Why would I complain to a the developer of a 10+ year old game they see no revenue from that they should completely rewrite it because Apple is penny-pinching, againg?
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Apple to Phase Out Rosetta 2 Starting With macOS 28 as Intel Era Ends
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They are not losing a function they were sold with, if you need Rosetta you can continue to run Sequoia for another 2-3 years or so fully supported. And then you can choose to upgrade or not, if you need to keep it.
That's the conclusion I came to in post #146 (last page).
What happens to the new 2027 MacBooks shipped with MacOS 27? Do they only get one year of Rosetta 2 support if they plan to upgrade to MacOS 28?
Yes, the same as any other Mac that supports macOS 28. Running macOS 27 in a virtual machine may be an option, particularly on Macs that shipped with macOS 27 or earlier. x86-64 apps will have gotten 7 years of support after Apple shipped the first Apple Silicon Macs. That’s 3 years longer than PowerPC apps were supported after Apple shipped the first Intel Macs.
I got to own the 2020 Intel i5 MacBook Air and the 2020 M1 MacBook Air back to back. Identical machines on the outside but the user experience was just night and day. I would fight that Intel Air to get even 5 hours battery life out of it and it would be gasping and wheezing the whole time. The M1 brought triple the battery life, zero fan, zero heat, and felt at least 2x as fast. By far the most dramatic computer upgrade I've ever experienced.
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If the developer isn’t making money on it, then why should Apple continue to clutter up their OS support obsolete hardware and software. I worked for a company years ago that had machine tools controlled by Windows 3.1. Guess what happened when the computers that controlled the machines coughed up massive hairballs and died. Yep, massive upgrade of hardware and software because no PC hardware available run Windows 3.1 and the machine tool vendor had already updated their software and hardware to run Windows 7. If you want a game that will never be obsoleted by a software upgrade, buy a board game like Monopoly or Risk🤣
I was just at a conference where somebody mentioned that their organization's electron microscope isn't compatible with the new OS. $3M machine now obsolete. Note the company is still in business but the old software won't work with the new OS and the new software won't work with the old machines. Same specs on the hardware though.
I think it's getting ridiculous. Are we headed for cars that will be deemed obsolete because you can't open the doors without a phone but new phones will drop support for cars without the requisite version of CarPlay? Homes that have to be torn down because they aren't compatible with some new version of HomeKit?
Meanwhile a 1960s Cadillac can still drive all over this great nation. I guess no one thought to make new roads incompatible with old cars.
Are you talking about "the new" macOS? Why would that microscope be obsolete? Their new software won't work with the old machine anyway so that's where the problem lies. They won't need to upgrade to macOS 26 either. The microscope will keep working fine with Sequoia until it brakes.
I originally scrolled past this MR article, thinking I'd never ever need Rosetta, but was grateful for Rosetta yesterday while installing the most recent (Catalina) printer driver for my laser printer found on the manufacture's support site.
Because I, the user, who paid for their hardware and exorbitant upgrade prices wants to use that game. And if they want me to do it again, they better kiss my a** instead of increasing their margins a tiny bit, that's why.
It is up to the developers to keep their apps current with the newer operating system.
As the OS evolves, some internal libraries get replaced with new ones; this process takes a few years, as Apple will maintain the old libraries available along with the new ones for a a while to give developers the opportunity to stay current.
Then when the time comes those deprecated libraries get removed from the OS.
The problem with some equipment vendors is that their primary focus is to sell equipment, and if a new version comes up, they may lose the interest to continue updating their software.
Those kind of companies are years behind with their software. Imagine! Windows 7 has been obsolete for 5.5 years, and Windows 10 will be obsolete in less than 3 months.
I've been at a new client recently, they are using a Database app written in Alpha Four (released in 1991) and wonder why their are having issues... Why haven't they migrated to something new? Because their IT for decades has been using it and don't know anything else.
Who's to blame here?
I don't know the details -- if the OS was macOS or another. The OS was already older so it's not that it still has a few more years it's that the OS is already at EOL.
Then the security requirements of the institution -- in order to comply with various laws and regulations -- don't allow keeping unsupported devices on the network.
The more general issue is that we're now creating durable goods that depend on computers/OS with much shorter support cycles. What OS are going to be supported for the life of a car (20-30 years) or a house (50+ years)?
Companies that buy 10, 20 or even 50 of the top tier Mac pro's are buying those for the raw power. They aren't going to use them for 10 years, because a) after a couple of years they're depreciated so the company will probably buy new ones for tax reasons and the performance gains. If they don't upgrade after a couple of years, they get 10 years of use with either OS version updates (seven years) or security updates (10 years). They won't complain.
Apple has for at least the last 30 years moved their own technology forward by removing things they consider to be legacy/old. Microsoft on the other hand has in general tried to support everything all the way back to 16-bit apps still working until not so long ago (don't know if they still do, maybe someone else knows?).
