Comment by quietthrow
7 hours ago
Apple makes unbelievably good hardware and software that just lasts and just works. Until it’s 7 years old. After that you essentially have to chuck it as you don’t get any updates from Apple and slowly you descend into incompatibility unless you world exists in browser.
I wish once you bought an Apple computer it was truly yours for as long as you wanted it instead of it being dictated by Apple.
Still Great computers though.
It is yours for as long as you want it, and it (mostly) runs all the software it was compatible with when you first bought it (there are some quirks around software you had access to but didn't install, like Garageband, where you may no longer be able to access the original version). Stuff doesn't just 'stop working', as a rule, but the rest of the world does move on. I'm not sure what you think should be done about that? All software should always be backwards compatible with older versions forever?
As a reasonable alternative, you can stick Linux on it and it'll run nicely, although with a different set of software to what you got the laptop with. 2026 is the year of the Linux Desktop!1! (in all seriousness though, it is actually quite good by now).
> Stuff doesn't just 'stop working'
They didn't say that. In fact they said the total opposite
> As a reasonable alternative, you can stick Linux on it and it'll run nicely
Somewhat true for Intel
Not so true for Apple Silicon (Asahi are only upto M2 I think?)
I did read between the lines here:
> After that you essentially have to chuck it as you don’t get any updates from Apple and slowly you descend into incompatibility unless you world exists in browser.
But I don't think the lines were particularly far apart.
> Not so true for Apple Silicon (Asahi are only upto M2 I think?)
M1 was six years ago, M2 was four, both within the seven years OP was talking about.
You can run Linux inside a VM on any Apple Silicon Mac already, even if there is no progress on native Linux on Apple Silicon.
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hardware? yes.
software? macos is a disaster after disaster, worse each year. currently deferring upgrade to tahoe for as long as corporate IT lets me.
I bought a 2015 iMac last year for 100 euros at a thrift store. It’s a bit slow but works fine for YouTube etc. And the computer itself basically looks good as new - the screen is really beautiful.
Thinking I’ll try and install Linux on it at some point.
Fruit Construction Inc. makes great houses. Wish you could own them, but really great houses.
As a data point: Chromebooks get 10 years of updates.