almost all major cities have at least one Apple Authorized shop that can do warranty and non-warranty repairs, and there are many other independents which will do non-warranty repair on Apple gear.
There is even a nice "locator" on the Apple site; but I can never remember how to get to it...
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Ford doesn't try to keep Autozone etc from stocking new parts for it. You can DIY or hire an independent mechanic as you see fit.
A story for you on Apple and old tech (Score:5, Interesting)
A long time ago (pre Intel days tho) I had a medical university as a client with a very expensive lab instrument that ran on an Apple Performa.
When I say expensive, the original MSRP was in excess of 10 million dollars.
Well the Performa, simply due to age, broke down. The university came to me, a PC guy, and asked if I could repair it, and handed me a *blank* check (meaning, money is no object)
Not being a Mac guy, I called up Apple. They just laughed at me. I explained the need for repair at any cost, and they said 'nope, buy a new Mac'
Not really an option since the software only ran on old Performas and the cost of a new lab system and computer to go with it, was again, in excess of 10 mil.
So I called around to a number of independent Apple repair shops, and explained the issue. I got no help because their parts inventory was all tied up with Apple, and couldn't get the parts even if they wanted to, and something about losing their repair license with Apple, if they tried to fix it with parts I bought off eBay.
So, I bought several old Performas off eBay, cobbled one together to work, and put in their original hard drive.
Needless to say, the university was ecstatic, and that was the last time I ever looked at buying, or owning a Mac.
Fuck Apple.
Wow you took away the wrong lesson from that!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
So, I bought several old Performas off eBay, cobbled one together to work, and put in their original hard drive.
Ok that was a good step one... but given you had inline money why did you screw over the lab people by not hiring some guy to migrate that software to more modern Apple hardware?
I mean, come on, no hardware is going to last forever and you have to have a plan for stuff like that to migrate the base computer system going forward.
I don't really see how the moral of this story is "fuck Apple" when you were asking for something totally unreasonable.
P.S. Another angle on this is, if something ran on a Performa is really seems like you could have found a wide range of tech that would have still run it.
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... but given you had inline money why did you screw over the lab people by not hiring some guy to migrate that software to more modern Apple hardware?
Yeah, that is so simple and obvious, just the sort of thing we all do with other people's software all the time. Imagine having to come to slashdot to have it pointed out to him! In fact, if he preferred, he could even have bought a new Mac and migrated that backwards instead.
Re:Wow you took away the wrong lesson from that!!! (Score:5, Informative)
Ok that was a good step one... but given you had inline money why did you screw over the lab people by not hiring some guy to migrate that software to more modern Apple hardware?
You are assuming that they wrote or had access to the source code for the program. The device could have also had a special port, card, or some device that allowed communication that only worked in this hardware. The 10mil device was also probably not open source, so finding specs on how to communicate with it was probably a no go as well. Really someone should have raised a few red flags as to why they bought the device in the first place if it only worked with one piece of hardware.
In general I understand Apple's position, they don't want to keep supporting stuff forever. But on the other hand to limit the repair shops ability to do repair on older equipment is something I don't understand.
I've ran into a few of these situations myself: trying to find a modem that worked with the equipment we had because the only way to transmit payroll was over a dial-up modem (thankfully that lasted only about 5 years before the bank implemented an SFTP solution). I also remember hunting down line printers on e-bay and elsewhere because the financial department would grind to a standstill without a working printer. We also had old HP servers that were no longer supported, and yep, we bought replacements whenever they popped up on e-bay and made working backup devices just in case.
Re: Wow you took away the wrong lesson from that!! (Score:2)
Right, rather than blaming Apple, how about blaming the original vendor who sold them this system with insufficient support? Or the people with insufficient foresight who procured it?
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In general I understand Apple's position, they don't want to keep supporting stuff forever. But on the other hand to limit the repair shops ability to do repair on older equipment is something I don't understand.
I guarantee Apple isn't going to yank the Authorization of any repair shop that takes in an old piece of Apple gear. That shop just wanted to make someone else the "bad guy", and it was easy to blame Apple.
