As a Mac user at work I just close the lid and put the laptop in my back. Windows users shut down and power up again the next day.

Whenever I bring this topic up IRL people inundate me with stories about how much issues arise if they just sleep their computers.

Apple literally rolled out the feature 13 months ago with 24 months free use with the purchase of a compatible device.

How can you claim any statistics on the topic?

But yeah, I think the real interesting thing is what’s going to happen with the LEO constellations, but I also get why Apple isn’t keen on relying on a Musk-driven enterprise.

All other LEO-constellations are probably a decade away from having enough coverage.

I think Apple wants to get in the game now, and they have the money to spend on differentiating themselves.

And for those who have stumbled into a situation where they needed it and been rescued it’s great, but on the other hand the majority of the planet is not served as of now.

I didn’t mean the customers, but sure.

Apple has shown that the market could be willing to adapt.

But then again, they’ve always had more leverage than the Wintel-crowd.

But what people seem to ignore is that there is another option as well: hardware emulation.

IIRC correctly old AMD CPU’s, notably the K6, was actually a RISC core with a translation layer turning X86 instructions into the necessary chain of RISC instructions.

That could also be a potential approach to swapping outright. If 80% of your code runs natively and then 20% passes this hardware layer where the energy loss is bigger than the performance loss you might have a compelling product.

A 1% recommendation 👌

I’m saying that anyone singling out Apple for planned obsolescence and disregarding the rest of the market is playing into someone’s playbook.

I’m also fully aware of the so-called batterygate (oh, how I loathe how people add a “gate”-suffix to things to make a “scandal” completely clueless to the fact that Water_gate_ was the name of a fucking hotel. Anyways…), and while we may only speculate wether or not Apple was trying to push people to buy new phones, from appearances it would seem that they were acting in the (somewhat*, I’ll get back to that later) best interest of the consumers, but just failing to communicate it in a good manner.

1. Before the story broke people discovered that replacing batteries made the devices run faster again.
2. Before Apple started power/performance-throttling devices with worn batteries plenty of older iPhones exhibited shutdown issues, especially at lower SoC. I remember being clueless as to why some devices among friends and family behaved this way. After Batterygate broke it suddenly clicked.
3. Built-in batteries can be replaced for a reasonable price either via Apple (less reasonably), or via a third-party (more reasonably). Device experience is regained (minus software bloat), and device longevity is maintained.

Now let me get back to my asterisk:

*: There are different types of battery chemistries, and while Apple thumped their own chests back in the day that their MacBook batteries took 1000 charge cycles to get to 80% of factory capacity.

Apple willingly choose to use cheaper chemistries for iPhone batteries than they could use if they wanted longevity to be higher.

So yes, in that regard you can argue planned obsolescence. The amount of money Apple charge for their phones they could definitely put better batteries in, but on the other hand there’s likely arguments for why they choose these batteries, such as capacity or other characteristics. I’m not going to claim to be an expert on battery chemistries, and will leave that to someone else.

With regards to some of your comments on longevity then and now; note that we used to use the best material to make something, regardless of its impact on people and environment. Some environmental concerns do actually reduce product longevity.

Combined with increased technological complexity and a higher rate of improvement in the digital era than in the analog era it’s been a long period where don’t think it’s too bad to replace a device after a few years time.

However, we’re now seeing so good performance from a lot of our tech products that an upgrade feels much more incremental than it used to.

I definitely think we should demand more lifetime from our products, but this needs to be through regulation and not just left to consumers.

• Software needs to be supported and updated so that the devices can be used safely
• Parts need to be available for replacement.
• Soldering components with limited lifespan to the motherboard should be illegal without providing a backup port and room for a replacement device, at least over a certain form factor. Thinking of SSD’s primarily.

Louis Rossmann also had some good points here: https://youtu.be/l27_75pDvd4

We should be able to use cloud features without being locked to the manufacturer. Especially if they go belly-up.

He mentions a Chinese car manufacturer, and Arlo cameras, but it could just as well be Norwegian EV charge box manufacturer Easee, or a cell phone manufacturer like RIM (BlackBerry) or a TV manufacturer, etc.

So many products today depend on cloud services for basic functionality, and for a lot of those devices their planned obsolescence will be the cloud service they’re connected to.

Should Apple support their products longer?

Yes, definitely.

But there’s a big difference between not supporting old devices with software updates and designing them to stop working which you allege to.

If you ask me theres way worse fish out there than Apple, and if you look at phone support Apple is the golden standard by a mile with most Android devices still not being supported for more than a year or two tops.

What we should have is a requirement to support devices for at least ten years.

Yes, I know, ten years is a long time, but we’ve gotten to a point where we should expect a device that’s been treated well to last that long.

My 2013 MBP runs just fine, so does my 2011 MBA, my dad’s Fujitsu-Siemens laptop from 2008 even still works. But only one of those is running an updated operating system. Guess which one?

Doesn’t mean that the product is designed to fail, just that Apple chose not to support them any longer.

Right. Keep pretending.

lol what? How do you think the world works? What kind of argument is that - at all? SMH

In my experience very varied. I feel students lean more towards Android, but if you develop on Mac you’re also more likely to have an iPhone, but the one place where it’s somehow been consistently Android in my team is the app developers.

While I don’t mind it at all, somehow the Android build of our app still has the most issues. Consistently over almost six years now. Which I find a bit ironic.

A friend of mine that was also a former colleague has always been an Android guy. A year ago he switched employer and the new company is iPhone only - but he can’t get the latest versions, and it’s basically just the base version too. So he’s still running with his Galaxy S21, but no e-mail or calendar sync.

I think he’d switch if he could put some of his own cash in and upgrade to the top model.

People can have the preference they want in life, but there’s no need to obnoxious about it.

“Known to scam people”, “designed to stop working”.

I am fully aware that people can say anything on the internet, but clearly you are not objective at all.

Obviously any further attempt at discussion is pointless. Enjoy your fruit-less life, may it treat you with software updates until the next flagship device is launched.

Honestly don’t know. Whenever I check back in on the few communities that I care about that didn’t find a new home on the fediverse (at least that I’ve seen) the rest of Reddit seems less engaged than before.