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> What other actively exploited bugs are Big Sur and Monterey now vulnerable to? Actually, Apple sometimes patches actively exploited vulnerabilities in "unsupported" older versions of both macOS and iOS. The vulnerabilities that don't get quickly patched are the ones that aren't actively exploited. In any case, security researchers talk about known vulnerabilities that have or haven't been patched, but as the author…
> "New versions of macOS are full of bugs" This is why I never liked Apple's annual upgrade schedule. Ostensibly to stay ahead of security issues, annual upgrade isn't working and is causing more issues than it is worth. Leopard to Mountain Lion were the glory days of OS X stability, with Snow Leopard, Mountain Lion, and High Sierra standing out as focusing on bug fixes rather than introducing new features (and new b…
This is a common misconception. Major OS updates always introduce more bugs than they fix. Bertrand Serlet put up a "No New Features" keynote slide for Snow Leopard, but that was highly misleading, because Snow Leopard had many big under the hood changes, and the early versions of Snow Leopard had some nasty bugs. You can go back and look at the old Mac OS X release notes to see the descriptions of the bug fixes. What was different about Snow Leopard than today is that it received a full 2 years of nothing but bug fixes. The Snow Leopard people remember fondly was 10.6.8 v1.1 not 10.6.0, which was much buggier than its predecessor 10.5.8.
The current yearly major OS update schedule is death for quality, because there's never enough time to fix the bugs. The engineers always have to turn around and start working on the next big thing, never fix the current big then. There's no solution except more time between major updates.
The other difference between now and the past is that now Apple is immediately pushing everyone to update, whereas new major Mac OS X versions used to be paid rather than free, so there was a lot more lag, you had to go to the store and purchase new discs in order to upgrade, and a lot more users were sticking with the older versions.
This article talks about regular bugs not being updated in anything but the current version of the OS. It talks about security bugs only being fixed in up to N-2 OS releases and then on a sliding scale of importance. It then talks about security bugs not being fixed in those older, unsupported N-3 and older which may get a rare security update. My conclusion is that Apple wants to sell you a new Mac instead of fixing…
I am increasingly annoyed by it -- especially when Apple hardware, commendably, kind of can last forever these days. But at some point while the hardware may still be completely usable, it will stop running the latest OS. Which, with OS's only really supported for (depending on how you look at it) 1 to 3 years, isn't great. There haven't for years really been any features I wanted in new OS versions, just have to upg…
This is why I own an iPad and iPhone but will not buy an apple Laptop. I dont need to have an expensive laptop suddenly ruled "end of life" and not able to upgrade unless i "patch" it first.
But it’s something I could use a third party software for and comes with a few annoyances, like, sometimes I just want to drag an image, not select text.
Recently, I fell macOS releases take away more than they give. Either by quality of life (allow terminal.app to access your hard drive), poor UX and aesthetic decisions or downright feature removal.
Ventura, for instance, removes Preview’s ability to render PostScript files, and suddenly the man2pdf bash alias I’ve been using for 20 years is broken.
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I tell people that I haven't looked forward to new features in the 'California' era like I did in the 'Cat' era. Now, I worry about what Apple will break or take away. If Microsoft wasn't so intent on spying and advertising to me, I might consider them. I get the feeling I will switch to a BSD eventually.
I’ve been leaning the same way. I’m curious why you also lean towards BSD instead of Linux? It’s a gut feeling for me after watching the Linux ecosystem churn a lot and seeing BSDs with well documented core systems and the “core/ports” distinction make clear what is and isn’t really supported
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I’ve been leaning the same way. I’m curious why you also lean towards BSD instead of Linux? It’s a gut feeling for me after watching the Linux ecosystem churn a lot and seeing BSDs with well documented core systems and the “core/ports” distinction make clear what is and isn’t really supported
I'm much more familiar with OpenBSD and FreeBSD on the server-side, and I don't feel real comfortable with Linux. The two biggest vendors, Red Hat and Ubuntu, don't really give the warm fuzzies. Maybe something like System 76 backs.
Is it wrong? I’m not entirely sure. You can call that greedy, but take a few things into consideration. Firstly, Apple provides highly specialized software that runs extremely well and efficiently on their own hardware. Continuously providing support for old hardware while simultaneously maintaining the same level of performance is simply not feasible. I challenge any software developer to achieve a similar goal.
We are not talking about Linux here, where if you’re lucky, things work. Anyone’s that ever used macOS even once knows that things really work.
Now, I assume this window of time between a new hardware’s release and the software drop for that given piece of hardware will increase over time, given that new hardware released by Apple nowadays is incredibly performant, this would allow longer software support.
Frankly, my opinion is that 10 years of support is more than enough for anyone to consider renovating their hardware.
Recently, in the last XNU kernel release (corresponding to macOS 13/iOS 16) the 32-bit part of the kernel has been entirely removed, meaning that XNU won’t support any 32-bit device anymore. This is really exciting to me, as I see the technology moving forward, without getting stuck on prehistoric hardware support.
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Yeah, I can't recall any real bugs at all — the main problems for me are various accessibility flaws and ui issue that Apple will probably never choose to fix anyway. I take issue with your "2-3 year update cycle", though — my 8-year old MacBook Pro is still fine as the daily driver and I know plenty of others with Macs around the same age.
> I take issue with your "2-3 year update cycle" I think the OP meant the software update cycle not hardware.
I factor in the cost on a monthly cost basis.
Sort of agrees with my own opinion, that your use of Macs and iPhones and your stay in the ecosystem is only secure as long as you keep paying up. More specifically, you're good for a year after you do a major upgrade. After that you may or may not see critical issues addressed, and after two years all bets are off. I'm not sure how long Apple supports their overly expensive things these days, but I will not be surpr…
The iPhone 5s from 2013 just got a security update in July of this year. But if you care about how long the vendor supports your phone, you really should get an Android phone. I’m sure you will be delighted about how long they support their phones.