They just knew they couldn't get parts for a machine that hadn't been sold in this century! And so, didn't even want to get involved.
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In general I understand Apple's position, they don't want to keep supporting stuff forever. But on the other hand to limit the repair shops ability to do repair on older equipment is something I don't understand.
It's pure unadulterated arrogance. They're 100% sure people MUST HAVE Apple products and will pay lots of $ for them. They get off on mocking you for being so out of touch as to even ask. I strongly believe they'd have a much bigger share of the desktop and laptop market if they'd greatly widen their view on helping people keep older hardware running. It'd give potential buyers much better confidence in Apple's products. I warn people who are interested in Apple stuff that it will be "unsupported" in m
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Exactly! I have a Lacie DVD burner I use to make data backups. I have to use it on my 2007 Mac Mini because the company doesn't have one to run it on my 2012 Mac Mini!
Re: Wow you took away the wrong lesson from that!! (Score:3)
You talk as if doing that is oh so easy. Another clueless know nothing mouthing off trying to sound smart. And failing.
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What I bet companies would do is the exact opposite of what they were doing during the late 1970's.
Forget where, there was a store owned which was open only five minutes a day. All the products had white, generic type packaging with strange names. What you found out was that this store was owned by a company which would trademark tons of product titles, put those labels on them, then put them in this one store. This way if someone tried using the name they could say, "We had in the store first, pay us." (It
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"I can see manufacturers doing the same thing but in reverse. Start a fake store open only a few minutes a day and have one of every product available just so they wouldn't have to release the specs."
You thought of that, so any legal patch could take it into account.
Of course, the problem will the things you didn't think about. But, then, you'll discover them once your law is in the wild. Once you discovered them, you patch the law again till no new holes appear.
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Ok that was a good step one... but given you had inline money why did you screw over the lab people by not hiring some guy to migrate that software to more modern Apple hardware?
All of the above answers and, unfortunately, legal issues, including software license violations and possible / probably FDA regulations.
It's one thing to take that risk for your own personal machine use, but doing work for another person isn't worth the risk that someone wants to make an example of you. Admittedly a very slim risk, but someone could possibly blab about how IWantMoreSpamPlease got a new Mac to work with their old $10M thingy, and word gets out, and $10M thingy company finds out, and, well
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So, I bought several old Performas off eBay, cobbled one together to work, and put in their original hard drive.
Ok that was a good step one... but given you had inline money why did you screw over the lab people by not hiring some guy to migrate that software to more modern Apple hardware?
I mean, come on, no hardware is going to last forever and you have to have a plan for stuff like that to migrate the base computer system going forward.
I don't really see how the moral of this story is "fuck Apple" when you were asking for something totally unreasonable.
P.S. Another angle on this is, if something ran on a Performa is really seems like you could have found a wide range of tech that would have still run it.
In his (weak) defense, it was likely a PowerPC Mac (I don't think the Performa name was used in the 68k days, but I might be wrong), and in any case, was not an Intel-based machine. No practical way to get that software running on modern hardware, unless perhaps they had the source code (unlikely).
Hey, I know someone who put a Mac mini running BootCamp into a Mass Spectrometer to replace an XP machine. He couldn't buy a new PC that could run XP; but the Mac mini with (an early) BootCamp... would!
So, that s
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HP or Dell would tell you the exact same thing if you asked them to repair a decade old PC. The fact that it's Apple has no bearing on your argument.
Re:A story for you on Apple and old tech (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, I pretty-much agree.
The thing about old PCs vs old Macs, though, is that it's really easy to find parts for PCs, no matter how old they are. If you can't buy a part directly from Newegg or Amazon, then eBay will have it. For next-to-nothing.
For old Apple stuff, parts were never really sold individually. So, like this guy did, you end up having to hunt down an old computer and hope that you can scavenge working parts from it. Obviously eBay sellers will sometimes have old Apple parts for sale, but there isn't that much of it.
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Yeah, I pretty-much agree.
The thing about old PCs vs old Macs, though, is that it's really easy to find parts for PCs, no matter how old they are. If you can't buy a part directly from Newegg or Amazon, then eBay will have it. For next-to-nothing.
