OS X Mountain Lion Officially Drops Support for Some Older 64-Bit Macs

KPOM said:

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.

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That's a totally ways off comparison - When 64-bit Windows dropped 16 bit support, Microsoft was still selling 32-bit Windows. Most importantly very few were still running 16-bit code at the time - even when compared to how many people still run 2007 Mac Pros.

Microsoft making vendors write 64-bit drivers was a good thing - didn't hurt me as a consumer. Microsoft's 64-bit transition was arguably the best - people buying Windows 7 machines today don't even notice it for the most part.

But that's completely besides the point - 64bit is behind us. We are talking supporting older 64-bit capable hardware here.

I wonder if some First Gen MacPro users will file a law suit against Apple. They marketed those machines a fully 64Bit. Not once when being advertised did they tell anyone that it was really a 32Bit machine.

Is no-one at Apple capable of writing an EFI update for the first MacPro?

The obsolescence is a joke, my old G4 worked from 9.0.2 through to 10.4.8. So it ran the latest for 8 years. Are Apple really saying they are not capable of doing that anymore? Is 4 years the best this company can now do for computer hardware support?

Apple really know how to p**s off the Mac Pro community at the moment.

My Mac IIsi wouldn't run OS 8.5, because it wasn't a PPC.
My PowerMac 7200 wouldn't run OS X, because it wasn't a G3.
My G3 iBook wouldn't run Leopard, because it wasn't a G4 867MHz.
My 2006 iMac won't run Mountain Lion, because it has a 32-bit EFI/kernal, crummy graphics, whatever.

Nothing new here. This is the march of progress.

This isn't Apple "forcing" anyone to buy new (unless you feel compelled by the latest shiney).

All those machines kept on working. They didn't disappear in a puff of smoke when each new OS was released. Many of them did useful valuable work for many years after they stopped being the latest thing.

The move to Intel and the transition to 64-bit has certainly caused some early cut-offs. Hopefully, hardware should have a bit more stability for the next few years. (Till OS X moves to ARM, of course....!)

jv2 said:

Well, this is ok by me as I'm lucky enough to have a new rMBP except when it comes to VPN. It's beautiful, but absolutely can't boot (and work) in 32bit mode. Of course I've only got a 32bit Cisco VPN client, so I can't use that. There is a 64bit Cisco VPN client, but Cisco wants people to PAY for that client... ugh

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Ask your IT departement to download it using their SMARTnet contract.

Brutal, so this is the road ahead for Apple.
From tools to toys,
durable to dispensable,
creation to consumption,
collectible to common,
focused to forgotten
and passioned to greed.

G4DP said:

Is no-one at Apple capable of writing an EFI update for the first MacPro?

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And along the same lines, when they shipped a machine with 64 bit CPU, why didn't they make the EFI 64 bit in the first place?

benwiggy said:

My Mac IIsi wouldn't run OS 8.5, because it wasn't a PPC.
My PowerMac 7200 wouldn't run OS X, because it wasn't a G3.
My G3 iBook wouldn't run Leopard, because it wasn't a G4 867MHz.
My 2006 iMac won't run Mountain Lion, because it has a 32-bit EFI/kernal, crummy graphics, whatever.

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First, what was the timeline on each of those?

And second, those are all either major shifts in technology, or chips being too slow, neither of which is the case this time around. Nobody expects technology to be supported forever, the issue is it's being dumped too soon and it's forced obsolescence as opposed to the hardware actually being unable to run the OS.

Radio said:

very fair.

this is why im on the verge of jumping ship entirely to apple.

my notebook is a sony vaio and support has been weak.

have they invented two button mouses yet in the apple world?

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No, there is no need for a two button mouse, they are the first computer manufacturer to offer a touch sensitive mouse or (even better) a track pad as standard, which is far superior to a mouse restricted to two buttons and bunged up track wheel filling with dirt.

