I thought the whole point of Chromebooks was that they were essentially thin clients for the web, or Google services in general. That they have such short expiry dates seems absurd.
iPads are supported for longer. (And at <$500, not much more expensive.)
Most of the people I know who have switched from Android to Apple did so because a premium phone they had purchased stopped receiving updates after the first year or so they were stuck with bugs for which the only fix was “buy another phone”.
Everyone has EOL dates in this game, but Google consumer device ecosystems are the worst of the bunch in this regard.
This is the main driver for me in considering a switch to Apple. I almost did the last time I needed to upgrade, but the trade-in offers were good enough that I didn't. It doesn't feel like an upgrade though, I lost the back fingerprint scanner that worked great, but at least I get the security updates for a bit longer.
While I use an iPhone and would recommend it , you could easily get a phone like the pixel , one plus , etc that support lineageos or other 3rd party roms and that will keep support years after the vendor does. I will probably go that route next time because it’s not like the phone is unusable or slow after no more updates.
I have been on pixel my last few phones (currently on 6a). While I've done 3p roms on my phones before, I'm not as interested in tinkering with them anymore.
The phone that I got before my iPhone was a razor phone 2. I was hoping it would be one of the last androidphones I'd have to buy for a while due to its beefy specs.
Unfortunately they dropped support for it within the year that I bought it and it never got the latest android. Now it's it's in my basement.
Chrome has recently started really driving folks to upstream their drivers to Linux.
But many of these Chromebooks are from a before-time, when it was more traditional vendor development models.
Aka a huge gnarly vendor ask code drop. That may or may not matter be replaced by a other similar or quite different code drop. This is how wireless routers mostly exist today. Most embedded devices. Alas. Because it's utterly unsupportable over time. There's huge piles of hacks to get Chrome, the thing running the OS, going. And the new platform sdk changes everything around and introduced new issues and it's just a mess.
Now though, two things are happening. A lot a lot a lot more devices have Linux kernel mainstream support. So the kernel should support these devices basically forever-more, which is a huge change.
ChromeOS is also a moving target with a shifting sea of services & standards & expectations. Just a thin client maybe the end goal but there's basically a pretty complex featureful desktop, and with cause really. There's real burden upgrading a device to support newer ChromeOS, to keeping up.
The good news here is that ChromeOS is decoupling chrome the browser from Chrome the OS. So users may be stuck on an old ChromeOS desktop perhaps, ut they can keep upgrading Chrome the browser, which should expand effective lifetime a lot. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36977107
Albeit the question exists of how long hardware/desktop support will last. I spoke to how mainline drivers should make the task much easier. But whether companies actually do support their hardware beyond the current short lifespan or not is unknown, is anyone's guess.
> These updates depend on many device specific non-Google hardware and software providers that work with Google to provide the highest level of security and stability support. For this reason, older Chrome devices cannot receive updates indefinitely to enable new OS and browser features. For this reason, older Chrome devices cannot receive updates indefinitely to enable new OS and browser features.
By contrast, Microsoft supported security updates for Windows 7, across all the hardware supporting it, from its release in 2009 all the way through early 2020. A five-year AUE, less than many students' times in post-secondary education, is comparatively user-hostile - and downright dangerous from a security perspective.
Dumb question, but aren't iPads full of non-Apple hardware too?
I can't imagine buying a brand new device and be told that it's already too old for system updates because Google and the hardware provider are choosing not to work together to provide support. Google can point the finger all they want, but this is entirely a self-inflicted issue that other system software providers seemed to have worked past.
> Dumb question, but aren't iPads full of non-Apple hardware too?
They are but the parts that matter (i.e. the SoC containing the CPU and GPU, as well as anything RF such as WiFi/BT) is either made by Apple themselves or at least Apple has the full spec sheets - Apple writes all the drivers on their own, which was why NVIDIA got the boot, they didn't want to give Apple the documentation they needed (and were still dealing with the fallout of Soldergate, which made it an even easier decision for Apple). I think they also do the binary firmware blobs for RF devices, or at least that was the suspicion years ago when I was more involved in Hackintoshes as the stability of the same chipset was night and day between Windows and macOS.
Apple controls the full stack from hardware over kernel to a huge part of userspace. No other vendor comes even close to that level of control and experience, even Google only started rolling their own SoC (Tensor series) in the Pixel 6 and above two years ago.
To me it seems like Google wants the same level of control, but is sacrificing user experience and ChromeOS brand impression to achieve it.
To me, resolution of this issue looks like either letting hardware providers release their own drivers to enable them to support the sales of hardware currently on the shelves, or refuse to license ChromeOS to hardware providers unwilling to meet support standards that Google’s customers expect. Selling unsupported hardware as new seems like a recipe to drive customers away from the ChromeOS experience.
>By contrast, Microsoft supported security updates for Windows 7, across all the hardware supporting it, from its release in 2009 all the way through early 2020.
Exactly. Whats the point of getting a chromebook if you need a cheap laptop, when you can get a cheap windows one which you know will receive updates for at least a decade
Perhaps an institution may go for the iPad as it is harder to bypass the security and root/jailbreak and install apps (APKs) from a PC.
On the other if you are like me and prefer to read from a 10" or a 12.4" (Samsung) tablet, for which I don't mind the 'no updates', as I use it only as a reader that is always on Airplane mode and never connects to the internet. But I have no idea how many people go to that extreme (use a tablet only for reading and zero online connection).