For old Apple stuff, parts were never really sold individually. So, like this guy did, you end up having to hunt down an old computer and hope that you can scavenge working parts from it. Obviously eBay sellers will sometimes have old Apple parts for sale, but there isn't that much of it.
Really?
Find me some PS/2 MCA stuff without going to eBay or other junk dealers. I'll wait.
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That stuff is getting scarce, but IBM's (admittedly not very user friendly) maintenance site still lists parts for the PS/2.
1.44MB floppy drive:
https://www-store.shop.ibm.com... [ibm.com]
CMOS Battery:
https://www-store.shop.ibm.com... [ibm.com]
Hard drives:
https://www-store.shop.ibm.com... [ibm.com]
https://www-store.shop.ibm.com... [ibm.com]
You can add it to your cart and proceed with checkout. I have no idea what would happen if you actually tried to order that stuff.
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HP or Dell would tell you the exact same thing if you asked them to repair a decade old PC. The fact that it's Apple has no bearing on your argument.
Exactly.
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HP and Dell don't use specialized parts and bind the manufacturer to a contract to only ever sell them to them.
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So what? A HP or a Dell is a just a bunch of commodity parts. You don't need to go to HP or Dell to repair one of their computers.
Well, not quite (Score:2)
Mostly true, but there have been cases of HP (maybe it came from the Compaq heritage) or Dell having "ATX" power supplies that didn't quite have ATX pinout, or some of the "low profile" machines having non-standard floppy cables that combined it with ATA (because they're trying to save space and shoehorning a laptop drive into the desktop.)
Of course, those are exceptions, not the rule.
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I probably would have taken the Performa to a non Apple authorized repair shop (Rossman Group in NYC is one of the more famous ones), and let them repair it. Because they aren't bound by Apple's rules, they can use whatever parts they want to repair the system.
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I probably would have taken the Performa to a non Apple authorized repair shop (Rossman Group in NYC is one of the more famous ones), and let them repair it. Because they aren't bound by Apple's rules, they can use whatever parts they want to repair the system.
Fine. But anyone but Rossman. He is a liar and a con-man.
Re:A story for you on Apple and old tech (Score:4)
People don't think this way when they buy stuff, but if you're spending that much money it's a good idea to get a copy of the source code. Maybe they won't allow it, in which case move on. Maybe put the code in escrow in case the company goes out of business. Ten years later there's no real need to protect the IP of something that's never going to be touched again by the copyright owners.
The military for example will often get full schematics for many devices it buys from defense contractors, which helps ensure that they're not stuck in the lurch later. I helped out one guy in the 80s who was working for a company that carefully sliced off the top of old ICs and reverse engineered them in order to keep critical systems running.
This is a big problem in the health industry. They just don't have the budget to upgrade all their machines every 5 years. I had a former dentist who was extremely worried that she'd have to fork over a ton of money because all her software ran with Windows XP and needed a big charge to get a later version (yes, she might have been able to migrate the old stuff, but being a dentist she was not a computer expert and only knew that the software provider was uninterested in providing any support).
To be fair I did the same on a $20k CNC machine (Score:2)
On the other hand I didn't have to worry about calling a Dell repair shop and them being worried about losing their license. That part's a dick move.
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that had a Dell 486 running it. I would expect that if I called Dell they'd laugh a bit and say sorry.
On the other hand I didn't have to worry about calling a Dell repair shop and them being worried about losing their license. That part's a dick move.
...and a lie, either by the OP, or by the repair shop who just didn't want to be arsed with taking in a machine that they knew they couldn't get parts for.
Re:A story for you on Apple and old tech (Score:4, Interesting)
To be fair, Performas were from the bad old days of Apple (I say this as someone who owned a Performa at one point) and you kinda stumbled into a worst case scenario. The Performa line was splintered into dozens (hundreds?) of SKUs with no method to the madness of how or what differentiated them. Parts weren't regularly shared, specs were all over the place, and form factors were varied. It was a mess. Even when they were new, the then-beleaguered Apple could barely support them all, what with there being so many different parts but no money to keep them in inventory on account of how close they were getting to bankruptcy. They were just throwing things at the wall without a plan and hoping something would stick.
