| You greatly under-estimate how much work it is to maintain old code, particularly to maintain in securely. AFP and Time Capsules add attack vectors to the OS, which can be targeted even when few users actively using them. One dev could keep both basically functional, but to what end? User counts are already small, and people that aren't using them are still exposed by their mere existence. Shrinking or removing code, in my experience, is one of the biggest single wins you can have in software development. Less to test, less to update, less to secure. |
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| ▲ | applfanboysbgon 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Yes, writing and maintaining less code is great for a developer. We can follow this to the logical extreme and marvel at how easy it is to write and maintain a program whose only function is to print "hello, world" to the console. Nevermind the users, what do they matter? | | |
| ▲ | Someone1234 an hour ago | parent [-] | | By the very nature of assigning development time to these antiquated features, you're assigning them away from other features, bug fixes, or requests that may have a larger user reach. Development is a finite resource, the argument here is to allocate them to hard-to-secure, outmoded, replaced, technology instead of anything future relevant. It doesn't make sense. | | |
| ▲ | applfanboysbgon an hour ago | parent [-] | | The person was specifically suggesting hiring extra developers for maintenance. While I'm familiar with the concept that "nine women can't birth a baby in a month", I don't think that applies so much to maintenance of old code paths. Apple makes over $100b in net profit per year, a truly unfathomable amount of money, they can afford it, and I think not only can they afford it but that it would benefit them. Even if only 1% of your users use X, for Apple that might translate to perhaps 10 million people using X, or at 0.1% 1 million. Hiring a dev to improve the experience for that many people just makes sense at scale, software is write-once reproduce-a-million-times-for-free. I have no doubt the bean counters have drawn up every kind of spreadsheet they can imagine trying to quantify it as being not worth it, but I don't think these kinds of quality of life things can be easily quantified, because each small thing maintained might only impact a small number of users but collectively, all of these kinds of small things add up to either a system with sharp corners that constantly papercuts the user (current Apple software), or one that is so seamless that it engenders customer loyalty for decades (old Apple software). This kind of shortsighted penny-pinching is how companies become a shell of their former selves, suffering a slow death-by-MBA. |
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| ▲ | zimpenfish 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > You greatly under-estimate how much work it is to maintain old code, particularly to maintain in securely. cf Linux removing old network drivers this week for the same reason (without the hand-wringing that this Apple announcement is getting!) | | |
| ▲ | saghm 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Is the code that Apple is removing support for open source? The Linux drivers could at least plausibly be picked up and used by someone who really wants to, so it doesn't seem to be a fair comparison |
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