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To be fair, Apple stopped providing security fixes for Mojave ~4+ years ago, and there have been 7 or 8 new os releases since then…

I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect an open source project to support everything


I think MacPorts still supports PowerPC Macs. I would need to rebuild my G5 to verify it because the hard disk is long dead, but last time I checked, it worked.

I get it - it’s a different beast with very different ideas behind it, but MacPorts is BSD-solid, and that’s a lot.


I agree in principle but Homebrew only supports the latest 3 versions of macOS. Right now Ventura 13 which came out in October 2022 is unsupported.

I still think that's entirely fair for a power user tool like homebrew. With the upgrade rates of macOS that probably means that's 98% of the users would be covered. Expecting an open source project to accept bug requests from a bigger variety of versions that then would need test devices on these versions to replicate issues sounds unrealistic. Bigger companies, or Apple itself I would hold to much higher standards when it comes to that.

> power user tool like homebrew.

That makes no sense then. A power user may still want to run older OS versions for a reason. Take the training wheels off it and then it'll be a power user tool.


> A power user may still want to run older OS versions for a reason.

No doubt there are edge cases like that, but I don't fault a project for not catering to the < 1% of users who would fall into that bucket and would probably be the ones that cause trickier support cases. These would maybe also be the user that could just install it without homebrew then, it's not like homebrew is the only way to install software.


This is not an edge case. Most HN commenters describe the latest two versions of macOS as being objectively worse than earlier versions: slower, less stable, more broken. There are significant numbers of “power users” who deliberately avoid upgrading or have actively downgraded macOS to Sonoma because they care about their computing experience.

People who downgraded to Sonoma are the definition of an edge case, maybe you hear from some of them on HN and it sounds like a big group but this is a niche of a niche.

https://telemetrydeck.com/survey/apple/macOS/versions/


brew used to say, more or less, "This OS is old and unsupported. Don't submit bug reports. If you have problems, too bad. If you submit a PR to fix something, we might merge it". Fair enough, right? Now it just says, "Go fuck yourself, grandpa."

True, but I think you still want to avoid Homebrew if you're interested in older Mac versions. A specific project might have some support for the version you're interested in. For example, the Go 1.23 toolchain (which isn't the latest version) supports Mac releases back to Big Sur.

I’m not a developer by trade. I’ve screwed around with some programming classes when I was in school, and have written some widely used but highly specific scripts related to my work, but I’ve never been a capital-D developer.

In the last few months, Gemini (and I) have written for highly personal, very niche apps that are perfect for my needs, but I would never dream of releasing. Things like cataloguing and searching my departed mom‘s recipe cards, or a text message based budget tracker for my wife and I to share.

These things would never be released or available as of source or commercial applications in the way that I wanted them, and it took me less time to have them built with AI then it would have taken me to Research existing alternatives and adapt my workflow/use case to fit whatever I found.

So yeah, there are more apps but I would venture to say you’ll never see most of them…


> The memory bandwidth of flagship iPhone models is similar to the memory bandwidth of flagship Android phones

More correct to say that the memory bandwidth of ALL iPhone models is similar to the memory bandwidth of flagship Android models. The A18 and A18 pro do not differ in memory bandwidth.


> The A18 and A18 pro do not differ in memory bandwidth.

A18 Pro has a modest memory bandwidth advantage over the standard A18, which is part of why it can support ProRes recording and always-on display while the standard A18 cannot.


That's an interesting accusation there! You're essentially accusing every "savvy vendor" of large-scale fraud... DOn't suppose you'd have any actual citations or evidence to back that up?

> Or y'know, ban this betting activity to begin with.

Ban it where exactly? If you’ve got personal knowledge of where these knuckleheads reside, speak up. It’s entirely possible that it is banned where they are and they just got a VPN and did it anyway.


In the US it’s a legal battle currently being fought. CISOs have been charged by the SEC and other agencies, with varied success. Some cases have been deemed over-reach, some have not. And other were a case of a CISO doing ostensibly illegal things in their capacity (in some cases paying ransom demands have been interpreted as such, especially when disguised as other things).

