Re: New Computer....

Posted by HH56 On 2023/9/1 10:52:09

And Macs are not immune either and they have a pretty well defined era of 7 years after last being sold before they become vintage with limited support or obsolete and no longer supported. I have an old but perfectly running Mac Mini and a newer iMac and both cannot be updated. The mini is in the same boat as your old PC when trying to access websites so only good as a file server. The iMac was recently considered obsolete and can get some new apps but is on borrowed time before it too cannot do much.

Windows for a long time had so many legacy apps and peripherals that business needed to rely on that Microsoft was forced to try and keep some kind of redundancy so the older programs and printers etc would still work. This was both good and bad -- good because old programs and add ons worked longer and bad because any weakness that malware or virus purveyors could exploit stayed around to be exploited again.

Apple was not as concerned about the enterprise market so when they were in tough times right after Jobs came back he embraced the future head on and almost without mercy. Apple eliminated the floppy disc, some legacy ports in favor of more mainstream standards, Flash multimedia apps that wre notoriously prone to malware and then started a transition from Power PC to Intel microprocessors and then a jump from 32 to 64 bit instruction sets all in a fairly rapid timeframe. The main thing they did to keep old apps running was develop software emulation to run on new machines so the old power PC programs could work with Intel chips and 32 bit apps still worked on 64 bit processors. Some aftermarket entrepreneurs developed hardware adapters to keep some ports relevant. All that too went away after a while as the new era was embraced by software and hardware vendors. I have not kept up with Windows but they seem to now be doing the same thing as Apple did years ago and saying bye to the old era.

Apple has now moved into its next phase and has eliminated the use of Intel microprocessors in favor of their own Apple silicone which is a completely different and more efficient platform than the Intel chips. Because my iMac was obsolete and couldn't take the last OS upgrade got a new mini with Apple silicone. They again provide software emulation to keep some old apps running but as more apps are rewritten to directly work with Apple silicone that too will go away again.