Killed by Apple(killedbyapple.theden.sh) |
Killed by Apple(killedbyapple.theden.sh) |
Good. Apple users are a minority in my local community, yet the vast majority of broken charging ports over the years have been Lightning. Some micro-USB, and zero USB-C problems so far.
The expectation should not be for products to last for ever.
And for each product that happened, more products came after that were inspired by it.
Google's list is pretty extreme though.
But don't worry, Rosetta 2 is also on the chopping block:
> Rosetta was designed to make the transition to Apple silicon easier, and we plan to make it available for the next two major macOS releases – through macOS 27 – as a general-purpose tool for Intel apps to help developers complete the migration of their apps. Beyond this timeframe, we will keep a subset of Rosetta functionality aimed at supporting older unmaintained gaming titles, that rely on Intel-based frameworks.
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/apple-silicon/abou...
tl;dr: Rosetta is sticking around through macOS 27. After that, the normal Rosetta will be removed from macOS. but a subset of Rosetta will remain to support certain older unmaintained games.
I agree that the SE was a great iPhone and a great form factor. I didn't have one, but my kid did. Whenever I had to do something on their SE, I found it so much more usable than my own whatever Pro phone of that time. It wasn't enough to get me to go to an SE, however.
The quality of entries on killed by apple seems largely comparable if not higher.
When Apple introduced Lightning it was as the "modern connector for the next decade" and... that's exactly what happened.
Honestly this regulation should never have happened IMHO…
Ironic if we're talking about the Apple Airport series https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Early_Ai...
PSA - Ford killed the Model T. Big whoop.
So while it's not gonna be the next Moltbook in terms of security breaches, it's basically just the 2026 version of your middle manager copy-pasting a paragraph from ChatGPT web into Slack. It's content from nobody for nobody. It's definitely not what I want to see on the HN front page, but I guess if people get a kick out of it then you do you.
> Apple TV Remote app > Apple's official iPhone and iPad app for controlling Apple TV. Pulled from the > App Store after Apple moved the remote into Control Center.
lol
I would say the Mac Pro was "killed", left to languish after the trashcan model, then isolated from third party GPUs when it finally got upgraded to Apple Silicon, and then left to languish again until the lack of sales justified killing it.
Rosetta 2 will certainly deserve a spot on this list next year when they start yeeting it, an amazing piece of technology that has made Apple Silicon-era Macs uniquely capable of executing the widest range of software.
I have a house full of Apple hardware and none of them get updates from Apple anymore, and I can't manually update them without hackery (OpenCore) or wiping them to install Linux (where possible). Also, because third party app developers largely align with Apple's philosophy, less and less 3rd party software even works on my computers anymore. Heck, even Homebrew, which ships open source software that has always run on my devices, relegates my hardware into their "tier 3" garbage can[1].
The combination of Apple's and third party's disinterest counts as "killed by Apple" in my book.
If you've ever tried to run a hardware business (or really any business), you know that it is not financially sound to continue to support old devices that have been superceded (sometimes more than once) by newer products that consumers are currently spending money on.
We can debate if this is the way things should be, the aspect of whether you truly "own" things, software escrow, and on and on. But the phenomenon itself is in no way unique to Apple. If anything, I have found that the usable lifespan of Apple hardware is, on average, longer than the usable lifespan of other name-brand electronics in similar categories.
I held out using MacPorts for ages, but there came a point when I just could not reasonably expect to find the software I needed on MacPorts, but could on Homebrew, and so I switched. I wish Homebrew hadn't won that particular mindshare war. Moving from MacPorts to Homebrew felt like downgrading from an actual package manager to a duct-taped shell script.
I think it's more about 3rd party app developers attempting to improve their products and stay relevant.
If Apple releases a new framework or API that would make a developer’s app better, but it requires macOS 14 or later, are they not supposed to incorporate it?
I've noticed lots of 3rd party developers keep older versions of their apps available for older macOS versions.
Sorry but the HomePod wasn't "killed" just because they upgraded from gen 1 to gen 2. Gen 1 HomePod literally just got a software update a month ago with another on the way. The iPhone X wasn't "killed" just because they released the iPhone 11. This list is egregiously version-centric for things where it makes no sense.