And then they bought out NeXT.
Shortly after his return, Jobs put up a slide with his four-quadrant approach to differentiating computers: mobile vs. desktop on one axis and pro vs. consumer on the other. They already had PowerMacs (pro desktop), PowerBooks (pro laptop), the original iMac (consumer desktop), and had yet to introduce the first iBook (consumer laptop). Anything that didn't fit neatly into one of those four quadrants was immediately axed so that the company could put all of its wood behind the handful of arrows that would keep it alive. What little supply they still had for Performa parts would have disappeared almost immediately at that point, so if you were coming along later, you were out of luck.
These days, support is much, much better, but that's because they stopped engaging in shenanigans like the Performa line. They now have far fewer products, all of which sell well enough, thus enabling them to easily support all of those products for far longer. Still not as long as many of us would like (our everyday home computer is a 2011 MacBook Pro, so I upgraded the RAM and put in an SSD on my own), but still for long enough to be reasonable in most cases.
CallIng BS. An u supported 10m device? (Score:2)
Why didn't you just call the vendor? Because the hospital refused to pay for maintenance?
10 million in the performa days was a literal fortune. Nobody spends that money w/o maintenance.
What was the real story?
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I would have tried emulation. It might have required some work to get it to talk to the hardware, but since there are open source Mac emulators, that should have been doable, and perhaps easier to maintain in the long run?
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A long time ago (pre Intel days tho) I had a medical university as a client with a very expensive lab instrument that ran on an Apple Performa.
When I say expensive, the original MSRP was in excess of 10 million dollars.
Well the Performa, simply due to age, broke down. The university came to me, a PC guy, and asked if I could repair it, and handed me a *blank* check (meaning, money is no object)
Not being a Mac guy, I called up Apple. They just laughed at me. I explained the need for repair at any cost, and they said 'nope, buy a new Mac'
Not really an option since the software only ran on old Performas and the cost of a new lab system and computer to go with it, was again, in excess of 10 mil.
So I called around to a number of independent Apple repair shops, and explained the issue. I got no help because their parts inventory was all tied up with Apple, and couldn't get the parts even if they wanted to, and something about losing their repair license with Apple, if they tried to fix it with parts I bought off eBay.
So, I bought several old Performas off eBay, cobbled one together to work, and put in their original hard drive.
Needless to say, the university was ecstatic, and that was the last time I ever looked at buying, or owning a Mac.
Fuck Apple.
And you think the situation would have been different trying to get an old Dell, Compaq, or HP piece repaired at a factory-authorized repair center, or the OEM?
If so; you're delusional.
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Dell may have refused, but I wouldn't lose my Dell authorized reseller license had I worked on an ancient Dell. That's the point I was making. Apple is being a dick about working on a system they themselves don't support, and won't let anyone else support it either.
For the record, I had called several Apple repair shops in my area (a major city) and got the same answer, so it's a fair assumption that Apple *would* yank their license if word got out.
And to the rest, lab/scientific systems are often like this
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A long time ago (pre Intel days tho) I had a medical university as a client with a very expensive lab instrument that ran on an Apple Performa.
When I say expensive, the original MSRP was in excess of 10 million dollars.
Well the Performa, simply due to age, broke down. The university came to me, a PC guy, and asked if I could repair it, and handed me a *blank* check (meaning, money is no object)
Not being a Mac guy, I called up Apple. They just laughed at me. I explained the need for repair at any cost, and they said 'nope, buy a new Mac'
Not really an option since the software only ran on old Performas and the cost of a new lab system and computer to go with it, was again, in excess of 10 mil.
So I called around to a number of independent Apple repair shops, and explained the issue. I got no help because their parts inventory was all tied up with Apple, and couldn't get the parts even if they wanted to, and something about losing their repair license with Apple, if they tried to fix it with parts I bought off eBay.
So, I bought several old Performas off eBay, cobbled one together to work, and put in their original hard drive.
