Planned Obsolescence?

[PapaRaptor]

Interesting video,

Will Apple be shutting off your audio gear?

Apple's announcement that it will be actively removing the last bits of IEEE 1394 Firewire computer code in its Ventura and Sonoma operating systems has huge...

youtu.be

 

[MarkDyson]

Interesting. My home file server stays on Monterey because it's connected to a Drobo file storage device. That company went under and the management software isn't being updated so if I upgrade to a newer OS I risk losing terabytes of storage. Not really a hardship for me, the bells and whistles they've added in later OS versions really don't matter to my server operations, but it is a taste of the end of life issues talked about in that video.

 

[CaptainMoto]

When I first saw this, I thought.......... for once, It's not a windows issue.

 

[dvs]

Yes, the wonderful thing about standards is there are so many to choose from.

 

[MarkDyson]

Yes, the wonderful thing about standards is there are so many to choose from.

 

[Elwood]

Will Apple be shutting off your audio gear?​

No, but windows is moving on without me - "Windows 10 will reach end of support on October 14, 2025." More than a couple of pc based machines will go idle as windows machines will no longer be safe and secure to use (if connected to the internet) due to a lack of security updates, since MS "didn't think it through" and left millions of machines incompatible with new versions of their own operating system. I don't buy that Apple or Microsoft "didn't think it through".

I really like the sensational videos of landfills suggesting that Apple is the scourge of the environment. I think they all embrace their "current standards" at the peril of those who would rather not do so. I would also be surprised if there are not a host of adapters that will spring up if the demand actually does exist. I also wonder how much of the "vintage" gear is really, like actually, currently in use. Looking at the price range of the stuff talked about in the video I can pretty safely say I will not be impacted. It is also a safe bet that things will continue to change as time passes.

FWIW: @CaptainMoto gets my vote for video of the day (so far) with the mic comparisons done by the guy that does voice overs for "Animal" from the Muppets.

 

[MarkDyson]

I do remember the hue and cry when Apple decided to drop floppy drives. Then they decided to drop optical drives. Then everything went to Thunderbolt, and now their laptops only have USB C ports. People tend to hate change, and I’ve done my share of griping when something I’m used to gets axed.

Yet, here I still am, adapting like a Homo sapiens.

 

[PapaRaptor]

I do remember the hue and cry when Apple decided to drop floppy drives. Then they decided to drop optical drives. Then everything went to Thunderbolt, and now their laptops only have USB C ports. People tend to hate change, and I’ve done my share of griping when something I’m used to gets axed.

Yet, here I still am, adapting like a Homo sapiens.

I've been looking at getting a couple of 20 terabyte drives for my home computer. I got thinking, "What did we use for portable storage before USB flash drives?" I suddenly realized how quickly we have moved from 360k 5 1/4" floppy disks to today's flash drives that can be had with a full terabyte of storage. At least PC users never had to deal with 8 inch floppies with 80k of storage.

 

[ChrisGSP]

"What did we use for portable storage before USB flash drives?"

I was a mainframe computer operator for many years - first we had magnetic tape, then disks that had six or seven platters about 13" diameter and weighed 8 or 10 pounds. At NCR they had things called CRAM (Card Random Access Memory) that were magnetic cards. And so it goes.

But I remember standing with my best mate (RIP) in the Basser Computing Department at Sydney University in 1968 or 69, saying to one another "wouldn't it be great if they could come up with some kind of portable storage that didn't involve moving parts?" (i.e. rotating disks or moving tape). It took 40-odd years, but finally the world caught up with our late-teenage imaginations and came up with USB.

 

[PapaRaptor]

"wouldn't it be great if they could come up with some kind of portable storage that didn't involve moving parts?"

I remember having similar thoughts in the late 60's about recorded music while listening to old (early 60's) scratchy albums.

 

[Griff]

This sort of stuff drives me up the wall...

I had 2 perfectly good ipads (the original versions) and after a while the operating system wouldn't update anymore... no problem, until I couldn't install the apps I needed because the OS was out of date...

Which was also fine until the existing apps stopped running, complaining that they were out of date and wouldn't run anymore until updated!

Literally turned $1000 worth of hardware into desktop paperweights.

My primary live rig runs off old Presonus StudioLive mixers (I have 2 16 channel with faders, and one RM32 without faders) and I have an old 2012 Macbook Pro that still has firewire. I don't let it connect to the internet, and Lord only knows how many generations behind it is on the OS, but it works, and it runs those mixers just fine gig after gig (it's worked for thousands of shows in the past 11 years.)

If any one piece of that system goes down (it'll likely be the computer), all of it becomes recycle-bin fodder and it's, again, thousands of dollars to replace it.

I have an old Windows 8.1 computer that runs the AAP webinars, and nothing else, that's all it does. It has Chrome on it so it can login to the webinarjam platform and run the webinars for the live sessions.

At some point webinarjam will need a new version of chrome in order to keep running, and I'll have to update to windows 10, and I guarantee something will fail in the process and it'll never work as well ever again (this is my experience.)

I currently have 2 newer ipads that haven't had an OS update in like, 7 versions, but they still do what I bought them to do, just nothing more. My ipad pro is still trucking, but at some point it'll need to be replaced too because it's the newest thing I have.

My video and audio computers are still on Windows 10, and I run tinywall so they don't update, ever, unless I say so. Recently I had to let them update because Studio One required it, now my Video machine crashes randomly and my audio machine takes 20 minutes to boot up.

I understand that technology marches on, but I'm on 3rd generation i7 machines and they still work just fine. The pace that hardware improves is light years faster than software development, which hasn't really improved in my lifetime, just gotten more prolific.

