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Intel Macs Won't Get Updates After macOS Tahoe
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True. I understand that people are pissed, but Intel got way better treatment than PowerPC.
There's another important and truly huge aspect to this sequence of events. And I think Apple should play smart here - and make a great "green" PR out of a potentially bad situation.
This can also be seen as primarily an ecological issue. If Apple is honestly a green company in the grand scheme of things, then they will realize that the 50 million or so Intel Mac users who would be left without support are a real environmental precedent. Apple should make sure that Intel users have at least two or three extra years of support for critical applications like Safari, Mail, FaceTime, Pages, and more.
If we want to learn something from history, let's go back to the 90s...
The PowerPC generation came to an end when IBM's legendary East Fishkill processor factory, after a long delay, was unable to produce the G5 processor in a process finer than 90 nm. They hit the technological ceiling of production and the fastest G5 ever stopped at 2.7 GHz, and from 2.5 GHz it required liquid cooling.
Jobs then pulls the switch and Apple switches to Intel processors. For our analysis here, a parallel that imposes itself is important, and that is the question of how many more years did Apple support the abandoned architecture? In the case of the G5, not long; the last G5 was produced in 2006, and the last supported MacOS on it is 10.5.8 Leopard which was released in October 2007. G4 Macs from 2002 fared better and were still able to install MacOS from late 2007, meaning they had five years of support to install the latest OS and after that Apple provides support for the last three generations of the operating system. In total, we come to eight years of factory support - which is not bad at all.
Apple has mostly stuck to similar rules to this day. The last three operating system releases are officially supported, and the computers themselves always receive a minimum of five years of support for new systems, although in some cases, such as the legendary tower Mac Pro (5,1), official support lasted a full nine years! All along from 10.5 Leopard to 10.14 Mojave! And when we thought that this ingenious Mac was dead, enthusiastic developers appeared who developed the OpenCore system. With a few compromises in speed, it allows the installation of new versions of MacOS. It sounds incredible, but the old Mac Pro (5,1) works perfectly today on the latest MacOS Sequoia 15.5 - in its sixteenth year of life! Since we know that Sequoia will be supported for the next two years, this, in my opinion, the best Macintosh ever, will come of age as a perfectly usable machine on the current and supported operating system.
But is it right to draw a parallel in terms of support between these two transitions? I would say not. There is a key difference in the size of the installed base. In the PowerPC era, Macs were not as popular as they are today. The user base was small, and so was the number of software buyers. At the time of the transition to Intel, there were about 20 million Mac users. Today, there are five times as many, about 100 million, but many have already switched to Apple's new "M" architecture. It is estimated that there were about 80 million Mac users at the time of the new architecture. How many have already left Intel? Some data says about 30 million, which means that globally we have a half-and-half situation, 50 million on Intel and 50 million on "M" systems.
There is almost no large corporation that does not boast about green policies, efforts to reduce pollution, the percentage of recyclable products, and the emphasis on using energy from renewable sources. Apple is at the forefront of this, but like other corporations, it does not do its best to use hardware as long as possible and to use purchased computers until the very end of their technological usefulness. I will not seriously criticize them because they are still the best in the industry, but more can be done! My opinion is that there is no greener policy than allowing users to use the purchased device until the very end of its life. We are witnessing the fact that many devices (especially smartphones) are abandoned in terms of software before they actually become technologically obsolete.
The same applies to computers, and the best indicator is the OpenCore project, which in practice proves that many "outdated" computers are quite capable of using the latest releases of operating systems and accompanying software. The loss of official support is therefore more of a "political" than a technological decision. If Apple sincerely wanted to be "green", it would continue to release Intel versions of MacOS for at least a few more years. Existing Intel hardware has the power to do this, and modern "advanced AI capabilities", which depend on new processors, may be exclusive to new Macs. However, none of this is critical for users of older Macs.
Let's just look at the evolution of MacOS releases in recent years - news and innovations are increasingly insignificant, often reduced to "new emoji" and unnecessary luxuries such as "iPhone mirroring" on Mac. If we look relatively, in terms of power, capabilities and period, by far the best MacOS ever was 10.6 Snow Leopard. That release focused on "under the hood" optimizations and innovations, such as the Grand Central Dispatch technology that optimizes multitasking and enables elegant performance of symmetric processing depending on the available hardware.
I would be the first to vote for Apple to return to biannual release of key versions of operating systems. That way there would be more time for optimizations and bug cleaning.
On the issue of Intel support, Apple will show how green the company really is and how much it really cares about the environment and its users.
This can also be seen as primarily an ecological issue. If Apple is honestly a green company in the grand scheme of things, then they will realize that the 50 million or so Intel Mac users who would be left without support are a real environmental precedent. Apple should make sure that Intel users have at least two or three extra years of support for critical applications like Safari, Mail, FaceTime, Pages, and more.