Navdakilla said:

Not a big deal. They are dropping support for computers 4-5 years old.
I would love to see my old single core windows xp computer handle windows 8.

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I'd think a top of the line 3 to 4 year old PC/Laptop should be able to handle Windows 8 pretty well thank you.

hobo.hopkins said:

People can't legitimately expect to receive the newest updates on machines that are 3+ years old.

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sure you can, the alternative (wintel) usually does this, and... the usual length of depreciating a pc/laptop/workstation/tablet/smartphone is 3 years. Since it's possible to buy one at the end of a product update cycle, it would make sense to support machines for 3 years plus one update cycle loop...

otherwise...

business decision makers will be acutely aware that supplier (Apple) end-of-lifed products that were "still on the books" - which is *deadly* in the corporate world.

KnightWRX said:

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.

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I gotta wonder about your experience actually. Having done real driver porting for Linux for years I somehow doubt you understand modern OSes and the facilities they provide to make endianness, and 32-bit/64-bit issue mostly a matter of writing good code that is 64-bit clean - take a look at this for example.

As such all well written code should not be a that big of an effort to port to 64-bit. Apple themselves have done it for some time now since the 64-bit kernel was available.

KnightWRX said:

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.

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Ok, I'll give you that, yet with a simple hack M.L. can run on "unsupported systems". Thus, someone who doesn't have to know coding can get 10.8 to run on a system that Apple claims is not supported due to hardware limitations.

As for writing kexts, it doesn't require a complete system rewrite. Also, "Snow Leopard" was indeed rewritten; it was a ground up overhaul of Leopard, and began the drop of PPC systems. Again, it seems engineering was more concerned about iCloud and iOS implementation than making an OS that is solid with reasonable support for 3-5 year old systems in order to push more hardware sales. They sell the hardware with the OS, it's a choice they made, it is not impossible for them to do.

parapup said:

That's a totally ways off comparison - When 64-bit Windows dropped 16 bit support, Microsoft was still selling 32-bit Windows. Most importantly very few were still running 16-bit code at the time - even when compared to how many people still run 2007 Mac Pros.

Microsoft making vendors write 64-bit drivers was a good thing - didn't hurt me as a consumer. Microsoft's 64-bit transition was arguably the best - people buying Windows 7 machines today don't even notice it for the most part.

But that's completely besides the point - 64bit is behind us. We are talking supporting older 64-bit capable hardware here.

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exactly.

SeattleMoose said:

Planned obsolescence drives HW sales. And if you just state the truth there will be @#$% to pay. When I invest in a computing device I want it to be able to stay current for a MINIMUM of 5 years.

Clearly Apple has a different "minimum" in mind for most of its computing devices.

And since the trend is away from DIY upgrades/part replacements...we are even more at the mercy of the computer industry. If they ever get to one year disposable devices, hopefully we will be able to trade them in for a sizable down payment to get the latest and greatest.

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Reminds me a little of football / soccer replica shirts in the uk - they change every 2 years, they would like it every year but the fa ruled against it.

Maybe they'll drop AppleCare down to 2 years.

mdelvecchio said:

and your argument continues to stand -- not being able to run the latest & greatest OS X doesnt in anyway de-value the usefulness of your version. it's every bit as functional as the day you bought it, probably more.

just stop comparing it to whats new *today*.

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Do you develop anything? Only about 2 months after Lion was released it was required to even run Xcode.

Itpirate said:

That stinks! I can upgrade my 08 iMac, but not my 2007 Mac Pro? My Mac Pro can run circles around my iMac.

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The processors are 64 bit on the Mac Pro, so I guess the problem is about the graphics card drivers. If you get a newer graphics card it might work (if I understand correctly). Time will tell I guess.

Navdakilla said:

Not a big deal. They are dropping support for computers 4-5 years old.
I would love to see my old single core windows xp computer handle windows 8.

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Windows 8, and even 7 run pretty darn well on older hardware.

