@Stephen_Ng, thanks for sharing those perspectives. I certainly agree with the roots of the sentiment expressed. As I noted, I’ve been using Roon since year two, yet it’s only since 1.8 that stability has reached a level I had longtime hoped for. So no, I was not particularly enthusiastic about 2.0, the deprecations involved and how the rollout has affected many of us. On the other hand, I can support the enthusiasm others have for 2.0, ARC ect. Seems like great stuff, just not anything I need. I just want to keep enjoying the user experiences I’ve been having without the kinds of disruptions discussed here.
But this thread’s topic is not about the merits, or lack thereof, of 2.0. It’s about those managing its rollout, and more particularly, mitigating the impact on those like ourselves whose hardware would require us to install the 1.8 Legacy components. And maybe to a lesser extent, the thread also brings up the issue you’ve raised about policies a company like Roon has toward maintaining support for older hardware.
The cases described in this and other recent threads illustrate that for many of us running Roon in Apple’s ecosystem, we found our Roon installations bricked at 2.0’s launch. Worse, we were sort of left to ourselves to sift through bread crumbs here and elsewhere to get back up and running. So the question this thread asked was how might this aspect of the rollout been handled differently?
But instead of accepting any responsibility for these occurrences, and welcoming a forward looking discussion about how things might be better in the future, at least one Roon staff member adopted a defensive tone, effectively blaming customers for not being on top of things. There’s been no interest in accepting the possibly Roon missed the mark here.
Funny, back in the day, I always felt uplifted at how Danny and other Roon principals seemed to respond humbly when users raised such issues. So I agree, there’s no reason to “let it go”. By and large, the thread’s topic has yet to even be accepted by Roon, much less generating a discussion on how things might move forward. What is stop one, admit there is a problem? To that end, maybe Roon could assure us “Legacy” Mac users we will be supported through at least the end of 2023 as a result of these inconveniences.
I share in your frustration about your 2014 Mac Mini being among the hardware on the Roon 2.0 chopping block. Mine’s a 2011, so the hit on me when the 1.8 Legacy window closes will be lighter. Nonetheless, this is the game we choose to take part in. For Roon to keep moving forward in its market, as well as maintain parity with the frameworks, servers and what not upstream in its world, some of us unfortunately get left behind downstream for trying in our own small ways to consume with a little lighter footprint on the planet and our bank accounts. Two years ago I got interested in testing Dirac Live, but found it had deprecated my Mac Mini two years prior. And when looking into new Mac Minis yesterday, i learned that while Roon 2.0 supports my iPhone 6, I can’t stream Airplay 2 to a 2021 M1 Mac Mini unless I’ve got an iPhone 7. So Roon is hardly the worst of the bunch in this regard, and possibly better than most. Maybe a thread on this would be interesting now that this depreciation topic is more real for more people. Does Roon want to say, “Hey, rest assured your hardware will be supported for a long time.” Or, like you point out, will the eight year lifespan for supporting cores like your Mac Mini soon become, seven, six…?