
Apple Products and Planned Obsolescence - mef
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/duby52/people_with_expired_nondisclosureagreements_whats/f74husn/
======
coldtea
A decision not to release a feature (AirDrop) on older machines, is taken as
an example of Planned Obsolescence.

Sorry, that's not what planned obsolescence means.

The machine wasn't made to be less capable over time for what it was
originally sold for. Features (software or hardware) weren't decided to
suddenly break.

It would just not get some _new_ features in future OS even if it could (which
is debatable). It might could (according to the dev) but give a subpar
experience, or eat into the battery, etc. One can say "that should be for the
user to decide" but that's not how Apple works, nor has ever been part of
their value proposition. Their value proposition is "we think of most of those
things for you". In the end, even if the older machines could support the
feature just fine, not releasing it for them is standard practice to entice
people to a new model, and has nothing to do with "planned obsolescence".

If anything Apple has a great track record on both:

1) Getting new iOS releases to older machines. Most Android vendors were
horrible at that, abandoning machines even at the first release after being
sold.

2) Having machines (including iPhones) keep their resale value high. That's
the opposite of planned obsolescence.

~~~
microtherion
> A decision not to release a feature (AirDrop) on older machines, is taken as
> an example of Planned Obsolescence.

And of course, if Apple DOES release a feature for an older machine for which
it's borderline performant, it gets accused of… planned obsolescence.

Can't win with some people.

~~~
kirb
Yep, the prerequisite for AirDrop, Handoff, SMS/voice call relay to your
iPhone, etc. was a Bluetooth 4.0-capable wireless chipset. You could actually
purchase an upgraded wireless module from 3rd-party sellers on
Aliexpress/Amazon/eBay for <$100 and install it in an older MacBook with a
Philips screwdriver. Apple made no money in that transaction, and you got to
have one of the “killer features” of the latest Macs for a great price.

A better argument for planned obsolescence might be that Apple discontinued
this modular design in the current MacBooks and integrated the wireless
chipset onto the main logic board, making such an upgrade impossible in future
if a new feature has a dependency on more recent wireless hardware.

------
DavideNL
Apple decided Sidecar (an iPad as second screen) isn't available on my Macbook
Pro 2015 in macOS Catalina;

Luckily i found
[http://dev.zeppel.eu/luca/SidecarCorePatch](http://dev.zeppel.eu/luca/SidecarCorePatch)
which patches the SidecarCore framework and now it runs just fine.

~~~
trollied
The CPU in your machine probably doesn’t support native video encoding
extensions, thus taking a massive performance hit encoding the video stream
for Sidecar. I believe that’s why Apple did this.

Happy to be corrected on this, by the way.

~~~
threeseed
No you're 100% right.

Only the 2016+ generation of Macs support hardware accelerated HEVC
encoding/decoding.

My guess is that OP's computer would struggle to use Sidecar with an app like
Photoshop (a primary use case for this feature).

~~~
js2
Ah, I wonder if this is why Google Hangouts is so awful on my 2015 MBP.

~~~
woah
Google Hangouts is awful on most devices, while webrtc demo apps work fine

------
rmellow
For this and other reasons I switched to a KDE distro and saved >$1000 on
hardware.

Yes it's not as pretty and takes some getting used to. But there was no
tangible benefit to paying extra to be in the Apple ecosystem. I can code just
the same as before. Perhaps what I miss a little is the trackpad. Those are
_nice_.

~~~
jammygit
I miss my old MacBook keyboard and trackpad. My xps runs Linux great though

~~~
rmellow
Also on an XPS :)

The trackpad yes, but considering _modern_ MacBook keyboards, I think I'm
better off with the XPS.

When I'm on my work MacBook I completely ignore the Touchbar as much as I can.
It looks cool, but functionally it's just a gimmick. I want to keep my eyes on
the screen as I'm typing, not the keyboard.

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akersten
This poster is braver than me. They're almost certainly identifiable based on
the projects they worked on, and they admit to insubordination at best and
industrial sabotage/CFAA violations at worst. Not that I agree with that
interpretation, but if it were me I wouldn't have mentioned the bit about
sharing a hack on Mediafire.

~~~
Apocryphon
Apple’s star has not been in the best position as of late, at least among the
hacker community. If he was to experience retaliation, here’s hoping that the
community here, on Reddit, and elsewhere will rally around him for exposing
their practices. At the very least he will likely have no problem securing
crowdsourced funding for the legal fees.

------
threeseed
In case people missed this:

"The rumor, and I mean rumor, was that there may have been 2008 Mac Pro's sold
with a different Airport card than most had"

Which if true meant that Apple could have been subject to class action if they
stated that the feature was available for 2008 models.

~~~
FireBeyond
He also says later:

> _But I never seen it_, and there's no reason why OS X couldn't just say
> upgrade the airport card. So instead they blocked the entire line rather
> than this supposed older Airport card _that none of us were even familiar
> with_.

i.e. I believe he was basically implying that it was a bullshit reason that
would pass plausible deniability tests.

