Any belief that Apple could care less about Mac Pro owners ended long ago. This is about as surprising as the sun coming up tomorrow.
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OS X Mountain Lion Officially Drops Support for Some Older 64-Bit Macs
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Any belief that Apple could care less about Mac Pro owners ended long ago. This is about as surprising as the sun coming up tomorrow.
We learned during the Developer Preview process that there are four limitations that stop an older Intel Mac from working with OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion:
- 64-bit CPU required: If you have an Intel Core Solo or Core Duo processor, it won't work. Some models can swap to a 64-bit Intel Core 2 Duo but may require an Apple-unsupported firmware upgrade.
- EFI64 required: If you have an original 32-bit EFI Intel Mac, even if with a 64-bit CPU, it won't boot the 64-bit kernel. This is disappointing as many can run the kernel, just didn't have a way to boot it. Many such Mac owners use "Hackintosh" PC bootloaders, such as Chameleon, to boot these Apple-unsupported Macs into Lion with 64-bit kernels and the same approach works with Mountain Lion.
- "Modern" graphics card required: If you have a legacy graphics card (such as an Nvidia 7xxx) it won't work. (Legacy ATI X1xxx could work with at least the Developer Preview versions, but with significant issues. Not sure of final build.) If you have a Mac Pro with PCIe slots, you can upgrade to a newer card, even if it's unsupported by Apple.
- Supported machine identifier required: If you have a Mac not on Apple's supported list, the installer won't run as it checks the machine identifier (i.e. MacPro2,1) before letting you install. There are lots of ways around this, the simplest being adding your Mac identifier to the list.
Windows 64-bit versions dropped support for 16-bit programs and all 32-bit drivers. Microsoft did the same thing as Apple (which partly led to the Vista debacle), so even they recognized that there is a limit to legacy support.
Arguably OS X's transition to 64-bit was smoother since they allowed 32-bit drivers to run on the first 64-bit versions, while Microsoft just dropped support altogether and forced OEMs to write 64-bit drivers for everything they wanted certified to run on Windows 7.
I agree, Apple should provide the security updates for a given OS for the same amount of time as before...otherwise short of updating the OS you'll have 2 year old (and newer) machines falling out of being able to obtain security updates.
I have a feeling this is an unintended consequence of moving to the iOS release cycle that needs to be addressed.
So you've bought into planned obsolescence lock, stock, and barrel? Customers have a legitimate expectation that a $1000+ machine will function and be supported for longer than three years, especially professionals who may be spending $2000+ on a machine (and who probably consider their computer to be an investment, not just a Facebook machine).
I understand most people will not upgrade their machine or even attempt to troubleshoot a problem with their computer, but I don't understand why people have bought into this idea that electronics are disposable and need to be updated annually. You are just throwing money out the window. Sorry for the rant...
But it will suddenly stop receiving security updates when Mountain Lion is released. I suggest she should stop performing any casual web browsing using that machine.
I often complain about specific deprecations of features or compatibility, but this is not one of those times. The ones I complain about are the arbitrary ones where Apple could simply tick a box in a compiler or feature list and offer it. Intentional crippling.
This is not that. This is to move into a new memory space model in anticipation of a converged silicon space in the "near future". 3 years?
Rocketman
This is not that. This is to move into a new memory space model in anticipation of a converged silicon space in the "near future". 3 years?
Rocketman
Very few
In reality, very few models can take complete advantage of ML.
You can buy a new 12 core MacPro and it can not use Airplay, arguably the coolest feature in ML.
One can argue why Apple is doing this, but you need to be clear with your readers what features of ML they can and can not use.
In reality, very few models can take complete advantage of ML.
You can buy a new 12 core MacPro and it can not use Airplay, arguably the coolest feature in ML.
One can argue why Apple is doing this, but you need to be clear with your readers what features of ML they can and can not use.
Most of this "dropped support" is for Macs from 2008 and newer...machines barely 4 years old...and machines that could have been purchased late in their release (for example a "late 2008" model that was purchased in mid or late 2009...and yes, for the exact same price as when it was released in late 2008).
For a company who builds the OS and the hardware, this is unacceptable...and a major reason why Apple just doesn't live in the business space.
For a company who builds the OS and the hardware, this is unacceptable...and a major reason why Apple just doesn't live in the business space.
