Apple Planned Obsolescence

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by Bill, Dec 16, 2014.

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  1. Burt

    Burt Forum Resident

    Location:
    Kirkwood, MO

    Yes, it does. But I know of no corporate users on XP any more, they're all on 7 now (although a few went all the way to the end). Many individuals are still on XP, although nine times out of ten it's on a machine that could run 7 adequately. 7 is still the corporate standard and Dell and most other vendors still offer 7 on brand new business class machines. Most businesses will be skipping 8 and going to 10 (as you may know, there is no 9. The reason is not confusion with Mac OS 9 or OS/9 ((a Unixlike system sold for embedded use now, once available on the Tandy Color Computer)), nor Asian numerology: it's because version checking software often looks for the first digit and would read 9 as "95" or "98".)

    Microsoft could offer a much less expensive license for 7 and most users of XP would upgrade, generating revenue Microsoft wouldn't be making otherwise, bringing good will to all and improving security and removing Internet problems with old IE versions.
     
  2. scompton

    scompton Forum Resident

    Location:
    Arlington, VA
    My company has a few more XP machines. I believe the target is to finish upgrading by the end of the year.
     
  3. jon9091

    jon9091 Master Of Reality

    Location:
    Midwest
    What makes you think I assume that? I work in a Post a Production studio doing video editing and gfx all day. All Macs.
     
  4. uofmtiger

    uofmtiger Forum Resident

    Location:
    Memphis, TN
    We have several XPs at work. We have a workaround to use them without giving them Internet access. It is a major pain, but we have software that runs only on XP.

    If you read the many articles on the subject before they stopped supporting XP, I would guess there are still a whole lot of businesses in the same boat.
     
  5. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    And you were using 4GB of RAM in 1994? I think if you added up all the RAM we had at Complete Post in Hollywood in 1994, it wouldn't be even close to 4GB. (And that included the RAM inside the heads of people running the machines.)

    I figured Microsoft skipped 9 because they're really screwed-up.

    On the other hand: Apple is no better. They go from 10.9.5 to... 10.10. Which of course, makes no bloody sense, because it's the same as 10.1. For some reason, they seemed bound and determined not to go OSX 11 and just call it that.
     
  6. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Not so. I bought a Seagate Barracuda 2GB hard drive in July 1994 for $2000. It's possible an extremely fast drive would go for more money, but not that much more. (I also bought my first CD-R drive at the same time, a Pioneer 103, and I believe that also cost $2000. Back at a time when a blank CD-R disk was $12. Fun times.)

    Drive price reference here:

    http://www.jcmit.com/diskprice.htm
     
  7. namretsam

    namretsam Senior Member

    Location:
    Santa Rosa , CA
    Yep . My first powerbook in '97 was a 1400cs and it was maxed out to 64mb of RAM. Still works and still connects to the internet.
     
  8. paulisme

    paulisme I’m being sarcastic

    Location:
    Charleston SC
    10.10 isn't the same as 10.1 when you're talking version numbers. The dot is just a separator, not to be confused with a decimal point.
     
    RolandG likes this.
  9. jon9091

    jon9091 Master Of Reality

    Location:
    Midwest
    What does any of this have to do with the assertion that Mac users were doing lesser work? You just pulled that out of thin air.
     
  10. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Jon, you started this by saying the following:
    I answered, "I would be amazed if you had 4GB of RAM in a computer from 1994 [20 years ago]" and followed it up with real numbers. Am I confused?

    Burt echoed my sentiments when he said:

    It always helps if you're very specific in these arguments. My apologies if you believe you're sticking up for the Mac side. Me, I don't give an F what operating system I'm using as long as the thing works. Both Macs and Windows are annoying, irritating, unreliable machines that can make you crazy. I see Mac OS as getting worse and Windows as getting slightly better, but they're both ornery, nasty systems. But as of late 2014, Mac OS is less horrible than Windows, by a slim margin. For me. Price no object, no question, I'd be using a combination of Linux for day-to-day video work and Mac for editing, operations and various tools.
     
  11. jon9091

    jon9091 Master Of Reality

    Location:
    Midwest

    And way back in the thread I said I misspoke....4MB of ram. That still has nothing to do with Mac users, or PC users.
     
