Anytime you work on a software project, the big events are always new releases. We love to get our update and see what sort of new and exciting things have been added. New versions are exciting, they're the result of months or years of hard work. Who doesn't love to talk about the new cool things going on?
There's a side of software that rarely gets talked about though, and honestly in the past it just wasn't all that important or exciting. That's the end of life. When is it time to kill off the old versions. Or sometimes even kill an entire project. When you do, what happens to the people using it? These are hard things to decide, there aren't good answers usually, it's just not a topic we're good at yet.
I bring this up now because apparently Apple has decided that Quicktime on Windows is no longer a thing. I think everyone can agree that expecting users to find some obscure message on the Internet to know they should uninstall something is pretty far fetched.
The conversation is way bigger than just Apple though. Google is going to brick some old Nest hardware. What about all those old tablets that still work but have no security updates? What about all those Windows XP machines still out there? I bet there are people still using Windows 95!
In some instances, the software and hardware can be decoupled. If you're running XP you can probably upgrade to something slightly better (maybe). Generally speaking though, you have some level of control. If you think about tablets or IoT style devices, the software and hardware are basically the same thing. The software will likely end of life before the hardware stops working. So what does that mean? In the case of pure software, if you need it to get work done, you're not going to uninstall it. It's all really complex unfortunately which is why nobody has figured this out yet.
In the past, you could keep most "hardware" working almost forever. There are cars out there nearly 100 years old. They still work and can be fixed. That's crazy. The thought of 100 year old software should frighten you to your core. They may have stopped making your washing machine years ago, but it still works and you can get it fixed. We've all seen the power tools our grandfathers used.
Now what happens when we decide to connect something to the Internet? Now we've chained the hardware to the software. Software has a defined lifecycle. It is born, it lives, it reaches end of life. Physical goods do not have a predetermined end of life (I know, it's complicated, let's keep it simple), they break, you get a new one. If we add software to this mix, software that creates a problem once it's hit the end of life stage, what do we do? There are two options really.
1) End the life of the hardware (brick it)
2) Let the hardware continue to run with the known bad software.
Neither is ideal. Now there are some devices you could just cut off features. A refrigerator for example. Instead of knowing when to order more pickles it reverts back to only keeping things cold. While this could create confusion in the pickle industry, at least you still have a working device. Other things would be tricky. An internet connected smart house isn't very useful if the things can't talk to each other. A tablet without internet isn't good for much.
I don't have any answers, just questions. We're still trying to sort out what this all means I suspect. If you think you know the answer I imagine you don't understand the question. This one is turtles all the way down.
What do you think? Tell me: @joshbressers