So...
Does the lack of support for 32-bit KEXTs on Mountain Lion's 64-bit kernel imply that all 32-bit applications will no longer be compatible?! No more Quicksilver, smcFanControl, Little Snitch, iFreeMem, etc... I hope 3rd party developers step up their game if this is the case!
Does the lack of support for 32-bit KEXTs on Mountain Lion's 64-bit kernel imply that all 32-bit applications will no longer be compatible?! No more Quicksilver, smcFanControl, Little Snitch, iFreeMem, etc...
I hope 3rd party developers step up their game if this is the case!
I'm guessing you aren't a hardware or software engineer of any level or you would know how false your guess is
No. 64-kernel runs 32-bit apps. KEXTs are part of the kernel, and have to be 64-bit in ML since DP2.Does the lack of support for 32-bit KEXTs on Mountain Lion's 64-bit kernel imply that all 32-bit applications will no longer be compatible?! No more Quicksilver, smcFanControl, Little Snitch, iFreeMem, etc...
You might be able to, check out the links in this thread where the hackintosh guys made it work with early mac pro.
people using the listed macs will happily upgrade
people who don't will happily still run Snow Leopard or Lion.
people who don't will happily still run Snow Leopard or Lion.
How much resources does one have to invest to update a bunch of drivers?
Graphics driver ? Plenty. Those are complex beasts. I remember following John Carmack and co. while they wrote a X11/Linux driver for Matrox G200 cards back in the pre-DRI days. They went at it for months, with full specification in hand.
Not really. Growth of tech has been exponentially exploding over the past five years. Theres been as much growth as the 20 years before that period. That kind of difference is a royal pain in the ass to try to support. Apple is making the choice not to waste resources on machines that will only give crappy results.
Those that want to threaten to go to Windows should just shut up and do it. Apple will still do just fine off their toys
Looks like it can...you just need to use the hack to boot without using the EFI.
And your experience with C, type sizes and how it all maps unto hardware registries with fixed size is ... ?
For userspace applications using sanctionned APIs and not doing any voodoo hacks to get some performance increases, definately the effort is mostly choosing "64 bit" as a target and hitting compile. Drivers are very very different beasts.
Actually, people seem to think EFI32 is capable of booting a 64 bit kernel. Linux can do it. It's just Apple is being its usual stubborn self; artificially limiting support for machines to try to get people to buy new ones. What's wrong with including a 32 bit kernel with ML? Back in the Classic OS era, machines such as the SE/30 and 6100/60 had 7 years of OS updates. Now we're down to just 4, on an OS that's much more capable of supporting a wide array of hardware.
So why aren't Mac Pros with upgraded GPUs that fully support 3.2 able to run ML? Why is this a welcome decision for you? Does it somehow improve your life?
Why not? As I stated above, in the Classic OS times, you could update machines for 7 years after the purchase date. Even in the PPC OS X era, the machines were supported for longer. Support was dropped for the G3 CPU was because it simply didn't have the features (namely AltiVec) to run the latest OS. The Intel architecture is largely the same between the unsupported and supported models.
The first Unibody MacBooks have 64 bit EFI.
That's true, but Apple's ported pretty much all the drivers for the unsupported Macs to 64 bit anyway, as the hardware between the last EFI32 Macs and first EFI64 is almost the same.
There's no reason why Apple can't compile the kernel in 32 bit for the EFI32 Macs, other than the greed to get people buy new Macs. Only thing is, there aren't really enough features in ML to make people upgrade, people'll just stick with SL or Lion as Microsoft experienced with Vista/7, a large proportion stayed on XP.
My MBP is supported... barely! But Lion has bogged this thing down considerably (or maybe it's just getting old?). I'm considering upgrading to an Air, but keeping this one around just for internet/office applications. I wonder if going back to Tiger (it screamed when running Tiger, but seems to have slowed with each update) would be wise...
In any case, AirDisplay isn't supported on my MBP, and that's the feature I'm most excited about.
In any case, AirDisplay isn't supported on my MBP, and that's the feature I'm most excited about.
There is no complete rewrite. 10.8 evolved out of the same code base as 10.0, same as 10.6. There are large parts of the system that don't need to be rewritten every iteration.