On the Back Side of Technology

Google is threatening to discontinue updates on Chrome for my Apple OS X, 10.7 or whatever cutsey animal name Apple gave it, and my wife’s exercise room WinXP machine. No problem, I deleted Chrome from both machines and they are happy with Explorer and/or Firefox. I don’t care which browser I’m using as long as it works and I can’t say that Chrome works all that well on a regular basis.

Threats to abandon my computer platform have been entertainment since I began to think about retiring in 2012. We have a WinXP machine in the basement that my wife uses for watching Netflix and Amazon movies and while Microsquash abandoned “extended support” for WinXP on April 8, 2014, that system keeps providing entertainment. The computer is probably 15 years old as is WinXP. The end of Microsoft’s “support” and security updates is only noticable because I can’t shut off the damn wanting that my system is not set to automatically accept updates. I’m not alone in continuing to get along with this obsolete software. As of January 2016, the US Windows XP desktop market share is 8%, China at 26%,and it is still the fifth most popular OS in the world after Windows 8.1 and OS X. Some statistics rank WinXP as second after Windows 7. Support from either Microsoft or Apple belongs in quotes because their definition of that word is only consistent with what other industries might call “customer abuse.”