MacBook Air owner?

2018/2019 models are losing #Apple support.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/06/the-case-for-and-against-macos-15-sequoia-being-the-final-release-for-intel-macs/

#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.

@kde

#KDE #KDEEco #FOSS #OpenSource #MacBook

60 points

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

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22 points

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.

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18 points
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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.

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5 points

100% agree. You’re not selling the hardware anymore, leave it in an unlocked state. Same with games.

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1 point
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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.

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1 point

That would be nice for iPhone, I’ve got a perfectly fine iPX that I’m only going to upgrade because my banking apps are going to drop support for iOS 16 soon

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0 points

@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

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9 points

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

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10 points
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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.

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6 points

“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.

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3 points
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G and S are doing 7y now, G has for almost 2y. Pixel 6 has 5y, while 7 + 8 + beyond get 7y, I believe.

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16 points

@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.

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2 points

Yep, if it’s anything like the ppc to x86 transition there will be security updates for a year or two before they drop support entirely.

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7 points

Writing this message on an 13 year old thinkpad that still got a lot of life in it!

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5 points

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.

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31 points

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.

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3 points

That is true for my 2015 mbp. Still get security updates regularly

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7 points
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3 points

I am also still using my 2015 macbook pro A1502, the battery isn’t as good but it can still run my daily tasks. Its still on Catalina, there is no need to upgrade.

Theres always Linux if I ever wanted to upgrade OS.

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1 point
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1 point

The last few OS releases will continue to get security updates, but new versions of the OS won’t support those models at all.

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0 points

@hayes_ @be4foss It means you become a security risk. But as long as you don’t put that laptop on the Internet with that old version OSX then you should be good, otherwise … Linux the thing and use it until whenever. ;)

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5 points

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

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6 points

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.

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1 point

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?

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3 points
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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.

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1 point

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 :(

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2 points

The app compatibility is what I’d be most worried about. Not enough people want to buy them since there are bugs. But there aren’t enough people buying to justify devs fixings these bugs. It needs some momentum, it seems

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4 points

Mac book pro from 2012 still going, not strong, Bluetooth barely works, there’s a dying row of pixels, on the screen, the CPU doesn’t seem to support any modem video codec in accelerated mode, and the speakers were clearly garbage and it doubles how bad the Bluetooth is. But it’s running pop os! And it’s running it fine. I mean as long as you connect via rustdesk to another real machine to do real work. It can’t handle tabs or browser rendering…

Anyway even if i retire it today, it’s outlasted 3 work laptops.

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2 points

Especially if it’s a 12”, parts to straighten that thing out are dirt cheap. Last time I did display work on the old late 2012 12”, the owner wanted a whole new upper assembly, top clamshell and all and it was ~$100.

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KDE is an international technology team creating user-friendly free and open source software for desktop and portable computing. KDE’s software runs on GNU/Linux, BSD and other operating systems, including Windows.

Plasma 6 Bugs

If you encounter a bug, proceed to https://bugs.kde.org, check whether it has been reported.

If it hasn’t, report it yourself.

PLEASE THINK CAREFULLY BEFORE POSTING HERE.

Developers do not look for reports on social media, so they will not see it and all it does is clutter up the feed.

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