Does Anyone Still Use a 2009 Mac Mini?

[talmy]

The problem is the OS rev:

- The 2006 mini became obsolete 4 years later in 2010 when OS rev 10.7 (lion) was introduced.

- The 2007 mini became obsolete 5 years later in 2012 when OS rev 10.8 (mountain lion) was introduced.

- The early 2009 mini is still supported 6 years later in 2015 when OS rev 10.11 (el capitan) is introduced.

Obviously the 2009 minis (and probably the 2010 as well) are the next to go.

Obviously but "when" is the question. Note that they are actually supporting longer now than they used to. The 2006 mini became obsolete because of the 32-bit architecture. I don't know what the issue with the 2007 is, maybe its awful embedded graphics. There is no move to 128-bit architectures in the works so I'd expect that as long as they keep the graphics drivers updated all is good. Note that even though you can run El Capitan on a 2009 mini, and it works fine, not all features of the latest OS are supported. You could call this a graceful dropping of support.

Moves in the recent OS versions to reduce the memory footprint, increase performance and energy efficiency will actually increase the useful life of older machines.

 

[grcar]

Note that even though you can run El Capitan on a 2009 mini, not all features of the latest OS are supported. You could call this a graceful dropping of support.

Sure. I am merely pointing out there is a time when the latest OS stops supporting older hardware and it seems to be about 5 years on average after the hardware was introduced. This is a simple, objective criterion for when the writing is on the wall. There are lots of other macs (laptops, desktops) that evolve faster than the mini, and the OS has to support all of them. It must be a nightmare at 1 Infinite Loop to run on so many platforms.

 

[talmy]

It must be a nightmare at 1 Infinite Loop to run on so many platforms.

Nowhere near the nightmare Microsoft has with Windows!

 

[g33k]

I think it is fast enough for most users, you can always upgrade the RAM to 8GB's which is awesome. What's even more awesome it that you can upgrade the rubbish hard drive to an SSD. You can even get Yosemite, but since you're using such an iconic and beautiful older Mac Mini i'd leave Mavericks on it.

 

[talmy]

You can even get Yosemite, but since you're using such an iconic and beautiful older Mac Mini i'd leave Mavericks on it.

Snow Leopard lovers should note that these will all run Snow Leopard! OTOH all three of mine have Yosemite and will have El Capitan (aka Snow Yosemite) when released.