And one more password to remember, on top of 57,229 you already have.
This might be of interest to you (hardcore Windows fan experiencing similar issues to yours, in the same context of music software - bought a refurb Mac Mini and it just works):
My parents’ nickname in Polish for me translates to “parsley.” Food nicknames seem pretty normal to me, and “gobi” or “gobhi” is mellifluous to my ears. “Aloo” is cute, too, (I have an Indian acquaintance with a dog named “Aloo”) and works much better than calling someone a potato in English, that’s for sure.
There have been many ‘which is best for music’ discussions over the years about Mac vs Windows. Used to be that Mac had the edge, perhaps because more developers targeted it.
Nowadays I think the capabilities are pretty much on a par, and I’m not going to do a complete platform switch with the learning curve for one problem.
Though if MSoft don’t fix this eventually, I may just set up dual-boot with Linux.
Reaper works pretty well on Linux, I think, and as an old UNIX dog it’s a familiar environment.
No argument here. That’s just bad all around.
I actually had a fairly lengthy post about product cycles, and about how the primary issue here is that most other products have a lifespan that’s based on wear and tear, while software doesn’t. So the equivalent is basically how long the publisher is willing to keep supporting it and patching it, both of which become more and more difficult as other hardware and software products advance beside it.
This means that without that physical wear and tear, the lifespan is basically determined by the publisher’s willingness and ability to maintain that software.
I’d be curious if you can still get parts readily and have experienced technicians for a 15 year old washing machine or refrigerator? Maybe, but if Whirlpool or whoever decided to discontinue parts after 15 years, nobody would bat an eye. But for some reason, we’re getting that exact reaction for what is essentially the same thing with operating systems. That’s what I don’t get.
The browser I like isn’t updating anymore, and I am picky about modern browsers, so I need to find a decent replacement. I will eventually. It’s not a big problem.
I’m only grumpy (and only mildly so) because the kind of consumerism we take for granted is not sustainable, and I don’t think the people who try to opt out are the problem. It really smacks my gob that so many people are OK with having to buy new expensive devices every few years in order to participate in society – it seems like a total ripoff!
Then allow me to satisfy your curiosity. I was especially intrigued by your ridiculous examples because the ones you picked at random – 15 years and Whirlpool – I can specifically address.
This house is now over 15 years old, and so are most of the major appliances. A few years ago the oven element in the stove burned out, and a generic replacement won’t work because (a) the form factor is different and (b) it’s higher wattage. I had to get an original replacement part. I had to drive down to a specialty appliance store to get it, and they had hundreds of specific models in stock.
Then there’s the dishwasher. A couple of years ago the door latch broke. On a dishwasher it’s not just a latch, of course, but also an electrical interlock. It wasn’t repairable so I had to get a new one. It was no problem at all. Funnily enough, with all the consolidation of appliance manufacturers going on, the part that arrived was Whirlpool branded, though the machine isn’t actually a Whirlpool. But it was an exact replacement. Problem solved.
I assure you that if these parts had not been available, I would have done more than bat an eye – I’d be furious, but fortunately we do not yet quite live in the sort of disposable-everything culture that folks like you seem to advocate, and I’m grateful for it. Except in the world of software and operating systems, because Microsoft, which has a near-monopoly in the business, deems it so.
Amen to that! And it’s doubly annoying when the new stuff is objectively worse than the old stuff. In the case of operating systems, it’s needless and regressive changes to the UI and an infestation of upsells and endless updates (that sometimes break things). Kinda ironic when you migrate to a new OS to be better protected against malware, and the OS itself is malware!
In the case of appliances, it’s cheaper build quality and lesser reliability in favour of bells and whistles that no one wants or needs. This is not Luddite opposition to progress. I love progress. But that ain’t progress. Progress means better functionality and better reliability, ideally at a lower price, but it’s the first two that are most important.
“White goods” (washers, dryers, refrigerators, ranges, etc.) have a far longer expected lifespan than a personal computer, or a computer OS.
I have a Samsung washer and dryer set, which are about 20 years old. They’ve required repair several times in recent years (nothing particular major), and not only are parts still readily available, and technicians who know how to repair them are also readily available, but there’s no reason to believe that they are near obsolescence, and yes, I would be surprised if a repairman came to fix my dryer, and said, “sorry, there’s no way to get that part anymore.”
This grumpy old luddite can still use the old, useful version of iMovie that came with MacOS 10.4 because I’ve got a MacOS 10.4 box, and it has a Canopus card for converting analog video, as well as a USB turntable for vinyl albums. And it has Photoshop CS2. Nice little PowerPC 17" laptop.
And I can scan slides with a very nice slide scanner whose manufacturer never released a MacOS X driver, but the old WallStreet can still boot MacOS 9 and use it very efficiently.
