Well, now that we have the official ‘bag on Apple’ and how ‘they’re the worst’ portion of the thread illustrated, I’m curious about what the policy is for supported backward compatibility. Most if not all product teams publish their policy for backward compatibility, and some are more generous than others. Fortunately technology moves forward and unfortunately this puts an expiration date for useful life on most technology.
Regarding the issue @codev raised, I’m also curious as I was about to deploy Discourse however I have the possibility of some users with aging devices. As @Ed_S hinted, it may be something I need to consider, for looking elsewhere.
Personally I use some technology that is more than 5 years old and I have family with devices which are a bit older. I don’t think I’m alone in that. To Apple’s credit, their hardware is solid (which means it typically just continues working well beyond the software which is supported), and generally they do provide a generous coverage for backward compatibility.
Software and security frameworks move forward constantly, and ever more so these days, requiring upgrades as so much is interdependent. I buy the argument of upgrading for security, however no longer supporting a particular version of something because it is no longer “shipping” doesn’t mean there are not users who still use the technology.
If someone is going to argue, “hey, I need to support clients with non-SSL browsers from 1993,” I agree that’s absurd. However if we’re saying you only can use something that was released as N-1 (say, only shipped in the last 18 months), well not everyone is upgrading every 6 months.
Firefox for example, provides ESR (extended supported releases) for older platforms. That’s great for Firefox and folks who need ESR. Though it becomes moot if vendors, e.g. Discourse, won’t support something because of a silly browser version number not matching their predefined / hardcoded minimum version string. If there are required frameworks, that’s one thing – if it’s simply “version 1 does not equal 2,” but otherwise it works then that’s really unfortunate. I’ve been seeing more and more of this lack of interest in supporting earlier things. It’s a disappointing trend. Engineers today born in the late 80s and through the 90s have come up in a culture where “one always must upgrade.”
I know I’ve taken tangents here, thanks for the artistic license. I don’t want to lose sight of @codev’s original query. It’s important, specially where Discourse provides such meaningful purpose in communication and community.