this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2024
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Generally if you want long support windows you go for big boring brands’ simplest business class laptops. Or Apple.
Small companies an make a commitment to support, but they often have neither the money, customer base or manpower to follow through when the going gets tough.
I have found that popularity is a better predictor of spare part availability than any commitment from a company of any size. When they stop selling parts, there’s always the second hand market. When that dries up there’s always third party parts.
Firmware updates are one of the places that dell, Lenovo and Apple shine. Because of their customers expectations they tend to release new updates and drivers as functionality expectations or security conditions change.
Big brands have the money to provide longer support, but not the inclination lol.
This is sometimes true, but big brands have the market penetration to make hardware support very easy through second hand and third party parts and to be enticing fruit for third party support (see opencore and the dosdude patchers for apple stuff).
Although, Apple also just decides to make updates unavailable for your device once it's a few years old, so there's that.
Windows on a Dell XPS laptop was a good experience, firmware (and Windows) updates always came instantly. With Linux I have to keep an eye out for BIOS updates from time to time but Dell does not shy away from releasing BIOS updates for an over 7 years old laptop. Probably because their newer laptops use the same BIOS, but still!
Yeah, I'm still getting updates on my 2017 Dell Latitude!
And mostly, Windows/Linux will update for eternity; it's up to you if it works and it most likely will despite the wide abd varied hardware support.
The Apple support window is pretty predictable. You get about seven years from device release to no os updates.
It used to be that they didn’t talk about it and it was kind of a “he who has eyes, let him see” situation.
Of course, we’re talking hardware here so that’s sort of neither here nor there.
The enterprise dell experience is indeed very good all around. I’d even include hp in the pile if I had any experience with em. Their scopes used to be decent.
They have done 4 year windows before, and we still cannot know for sure how long for example the macbook m1 will be supported, still.
That said, 4-7 years for a laptop of that price seems short, I also don't understand why they have to bring mobile OS support windows to laptops in the first place.
When it comes to update support, it seems odd to me to recommend Apple's computers when they literally have a mobile OS' support window to the OS.
When was the last 4yr window on a computer? I think the ati 2011 15” mbp got dropped fast af but thats the last real short one I remember. I haven’t dealt extensively with the touchbar models though.
The m1 air looks to be another 2012 mbp 12”. It would surprise me if they cut it off at 7 years. Although that decision seems to have been driven by the enterprise install base and who knows if that’s still what it once was.
I think the reason why mobile os support windows are apples thing on computers is because they don’t have a separate business line. Iirc xps used to be dells enthusiast brand and now it’s part of the business line.
Thinking more about it, the core line of processors was a real stumble for intel because they were really good and lasted forever and manufacturers had to start pushing updates to fix realtek and qualcomm chip problems or get blamed for shit not working or being supported.
Also, this is kinda tangential because the op is asking about firmware support and hardware availability and firmware support is not as important on macs and they have incredible second hand hardware markets.