Agreed, lots of industries are established enough that they can do long term support like that. Perhaps the computer industry will someday, but we definitely are not there yet as an industry.You’re probably correct about the computer industry. In other fields, however, there are companies noted for supporting legacy products. For example, in audio recording there’s a German company called RME. They’re well known among audio engineers for supporting their products even decades after initial release. Indeed, it’s one of RME’s selling points: their products are built like a tank with rock solid software, and supported for decades. This reputation makes RME a go-to choice among audio engineers.While I agree Apple definitely has planned obsolescence, I think it's worth noting that all computer vendors do. Windows is not supported indefinitely either. Other operating systems are similar, Linux, BSD, VMS, even the big mainframes have EOL software dates.
The closest the computer industry has is probably IBM's S/360 mainframe line(now called Z), where software from the 1960's still runs fine. With Unix and VMS fighting over second place(Unix came first, but backwards compatibility was not guaranteed until standardization(POSIX) in the late 1980's).
Statistics: Posted by zie — Sat Aug 17, 2024 8:08 pm — Replies 71 — Views 5480