> Someone has received credible death threats

2 points - 1) “credible” is carrying a lot of water in that statement, and 2) your implication is that any activity which could eventually or conceivably involve a lunatic making a death threat is not compatible with any level of privacy.

The second is incredibly disturbing - people have made death threats over E2E encrypted chat channels, therefore we must remove any privacy built in to such a model?


I'll just dodge 1 for the moment since we're discussing an article about those threats. For the second point - I'm not saying that death threats should invalidate privacy concerns I just wanted to stress that the little people are already seeing quite a few downsides so it's important to view this issue with more nuance than a Facebook-like scenario when the privacy only comes at the cost of ad-revenue.

> and acquire a new phone number

> Wikipedia of all places already employed IP address matching to link sockpuppet accounts

That’s… well, that’s just not how tcp/ip works. Your phone number has nothing to do with your device IP…


It does when your phone number is used for 2fa in a session running on tcp/ip

Phone numbers are available to many apps if they target older SDK versions and serve as an additional unique identifier.

Setting aside debates about which is “better”, this article appears to be based on crap. The link to the supporting analysis uses the words “through the roof”, but here’s what it says:

“ wired headphones rebounded in 2025, growing 3% (about $15M).”

So now a 3% growth in sales is “exploding” and “through the roof”? No, I don’t think so…


This is the BBC. I've been reading their site every day for many years now. They're mostly good, but at times they have a way of steering their audience towards an agenda through bunk articles like this. It was especially evident with the remote work hit-pieces they published regularly during the RTO movement a couple of years ago. It was clear someone was pulling strings at the BBC to generate negative headlines about remote work, but when you dug into their sources, you'd see data to suggest the complete opposite.

I'm not sure what the agenda would be in this case and maybe there is no agenda, but it's something to be aware of. It could be simply one of their contributors has a bone to pick with manufacturers over the lack of reliability in Bluetooth audio technology.


> They're mostly good, but at times they have a way of steering their audience towards an agenda through bunk articles like this.

Real-time Gell-Mann amnesia.


And a 30% increase in sales across a cherrypicked 6wk time window. This is one of those articles that's more wishful thinking than real news, even though I have the same wish.

I wouldn't choose those words, but a 3% increase of something that's been steadily in decline is significant enough to warrant hyperbole of some kind.

> only one wireless option -Bluetooth- and it is a terrible product from a user experience perspective

That’s an implementation problem, not a technology problem. iPhone with AirPods here - your scenario just does not happen. There’s even an option for “yes be stupid and connect to my car even when I’m in the middle of a phone call” if you really want to use it…


No, it happens even with AirPods Pro/Pro2.

I have two iPhones and a MBP. I have to keep Bluetooth disabled on the MacBook otherwise it randomly triggers while I'm between podcasts or whatever and squeeze the AirPods to resume, instead it launches Apple Music, or some browser tab starts playing audio.

This is far from solved if you have more than one Apple device.

There is no option for me to say: never use AirPods for anything but podcasts, and absolutely never automatically select them as an audio source for zoom/teams. AirPods microphones just don't work for my vocal range, they sound horrible and underwater. The microphone on my MBP works great, the mic on my iPhones works great.

AirPods are fine if you only ever use one device at a time. If you use more than one at the same time, it becomes extremely annoying.

Let's not even get into the annoying ways which it becomes hard to manage when you have multiple AirPods, multiple iPhones, and multiple MacBooks.


> ...your scenario just does not happen.

It happens to us all of the time.

My partner is on a conference call, I hop in the car to go run an errand. Suddenly I'm on a conference call.

My partner is in the kitchen listening to a podcast, I hop in our other car and suddenly I'm listening to a podcast.

My partner is sitting in the car having a driveway moment, I arrive home with the other car and now I'm having her driveway moment.

My partner is on a conference call at her desk and picks up her phone to respond to a message and then you hear "shit shit shit, hold on a moment!" and then frantic typing and clicking.


If a spec is regularly implement poorly, the spec is the problem.

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