email stopped working ?

[Anastasius]

Some email providers have recently migrated their systems over to TLS v1.2 and stopped supporting earlier versions. This means that access to your email account might stop working if you are using a Mac with El Capitan or earlier because, despite what some so-called experts will try and tell you, the mail client that comes with this version of OSX - Apple Mail 9.3 - does NOT support TLS v1.2.

Neither can it be upgraded unless you upgrade the whole OSX to Sierra or High Sierra and so if, like me, you are running an early-2009 iMac (or older) then you are stuffed as yo cannot upgrade.

One remedy is to use another email client like Thunderbird

[french frank]

Neither can it be upgraded unless you upgrade the whole OSX to Sierra or High Sierra and so if, like me, you are running an early-2009 iMac (or older) then you are stuffed as yo cannot upgrade.

One remedy is to use another email client like Thunderbird

Have we reached the stage where you have to upgrade software and hardware, like it or not, every 2 to 3 years?

[Anastasius]

Have we reached the stage where you have to upgrade software and hardware, like it or not, every 2 to 3 years?

That's an interesting question. In this instance the answer is 'No' as my iMac will be ten years old soon which is pretty damn good value for money IMO. My gut feel is that in the case of smartphones then the answer is probably 'Yes' particularly if banks etc start insisting that in order to use their latest App then you have to be running this or that version of Android or iOS.

I'd be interested to know how well comparable PCs of similar age are performing with the latest version of Microsoft compared to when the PC was first bought. My sense is that my iMac has taken hardly any performance hit with each new OSX. Not sure if PC's are the same.