With every OS update I loose a few favorite programs. Games, music software, utilities. If the company does not keep up their developer subscriptions and do frequent updates to their software, it is going to get the “Developer needs to update” flag, stop running on your iPad or iPhone, and eventually be removed from the store. I used to wonder why Apple was not more like Microsoft when it comes to supporting older software revisions. Then, while watching a video on how the screens of new MacBook Pro’s can only be replaced by Apple, it hit me. Apple does not make any money on 5 year old programs that you continue to use. They get a BIG cut on sales of software on their app store. The more old software that they break, the more new software the customer base has to buy. Code to keep you from replacing damaged screens. Code to keep you from upgrading memory. Code to prevent you from using unauthorized cables. Code to break old software so you have to buy new. What used to be a great, green company has given into corporate greed in the biggest way.
They just prioritize security, efficiency, and portability over backwards compatibility. It’s not a conspiracy, but if it isn’t to your taste, use something else. As frustrating as it is to lose the use of software a developer has abandoned, people would be even more angry if the hardware and OS weren’t being updated.
They break old software because as the platform evolves and things that weren’t considered an issue before became an issue. It’s usually stuff around privacy, access to APIs that can be used for tracking the devices (which ad platforms abuse when they find them), breaking APIs will break apps and if the apps don’t update while Apple is trying to remove such APIs then the apps become incompatible.
There’s no conspiracy behind this, it’s a different mode of deprecation, Microsoft has insane backwards compatibility which riddles their OS with bugs to support all these possible edge cases from software that was developed for Win98, there’s even code in Windows to support edge cases of stuff from MS-DOS.
Apple does not care about breaking backwards compatibility, they control the whole platform stack from hardware to software. That’s the gist of it, there are many, many reasons to break API compatibility, even more on such large systems.
I work with APIs used by hundreds of millions of people, through millions of apps, both development and governance, it is an absolute pain in the ass to maintain compatibility, even more when the business, and features change and people depending on your API aren’t willing to change, Apple has a leverage here: they can notify users of the APIs that it will be sunset/changed at a future specific date and let app developers deal with the fallout. If the app developer doesn’t update it will, eventually, not work anymore on their platform.
This is well put!
I prefer Apple’s walled garden because I like the feel of their hardware and the workflow of their OSes, and I don’t care about upgrades to RAM and hard disks. And the apps I use the most (Reaper and a bunch of plugins) are made by very active developers who cultivate users from many platforms, and keep things working with each software and hardware iteration. I would definitely have a Surface or something if my main use case was for 32-bit plugins and synths, or for gaming.
Apple have been like this since the dawn of time. The modus is always on the developer to keep their software up to date.
A side-effect of this is that if you want to run certain software (abandoned, or frozen in time) you have to not update your OS, and this leads to needing to keep old hardware around, since new hardware won’t run old OSes (of course).
All of this becomes complicated, in recent history, by app signing and SSL certificate expiration. It’s in the name of security, but it’s also planned obsolescence codified.
I worked as a software engineer at Microsoft, some of my co-workers were OGs.
The difference between Apple and Microsoft boils down to Apple being a consumer company and Microsoft being an Enterprise company.
Microsoft expends enormous effort for backward compatibility. A project that would have taken me a few weeks anywhere else took months at Microsoft because we needed to develop and test for strange combinations of ancient products.
I’ve never worked for Apple, but I’m reasonably sure no one is twirling their mustache while breaking backward compatibility. More likely they are building new features and updating old APIs with the knowledge that most customers will just accept that. A fine line, perhaps, but the line between malice and indifference.
The downside to Microsoft’s strategy is that under the hood things get really gnarly really fast. I would strongly prefer never to build anything for a Microsoft product, ever, but I am at this moment on my way to a kick off meeting for a project where Windows figures prominently.
Sounds like either lazy developers or abandon-ware. It’s annoying when it happens, but being a software engineer myself, keeping legacy software up to date can be a full time job in itself, which could be rendered moot by the project being free or I’m too busy with other current paid jobs or you know… life.
Many devs open source their old apps in the hope a Dev somewhere in the future might update and build upon it. Conversely many companies do Not open source their soft/firm ware and whole ranges of synthesizers are left to wither away despite their popularity or obscurity.
It’s the software cycle/circle of life
Use your tools while you can, finish your songs
Life is short and these will be the only few bits and bytes to outlive us…
…sure they’ll never miss out on further little profit options allover their own innerecosystem…
especially when it comes ios…on mac os, it’s not happening so much and most programs continue to run smooth for years and over quite a few main os updates…
but all appstorebusiness is strictly progressing constantly…
and a vast majority of apps are created by one man developers that can’t catch up every time, when ios is taking a next bigger step…there’s no bad will behind it…just rapid evolution in all this information age and consumerism…
i tend to run my computers and devices with the os version they had installed when i bought them…in fact, only exception is my latest mbp m1…i recently updated to ventura…but that will be the last mainupdate it will see…my actual iphone is almost four years old by now…still fine with it’s, by now already totally outdated ios 13 or 14…my last ipad got stolen…my first ipad is from 2013…same there…never saw an ios update…still worx fine all those first gen music apps from back in those days, won’t see any new ones ever…
It’s security. Which is more or less the point of the walled garden. Developers know this - why are they abandoning their software?
always has been
It’s called programmed obsolency, and its the basis of their business plan
I really wouldn’t say it’s the basis of their business, at least Apple hardware is quite well supported for a long time compared to their competitors/peers. Old iPhones get updates almost 7 years in the future (iOS 16 still runs on an iPhone 8, for example), very few Android phones have that support from the manufacturer (I’d even guess that no Android phone has ever been supported for that long).
My girlfriend uses a MacBook Air from 2014 daily, no hiccups even though it won’t be supported much longer. Still, it’s a 9 years old hardware that still works pretty fine.
So much complaining about corporate greed, so few votes for the communist party…
It’s not any definition of “planned obsolescence” if a computing device can’t run new software forever, or if developers don’t have the resources to update to newer coding convention and hardware support.
At this point I’m less concerned about backwards compatibility on new Windows over that new bells and whistles are dogshit.
Hotfixes and security changes I’m fine with on Apple and MS platforms (used to work in COSD for MSFT)
Actual communists* don’t run for office at any reasonable scale. They’re generally busy working within their communities over being co-opted by money and power.
*True Scotsmen, too.
Cos nobody votes for them…
Quick shoutout to the greatest operating system in the world:
It’s a chicken-egg scenario, there’s absolutely political organizing but radical and government/systems don’t really go hand-in-hand. Bureaucracy exists to perpetuate systems and the status quo, so the closest you’ll get to radical in electoral politics is reactionary populists which… are not what people are asking for.
You’ve taken my joke very seriously.
To be fair, Steven Jobs could be considered the Joseph Stalin of tech executives. (Jeff Bezos is Stalin’s fantasy self)
Arguably, Communism achieved incredible results in the USSR and China: they took backwards agrarian nations and dragged them kicking, screaming and bleeding into the industrial world and somewhat beyond.
IDK if 19th century political constructs have much meaning in 2023. It can be fun to throw them around and start fights, but their explanatory power is limited.
“Jokes are like food - not everyone gets it”
Cos they haven’t got any money left to run a campaign after spending it on wooly jumpers and rollies.
destroying jokes is my thing