And can get files off of your ancient floppy disks because my PowerMac 7100 has a floppy disk drive (the original SuperDrive) and I can even boot it in System 7 if your floppies are 400K single-sided diskettes. And while I’m at it I can convert your antediluvian word and spreadsheet files because I have MacLink Plus translators on it, so if you wrote your term papers in AmiPro or MacWrite 5.0 I’ve got you covered.
And can open your SyQuest and Zip media and get files off them, and also your SCSI hard drives.
Oh, and while I’m at it, this grumpy old luddite can run Sequoia on a virtual machine, Sonoma on a real one with dual monitors, and can run Windows 11 in a virtual machine. (Never owned a PC so no real PC hardware in the museum).
I can use Timbuktu and remotely control machines and environments as far apart as Macintosh System 6 and Windows 11 / MacOS 14 “Mojave” and move files and clipboard contents seamlessly.
My iPhone just informed me that I spent an average of 1 minute daily screen time. Still don’t need for much; Will be using it tomorrow to hail an Uber, though.
I’m not stupid or misinformed. I just prefer to spend most of my time on a 17" MacBook running MacOS 10.11.6 and I haven’t found it necessary to abandon it.
Oh, by the way, Legacy Chromium runs fine under MacOS 10.11.6 and I don’t get the nastygrams from Discourse, so I will be continuing to post here from my 10.11.6 MacBook Pro.
My dad got an apprenticeship to become a linotype operator in the early 60s and was an operator at the newspaper until one day when they shut them down. He transitioned to a new position at the paper and eventually opened a print shop. During summer breaks, I worked at the shop some helping with the offset press but I mainly used the old timey Chandler & Price press (they called it the snapper). Somehow I survived without smashing fingers or getting maimed by all the moving parts.
Why not?
I’m old. I’m retired. My wife and I drive a 13 year old car. There have been a few software modifications to it over the years, but never once has either my independent mechanic or the dealer said, “You need to buy an entire car to fix this software glitch.”
Yup.
I was at a museum somewhere, mid 90s maybe, and they had a bunch of Linotype machines, and it seemed I was the only one interested in them. I got very excited seeing the ligands like “ff” and “fi”. Of course the font here is too stupid to properly connect those letters. Do Swedish Linotype machines have a ligand for “fj”?
As for car parts, there is a big problem right now with lack of availability of some parts. I’ve seen mechanics on YouTube complain about 15-20 year old cars that are unrepairable because certain parts are completely unavailable. These tend to be less common cars, but can be things like VWs and Cadillacs.
So almost the same concept as an older computer. An otherwise perfectly good car is being taken off the road because some special hose fitting or electronic part is impossible to get. A common enough car that back stock is gone, but not common enough to be worth it for the original manufacturer or a third party to make custom parts.
Here is what the world is coming to.
I was just innocently looking to see what tomorrow’s weather will be, and got this awesome message:
The Treasury Board Secretariat and the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) have recommended that the Government of Canada update its security protocols for all its websites. On May 5, 2025, the Transport Layer Security (TLS) certificate will be upgraded to TLS 1.3. However, the minimum sufficient configuration remains at TLS 1.2.
OK. So if I interpret this correctly, if I don’t run an updated super-secure computer, I will not be able to find out what the weather will be tomorrow?
We have all gone mad.
Ha! I guess I over-reacted. TLS 1.3 is over six years old.
According to clienttest.ssllabs.com:
Protocol Support
Your user agent has good protocol support.
Your user agent supports TLS 1.2 and TLS 1.3, which are recommended protocol version at the moment.
So they are moving their computers forward to a 6 year old standard, TLS 1.3, but not requiring their users to do anything since they will still accept TLS 1.2. Which is now 17 years old. Should be retro enough even for an old dog suspicious of new tricks. 
As you know, the nature of cryptography is that it’s a slow-moving field unless someone discovers a fatal flaw in deployed standard [whatever], after which there’s a mad scramble to replace it with something lacking that flaw.
Yes, there is the slow march forward of better cracking algorithms, faster cracking hardware, etc. But usually the standards folks can leapfrog far enough ahead of that to buy a WAG 20 year lifetime for their standard.
Which does suggest that maybe TLS 1.2 is getting long in the tooth and may become deprecated soon.
To be fair, my panic was prompted by the headline on the site “Are you ready for the new browser security update?”
Which turned out to amount to nothing, unless you’re running Windows 3.1.
Which is also precisely my point. I access lots of websites that demand high security, and none of them have ever objected to my Windows 7 OS or any of my browsers or their security capabilties. Minimal SSL requirements and the like, sure, but the rest is just hype, largely fueled by Microsoft. For what reason, I can only guess. 
Yes, I used those. Scary looking machines, but they required both hands to operate so you wouldn’t risk cutting off one of your own.
Same for the paper cutter. Took both hands to activate so the human bits were away from the cutting bits.