Thursday, April 23, 2009

Virtual Obsolescence

Since the '80s, I've been a loyal Apple customer; in fact, I've never owned any other computer. After my gorgeous "Bondi Blue" iMacG3 kept freezing, I almost switched to a PC, but once again fell for Apple's cool design and bought the smallest iBook G4, which I'm writing this on.

Although I've had to replace the battery once and the keyboard several times, the hardware is still completely functional. But suddenly, I can't view the videos friends post on Facebook, call my children on Skype or update my profile on the directory at work. Apparently, my computer's operating system is too old to run a host of common software applications. When I tried to upgrade to the latest version of Adobe Flash Players or Safari or Internet Explorer, I discovered that they only work on a Mac OSX 10.4 Tiger and above-- and my computer's OSX is a 10.3.9 Panther. At the Apple store, I was told that I could buy a 10.4 Tiger upgrade for $80 from Amazon and maybe prolong the life of my machine another year and a half.

Upgrading to Apple's current Leopard operating system isn't an option apparently, so my other two Apple alternatives are to buy a brand-new Mac laptop with Leopard already installed (starting at $1000) or wait until the summer when the newest operating system, Snow Leopard, is expected to be released.

Yes, I know that three years in a lifetime in the frenetic world of software development and that there have been two major upgrades since Panther was the latest and greatest, but really, how customer-friendly-- not to mention environmentally-friendly-- is it to create an operating system that won't run on hardware that's only a few years old?

It's interesting that Apple has chosen to name its operating systems after endangered big cats, and somehow, apt. In a world with overflowing landfills, where Third World children "recycle" the heavy metals from First World computers, this kind of planned obsolescence isn't merely annoying-- it's virtually obscene.