Doubling the lifespan of older Chromebooks would save California’s schools $225 million, according to advocacy group CALPIRG.

There are few things quite as emblematic of late stage capitalism than the concept of “planned obsolescence”.

Huh? I have an ipad mini and since two-three years ago it’s as useful as a brick, Apple doesn’t allow me to install any app because they require a newer os version (that’s not available for the model)

By contrast my much older nexus 7 can still use most apps that I want

hoodatninja
link
fedilink
4
edit-2
1Y

It can’t run everything obviously but the fact that my nearly 10 year old iPad can handle video streaming still and these schools have bricked laptops after 3 years is ridiculous.

Those Chromebooks aren’t bricked. They simply don’t get chrome updates anymore, even if it’s just Linux+Chrome and updates could continue forever without any real effort from Google

For security issues they can’t give to students unsupported hardware. The discontinued iPad would go in the same e-waste bin, because it’s not like android where browsers will continue to get updates for years and years

hoodatninja
link
fedilink
41Y

For a school they functionally are. They can’t use them if they can’t get security updates.

and instead the ipad that doesn’t get security updates since 2018 in your example doesn’t count?

hoodatninja
link
fedilink
21Y

Well for starters it wasn’t purchased by or for schools so no. But even if it was, it gets far more than 3 years of support. I think 5 is somewhat reasonable if we’re just going to accept this sort of behavior.

Either way the comparison is not really apt. Mobile devices are far worse about this than PC’s. You should instead compare a macbook (or a cheap windows machine), which gets security updates for 7-10 years. Google knows their devices are very popular for school computers, so to treat them like mobile devices and enforce the terrible standards that comes with is pernicious.

you again chose a macbook for an example, some macs released in 2017 got less than 5 years of OS updates and became ewaste very quickly

choose a different company than apple for your “long time support” examples…

hoodatninja
link
fedilink
1
edit-2
1Y

It was one example, and if you’ll notice I said “or just any affordable windows machine,” I don’t know why you’re ignoring that.

As for the 2017 releases getting less than 5 years support, I have never heard of this nor am I finding any examples. Here is the Monterey (apple’s current OS version) compatibility list, which consists of computers as far back as 2013. So I’d be curious to see what you’re referencing. Catalina, the previous OS which dates back even further with compatibility, had security updates until about 8mo ago as well.

3 years is unacceptable on Google’s part and Apple hasn’t come anywhere close to that.

Are you cherry picking? Check Sonoma compatibility list, only for iMac 2019 or later

Are you cherry picking? Check Sonoma compatibility list, only for iMac 2019 or later

Create a post

A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.

Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.

Subcommunities on Beehaw:


This community’s icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

  • 1 user online
  • 152 users / day
  • 311 users / week
  • 620 users / month
  • 2.26K users / 6 months
  • 1 subscriber
  • 3.36K Posts
  • 67.7K Comments
  • Modlog