Apple supported OpenGL plenty, just that the world moved. Apple created metal, shortly after Vulkan was created.
"They could support it if they wanted to" is almost a tautology. Of course they could. But then they have to support another thing. They are on the hook when something goes wrong.
Best form goes to the Neo, current Air, or 2015 MBP.
They should be offering a 12” Air now.
wider sure, but widest?
Usually these pages convey how capricious the parent is, but this just feels like an arbitrary accounting of things Apple has moved or updated, with a few of them not having replacements.
Some of the text is silly sour grapes, but it always will be with editorial content about tech products.
https://www.macrumors.com/2026/04/27/app-store-monthly-subsc...
It would be nice, but perhaps hard to do, to have a list of "sherlocked" apps and services.
It's not on the site, and I don't care _quite_ enough to figure out how to add it.
That's the problem with built-in software that "does it all" and crowds out the market for other software. One day it might not do it all.
(VLC can do this, but not as simply as I used to be able to).
Pitch is still missing though.
To some of these I say, good riddance.
On the other hand, I spent a lot of time with "iTunes U" as both an engineer on the project and as a user. I was sad to see it shut down. (I made the last code changes to the last version of iTunes U that shipped.)
While on the team, I also did what I could to try to keep iTunes U alive—fight against its pending "sunsetting". The Education team owned iTunes U but we were also trying to find our way with a new app, "Schoolwork". Schoolwork didn't have content like iTunes U—it was more like Canvas. An instructor created assignments with it and then assigned them to their students.
A desperate Hail Mary play I made was to facilitate the bridging of "iTunes U" and "Schoolwork". The idea was that an instructor could assign portions of an iTunes U course within Schoolwork. Links within the assignment would launch iTunes U, take the student to the specific course and then the specific chapter…
I hoped someone might then see what an asset all this free content iTunes U (well, Apple) hosted. (MIT courses on computer science, to name just an example.)
In the end when it was clear we were tilting against windmills trying to keep iTunes U going, I relented and spent time trying to help enable a mechanism that allowed iTunes U content owners to export their courseware to Canvas-style courses. A handful of content owners took us up on that. I don't know ultimately what ever happened to all that content though.
Some of it no doubt ended up on Coursera or similar. But that iTunes U courseware, for the decade or so that it existed, was absolutely free and often top-notch… That will be missed.
And unlike the music, books, movies, the iTunes U content was all free. The most nefarious thing you might try to ascribe to Apple was that they were hoping the free content would somehow sell more iPads…
It still find myself missing what seems to be basic capabilities while using Photos.
These are all the stuff I miss and I wish they would come back.
On iPhone Air, currently at 6.5" gets a Silicon Carbon Battery upgrade, I hope we also get iPhone Air Mini at 5.95". The current iPhone Air still sold better than iPhone Plus. It should continue to stay in the product line.
This page could have used some heavy editing after asking the LLM to compile all stuff from wikipedia.
Lost it at the Lightning listing, which apple still first party even:
https://www.apple.com/shop/product/muqw3am/a/lightning-to-us...
At Gawker, They Battled a Billionaire. 10 Years Later, the Scars Are Still Healing https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/inside-ga...
Jefferson and Read had sold a scripted series to Apple titled Scraper that was based on the inner workings of Gawker, and the quartet, along with a handful of, as Carmichael puts it, “very accomplished, amazing screenwriters and playwrights on Broadway,” were producing scripts for the first season. [...] “Max and I had been concerned about that when we sold the project to Apple,” says Jefferson, but the executives developing the project “told us there was a very protective firewall between the TV side and the tech side.” But a month before the writers room wrapped with scripts for the first season’s eight episodes, Jefferson recalls, “an executive called me and said word had reached Tim Cook that we were doing a show set in a world similar to Gawker, and he had put the kibosh on it personally.” Jefferson and his 3 Arts Entertainment manager Jermaine Johnson (who also represents Read and Carmichael) say they heard about but never saw an email in which Cook allegedly referred to Gawker as rife with “vile human beings.” (Cook did not respond to requests for comment.)
I dunno, I mean… sigh.
