Here Are All the Macs Compatible With macOS Monterey

[biracialfamily91]

So, I’m guessing my 2014 mid MacBook Pro won’t get the Monterey update. That’s so sad. 😭. Anyway, I’m getting the new M1 iMac later this year anyway to replace it. I was hoping to squeeze out another year though. 🤷🏾‍♀️

 

[stevefeinstein]

I'm betting there is no technical reason at all. And the MacOS patchers quite often show that to be the case. It's a purely financial decision.

its really a performance based description and hackers are often satisfied with lesser performance. There’s really no financial benefit from cutting support from older systems if they can readily run the same code newer systems run. It’s when they can’t that performance suffers and it’s better not to be able to update and reduce their performance. Keep using the old OS and get the performance you deserve.

 

[odedia]

I don’t get it honestly. My 2014 iMac is still crazy fast.

 

[sublunar]

Are you confusing vintage with not being able to support an OS? vintage is when parts are no longer available, not being able to support an OS is when the parts don't support key features. No offense to the author, but he grabbed a list of devices that support a feature of Monterey, of which there are 2 footnotes. No where in the text or the footnote say that this is an exclusive list for Monterey support, although some features may not be supported. I hope I'm right, because I support Big Sur just fine, but I am not on the list. We'll see later today I guess

Apple want to be able to support a Mac up to 5-7 years after they stop selling it. Hardware wise that's their legal requirement.

They can draw their own lines on software support but obviously it looks bad if they stop supporting a product in software before the hardware support ends.

The point is here that Apple sold the 2014 Mini for far longer than they probably would have wanted and are now on the hook for support until at least October 2023 whereas the 2014 MacBook Pro is now vintage as of a year ago and will soon be obsolete.

Because the 2014 Mini lingered until October 2018 it won't be considered vintage until October 2023 and not obsolete until 2025 - long after the Coffee Lake CPU for the 2018 Mini (yes!) becomes obsolete and no longer available to buy.

Obviously if anything untoward happens Apple may have a stockpile on 2018 Minis or could upgrade people to an M1 mini going forward - the numbers of affected people won't be all that many I suspect.

But this why there's going to be a lot of whining about the Haswell decision which has split the MacBook Pro 2013/2014 users against the 2014 Mini users. Remember the 2014 Mini came with as little as 4Gb RAM, a 1.4GHz low power CPU (non-Iris graphics), and a spinning hard drive - none of which was officially upgradable.

Retina MacBook Pro users might have had a 15" model with quad core CPU, Nvidia GT750M graphics, and SSD but of course 2014 models will have been discontinued for over 6 years at this point and as linked above are already 'vintage'.

I guess this could be a key point for Apple. By moving the goalposts in this way they have just got rid of Nvidia Graphics cards from their supported line-up as the 2015 MBP 15" and later models went with AMD.

I'll not saying anything specific about feature support because it's too soon to say if Apple might be selective about borderline cases. I don't think it makes sense for Apple to declare that certain features are not available on certain Macs - they have already thrown a lot of Mac users under the proverbial bus for Monterey - although I would also add that Apple continue to go over and beyond for years of support for a product.

I could see these requirements staying steady for a couple of years when they can say goodbye to the 2014 Mini at the first possible opportunity and maybe move the goalposts slightly again.

Interestingly, thanks to Apple's product choices the 4 year Mac mini isn't the only aged product they will have to support for longer than they would have liked:

1. The MacBook Air which used Broadwell CPUs between 2015 and July 2019 (when the 2017 model was discontinued along with all of the Macbooks). These may have to have software support till Winter 2024 unless Apple decide to arbitrarily draw a line between Macs with the same hardware in again.
2. The 2013 Mac Pros will be vintage by December 2024.
3. The iMac 21.5" base model 2017 with Kaby Lake mobile CPU is still a current model - yes, it's due to go by 2022 but that just extends support until Winter 2026 at the earliest - I think it could go by October this year when the rest of the non 'Pro' ARM lineup is revealed.

 

[Spock]

My beloved 2014 13in. rMacBook Pro didn’t make the cut. Guess it’s time to start thinking about an upgrade.

 

[sublunar]

Believe it or not, you don't have to throw your Mac into the trash just because it won't run a brand-new OS version. It will, shockingly, keep functioning using the OS you have installed right now.

Also, Apple is quite good about providing security updates for years after a given OS version is superceded. I got a Catalina security update just last week -- about 7 months after Big Sur was released -- and if the past is any guide, I'll get more security updates for some time to come and so will you.

Apple currently provides security patches for the 2 previous versions of macOS. Currently Mojave is ok until Monterey comes out and then users will have to migrate to Catalina or Big Sur.