OK, rant over

 

[PapaRaptor]

Between laptops and desktop machines, I probably have over a dozen, either still running or in mothballs in my utiliity shed (waiting for 32 bit computing to return). I should probably get rid of a few, but then I think of all the mice I would make homeless.

 

[dvs]

...At some point webinarjam will need a new version of chrome in order to keep running, and I'll have to update to windows 10, and I guarantee something will fail in the process and it'll never work as well ever again (this is my experience.)
...

Support for Windows 10 ends on October 14, 2025. Soon you won't be able to update that machine to Windows 10 anymore. (I can't resist saying it, can I?) --> This one goes to 11.

 

[PapaRaptor]

Support for Windows 10 ends on October 14, 2025. Soon you won't be able to update that machine to Windows 10 anymore. (I can't resist saying it, can I?) --> This one goes to 11.

If you have the installation media you will probably be able to install 10. It just won't be supported. A couple months ago I was tinkering with an old (Pentium 4) machine. Just for grins, I installed a copy of Windows XP. It came up without a hitch. It was Dell OEM media and it went on a Dell machine, but it came up as "registered" without ever having a network connection.

You can install Windows 11 on a Windows 10 machine. Microsoft doesn't recommend it or even support it, but they do acknowledge that it exists as a means for companies or individuals to do testing on non-mission critical machines.

How to install Windows 11 on unsupported hardware - Pureinfotech

To install Windows 11 on unsupported hardware, use the Registry workaround with a USB or ISO file or use the Microsoft workaround.

pureinfotech.com

 

[CaptainMoto]

Devil Machines......all of them!

 

[sdbrit68]

is this because Europe is making them go to USB-c with their demand everything be universal ?

 

[PapaRaptor]

is this because Europe is making them go to USB-c with their demand everything be universal ?

I don't think so. More of a case of Apple being cast as one of the evil empires of the world. The video mentions there is just a few lines of code which were omitted from the CORE audio system. Clearly from the way the video is presented it is intended to make it look like Apple inflicted it upon the world just because they could. There may be quite a number of legitimate reasons why the code was removed. Who knows what those few lines of code could do to kernel stability when left to operate in parallel with newer, faster standards?

I find it ironic that there is so much analog audio hardware in studios that has been in use since before the presence of DAW software, which still remains in use and in some cases still being manufactured. They remain so for two simple reasons:
1. They don't pass audio or any processing data to or from a computer. There are studios all over the world still using analog mixing boards that were custom built twenty to fifty years ago. They don't become digital until very late in the production process.
2. The companies that produced the older equipment (at least those still around) usually will consult with the owners for application design as well as maintenance and repair of the gear. That is what they do. Their entire market is based around professional studios.

Yet, we now have at least two generations of equipment designed to simplify and speed up workflow in the production of audio recording which are doomed to the dumpster of obsolescence. It seems the smaller companies that cater specifically to the music industry can support their equipment, but platforms such as Apple and Microsoft's operating systems don't see that market as a large enough niche to receive special attention.

 

[MarkDyson]

I think Apple views themself as a "force" for moving tech forward. I mentioned the abandonment of floppy and optical drives; their response to the pushback was, basically, "we decided it was time." And they not only got away with it, other brands eventually followed suit. Never mind the waste.

 

[PapaRaptor]

I think Apple views themself as a "force" for moving tech forward. I mentioned the abandonment of floppy and optical drives; their response to the pushback was, basically, "we decided it was time." And they not only got away with it, other brands eventually followed suit. Never mind the waste.

In a lot of respects they are! They are the 4th largest shipper of PCs. Over the last couple of years, they have significantly increased their market share. Outside of their closed ecosystem there really isn't anyone else with the combined clout of hardware and software operating system integration, which puts them in a unique position in the entire computing industry.

In both cases you mentioned, usage of floppy media and optical media was well down the curve of decline when they chose to stop offering it. It's also a different animal. If you have a need, you can get USB based versions of both devices and still use them.

Apple certainly wasn't the only ones. My company used to manufacture a MS-DOS based voice mail system. The things were bulletproof and we built and sold hundreds of them until we encountered three fatal roadblocks.
1. Microsoft refused to sell licenses for MS-DOS. It was a simple licensing sticker that cost us $20 a copy. It was a sunset product from MS. The product was stable and came with no support from MS. For the last three years we were able to get them, they didn't even serialize the stickers.
During the last year of our production, I was scouring small computer shops who had OEM licenses and was buying their old-stock licenses.

2. Starting with Pentium 3 based motherboards, BIOS was optimized for Windows 95 and memory management was changed. Our product required the use of EMM386.sys and Himem.sys to "convince" MS-DOS to provide more than 640k of contiguous memory. Most BIOS companies elected to take the first 1k of memory above 640k and dedicate it in BIOS to a permanent mouse driver. Our software relied on the expanded and extended memory sections to provide 720k of memory to run.

3. Our telephone interfaces were built on ISA interface slots, which were the original expansion slots for PCs. They were slowly phased out in favor of PCI slots. It became very difficult to find motherboards with ISA slots. The board manufacturer moved to PCI based interfaces, but at the time, the boards were nearly 5 times the cost of the older ISA boards, which made the machines prohibitively expensive.

 

[sdbrit68]

wouldnt some things become obselete just because bigger and better ?

I mean, I have cool animation software that a top of the line I7 processor struggles on, even with m2 and 64gb of ram..............I am looking at I9 and Ryzen 9 now, so isn't there outside factors that force things to become obselete as they improve ?

I mean, as AI is filtering down to the personal home use, God knows what has to happen with hard drives and processors now