Needless to say, the university was ecstatic, and that was the last time I ever looked at buying, or owning a Mac.
FWIW, I've seen the same thing for Windows... Extremely expensive medical gear attached to a PC running Windows XP. Not possible to get the software to run on other versions of Windows, and when 15 year old PCs broke down part availability was a problem. They had foreseen it enough to stock some batches of old computers, as this was an ongoing problem - and Windows XP wasn't the first OS this happened on.
That's what you get with Apple (Score:1)
My 2014 Clevo laptop's fan stopped running well so I ordered a new one from someone on ebay. No problem since it seems to be a fairly standard model used in a lot of other laptops. Guess I haven't missed out all that much on cool looking minimalist design since its a plain silvery-black rectangle with analog vga port and all.
Also iPads... (Score:3)
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Using the iPhone emulator for developers might be an option.
Re:Also iPads... (Score:4, Informative)
I'm not by any means an Apple supporter, but in all fairness I don't think you would have much more luck with an Android tablet from 2011, which would probably be running Android 3.0 or 4.0.
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I have an Android Nexus 7 from 2012 which I still use daily. It works great. I haven't found any app in the app store which would not install and run. Still has good battery life on the original battery.
Google stopped supporting this with updates to the OS some time ago but it still works just fine. (Android version 6.0.1)
I'm cheap.
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I'm not by any means an Apple supporter, but in all fairness I don't think you would have much more luck with an Android tablet from 2011, which would probably be running Android 3.0 or 4.0.
Yes but you're comparing to one of the few things worse than Apple. I'm writing this on a 2010 era thinkpad which was (until recently) running the latest ubuntu LTS. I'll probably skip 20.04 and go for 22 when the time comes. I skipped 12 and 16. It'll likely become too slow before it stops running the latest software.
Or
Re: (Score:2)
One positive of the fragmentation in the Android community means that a lot of Android apps by necessity need to support older Android versions. Android 3.0 or 4.0 is going pretty far back, but if it had Android 5.0 a lot of stuff would still work on it.
On the Apple side, once iOS version N is out, support for version iOS version N-1 starts getting dropped pretty quickly.
Older versions of apps are allowed by Apple ... (Score:2)
** UNLESS ** the app publisher explicitly disables that version. By default all old versions are enabled. The developer/publisher had to explicitly disable each old version.
** CAVEAT ** I'm not sure how far back this functionality goes. I'm pretty sure your iPad 2 running iOS 9 should have this ability. An iPad 1 with iOS 5, not sure.
Re: (Score:3)
The one unfortunate thing is that Apple does not allow updating old versions of the app. So if you have to make some incompatible change to your server infrastructure, for example, you either maintain two versions of your infrastructure forever or leave those old devices behind. With a more open platform, you could decide whether it was worth spending the time to patch the changes into your old version of the code, rebuild it, and ship it.
For example, the Amazon (shopping) app is useless on my first-gene
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The one unfortunate thing is that Apple does not allow updating old versions of the app.
Has someone tried and failed? Lets say 1.0 is the old version incompatible with the current iOS, 2.0 is the current compatible version. Could a developer release a 1.1 update, or is it rejected because the version number is not greater than the current?
If 1.1 were allowed 1.0 may not upgrade to it automatically but if one uninstalled and reinstalled 1.1 should be what is offered because it is the most recent for the old version of iOS.
Re: (Score:2)
Unless something has changed very recently, the Apple submission website does not allow submitting a new version unless the bundle ID has a higher version than the previous submission. Also, any submission would have to run on the latest version of hardware, which an outdated version would not, so you can't just add the upgrade for old devices as a new version and mark it as only running on older OSes.
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We've had an old iPad 2 sitting around the house that our son used in high school. It works fine, and I thought it would be useful to use Chrome Remote Desktop to control our media PC, and also to load Google Home on to control lighting. Nope: neither of those apps will even download because the version of iOS is too old, and there is no option to install an older version. (I've looked it up: if I had an iPhone I could figure out a workaround by downloading the apps elsewhere via iTunes. But I do not have an iPhone. And I'm even less inclined to get one now.)
