alt Hacker NewsUpdating old products is expensive, especially as their hardware falls further behind. Unless manufacturers adopt some kind of subscription model to justify the cost of continued updates, which would likely be very unpopular, I don’t see how they can realistically keep older devices supported indefinitely.
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>I don’t see how they can realistically keep older devices supported indefinitely.
They don't have to. Open up the platform for linux and custom OS.
Well I'm quite sure the advances in LLMs abilities are going to be quite a nice change in this regard. If vendors would be required to release all firmware source code or at least full specs after devices drop out of support, it would be fairly simple and cheap now to port drivers to new kernel release or different OSs.
They don't have to support it indefinitely.
Allowing users install what they want on it would be the best case scenario.
Instead we have bullshit like "your TV is three years old? No updates for you": https://developer.samsung.com/smarttv/develop/specifications...
Vendors do not have to support their product indefinitely. They have to design their products in a way that they do not become useless after support ends. E.g. by opening up the bootloader and letting users install custom software.