  12. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Ah. That gets back to my point of being specific. Huge difference between 4MB and 4GB. Or 4TB. Wars have been started over less.
     
  13. quicksrt

    quicksrt Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    The economy sucks bad! I am getting more work offers than I was getting, but rates are depressing.

    I have four PCs with four monitors all lined up across a desk with rack machine doing an important task. The fifth computer is a Mac and it is connected to DVI switches so it can go dual monitors for editing using those same monitors as the PCs use.

    As I have mentioned in more than one thread, I am ripping a zillion CDs to flac files and do indeed use four computers at the same time often. But I prefer three going at once.

    I have scanning going on (at the same time as ripping) for covers that do not appear Online.

    I also rip my DVDs to take them with me on long work trips.

    Tons of storage space on ATA IDE drives, burner/ripper drives in IDE format as well as SCSI.

    When this ripping thing is over with then I can think about consolidating the various PCs and their parts into two units, and buying a newer one. For now I am busy burning out the existing drives ripping in secure mode all through the night.

    Money is tight and I don't see a silver lining yet.
     
  14. Burt

    Burt Forum Resident

    Location:
    Kirkwood, MO

    Because X11 generally refers to X Window System version 11, no relation to Microsoft Windows nor Mac OS X. Although X Windows support was built in to Mac OS X for a long time. After Snow Leopard you have to download and install a third party version.

    X Windows is the GUI and graphical networking system used on Unix and VMS machines so that one system can have a GUI "hooked to" its own back end or that of any other machine on the local or wide area network. The part that runs on the machine you sit in front of is the X Server. The other machine, across the world or just the room, is the X Client. When you use the GUI on a Linux machine, a Sparcstation, or whatever the machine has its own server and client. There were X Servers for Mac Classic and MS-DOS machines so you could run a remote machine from a PC or a 68K Mac as though you were in front of the Unix (VMS, Genera, et al) machine. There were also X Terminals, a box with a screen, keyboard and mouse that were like a serial dumb terminal or a Teletype machine, but graphical rather than text based.

    X11 was the last, all singing and dancing, canonical, inerrant final version of the X Window System. Just like System V Release 4 Unix.

    In other words, rampant Unixery no regular person should try to figure out....

    "The X Window System (X11, X, and sometimes informally X-Windows) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on UNIX-like computer operating systems."

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System
     
  15. Burt

    Burt Forum Resident

    Location:
    Kirkwood, MO
    There are businesses using isolated airgapped systems of every imaginable type for various specific software compatibility issues, and other equipment with old Microsoft OSes embedded in it, also airgapped or connected through a specific tight firewall. We have a customer with Win 3.11 on a pick and place machine and I know of NT4 and Win 2000 systems: I myself have a 286 PC with DR DOS on it (reminds me, I have to fire it up every few months....) in case I ever want to flash a Motorola two way radio again. One local business that closed up shop a couple of months ago had a Multiuser CP/M machine for its bookkeping they maintained since the mid-80s.

    But these are not used for general purpose use by most employees in most cases. For one thing, if the company is sizable, they probably have liability insurance policies covering them against data breaches and cracking, and those policies specify "best practices": having an XP system on the public Internet would be noncompliant. Momsicle and popsicle companies might not care that much, but they will be the first to cry if they get attacked.

    It might be possible to run XP in a virtual box without security problems, depending on the setup.
     
  16. skriefal

    skriefal Senior Member

    Location:
    SLC, Utah
    I figure that they skipped '9' for marketing reasons. '10' is a bigger number than '9', so it'll sell better... and so forth. And given the hatred that many seem to have for 8 and 8.1, increasing the version number of the next release may "distance" it further from 8/8.1 in some consumers' minds.
     
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  17. Burt

    Burt Forum Resident

    Location:
    Kirkwood, MO
    No, It's because old software might think it was on Win 95 or Win 98 and refuse to install or load the wrong files or flags.

    http://gizmodo.com/windows-10-may-have-gotten-its-name-because-of-lazy-cod-1641383218
     
  18. samurai

    samurai Step right up! See the glory, of the royal scam.

