How long do you see Apple supporting the 2019 4k Intel iMac?

[staypuftforums]

Considering the 2018 Mac Mini with the same 8th generation Intel chip and same 8GB of RAM is still sold in the Apple store. And the Intel Mac pro is still being sold.

Reason I ask is because I'm considering buying the 2019 4k iMac due to screen size, ability to run Windows through bootcamp and most importantly price.

Any chance at all it's getting security updates until 2029?

 

[padams35]

Nope. No chance at all. I'm thinking only up until 2028.

More seriously, there is always some chance... I'm just expecting T2 chips and/or SSDs to be required at some point which may permit the still-sold 2018 Mac Mini and 2019 MacPro to receive security updates up until 2029, where a 2019 iMac might be cut short.

 

[bsbeamer]

Personally think transition to M-class is going faster than they originally anticipated. Using a 2019 machine beyond 2026 is likely going to be challenging and beyond 2028 is likely at your own risk.

The Xeon chips are a different beast than i5/i7/i9 when it comes to their own security. Intel likely will push microcode updates beyond Apple’s active support timeline. Getting those installed can be a major PITA unless you’re a programmer or have similar skill.

The benefit of the 2019 iMac is it lacks T2, which makes a lot of that support outside of Apple’s ecosystem more possible. The double edged sword part, good chance machines without T2 are EOL’d before others.

 

[ADGrant]

For hardware support, a Mac becomes Vintage 5 years after it is last sold which, in the case of the 2019 4k iMac, was almost a year ago. So you have another 4 years before it becomes vintage and two more years before it becomes obsolete. My 2014 15" MBP reached obsolete status last year and its last supported MacOS version in Big Sur.

My 2020 5k iMac was just discontinued so the clock has just started running. Like the 2018 Intel Mini and the 2019 Mac Pro, it is also a T2 Mac but with a 10th gen Intel CPU. I think it is the only Mac with 10th gen Intel CPUs.

It will be interesting to see when they discontinue the Intel Mac mini. I suspect it may be the last Intel Mac to be sold and I think support for MacOS on Intel will end 5-7 years after that. It is certainly possible that support for non T2 Macs is ended before that but I wouldn't think by much.

 

[Bazza1]

Its also a question of 3rd Party software and how long Apple will keep Rosetta 2 onboard. Some larger companies may be willing on maintaining two streams of software going, but others may simply shift to Silicon. So buying new software for Intel may become harder, as well as finding updates and security patches. Okay for a bit if you already have all the software you need and aren't worried about updates, but...

 

[ADGrant]

Its also a question of 3rd Party software and how long Apple will keep Rosetta 2 onboard. Some larger companies may be willing on maintaining two streams of software going, but others may simply shift to Silicon. So buying new software for Intel may become harder, as well as finding updates and security patches. Okay for a bit if you already have all the software you need and aren't worried about updates, but...

It is not normally that hard to maintain support for two CPU architectures with the same OS. Easier than maintaining one CPU architecture targeting multiple operating systems. iOS developers have always done this. The simulators on Intel Macs run x86 instructions so the simulator builds are x86 builds and Apple's toolchains have supported both since the creation of the iPhone. Catalyst supports the creation of apps that run on iOS and MacOS and therefore support x86 and ARM64. With the latest versions of Xcode, Catalyst apps can be built and distributed as ARM64/x86 fat binaries with minimal effort (just testing really).

This has nothing to do with Rosetta. Apple may stop supporting Rosetta before it stops support of Intel versions of MacOS. That will not affect developers ability to support Intel Macs.

 

[bsbeamer]

Rosetta 2 will be around at least until Adobe finishes porting every single piece of their software over. They are pretty close partners and Adobe had very early access to iOS/iPadOS well before it was publicly known. Most of their software is years away, even with many already in later Beta stages. Lots of the finer detail functionality is still missing and some will be abandoned during the transition. Would be nice to see Adobe make a “final” release for Intel Mac eventually just to make future support easier, but slew of issues will likely prevent that.

 

[staypuftforums]

Thanks for the replies. I'll be optimistic and hope to get 6 years of official MacOS use out of it. I'm hoping it gets 3 new versions at least. When security support is cut off, I can always move to Windows, as I've heard Windows 11 works fine with only minor workarounds. And there's always Linux. That's one of the key benefits of using an Intel Mac.