A decision not to release a feature (AirDrop) on older machines, is taken as an example of Planned Obsolescence.<p>Sorry, that's not what planned obsolescence means.<p>The machine wasn't made to be less capable over time for what it was originally sold for. Features (software or hardware) weren't decided to suddenly break.<p>It would just not get some <i>new</i> features in future OS even if it could (which is debatable). It might could (according to the dev) but give a subpar experience, or eat into the battery, etc. One can say "that should be for the user to decide" but that's not how Apple works, nor has ever been part of their value proposition. Their value proposition is "we think of most of those things for you". In the end, even if the older machines could support the feature just fine, not releasing it for them is standard practice to entice people to a new model, and has nothing to do with "planned obsolescence".<p>If anything Apple has a great track record on both:<p>1) Getting new iOS releases to older machines. Most Android vendors were horrible at that, abandoning machines even at the first release after being sold.<p>2) Having machines (including iPhones) keep their resale value high. That's the opposite of planned obsolescence.
Apple decided Sidecar (an iPad as second screen) isn't available on my Macbook Pro 2015 in macOS Catalina;<p>Luckily i found <a href="http://dev.zeppel.eu/luca/SidecarCorePatch" rel="nofollow">http://dev.zeppel.eu/luca/SidecarCorePatch</a> which patches the SidecarCore framework and now it runs just fine.
For this and other reasons I switched to a KDE distro and saved >$1000 on hardware.<p>Yes it's not as pretty and takes some getting used to. But there was no tangible benefit to paying extra to be in the Apple ecosystem. I can code just the same as before. Perhaps what I miss a little is the trackpad. Those are <i>nice</i>.
This poster is braver than me. They're almost certainly identifiable based on the projects they worked on, and they admit to insubordination at best and industrial sabotage/CFAA violations at worst. Not that I agree with that interpretation, but if it were me I wouldn't have mentioned the bit about sharing a hack on Mediafire.
In case people missed this:<p>"The rumor, and I mean rumor, was that there may have been 2008 Mac Pro's sold with a different Airport card than most had"<p>Which if true meant that Apple could have been subject to class action if they stated that the feature was available for 2008 models.