[ShabbyDoo]

I'm surprised a manufacturer of such engineering machines hasn't differentiated itself by offering a SLA on driver (and general software) availability for future operating system versions. It would be reasonable to require users to pay a subscription fee for extended support. I'd think the resale value of machines with drivers still available would be much higher than for those without and that this eventually would allow the manufacturer to charge a premium price for the machine at initial sale.

I own a Fujitsu Scansnap s1500. It's out of support, and the existing drivers are incompatible with Catalina. I now must pay a 3rd party $100 for drivers or fiddle around with a Linux scanner server or similar. Never again will I pay $400 for a Fujitsu scanner, that's for sure.

[Leherenn]

It's probably because when faced between paying X for continuous support (where X is a big number) and "we will keep around a few computers for when it's a problem in 20 years", most companies are going to go with the later.

Even if it would make financial sense long term, how likely is it that the person making the decision will be there in 20 years to deal with the mess? On the other hand, it will look much better on their next quarter results.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

It happens all the time, but it's generally not "visible" to the typical HN developer.

PC and peripheral manufacturers in the embedded space often provide availability guarantees e.g., "this version of this hardware will be available for sale at least until YYYY."

Sometimes it matters, usually it doesn't. But it does at least make ordering spare parts easier.