 

[yaneevt]

isn't the second list supposed to read 2xxx and *EARLIER* xmacx?

 

[sublunar]

So I have about 4 years left of MacOS compatibility on my 2019 27" 5k 8-core iMac. Great investment... 🙄

You'll probably get more than 4 years unless Apple draw an arbitrary line somewhere. Remember that 2013 MacBook Pros were allowed to install Big Sur 8 years later which is a very good innings. The difference will come down to other Macs of a similar generation where Apple may wish to draw a line in the future.

 

[sublunar]

So, I’m guessing my 2014 mid MacBook Pro won’t get the Monterey update. That’s so sad. 😭. Anyway, I’m getting the new M1 iMac later this year anyway to replace it. I was hoping to squeeze out another year though. 🤷🏾‍♀️

You should get Big Sur security updates for a couple more years so you'll be comfortable for a while longer.

 

[sublunar]

This seems like a pretty minor update to Big Sur, it makes no sense (except from a planned obsolescence point of view) to drop support for the Late 2014 5K iMac. Really sucks to see Apple still doing things like this.

To be fair Apple have an interest in no longer expending engineering resources continuing to support edge cases despite the existence of easily capable Macs within the same generation, I mention in another posting on this thread that dropping pre-2015 MacBook Pros finally gets rid of Nvidia driver support from current macOS and eliminates performance issues from certain Macs due to onboard graphics where responsiveness may be sub par.

Apple will also want to get rid of spinning hard disks from the ecosystem as soon as possible so iMacs will be going on that basis even though the rest of the hardware might be perfectly fine.

They also have to match this off against generally continuing support for Macs under 5 years old so other edge cases may remain - such as Retina MacBooks and the MacBook Air which for years never got a serious upgrade for example.

And generally speaking if you use 2022 as the final benchmark, Apple could draw a serious line as soon as 2027 or 2028 and call it a day for Intel altogether with security patches ending a couple of years later.

 

[CheshireBlue]

End of an era for my early 2014 MacBook Air.

 

[fontman]

Seems like a lot of useful things in this particular release. Although I think with all the things that they have been discussing in the new iOS and 0S I believe they're trying to reprogram our brains.

 

[padams35]

No one knows how long Apple will release new versions of Mac OS with dual binary support for Intel, but I doubt you will get 4 more years of new OS releases. I would only count on a couple of new releases after Monterey. With security updates for a couple of more years after that. Apple will want to move away from dual binary as soon as they can. Last transition Apple only sold one further version of OSX with PowerPC support after the initial release. The gap between releases was about every 2 years back then.

I'm hoping this transition will be more like the 32->64b EFI transition where old machines only lost 1 year of support (which would suggest 2017-2020 iMacs will support exactly 4 more versions of MacOS.)

It's really not that difficult. Instead of dating Apple kit from when it first went on sale, you need to look when Apple stopped selling it before counting down the clock. The lowly 2014 Mac Mini was sold well into 2018 whereas your 2014 iMac quickly gave way for a better model. In other words, the 2014 Mac Mini is also the 2018 Mac Mini.

There appear to be two clocks: 6 years from date introduced or 3 years from date discontinued, whichever is longer. Products like the 2013 Mac Pro and 2014 Mac Mini that live out the second clock stick out as anomalies.

You'll probably get more than 4 years unless Apple draw an arbitrary line somewhere. Remember that 2013 MacBook Pros were allowed to install Big Sur 8 years later which is a very good innings. The difference will come down to other Macs of a similar generation where Apple may wish to draw a line in the future.

Big Sur had the same arbitrary line. The 2013 MBP just had the good luck to share a model ID with the Mid 2014 models and got grandfathered in. The same luck is with the 2015 MBA sharing an ID with the 2017 MBA.

 

[deputy_doofy]

macOS Monterey is compatible with many of the Macs that were able to run macOS Big Sur, but it drops support for some older MacBook Air and iMac models from 2013 and 2014.

A full compatibility list is below:

• iMac - Late 2015 and later
  
• iMac Pro - 2017 and later
  
• MacBook Air - Early 2015 and later
  
• MacBook Pro - Early 2015 and later
  
• Mac Pro - Late 2013 and later
  
• Mac mini - Late 2014 and later
  
• MacBook - Early 2016 and later

These are the Macs that were compatible with macOS Big Sur:

• 2015 and later MacBook
  
• 2013 and later MacBook Air
  
• Late 2013 and later MacBook Pro
  
• 2014 and later iMac
  
• 2017 and later iMac Pro
  
• 2014 and later Mac mini
  
• 2013 and later Mac Pro

macOS 12 Monterey is available to developers at the current time, with Apple planning to make a public beta available in July.

