MacBook Air owner?
2018/2019 models are losing #Apple support.
#OptGreen with #GNU/#Linux to keep your device in use! These machines will run beautifully for many years to come.
Not only wallet friendly, #upcycling keeps CO2 emissions out of the atmosphere. Ca. 75% of Apple’s emissions comes from production alone (details in alt text).
Sustainable, independent #FreeSoftware: Better for users, best for the #environment.
5 year old computers are end of life? What is wrong with apple. I’m glad I only bought one iphone and moved back to android afterwards
@GravitySpoiled They may provide security updates for a couple of more years, but as the article points out, Intel Macs in the Apple Silicon era are on their way out.
Not that big of an issue. Although Intel-based Macs won’t get software updates, they will be fine for many more years. My 2013 iMac is still going strong on its last os update back in 2019.
@mick @GravitySpoiled Although you can always of course use the excellent Opencore Legacy Patcher to (unofficially) run the latest version of macOS on Macs going back to 2007. That will run great on your machine.
I may be completely wrong but don’t Samsung, Google etc. stop supporting OS updates on Android phones after 5-6 years? Apple have supported devices for 6-8 years AFAIK.
Yeah this same conversation happens every time one of these headlines comes up and gets misinterpreted. The conclusion is usually that apple has longer than average hardware support across the board
“Not as shit as you could be” is not something we should be praising. A handful of years is still too short, just because it is marginally better than their competitors doesn’t mean we should give Apple a pass. It just means that the industry is full of shitty companies that profit off of producing e-waste, and know that consumers have no real choice but to put up with it.
It’s worthless when you can’t upgrade a damn thing, it’s frankly unacceptable to produce a laptop with soldered RAM and a soldered SSD (with no expansion options)
Apple claims it’s for speed and performance, which is technically true, but you’re not going to notice that 10% difference between a good quality NVMe and some speedy DDR5 RAM
But you will notice when you try to save some money on base RAM and base storage and then realize, you can’t upgrade shit a year or 2 later and your only option is to drop another couple grand for a whole new device
Fuck Apple.
On the other hand, I can put an open OS on my Android and get security updates long after the manufacturer has abandoned it. Can’t do that with an iPhone. (But honestly, few Android devices make it easy, and none that I know of allow every little part of the system to be supported this way.)
It’s about time we started legally requiring manufacturers to unlock our hardware when support ends, and release the driver specs ahead of time, so the open software community can take over support. The unending accumulation of e-waste due to nothing more than abandoned software is unforgivable.
This goes hand-in-hand with the right to repair.
You can format the Mac and put Linux on it and get updates forever as well.
Edit: or you could when it was x86… not sure where Mx stand on that.
@mox @manualoverride while I absolutely agree with your position, also keep in mind that this has security implications.
Beside the fact that most vendors dont even use all the patches available from AOSP, no custom ROM project can backport all patches. Sooner or later this means there are devices that cant be securely used anymore, unless someone does the effort.
a vendor concept with a subscription could solve this I guess or enough support for an open project e.g. @GrapheneOS
The pine64 products all look quite nice. I was thinking of getting one of those phones (Linux based) next time mine dies. I can confirm the pinecil is the best soldering iron I’ve used and it’s only $26. The laptop they sell also has decent stats
The phone is still not very usable. It’s possible to use it as a daily driver but only if you have a high pain tolerance.
sigh I miss my N900.
Did you own one? I’ve yet to meet someone that has so any other insight would be appreciated.
High pain tolerance like using Linux as a daily back in ‘06?
Yeah, I have one. It’s slow and unstable, no good browser, no good Signal client and an almost unusable camera and GPS.
All these things kind of sorta work. But not in any satisfying capacity.
It’s especially baffling to me that it seems to be impossible to make a modern smartphone with even a small fraction of the power of a PC. It must be hardware or driver issue because devices like the Steam Deck or Raspberry Pi show that the software is perfectly capable of delivering a good experience. And Android phones show that Linux on a smartphone works in principle. There just seems to be a gap between them and mainline Linux. Probably Google bribing chip manufacturers to keep competition down. Can’t think of much else.
I was looking into linux phones myself but I always hear others say how the ones on the market aren’t developed enough and have lots of bugs :(
Depending on the specific model, an Intel Mac running Linux is a very sustainable and repairable choice for a computer.
In my experience repairing all kinds of equipment, it doesn’t matter how long it’s officially supported or if the company made a bunch of boards to sell as parts, but instead how many are available on the second hand market!
This is misleading. The models mentioned won’t get the latest MacOS update, true, but they will be supported. My older 2016 MBP is stuck on BigSur or something, but gets security updates regularly and doesn’t have any incompatibilities so far. I could probably force update it if I wanted to. Apple is known for supporting their devices for longer than other manufacturers.
Apple devices have enough legit reasons for criticism, no need to make up new ones.
Sorry, my old Toshiba was on it’s last legs, it’s from like 2010. Good news is I’m hoping the Framework I just got will be the last and now I’ll just upgrade, because I can, for as long as 64gb of DDR5 will get me (only 32gb rn, but once ddr6 comes out and ddr5 gets cheaper it’ll be go time and extend the life until I need to upgrade the mainboard and by that time it’ll be ddr7/8/9!)
I’m thinking sodimms will be retired by the time ddr6 comes out, and replaced by the camm2 standard everyone is talking about.