It just seems a shame that perfectly usable hardware becomes artifically obsolete.
Try Jump Desktop. I'm pretty sure the 32 bit version will still download. I have a working iPad 2, and I can still go to the App Store and d/l Apps for it. It just won't run any of the new 64 bit apps; because the SoC is only 32 bit. Time marches on.
Google must have pulled their 32 bit version of those Apps. See https://apple.slashdot.org/com... [slashdot.org]
What is Google Home? It appears to be a smart speaker.
It's why people go to android, windows and linux (Score:4, Interesting)
And don't get me started on why I had to buy a new phone after my iPhone 6 Plus developed touch disease due to a manufacturing defect.
The Apple store manager pointed to his crowded store when I expressed dissatisfaction with their policy. Very arrogant. Until they start losing serious market share or government regulation Apple users are faced with a high total cost of ownership.
Re:It's why people go to android, windows and linu (Score:4, Insightful)
Linux, yes. Windows, maybe - in the old days, anyway. But Android? The support policies for Android devices are horrible. I mean, Google got props for guaranteeing three years of Android updates for its devices, while iOS devices routinely continue to receive updates for much longer than that.
Re: (Score:2)
Car companies do refuse to service cars 20 years and older.
Re: (Score:2)
That's up to the dealers as to what they want to service. Dealers are, at least in theory, independent. Most any dealer I've seen will service just about anything, including brands they don't actually sell. Some will draw the line when they need parts and the only source of parts is junkyards., mostly because don't want to warranty their work on something like that. But if it's for something like changing the oil and replacing tires, they'll happily service a 20 year old car.
Auto manufacturers are suppo
With respect to iOS devices ... (Score:2)
Still Running a 2009 MBP (Score:1)
Still works beautifully from a hardware perspective (other than the battery) after installing an SSD and max'ing out the RAM. Installed linux with an XFCE desktop after it became too old for Mac OS a few years back. I keep it down in the basement workroom. Works perfectly fine for web browsing, word processing, etc.
I have a second 2012 MBP that's still clinging to Mac OS and runs like butter with 16 GB RAM, dual SSDs in a RAID 0 config (took some tweaking after El Capitain). Kids use it without complaint.
Ri
E-waste? Who cares (Score:2)
You think that's bad, try android (Score:2)
I have phones that still run Android 2.3, and the manufacturer is out of business!
Realistically speaking, reset your nvram and SMC and see if that helps. Or install SMCFanControl and control the fans manually.
Re: (Score:2)
Windows supports Macs longer than MacOS (Score:2)
I dunno... (Score:2)
...I usually sell (or trade in) my Apple gear before it becomes "vintage" or obsolete, and use the proceeds to finance my next purchase. This has worked well for me for, uh, decades now. That said, I know people still using ancient Apple gear and they seem perfectly happy with it, but lets face it, a 5-10 year old computer is an old computer by any standard.
Mine Is Still Going Strong... But.... (Score:2)
By October of 2016, the slowness of the hardware was too great and I replaced the HDD with a SSD and maxed out the RA
Re: (Score:2)
I'm writing this response on a Mid-2011 13" Unibody MacBook Pro. It shipped with Mac OS Lion. At the time, I bought it because it was the last MacBook Pro you could buy that had a superdrive and a body you could open and replace the RAM, HDD, and SuperDrive with industry-standard parts. It also has dedicated ports for charging, USB, Firewire 800, ethernet, SD Cards, and a headphone jack.
By October of 2016, the slowness of the hardware was too great and I replaced the HDD with a SSD and maxed out the RAM to 16GB (from 8GB). This made the computer feel brand new, and it works nice and zippy to this day.
Alas, my laptop is obsolete. Mac OS High Sierra is the highest supported version and this fall's release of the next Mac OS will finally kill off any security updates for High Sierra. Then my Mac Book becomes fully unsupported. Thankfully, High Sierra still supports 32-bit apps I've enjoyed for years that are no longer presently developed.