I have ran Win7 on hardware as old as Northwood Pentium 4's. My brother still runs a Pentium 4 based dual core system. With enough RAM, CPU and GPU, it actually is a pretty reliable machine and suprisingly quick.

I've been testing Win8 on a very early single core Atom CPU (1.66ghz N455). its not super fast, but runs.

I Understand OSx migrating away from the older hardware platforms. But the complete cut off that they do on occasion sometimes seems heavy handed instead of just including legacy support.

While my computer is in the supported models list, this puts me back from buying another Mac. And I totally feel that Mac OS X these days is just gloss and drop shadows.

I have a Hackintosh on 10.6 and I just realised that it is what does the real work for me. My MacBook just sits on my lap. My next computer will be a Hackintosh with SL.

Not sure why people are pissed. It's not like your Mac will stop working when ML is released. Apple isn't forcing you to upgrade. You can keep running SL or Lion as long as you want.

As for Apple not re-writing the drivers to support the older Macs, I'm all for them. I'm a developer myself and it requires a lot of time to maintain 32bit and 64bit builds. I'm surprised Windows still supports 32bit. Hopefully with Windows 9 they drop it. Supporting multiple platforms and old hardware makes the OS bloated and more prone to bugs.

star-affinity said:

The processors are 64 bit on the Mac Pro, so I guess the problem is about the graphics card drivers. If you get a newer graphics card it might work (if I understand correctly). Time will tell I guess.

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It's both. The video card can be replaced, and the EFI won't let it run but that can be worked around hackintosh style. Since people have it working, it's just flat out stupid that Apple won't support it directly with the right video card.

benwiggy said:

Nothing new here. This is the march of progress.
[…]
All those machines kept on working. They didn't disappear in a puff of smoke when each new OS was released.

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This is a terrible comparison. Hardware has reached a plateau, this is not comparable at all to the Intel transition. Add RAM and an SSD to these obsolete computers and they may outperform others which made the cut.

Computers don't disappear in a puff of smoke once security updates stop, but from a professional POV they're dead.

Apple next move...

disposable Mac Pros: glued hard drives/SSDs, motherboard fused with the case. Computers are not supposed to be used for more than 3 years anyways.

Late 2009 mini here -@2.26 C2D. This will likely be the last OSX upgrade for me. Prob. about right though - as I was just thinking that I need to begin planning for my next upgrade.

I really want to hold off until the Retina display capable machines become available via the std vs the premium models. Hoping this in within the next 12 mths.

Navdakilla said:

Not a big deal. They are dropping support for computers 4-5 years old.
I would love to see my old single core windows xp computer handle windows 8.

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Windows is supported for much longer than OS X is. Unless you buy a new Mac, you can find yourself without support and being unable to run newer applications very fast. With Windows, even if the newest OS doesn't support your hardware, your current version of Windows will probably be supported for years to come.

XP is still just about in support (but not for much longer). Your old single core computer will be in support longer than any Mac will be. And I think it is a massive shame. I wish Apple supported their OSs like Microsoft does.

As a 2006 Mac Pro 1,1 owner (that I bought in 2007) I am disappointed, but not surprised as I saw it coming. This machine is completely capable of running Mountain Lion, way more capable than my early 2008 MBP that is supported in ML. They could have updated the EFI32 firmware to EFI64 if they wanted to, but it's typical of Apple to not do that sort of thing. It's theoretically possible for someone to hack the Mac Pro 1,1 to use EFI64 firmware, but apparently it's too difficult (failed attempts may mean a bricked machine)...

I'll probably be using the software hack that is available to get ML to run if it works well enough. My Mac Pro will basically be a hackintosh. I'm holding out until there is a major Mac Pro update to replace it, or maybe wait for a Haswell rMBP and go the laptop-only route.

bedifferent said:

How much effort does it take to upgrade a kext/driver? I would guess less effort than working on "Game Center".

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They could probably add support for older Macs if they tried, but they don't want to try. 5 years IS pretty old though, and the OS is only $30.