Meanwhile, I'm still sitting on my unsupported Google Pixel 3 without absolutely any reason to upgrade it besides "Google decided to not give it any more security updates". There's nothing on newer phones that I want, this one works just fine, even its battery levels! Why, oh why!?
Because it's an entirely arbitrary and avoidable reason that causes e-waste. Seriously, change me a few $ per year so I can get extended security updates. I have no interested in replacing my phone while this one still works!
I wish I could keep using my current unsupported android phone but slowly all my critical apps are no longer working including the banking apps which won't support my android version. What do you do about that?
LineageOS is in the same boat as GrapheneOS in this regard.
"GrapheneOS passes the basicIntegrity check but isn't certified by Google so it fails the ctsProfileMatch check. Most apps currently only enforce weak software-based attestation which can be bypassed by spoofing what it checks."
There is a guide[1] that is used for Waydroid to get the emulator certified, but it would be complicated for physical devices, as it requires a root terminal into it.
Though there are probably ways to work around that. I've used a Magisk module to trick SafetyNet and successfully used banking apps and such a few years ago.
I bought a reconditioned Lenovo Chromebook for my parents last Christmas, and I kid you not that black plastic sheets had been applied to conceal the scratches on the case.
Of course, the software was entirely out of support when I brought the device up and logged in.
Yes. N if they are running on Intel they can run just about anything. On ARM you can baked your own or use one of the handfull of distros designed specifically for this.
The Chromebook death date is absurd in general. I bought my mom one a while ago and then she had to basically get rid of it when it was perfectly fine.
Don't throw away your unsupported Chromebook/box, you can unlock it and install whichever OS would be compatible with similar architecture PCs, making them a lot more versatile and powerful compared to those running ChromeOS.
Can confirm, my parents bought me a Chromebook off of Amazon, and looking at the ChromeOS version, it apparently was out of support for a year. We had to return it, along with all of the three other Chromebooks my parents bought, due to defects on all of them (scratched screen, dead battery, etc.)
Honest question, don’t we see this constantly with Amazon AND news sites that constantly post “deals” on computers? “Buy this MacBook Air for $500 off!” But they never mention its from 2015 and will be not supported by MacOS much longer. Or you’ll constantly see deals like this on Windows laptops with 4th gen intel processors or refurbished business laptops.
In general nothing is changing for me. I still have to babysit EVERYONE I know through the computer buying process so that they don’t get screwed over.
While it's possible that Google hasn't said they'll be doing the updates separately for the browser there's no reason to suspect they wouldn't do that once LaCrOS was fully implemented -- after all, it works under Linux.
The comment I submitted only went so far as to say they started doing "that", referring to the parent's post about decoupling and providing separate updates.
If "that" is referring to both, it's incorrect. Google has said they will be "well into 2024" without any benefits brought by LaCrOS. That includes any theoretical extending of the expiration dates.
Are you arguing that because they won't have something providing benefits until "well into 2024" that they have not started as of the time of my comment ?
This makes me think that Google is going to kill the ChromeBook project. It’s not making them much money (if any). Since it’s just a marketing spend for the small laptop market, they should care about PR.
But they don’t care about PR as evidenced by this stupidity that makes Google look like stupid engineers who can’t support their product.
And the prices are high. $500 for a “new” Chromebook mode from 5 years ago is madness.
I give them 5 years until they just kill it all. If we’re lucky they’ll make some bogus foundation that will give it a few years to limp on.
I've spent a fair amount of time messing with the ChromiumOS source tree and I think Google's EOL dates mostly coincide with dropping support for older kernels. Hardware vendors only ship drivers and patches for the LTS kernel at the time the device is built, they don't test or port those patches to newer kernels.
OEMs don't want to spend time/money on kernel updates for old devices. They'd rather sell you a new one.
Regardless of Android or other devices like Chromebooks discussed here, I think history has proven conclusively:
Vendor's interest to sell new devices as quickly as possible, by definition does not align with users' interest to keep using a device as long as practical - or until the hardware breaks.
If devices' hardware improves fast enough, users will replace old with new by themselves. Which makes both "pure hw company" or "Apple style vertical integration" viable business models.
But in more mature market, 'old' device = good enough. Vendor wants to sell new device, user wants to keep using old device longer.
Community developed OS (with or without vendor support) fits that situation better.
This is a disastrous situation in terms of e-waste, if we consider how long laptops can survive when using a reasonable software stack.
With most Linux setups, web browsing on extremely JS-heavy websites is the only area where you might feel considerable differences between a new laptop and one from 7-10 years ago.
Does the accounting math on the value of having those Chromebooks still running include the value of retaining that user of you're-the-product advertising and general stickiness?
Or does the math say they'd probably keep that user, no matter what device that user uses (at least for now, though over time Apple or MS could edge out Google services with their own), and that turning old Chromebooks into insecure/irresponsible bricks helps generate revenue from sales of new Chromebooks, and keeps manufacturing partners happy?
Shit like this is why I went full Apple after using android for 10 years or so. You pay a premium for Apple products but at least you get the proper support and build quality. I have an iPhone 12 Pro that’s coming up on 3 years. I have zero desire to upgrade it and I have feeling it’ll last at least another 3 years.
The Chromebooks no longer get updates, but how long can they keep on working usably? The article doesn't convey enough detail about this difference, or the story is making it sound like the laptops will die on that day.
That some of these cost as little as $69 brand new is alarming to me. Tech that cheap is usually destined to become e-waste. Used models that were more expensive than that when new are better for the planet and the user.
iPads are supported for longer. (And at <$500, not much more expensive.)