There's stuff that deserves to be noticed, like the Mac Pro. The category is a beefy machine with expansion slots and the ability to run so hard that you need massive cooling. Even if the chips have become far more efficient, there's still space for running something so overpowered that you need physics to cool it. They just gave up on this space and it made some people sad (including me, even if I'm no longer that demographic, because I was for two decades).
And then there's the thing that just stopped mattering to most people because it wasn't relevant anymore. I remember my father, who used to love making mixed CDs in iTunes, asking why MacOS got worse at burning music CDs. I had to tell him that what he wanted wasn't the thing anymore. I essentially told him that he was "holding it wrong." It felt bad. Was that killed by Apple or did the market just move on? I'd argue the latter.
If you want to drive engagement, Killed By Apple isn't a bad name. I think that's basically the sum of the idea and not much else.
Like by 2010 you only burned CDs for the stuff what couldn't accept the flash drives ie mostly for the car audio systems. And by 2015 the need for ODD just disappeared though they were still included in servers and desktop PCs out of habit. But by 2020 a 'desktop' PC became SFF/USFF/USDF and you couldn't mount ODD there even if you want (though Lenovo sold mounting bracket for ODD for their Tiny series).
But I know, I'm not the target audience anymore.
And even then, I can still sync my 20+ year old firewire ipod with the most recent Apple Music (formally iTunes) on my m4 MacBook with the right converter.
iTunes -> Apple Music
Apple TV Remote App -> Apple TV Remote in Control Center
Dashboard -> Desktop Widgets
Find My Friends -> Find My
iPhoto -> Photos
Game Center app -> Games/Apple Arcade
Newsstand -> Apple News
iChat -> iMessage
Final Cut Studio/Server -> Final Cut Pro
AppleTalk -> AirDrop
as just a few examples.
You’re mad at the wrong people in this case though. iMessage can do high quality video and images because it’s a separate channel from the telecoms. RCS can now do high quality video and images too because it’s a newer standard and was built for that (and iPhones do support RCS now). But for normal “text” messages using the MMS/SMS systems, your quality is capped by the carriers and the carries have ridiculously (relative to current standards) low size limits. AT&T limits them to 1MB [1]. Verizon limits you to 1.2MB for images and 3.5MB for video [2] and T-Mobile limits you to 1MB for outbound and 3MB for inbound. Low quality is just baked into those paths and there’s nothing Apple (or Google) can do about it other than build parallel messaging systems
[1]: https://www.att.com/support/article/wireless/KM1041906/
[2]: https://www.verizon.com/support/knowledge-base-14641/
[3]: https://www.t-mobile.com/support/devices/device-troubleshoot...
Apple is clearly the bad guy on the RCS issue.
It's the first positive sign in a decade but also almost entirely unrelated to what people would consider supporting AMD and Nvidia cards.
It used to be that there was Android for those who didn't want the Apple way of doing things and wanted more control over their pocket computer, but Google saw how rich Apple got off the walled garden and has been slowly boiling the frog in that direction for years now.
Could delve in the sheer amount of data rot created by it and their drop of 32 bit support, but would be even more broad of it.
That's a knock against Apple, not a bragging point.
Regarding the appeal, this probably exists in Mac Ports, I do not know since you guys reminded me it still existed, but Brewfile lets me provision a new Mac very efficiently.
I'm a Windows user who also develops for Windows desktop and it's kind of sad that even though Windows has a way larger desktop share, there just isn't much going on compared to MacOS. Every week I read about some cool new or updated MacOS application and I can't remember the last time I read something similar about a Windows application (other than games).
The only reason I can think of is that MacOS developers are more motivated at least in part by having users that are willing to support developers by paying for software.
In turn, users and developers willing to pay for computing motivates and enables Apple to make better hardware. They don't always get it right, but I think they are doing a better job than most companies. It's also the reason why I think Apple's recent push for services revenue is so dangerous. The incentives aren't as aligned with users.
Maybe next year Framework or System76 will come out with their answer to Apple's M-series chips and I'll have to re-evaluate, but right now it feels like it's Apple against everybody else and everybody else is racing to the bottom.
Don't find and watch that video unless you have a therapist on the line.