They are two different views on progress, and for some it's a dealbreaker, for others it's a reason to pick Mac. The fabled MacOS Snow Leopard ripped out all the legacy stuff for powerpc and was a way, WAY better operating system because of it (amongst other things).
What OS was ever supported for 20-30 or 50 years? for me it feels like support cycles have become longer. It used to be that you bought a computer, and had no idea how long it would be supported with new versions of an OS. Windows 95 had 5 years of support, but the computers we had with 95 didn't all support 98. And before the internet we didn't even have a good way of *getting* that support anyway. Now you buy a computer and get some 7 years of software updates and an additional couple of years of security updates.
So true.
I remember back when an 8 year old Mac with Mac OS 7.6 was practically unusable. You had to upgrade every few years in order to do anything modern. So a 1994 Mac was barely usable in 1998 and by 2002 was unusable. Nowadays, I can use 15+ year old Mac to do modern computing tasks. 2007 MacBook Pro's were fully supported with security updates until 2018 and usable for many years after that. Still can, just a bit slow at many things like video etc. Meanwhile, 2015 Macbook Pro's are fully usable to do everything today. Unthinkable back in the 90's or 2000's.
Apple was also releasing new models under Steve Jobs every 6 months back in the early 2000's, with very good speed gains and new features each time, for many years. Everyone thought it was great. Now everyone complains if they release a new model twice in the same year. LOL
I think three things:
1) Probably some IBM OS can still run software from the 60s or something...but specific versions of the OS or older hardware probably not supported of course
2) I think your statement that computers with Windows 95 didn't support Windows 98 is a little extreme. I recall updating computers that were several years old to Windows 2K even. The more common issue was simply that a) computers were often the bottlenecks to our work and b) computers were getting faster faster back then -- 2x every 18 months. Even without OS issues, why keep using a 3 year old laptop when a new one was like 4x faster plus lighter, etc?
3) The issue I am getting at is not that every OS needs to be supported for 50 years but rather when we make durable goods computer-controlled, the OS needs to last the life of the device. In which case maybe a consumer OS isn't an appropriate companion for things that should last 10-20+ years.
As far as windows goes XP got 18 years FWIW
I believe OS/2 is still supported for systems sold nearly 40 years ago (assuming you’re paying for the support, these days from Arca Noae instead of IBM)
Also you can still install the latest versions of some Linux distros on 40 year old 68k machines and etc arches from that era (usually through unofficial but well maintained ports, debian has an active 68k port for example), so depends on what you mean by supported
Specialized customers, mostly military and banks are the main ones, have actively supported OSes that are even older than public support, either internally maintained or through contracts with vendors just for them. Speaking of XP again I believe the DoD still has a support contract with Microsoft for example
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Yes, I remember those days and you are correct.
But, we have to Remember that all of this is a business and companies are in this to make money. If they would make an OS to last the lifetime these days, they would make the computer to only last a few years (like some use too). We want Apple to make good lasting Mac’s, so we will put up with changing OS. It is what it is.
So much this.
Real businesses who purchase computers plan on keeping them 3-5 years because that's the expected usable life for tax purposes, warranty purposes and generally the best bang for buck in terms of when to trade/decommission them for increased productivity.
Whether its 10k, 50k, or 500k computers are not things expected to be cost effective to keep for a decade.
This is not exclusive to macs, but the same for desktop/laptop PCs in enterprise, servers in on-prem environments and cloud hosting providers.
Being stingy and trying to band aid 5-10 year old machines to do real work is false economy, keeping your staff up to date with fast easy to use hardware is what prevents staff turnover (which costs you a LOT more than the cost of the machine) and helps employee productivity (which will generally pay for the machine in a short period of time).
If a new machine would have saved the end user as little as ~2 hours a week in lost time (and seriously, using some old pile of junk i could spend that much time per week swearing at it), that's typically ~5k/yr for someone billing out ~$100/hr.
At that rate, over the 5 years you kept the 10 year old machine too long that's $25k in lost productivity alone, never mind the possible downtime lost due to out of warranty coverage hardware failure.
The cost of these machines, assuming they're used for the jobs they're intended to serve is chicken-feed vs. the billable time for those using them.
If you're a hobbyist, i can see why you might think differently, but the high end pro machines are not aimed at you, they're aimed at people using them to generate revenue.
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If you're buying new machines, you're generally keeping software current.
If you're planning to buy 2027+ machines to run software from 2019, you're doing it wrong. By that point you will have had 6-7+ years to figure out your migration to native software.
If you haven't figured it out by then and are running software that hasn't been updated in over 5 years, you're never going to without outside influence and are likely putting your business at risk due to security vulnerabilities in the ancient products you're using.