Built-in software ‘death dates’ are sending thousands of schools’ Chromebooks to the recycling bin

TheyHaveNoName , 11 months ago

I manage my schools IT - and when we started out a few years ago my board were pushing aggressively for Chromebooks. The service provider were talking about how they could roll out hundreds of Chromebooks at the touch of a button. When I asked about the lifespan of a Chromebook I got vague answers. I knew we would get a couple of years max out of each one so I instead pushed for much more expensive MacBooks. 5 years on and we are still using our original MacBook we got back then, with photoshop and other software.

arc , 11 months ago

Ironically the only way to use some old Macbooks these days is to put Chrome OS Flex on them. Apple is far more aggressive about killing off old hardware when it feels like it. You can still use them as-is of course but over time the browser and other web based apps degrade and refuse to work because of issues with TLS, CA certs (expired), discontinued backend APIs and unsupported web content APIs.

donio , 11 months ago

x86 Macs are not the greatest example of longevity at this point.

TheRazorX , 11 months ago

“These updates depend on many device-specific non-Google hardware and software providers that work with Google to provide the highest level of security and stability support,” said Peter Du, communications manager for ChromeOS. “For this reason, older Chrome devices cannot receive updates indefinitely to enable new OS and browser features.”

Bull. Shit.

hoodatninja , 11 months ago

I have an 8 year old iPad that can still use Amazon video and can still run Netflix, and google drops support for these computers as early as 3 years. I’m not an Apple fanboy but that is absolutely ridiculous.

HurlingDurling , 11 months ago

I will give credit to Apple on that one because android phone manufacturers are now supporting their phone for longer because of how long Apple is supporting them.

sirjash , 11 months ago

I think the more probable reason is that EU regulators were unhappy with this for a long time and have now put 3 years of OS updates and 5 years of security updates into law. Low cost Android manufacturers don't care what Apple does.

skulblaka , 11 months ago

I remember back in the day when I had apple devices where they would push updates for devices long past their capability to actually run the updated software. Rather than refuse the update or get a pruned patch with security fixes only, it would force updates and bloat your phone and grind it into unresponsive unusability after a few years.

I hear that's not so much the case anymore, so that's nice. But I remember. The main reason I upgraded my phone was because of that, the hardware was great, but I could hardly use the software anymore even after clean installs.

My point being, I guess, extended support is great if managed properly but it can also become a bludgeon with which to drive you toward the new generations of devices.

Sina , 11 months ago

long past their capability to actually run the updated software

Well, Apple intentionally slowed those devices down to make the users update, instead of using an insecure device, that would've provided a good experience otherwise.

And these days Apple is retiring devices arbitrarily for profits too. For example this year they are retiring the Iphone 8, which has better hardware, than the ipad 2018 that is still being supported...

bedrooms , 11 months ago

That slowness was, at least officially, for the battery health. Do you have the support to prove otherwise?

Boiscull , 11 months ago

And then if I recall correctly (though I can’t be bothered to look) didn’t they get sued for slowing phones?

So people were mad that their phones battery wasn’t holding a charge anymore, “im being forced to upgrade”, so Apple throttled older phones to keep the battery running, aka allowing people to keep their phones longer, and then they got sued for slowing down phones lol.

I am an apple fan boy, I wont hide that. But it does seem like they tried to do a “good” and make peoples phones last longer, and then got sued.

Also the whole forced upgrade just isn’t apples game IMO. Do they want you buying the new one every year, of course. But the more important thing is that you keep using AN iPhone at all. Stay in the ecosystem, stay in the app store, stay paying for icloud, etc.

Going to a new phone gives the user a window to move away from IOS. (Though most won’t haha)

Montagge , 11 months ago

Apple does the same thing if you don't already have those installed

unconsciousvoidling , 11 months ago

My 2nd gen Apple TV is garbage. Nearly all the apps fail to load now. 🤷‍♂️… I suppose I can try jailbreaking it but it sure feels like someone is trying to force me to upgrade my hardware.

ddkman , 11 months ago

Weeell "bullshit" is easy to claim but not necessarily untrue. So with android phones this is definitely a problem. Industry wide firmware support for these ARM SOC-s are often ranging from not long enough, to fucking atrocious. You get basically two years of new drivers, and a security update maybe. The way LinageOS manages to support phones like the note 3, from like android 4, to 11, is basically creating manifests, that use drivers from newer, still supported, but "similar-ish" components. And the note 3 was a flagship device, easily the fastest phone of it's generation. These Chromebooks, especially the ones schools can and do afford, are built to the penny. There is ultimately no point in pushing a software update to a device for a significant cost, that makes it so slow that no reasonable person would ever consider using it.

What is the solution to this? Hard to say. Not buying hardware so incredibly obsolete that it has to run an alternate OS, is a start. Maybe just use PC-s and deploy linux.

cerement , 11 months ago

Reviving Chromebooks with Ubuntu: Autonomous Servers, Planned Obsolescence, and Permacomputing