from Hacker News

How long will the last Intel Macs be supported? macOS Sonoma gives us some hints

by DCKing on 7/17/23, 1:35 PM with 23 comments

  • by adrianmsmith on 7/17/23, 4:36 PM

    > The most likely cause for this decline in support for latter-day Intel Macs is also the simplest one: It's simply in Apple's business interests to do so. Most cynically, if your old Mac gets fewer years of software updates, you have one more reason to buy a new Mac.

    At least for me, one of the reasons I buy Apple hardware (e.g. iPhones) is that they’re supported longer than the competition. So I think if Apple are doing the above then it’s short-term thinking.

    My Dad bought an 5K iMac in 2017. He just used it for browsing, email and YouTube etc. It works well. Very fast. Fantastic screen. Doesn’t support the new OS coming out in a few months (but presumably will still get security updates to its existing OS for a few years). There is no reason to fill our landfills with powerful machines like that! (I would say I regret telling him to buy a Mac, but Windows 10 will stop getting security updates in a few years too.)

  • by TillE on 7/17/23, 5:46 PM

    I was just looking into this issue myself, to see how long I'd realistically have to keep shipping chunky universal binaries. I can imagine that Apple drops Intel support in say macOS 16, but keeps patching macOS 15 for a good long while.

  • by kevincox on 7/17/23, 3:56 PM

    I didn't see it pointed out explicitly in the article but it seems that the last major architecture change hurt lifespan for both the old architecture (at some point updates stopped for all old-arch machines) but also for the first few generations of the newer architecture (presumable the hardware was changing quicker so it was harder to keep compatibility).

    I find it interesting that the primary factor seems to be if it was easy to maintain support. IIUC there is no public promise of software support lifetime. I wonder if there is an internal minimum, then they continue supporting as long as it is easy to do so?

  • by vr46 on 7/17/23, 4:38 PM

    The last Intel Macs were mind-numbingly expensive - my i9 MBP16 in 2020 was around £4.5K I think - and I would be seriously irritated at not being able to sweat this particular asset, or even sell it on. At least it still boots Windows. Still a good machine, the Touch Bar is a Power user’s dream.

    Apple might well have reduced their turnover by making the M1 series too good to need replacing on the same timeframes as the Intel machines - either way, what’s the point of making hardware built to last without the software?

  • by badrabbit on 7/17/23, 4:54 PM

    I think apple is making a mistake deprecating intel entirely. I want to get an M2 mac but I just can't. I need to work with native X64/amd64 code. And I can't get Linux laptops at work. Macos is the best work OS out there, sucks not being able to use them in the future.

  • by BaculumMeumEst on 7/17/23, 3:34 PM

    I still use an intel imac a few times a week to play with the CCL’s cocoa IDE. As intel macs become less stable, that software will die with it. Such a shame.