Should I buy a new MacBook, I lose the ability to upgrade my computer's hardware. I lose dedicated ports and have to join the world of dongles. I lose 32-bit apps I've enjoyed for years. And I get the added uncertainty of data recovery from proprietary Solid state chips soldered onto the motherboard for Mass Storage.
Losing all those things for what benefit? To have a computer that will need to be replaced because its design forbids hardware upgrades?
Actually, the mid-2012 non-retina MBP is the last "old-skool" Mac. It has FW800, USB 3.0, TB1/DP, Gigabit Ethernet, audio I/O (including Optical Out, IIRC), a SuperDrive and replaceable HDD/SDD and Upgradeable RAM. It is the only Mac I have ever bought brand new, and it still works flawlessly.
But I think you can install an run up to Mojave (and possibly even early Catalina) with DOSDude's most-excellent patched versions of macOS. See:
http://dosdude1.com/mojave/ [dosdude1.com]
Now, whether I would recommend taking that mach
WTF? "I'm no Luddite"? (Score:2)
"I'm no Luddite, but the computer has held up well over the years, and I've never felt the need to replace it."
"I'm no Luddite"? What's that got to do with using an old computer rather than a new one? Does the author know what Luddite even means?
Not that different from big box PCs from the 90s (Score:2)
Custom
but "It just works!" (Score:2)
Why would any Apple product EVER need repair? According to them, "It just works!" Until it just doesn't. And you're just stuck with a piece of junk nobody else wants...
Re: but "It just works!" (Score:2)
Typical (Score:1)
Sorry, if you use Apple, you are a luddite. (Score:2)
That is their whole shtick: Selling jewelry to luddites who want to believe that they are not luddites. Using an iPad is the iEquivalent to printing out your e-mails.
Apple... (Score:2)
its better to build a hackintosh and save the money if you must use their OS....the design of their laptops aren't even innovative anymore, PC laptops have caught up to the sleek, minimalist look years ago.
don't understand how someone can remain loyal to Apple, they blatantly treat their customers like garbage with a smile on their face.
2008 Mac Pro Still Works Fine (Score:2)
for day to day operation this 12 year old computer performs at most desktop computer tasks just as well any any of my newer computers.
The only thing it needed to maintain some semblance of modernity was a graphics card update. It's currently running a Nvidia GForce 960.
No, it's not going to win any benchmarks for graphics performance one whatever the latest effects heavy game is. It doesn't need to.
Computers reached a soft ceiling of what they needed to be able to perform over 10 years ago. There are very f
I like obsolete Apple. (Score:2)
I've on more than one occasion had obsolete Macs dumped in my lap since they wont run the latest Mac OS and they seem useless to the previous owners.
They run Linux like a champ. I've got many Apple products around the house, only one running Mac OS. It's obsolete also, but I keep Mac OS on it so I can work on other Macs remotely with native tools.
Feel free to dump more obsolete Macs on me.
Old computer? Fan problems? (Score:2)
The pitfalls of reliability (Score:2)
[don't know why I bothered writing a carefully reasoned post for slashdot - that's so 20th-century...]
This was never a problem in the past - in 2010, a 2002 laptop would have been laughable, fit only for a doorstop. (going back farther, in 1992 I had a 25MHz MIPS machine on my desk at work; in 2000 I had a mid-range PC with a 500-MHz CPU) The slow increase we've seen in CPU speeds in the last 8 years (and the flat price of DRAM from 2011 to 2019) is unprecedented in the history of computing, although there'
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I have a "vintage" late 2013 iMac, with 8GB RAM. It's s-l-o-w with the latest OS. Would it be worth the money to invest in a memory upgrade?
It will be faster, but no its probably not a good investment, its getting too close to its natural end of life.
When buying a new system, PC or Mac, double the RAM from the factory configuration (actually may need to quadruple for extremely low end budget PCs). This will add years to the useful life of the system.
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My "vintage" MacBook Air from 2010 is pretty much worthless due to progressively bloated software "updates" from Apple.
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Are you running out of memory? An SSD would be a vast improvement.
Re: What about upgrading? (Score:2)