How long do Macs receive new MacOS updates for?

[The Cockney Rebel]

I read in a magazine that the M1s will only receive one more MacOS update.

Surely that can't be right?

I have two M2s, so hope they will be supported for a few more versions of MacOS, before they are retired.

Would appreciate and advice/knowledge.

Thanks.

 

[Abazigal]

I would like to think about 6-7 years of software updates on average. My 2011 iMac got 6 years of upgrades, same for my 2017 iMac as well.

So for my M1 MBA, I think maybe till 2026 or 2027. At least 2 more years. The M2 was released in 2022, so till 2028 or 2029 hopefully? Ultimately, the ball is in Apple's court.

 

[The Cockney Rebel]

I would like to think about 6-7 years of software updates on average. My 2011 iMac got 6 years of upgrades, same for my 2017 iMac as well.

So for my M1 MBA, I think maybe till 2026 or 2027. At least 2 more years. The M2 was released in 2022, so till 2028 or 2029 hopefully? Ultimately, the ball is in Apple's court.

Thanks for the reply.

That sounds reasonable 👍🏼.

 

[ewu]

my imac 2017 27 inch end of support at the end of this year, so totally 7 years

 

[Guenter]

We have no clou about apples update policy with m series macs. For intel macs the update was based on model, independent on the cpu (e.g. i3, i5 or i7). Due to similaritys of the Hardware it is hard to explain why the support of an m1 mini should be different to a m1 macbook. I dont think that the support of an m2pro mini will be longer than the support of a m2 mini, both are announced at the same time.
But if the support of the macs depends only on the generation of the cpu, the support for the mac studio is in some cases one year less than the support of a macbook. As i said we dont know for now.

 

[benwiggy]

I read in a magazine that the M1s will only receive one more MacOS update.

Surely that can't be right?

One more, after Tahoe, you mean? OS 27 could be the last, so you wouldn't get 28 in September 2027, but you'd still have 3 more years of security updates and general compatibility with the newest apps.

We can only hope that because the M1s are Apple's own in-house hardware, support times will be longer than before, when they relied on other manufacturers for components. (OK, they still use Qualcomm..)

Apple usually ends support for Macs when they lack some necessary hardware, like Metal-compliant GPUs; or if Apple considers that the performance 'experience' isn't good enough. There are some cases where people have been unable to identify the difference between models either side of the cut-off; but some models get supported for longer than average, and others less. That suggests it's not just a ticking clock from release. You can either subscribe to the theory that they're just tossing a coin to piss people off, or that there are bona fide reasons why it's impractical.


I think it would be very hard for Apple to end support for M1 Pro or M1 Max with 32Gb RAM, just because a base M1 with 8Gb RAM isn't good enough.