If we want to learn something from history, let's go back to the 90s...
The PowerPC generation came to an end when IBM's legendary East Fishkill processor factory, after a long delay, was unable to produce the G5 processor in a process finer than 90 nm. They hit the technological ceiling of production and the fastest G5 ever stopped at 2.7 GHz, and from 2.5 GHz it required liquid cooling.
Jobs then pulls the switch and Apple switches to Intel processors. For our analysis here, a parallel that imposes itself is important, and that is the question of how many more years did Apple support the abandoned architecture? In the case of the G5, not long; the last G5 was produced in 2006, and the last supported MacOS on it is 10.5.8 Leopard which was released in October 2007. G4 Macs from 2002 fared better and were still able to install MacOS from late 2007, meaning they had five years of support to install the latest OS and after that Apple provides support for the last three generations of the operating system. In total, we come to eight years of factory support - which is not bad at all.
Apple has mostly stuck to similar rules to this day. The last three operating system releases are officially supported, and the computers themselves always receive a minimum of five years of support for new systems, although in some cases, such as the legendary tower Mac Pro (5,1), official support lasted a full nine years! All along from 10.5 Leopard to 10.14 Mojave! And when we thought that this ingenious Mac was dead, enthusiastic developers appeared who developed the OpenCore system. With a few compromises in speed, it allows the installation of new versions of MacOS. It sounds incredible, but the old Mac Pro (5,1) works perfectly today on the latest MacOS Sequoia 15.5 - in its sixteenth year of life! Since we know that Sequoia will be supported for the next two years, this, in my opinion, the best Macintosh ever, will come of age as a perfectly usable machine on the current and supported operating system.
But is it right to draw a parallel in terms of support between these two transitions? I would say not. There is a key difference in the size of the installed base. In the PowerPC era, Macs were not as popular as they are today. The user base was small, and so was the number of software buyers. At the time of the transition to Intel, there were about 20 million Mac users. Today, there are five times as many, about 100 million, but many have already switched to Apple's new "M" architecture. It is estimated that there were about 80 million Mac users at the time of the new architecture. How many have already left Intel? Some data says about 30 million, which means that globally we have a half-and-half situation, 50 million on Intel and 50 million on "M" systems.
There is almost no large corporation that does not boast about green policies, efforts to reduce pollution, the percentage of recyclable products, and the emphasis on using energy from renewable sources. Apple is at the forefront of this, but like other corporations, it does not do its best to use hardware as long as possible and to use purchased computers until the very end of their technological usefulness. I will not seriously criticize them because they are still the best in the industry, but more can be done! My opinion is that there is no greener policy than allowing users to use the purchased device until the very end of its life. We are witnessing the fact that many devices (especially smartphones) are abandoned in terms of software before they actually become technologically obsolete.
The same applies to computers, and the best indicator is the OpenCore project, which in practice proves that many "outdated" computers are quite capable of using the latest releases of operating systems and accompanying software. The loss of official support is therefore more of a "political" than a technological decision. If Apple sincerely wanted to be "green", it would continue to release Intel versions of MacOS for at least a few more years. Existing Intel hardware has the power to do this, and modern "advanced AI capabilities", which depend on new processors, may be exclusive to new Macs. However, none of this is critical for users of older Macs.
Let's just look at the evolution of MacOS releases in recent years - news and innovations are increasingly insignificant, often reduced to "new emoji" and unnecessary luxuries such as "iPhone mirroring" on Mac. If we look relatively, in terms of power, capabilities and period, by far the best MacOS ever was 10.6 Snow Leopard. That release focused on "under the hood" optimizations and innovations, such as the Grand Central Dispatch technology that optimizes multitasking and enables elegant performance of symmetric processing depending on the available hardware.
I would be the first to vote for Apple to return to biannual release of key versions of operating systems. That way there would be more time for optimizations and bug cleaning.
On the issue of Intel support, Apple will show how green the company really is and how much it really cares about the environment and its users.
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A lot of developers have shifted to a model of supporting the last 3 most recent major versions of macOS, so your software options must be getting quite limited by now? Chromium based browsers won't support Big Sur (macOS 11) after August 2025. MS Office only runs on the last 3 major macOS releases, likewise for Adobe software.
I have yet to see normal reason why they dropped 2019 iMac. Mac Pro 2019 - sure, go ahead and upgrade. MBP 2019 with thermal throttling - go for it. 2019 iMac with i9 CPU - GTFO, you don't deserve anything. If Tahoe is last Intel update they should've just kept all remaining Intel Macs compatible. Planned obsolence strikes once again.
You don’t have to wonder much. It’s the end of OCLP as we know it, i.e. it will get updates for all the point updates of Tahoe, and maybe a couple of stability improvements after that.
