Early 2009 iMac - How many more upgrades of OS X?

[icemantx]

I have an early 2009 24" iMac that is working very well for me. I was curious though about how long Apple will support this hardware with OS updates/new versions? Since this model has been discontinued for nearly 3 years (Oct 2009) I am wondering if Mountain Lion or the next one will be the last OS update?

Being that Apple sold Core 2 Duo machines even in 2012 (white MacBook for education stopped in Feb 2012), I am hopeful they will support it for another 3 years. As Apple likes it I am sure, when my hardware becomes obsolete (no more OS upgrades) that is when I usually trade up (about every 5-7 years).

Thoughts?

Jeff

 

[mixel]

I see no reason they'd drop C2D support. They're 64bit.. Only reason I could see them dropping support for such old systems is ram requirements but I doubt that's ever going to happen. The 24" 2008 C2D also runs ML great and I'd guess it will be a few Years at least before they drop support. Any barriers would seem totally arbitrary.

 

[theSeb]

3

 

[leman]

They could drop support for Macs with weak GPUs at some point. I think Apple will go unified OpenGL ES/OpenGL 4.1 (which are mutually compatible) at some point in the future. This would mean dropping support for Geforce 9 series and similar.

 

[dearlaserworks]

I have an early 2009 24" iMac that is working very well for me. I was curious though about how long Apple will support this hardware with OS updates/new versions? Since this model has been discontinued for nearly 3 years (Oct 2009) I am wondering if Mountain Lion or the next one will be the last OS update?

Thoughts?

My Early 2008 MacBook Pro (Core 2 Duo) runs Lion fine, will run Mountain Lion. Our older Late 2006 iMac just hit the wall, apparently won't run Mountain Lion due to the graphics card, even though it's a Core 2 Duo. Six years seems about right. That works out to $200 a year for the old iMac, not bad at all.

 

[mmpotash]

Lion

For my 2008 iMac I had Leopard, which I recently upgraded to Snow Leopard. I plan on skipping Lion and downloading Mountain Lion when it comes out in a week or two.

 

[RedCroissant]

I have an early 2009 24" iMac that is working very well for me. I was curious though about how long Apple will support this hardware with OS updates/new versions? Since this model has been discontinued for nearly 3 years (Oct 2009) I am wondering if Mountain Lion or the next one will be the last OS update?

Being that Apple sold Core 2 Duo machines even in 2012 (white MacBook for education stopped in Feb 2012), I am hopeful they will support it for another 3 years. As Apple likes it I am sure, when my hardware becomes obsolete (no more OS upgrades) that is when I usually trade up (about every 5-7 years).

Thoughts?

Jeff

I think 2. Mountain Lion seems to pushing out a few machines and I can see mine getting booted when OS X 10.9 Amur Leopard comes out.