I have made the promotion of hardware and software that puts owners in control and is designed to last a common topic at The New Leaf Journal. The last several weeks and months, I have made the case for long lifespans for video game consoles and computers, the case against digital media rentals masquerading as purchases, and the case against electronics that are defective by design. Having mostly focused on cautionary tales, I will highlight an encouraging story that I came across at Nikon Rumors. The article was published on July 26, 2022, and titled Nikon released new firmware update for almost 10 years old D7100 DLSR camera. The D7100 was originally announced in February 2013. The 2022 update “fix[es] an issue that resulted in live view ending about 10 minutes after being started in Camera Control Pro 2…” which I understand affects using the D7100 for live recording and streaming.
Digital cameras are good candidates for very long-term support, and it is good to see Nikon working to provide updates to owners of some of its legacy cameras instead of pushing them to upgrade by withdrawing support and future updates. This reminds me that I need to try to fix my even older Nikon D40 DLSR camera, which I used to capture some pictures that have appeared in The New Leaf Journal before it gave way to technical issues implicating its ability to focus.
My only quibble with the Nikon announcement is that, according to its update announcement, its software update program is only available for Windows (8.1 and up) and MacOS (six versions listed). I do hope that Nikon adds native Linux support in the future (note that I have no knowledge regarding whether its Windows software can be run on top of WINE), for supporting open operating systems is certainly in line with the values that lead to supporting hardware for many years. But in any event, I tip my hat to Nikon for its long-term-support philosophy.