We may see it being revived, and even pulling from/helping a revived ARM Hackintosh scene at some point, but that will be a different beast, much like OCLP was not the same as XPostFacto, even if the concept itself and its goals were similar.
Well I still haven't updated my Mac Mini 2018 32GB with Sequoia… still on Sonoma, so the news isn't earth shattering.
If I get a couple of years of Security Updates I'll be happy.
But yes, the writing is on the wall for my little Intel Mac.
If I get a couple of years of Security Updates I'll be happy.
But yes, the writing is on the wall for my little Intel Mac.
Currently I am working on a 2020 iMac, bought the day it was announced to replace my 2014 iMac (wich still works). I maxed out the CPU & GPU and ordered it with 64GB RAM and 4TB SSD, as I use VMs a lot. And yes, I still like this machine in my day to day work und I do not really care, that a M4 Studio would be faster, as the iMac is already fast enough.
And what Mac should I replace it with, I like the all in one concept and there ist currently no comparable Apple Silicone Mac. The screen size of the 24" iMac is to small, the external power supply is a bad joke and I can only get it with 32GB RAM and 2 TB SSD.
I will keep my iMac for myVMs and will probably add a Mini or Studio with a Studio display.
And Apple has not commited to that, it is just what they used to do in the past. And even than not all security issues where fixed in old versions.
And this is, what really annoys me. Every second sentence from Tim Cook contains something about environmental friendliness and than the abandon perfectly working Macs. As I already wrote, I do not need feature updates but Apple should commit to security updates. Or the should get honest and stop talking about environmental friendliness.
Just like any business, they spend resources (even with 'unlimited' money, there's not unlimited engineers)...
So while there are paths to revenue for Vision Pro, and they got 'something' out of the car project, spending tens/hundreds of millions to keep Intel running for another couple of years is bad ROI.
Where you work, does your leadership spend large sums of money on things that bring in $0 revenue?
Dev here, you can't support old platforms forever. If you want the benefits of new hardware, eventually the old stuff has to be dropped. Intel Macs are OLD at this point, I'm surprised apple didn't do it sooner to be honest.
Most of the OS is universal, not platform specific... it's never made sense to me why my Intel Mac has the ARM version of Calculator taking up storage space and vice versa on my ARM Mac, but that's how they've done it.
Ditto. My 2019 i9 (work computer) was replaced with a M1 Max due to keyboard issues... same RAM, same storage... NIGHT and DAY difference in performance, noise, heat, battery life! The M1 Max is still going strong, best upgrade ever.
I expect the final macOS Security Update to be out no earlier than 2028. I'll replace my 2019 MBP 16" after that.
I live off selling 2nd hand Macs, so I have some idea of the Mx chips’s speed. My wife has a 2021 16” M1 Pro, which is a crazy overkill for her needs (she’s a kindergarten teacher).
Meanwhile I torture my Core i9 with Adobe Ps and LrC, LLMs and whatnot. I do have to admit that it struggles with the workload, but I got so used to the laptop that I don’t want to give it up just yet.
Is anyone still using those? I'm on a M1 pro here and will continue driving this thing for a while but there was such a performant gap between intel and M1 that I can't imagine still using the older chipset.
Is anyone still using an Intel Mac? The short answer is yes. While I have an M2 13” MBP, I also have 15” MBPs that see daily usage for a variety of things. I can tell a difference in speed, but for a lot of tasks, my 2015 15” MBP does just fine. I need to get a faster and larger NVMe SSD to replace the 256GB OEM blade, and take time to use OCLP to get it to Sequoia, but it still works for me just fine with Monterey installed.
I can vouch that you'll find this to be great!
I have a 1TB NVMe stick in mine and it runs Sequoia wonderfully.
Apple did some work to better support NVMe sticks as these particular OSes went along, at least it seems that way.
Sounds like my 2015 15" MBP will enjoy a long, still useful, retirement up at Tahoe
My work laptop AND my personal laptop are both a 2019 16". I push them both to the max daily and their fan speeds are constantly at 50-100%. Have them hooked up to a thunderbolt dock and driving 4k144hz and 4k60hz displays. So yes, they're still usable. Although the m4 mini is extremely tempting for my personal needs, I don't have any reason to upgrade just yet.
It’s about what I had expected, 2025 for the last Intel OS update. It was very predictable that those who bought Intel Macs after the first Apple Silicon devices came out wouldn’t get the full seven years.
But that isn’t necessarily the end. A lot of Macs are still good for many years on older OSs. My mother still uses a 21” iMac from 2009 running High Sierra for some things.
But that isn’t necessarily the end. A lot of Macs are still good for many years on older OSs. My mother still uses a 21” iMac from 2009 running High Sierra for some things.