Article Link: Here Are All the Macs Compatible With macOS Monterey

I had no interest in updating my late 2013 MBP anyway, but it is sad to see that it's finally off the "supported" list. 10.14.6 (Mojave) is where it remains.

2020 MBA (i7) and 2020 MBA (M1) will run to the future. 😀

 

[cwwilson]

Looks like it’s about to be the end of the road for my iMac and MBP. Glad to see the 2015’s living on for another year but this looks like it will be the last before the axe drops.

I will install the betas tonight and see how it goes.

 

[Maconplasma]

They definitely want people to move fast to Apple Silicon Macs…

LOL move fast? Monterey supports select Macs back from 2013. Lordy your choice of words. SMH.

 

[poi ran]

Another update I don't need. A pity though that my main computer, on Mojave, soon will be even more unsupported. I don't really know, but it's a guess based on previous experiences.

I really like that Windows Whatever is supported until jabruary 201x, and I know it years in advance. Must be really frustrating to have a Mac that can run latest Windows 10 really well but can't run latest MacOS.

Being stubborn, I still rely on Aperture & Iphoto, so Mojave it is.

 

[Santiago]

Damn my 2014 iMac Retina takes a kick in the crotch 🙁

My original iMac 5K died on me back in January, but it would have been forcibly retired by this if it hadn't. (Now on an M1 Mini with an LG 5K display.)

 

[Maconplasma]

2014 mac mini user here. Woah, it‘s still supported!
Hopefully it won’t lose many features compared with the most recent macs.

I’m specially interested on the Continuity+ feature (that I suggested to Craig a year ago)

That's the thing. Just because one's Mac just made it before the cut off of support being dropped doesn't mean all the features will be available. In fact it's usually the case that the much older "supported" Macs will not be able to take advantage of the features that the newer Macs will. I'm certain that the 2018 to Apple Silicon Macs will have specific functionality available to them that older Macs won't, especially since 2018 models have the Apple T2 Security chip.

 

[Populus]

That's the thing. Just because one's Mac just made it before the cut off of support being dropped doesn't mean all the features will be available. In fact it's usually the case that the much older "supported" Macs will not be able to take advantage of the features that the newer Macs will. I'm certain that the 2018 to Apple Silicon Macs will have specific functionality available to them that older Macs won't, especially since 2018 models have the Apple T2 Security chip.

Yes, and probably when the M3 or M4 macs are released, many new features will probably be exclusive to those macs. For instance, features that rely on the Neural Engine.

 

[redheeler]

its really a performance based description and hackers are often satisfied with lesser performance. There’s really no financial benefit from cutting support from older systems if they can readily run the same code newer systems run. It’s when they can’t that performance suffers and it’s better not to be able to update and reduce their performance. Keep using the old OS and get the performance you deserve.

This argument goes out the window when you consider Apple's decision to keep supporting the 2014 Mac mini but not the much more capable 5K iMac released at the same time. There's no technical reason the iMac wouldn't perform much better than the Mac mini, especially a high-end pure SSD model like the one I had.

And actually, it hasn't been that uncommon for unsupported Macs with good specs to perform better than lower-end supported Macs. Especially as people upgraded their older Macs with more RAM and SSDs.

 

[mnsportsgeek]

Feels like they hacked off a lot of machines this year. I was definitely spoiled that my 2012 MBP was supported until last year.

 

[Andres Cantu]

Just a couple of more macOS releases until this fragmentation becomes a thing of the past. Once all Intel macs are dropped, it will be much easier to predict support for the Apple Silicon macs.

 

[Maconplasma]

its really a performance based description and hackers are often satisfied with lesser performance.

Yeah well they should be satisfied since they are stealing the OS in the first place.

There’s really no financial benefit from cutting support from older systems if they can readily run the same code newer systems run. It’s when they can’t that performance suffers and it’s better not to be able to update and reduce their performance. Keep using the old OS and get the performance you deserve.

I understand what you're saying but you do have to look at this from a business standpoint. It actually cost a company money to support older hardware. They have to build code to make certain it runs "well enough" to maintain support for it. Now you may not like what I am about to say but the fact remains that no company is required to offer a free OS upgrade past the one that came with the product you bought. The fact that Apple stopped charging the $129 for MacOS and providing free OS upgrades speaks volumes.

I don't think when you buy a Windows machine that Microsoft continues to give new versions of major Windows OS upgrades free of charge for many years, do they?

 

[twistedpixel8]

- iMac - Late 2015 and later

Well, ****. That means that my machine is right at the edge of support, so there's a good chance it will lose support next year.

And my work-issued rMBP is done.

Me too. My 2015 iMac feels like it’s still pretty current. I do most of my work on it and it keeps up just fine. What reason do they have to drop support for it?