Longevity, by Design

Longevity is a joke thanks to activation lock.

Apple could do a lot to increase long-term functionality by providing standalone Safari/WebKit updates longer than they do OS updates. I have a number of Macs and iPads which would be fine for my needs if browser functionality weren't so handicapped.

@NaOH: Basilisk works pretty well for browsing on older Macs.

A critical in depth take: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0DF-MOkotA

@Old Unix Geek: Thanks. I’ve found Mac workarounds, notably upgrading the OS some (to Mojave) when I didn’t want to, which meant a couple hundred dollars to upgrade other software, and where Safari still comes up short I’ve been using Firefox ESR (Extended Support Release). Of course, no similar options exist for iPads or old iPhones I use like an iPod Touch. And I lose the benefits of one browser across platforms (history, bookmarks, etc.).

I’m sure there is some limit to how long/far older devices can have WebKit kept viable. But there’s ought to be some alternative for the fact that devices border on useless when there’s no available, working browser engine. It’s the only situation which has ever made me wish other browser engines were permitted on iOS/iPadOS.

From what I’ve seen, Apple hardware easily outlasts Apple software, and they don’t seem to recognize this or consider it worthwhile to better balance this discrepancy.

@Kristoffer: Thanks for that video. Making stuff last doesn't seem to be a real priority -- lying about it does.

@NaOH: AFAIK, there's no hardware reason a modern web browser couldn't work on Mac OS X 10.0. It would probably be slow because of the stupid sizes and amounts of Javascript Web pages use these days, but a 2Ghz PowerPC 4-8Mb machine should still be able to do it, if someone bothered to port the browser to it.

The sad thing is, it's not just Apple. The whole software industry seems enamored with breaking things on older OS's / older browsers, because externalizing the costs onto users is cheaper for them. Since machines aren't actually getting much faster anymore (only GPUs still are), it's pretty silly.

The whitepaper is for future "right to repair" legislators. Those will carefully study the whitepaper and say "yes, Apple, we trust you to do the best for the environment". Or some such nonsense Apple believes.

@Kristoffer: thanks it’s a great video. My Macbooks suffered from many of the issues Louis mentiones. I’ve had to GPUs fail, one backlight failure and the screen connector issue.

I did have more luck with iPhones, but still, I think Louis got strong argument here. Seems like the Apple’s repair program is not that great either.

I can’t find the article mentioning this but here’s another example of how mitigating climate change doesn’t come without significant environmental costs.

https://nevadacurrent.com/2024/03/21/solar-power-project-threatens-prime-desert-tortoise-habitat-conservationists-warn/

"Apple could do a lot to increase long-term functionality by providing standalone Safari/WebKit updates longer than they do OS updates."

I know a bunch of people who finally had to get rid of old, but perfectly fine MacBooks simply because there were no browsers that supported their bank's website anymore.

My neighbor, an 86 year old lady, had a perfectly fine iMac that she inherited from her brother.

She used it to stay in touch with a friend of hers that was too ill to be out and about. They used Skype.

Then Skype dropped support but the web version worked. Then the web version stopped working, needed later version of the browser and that in turn needed a layer version of Mac OS but that didn't support the old iMac and a perfectly fine computer(for video calling) became useless.

Many parties share the blame in this, but it's such a waste.

@Daniel

"I can’t find the article mentioning this but here’s another example of how mitigating climate change doesn’t come without significant environmental costs."

So what? A lot more species than one desert tortoise are going to go extinct due to climate change. And lots of humans.

If we wanted to avoid that, we should have acted decades ago.

It's now too late for NIMBY nonsense and precious twits clutching their pearls and demanding perfect solutions that don't exist rather than good but imperfect mitigation efforts. Tough cookies. It's too late to be picky.

Finally, I don't see any reason to assume that tortoises and their food sources aren't compatible with solar panels.

@Plume which country, year of expiration, and MacBooks were involved?

What I've seen on the mobile side with banks in France:
- 2020, iPhone 4s on iOS 9
- 2023, some Samsung on Android 7

> My neighbor, an 86 year old lady, had a perfectly fine iMac that she inherited from her brother.

I don't know about Skype, but for a current browser Ubuntu would work great. For this kind of basic user (not meant disparagingly!) if you make a few tweaks like setting up the dock to look like theirs on MacOS they may not even notice the change.

"which country, year of expiration, and MacBooks were involved?"

They're mostly 17" MacBook Pros. People tried to hold on to them as long as possible, but a few years ago, I could no longer find any browsers that were actively updated and ran on them, and older browsers stopped being supported by banking websites due to some encryption issue.

Case in point:

https://mjtsai.com/blog/2021/09/24/some-web-sites-will-stop-working-with-el-capitan-and-older

In full agreement with everyone else here who wishes Apple's software would support older hardware. I think it would do as much (if not more) for the environment as making hardware easier to repair.

Older hardware doesn't need to get every new OS feature, but browser and security updates would go a long way. My father still uses a 2007 iMac I gave him years ago. It still works fine for his needs, but he's already running into issues with websites (especially SSL issues) and I do get nervous about browser exploits.