    Location:
    MINNESOTA
    I would call it incidental obsolescence. The software improves to the point that
    the older hardware can't handle it. This has happened to several Apples I've owned.
    Even though the computers are functional, updated software can't be installed.
    I don't think it's planned exactly. It just happens.
    I think this is just the way it is in digital land.

    Planned obsolescence is slightly different, the computer would just stop working
    in a given time frame. Same result though.
     
    jon9091 likes this.
  19. skriefal

    skriefal Senior Member

    Location:
    SLC, Utah
    I realize that's the claim. The problem is with my inability to believe the claim. :)
     
  20. quicksrt

    quicksrt Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    You dont think it's about money from new sales of hardware and software? Just the way it goes huh......

    I think it's all about money.
     
  21. samurai

    samurai Step right up! See the glory, of the royal scam.

    Location:
    MINNESOTA
    Of course it's all about the money but you can't deny that technology IS changing.
    These guys aren't doing this to fill some idle moments.
    The distinction I drew was pretty fine but as I said the end
    result is the same, a computer you can't use. I own several.

    Do you propose that they are able to produce a computer that could or should
    handle all conceivable future software and they're simply not doing it?
     
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  22. Burt

    Burt Forum Resident

    Location:
    Kirkwood, MO

    Software manufacturers prefer to support as few different hardware architectures and OS environments as possible because the work involved multiplies logarithmically but the revenue improves incrementally, plus, each rev of the software is expected to do more stuff. It isn't expected to be smaller, cleaner or more efficient.

    So, often some piece of software will break with the new rev OS and it isn't worth revising in management's opinion even though the old machine has enough RAM and computational power.

    Adobe doesn't care if you buy a new Mac, or PC, or more RAM or a nicer video card, except insofar as you can then buy their new version of whatever Adobe product it is you buy. Adobe doesn't get money from Apple or Dell or Intel. But they don't want to have to support three processor architectures, seven OS revisions and a cornucopia of hardware that doesn't have a standard interface to the OS.
     
  23. quicksrt

    quicksrt Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    No, I think that they should produce a computer that handles some of the old software and some hardware of the past, or all of it. That is what is lacking, the comparability with prior programs and gear, and this is where the money comes in - spent on not just a new computer, not by a long shot. They could always give you that virtual machine for your old gear. They make it very hard.

    I see nothing wrong with buying a new faster computer. It's the other things that run the tab up.
     
  24. quicksrt

    quicksrt Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    It's fine it really is. We've reached a point where one can do amazing things on 5 or 8 year old computers.

    Beef up your ram and grab a 3Tb drive or two and produce your own Hollywood indie feature or documentary if you are so inclined. Cameras and sound are advanced now that you only need talent and vision (often in short supply), and you too can be an Oscar consideration. Vimeo and YouTube are both waiting for you, and to distribute your blockbuster production.

    I really love the "Final Cut Studio" running on my old Mac. 16gs of memory upgrade did make a difference. Thank you Apple for that all in one film makers dream suite! I love it.
     
  25. Burt

    Burt Forum Resident

    Location:
    Kirkwood, MO

    There are tons of emulators and VMs out there and have been for years.

    Usually emulation demands a much faster machine, so that you need to go back TWO major eras in computing power to give acceptable results. When we had 68040 Macs, there was a DOS emulator we had that satisfactorily emulated an 8086 PC, but could never have run even Windows 3.1 very well. Apple sold a hardware Apple II emulator on a card for the LC III machine with the 68040 rather than emulate it in software though.

    Now there are virtual Apple II VMs that run as browser code! A web site that is an Apple II. You can save the .html file and run it in Firefox (or whatever).

    People are running-since a naughty elf put the binaries on some torrent site-the Symbolics Open Genera Virtual Lisp Machine in a DEC Alpha emulator on top of a x86-64 PC or Mac running Linux. It runs about as fast as the original Ivory CPU Symbolics box.



    http://minbar.org/

    https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/38392/230.pdf?sequence=4

    https://medium.com/message/networks-without-networks-7644933a3100

    No links to illegal or questionable code here.
     
    Last edited: Dec 19, 2014
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