This is not about EOL OS releases, this is about Catalina (macOS 10.15, released in 2019).
Apple advertises Catalina as still supported, last update was 15.15.7 on October 25 of this year (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacOS_version_history#Releases).
>Neither do all the widely deployed Linux flavours, they all have clearly defined EOL policies.
The big difference here you forgot to point out is that you can almost always update to the next Debian (or whatever GNU/Linux distribution you use) Stable release with the hardware you ran on the last one.
You could also get new hardware from whatever vendor you want to since Debian (and any other GNU/Linux distribution) isn't vendor locked to a company that insists on selling you soldered RAM/SSDs and thermal throttling machines.
The Debian team also consistently honors their support cycles, unlike Apple.
>Nor do the BSDs, e.g. OpenBSD has a "current plus previous" policy.
Same thing as the GNU/Linux situation i mentioned above, the operating system is not vendor locked and you can almost always update to the next release with old (in the case of *BSD maybe even ancient) hardware, this is not true for macOS.
>You have to draw a line in the sand somewhere in terms of patching historical versions. Agreed, you have to draw the line somewhere.
The issue here is that Apple drew the line and then didn't even bother to honor it.
Microsoft certainly does patch all two years old versions of windows.
Second, as already pointed out by another poster in this thread, Apple provide free upgrades to newer OS versions for supported hardware (and the hardware support goes back a decent number of years[1]).
For the vast majority of people on Catalina, all they need to do is to upgrade to Big Sur, it is almost certain they are using compatible hardware[1].
If Apple properly supported Catalina, that would be great; if Apple explicitly said that Catalina is out of support / EOL and people need to upgrade to Big Sur, that could be reasonable; but if they keep the two-year-old release in some limbo that's kind of supported but poorly, that's simply poor support.
Apple needs to make a clear choice and publish a specific date for each of their releases up until which they commit to backporting security updates, so that people can know what is the expectation for e.g. Catalina, whether it is considered supported or not right now.
Apple is giving you the update: Install it and now it’s up to date. They don’t have to support multiple versions of the same thing indefinitely.
The situations (devices) where the update isn’t possible (i.e. they’re outdated too early) can probably be counted on one hand.
The fact that Big Sur was released does not automatically mean anything about the support for Catalina, because there are all kinds of reasons not to make a major version upgrade even if the hardware is still compatible with the new version; the major upgrades do break certain aspects of software and implement changes to functionality and UI, not just fixes for security bugs.
The core issue is that simple questions like "Is Catalina being supported as of 14th November 2021 or not" and "Which is the date when Big Sur support ends and you are expected to migrate to Monterey or later for security updates" deserve a clear answer from Apple, and it seems that they are refusing to answering that with any official, published policy.
>iOS may now offer a choice between two software update versions in the Settings app. You can update to the latest version of iOS 15 as soon as it’s released for the latest features and most complete set of security updates. Or continue on iOS 14 and still get important security updates.
>https://www.apple.com/ios/ios-15/features/
Apple is not even meeting it's own guarantees.
> Name me one widely deployed OS that promises its users patches ad-infinitum.
> Microsoft certainly doesn't patch all older versions of Windows.
> Neither do all the widely deployed Linux flavours.
But the latest and greatest Windows and Linux releases are installable on older devices.
I extended the life of a 2011 iMac which stopped recieving updates from Apple by installing the latest Fedora.
Most Linux distributions draw the line at 32 bit hardware.
Windows 11 was controversial in that it dropped support for older computers. But this shows what the expectations are.
This was certainly true until recently when Microsoft went all Windows 11, which only works on a small, whitelisted subset of X86-compatible CPUs and also mandated TPM 2.0.
Now only Linux offers semi-guaranteed support for older hardware.
Also Microsoft provides an official guide on how to install Windows 11 on older hardware. My neighbor has Windows 11 on his 10 year old laptop running an i7 2500 and it's butter smooth.
So is OS X Big Sur[1] and Monterey[2]
For the majority of people all they need to do is pull their finger out and upgrade the OS from Catalina to Big Sur or Monterey.
[1]https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211238
[2]https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212551Modern computers should last a lot longer than that, especially if you can pass them on to users with less demanding requirements.
And fortunately Macs do last longer than that, but you have to install Linux or Windows to keep them up to date.
Name me one widely deployed OS that promises its users patches ad-infinitum.
Microsoft certainly doesn't patch all older versions of Windows.
Neither do all the widely deployed Linux flavours, they all have clearly defined EOL policies.
Nor do the BSDs, e.g. OpenBSD has a "current plus previous" policy.
You have to draw a line in the sand somewhere in terms of patching historical versions. Promising your users you will patch all historical versions forever is not feasible, because it means you are promising you will patch all dependencies forever, and that will require a lot of massive teams of developers doing nothing all day but patching legacy software.