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Intel Macs Won't Get Updates After macOS Tahoe

lars666 said:
Reasonable.
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It's expected, but I don't think it's reasonable. I had an iMac from 2019 that was still running beautifully. I sold it recently, but for it to have been on it's last update (only 5 updates (2020-2024)) is really kind of a slap in the face....it had a lot more life to give, but you don't want to own it when it falls behind on features and stops working across the board with your other devices due to lack of updates.

What's worse is for the folks who bought $5k-14k iMac Pros from 2017-2021 who are now about to lose support. I get things don't last forever, but it really seems like they should be supporting these things for far longer than they do. 5-7 years on a computer that still runs as good at 6 years old as it did on day 1, shouldn't be sunsetted.
 
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Broke it to my wife I’ll be upgrading my MacBook next year at some point because I can’t imagine not staying current with OS updates. Probably due for an update anyway given my systems 6 years old and will be at 7 when I look to upgrade.

TBH it’d been my guess that this year was the last anyway, and some other people I know didn’t think we’d even see an update this year. I’m overall reasonably happy with the period Apple has allowed the transition to run. When back in 2022 or whatever my Intel Mac wasn’t getting some features like the maps zoomed out globe view, I feared we were going to lose major OS updates much sooner than we have.

So next year I’ll update my MacBook and given my 2019 16” is still quite robust, I’ll probably expand my 150GB windows partition out to most of the boot drive and use it as a bit of a modest gaming PC and backup Windows system, as it runs quite nicely still (better than my newer work issued Windows PC even).

As with some other people, I appreciate the 12 months notice. I can plan for my own transition, or funds savings, for a new system. I’ll be more invested in any upcoming hardware announcements, that’s for sure.
 
VivienM said:
Windows 11 isn't supported on any Intel Mac because they don't have the TPM 2.0s Microsoft expects.

Easy enough to bypass, sure, and I am sure it will work fine, but...
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It works perfectly fine and Microsoft themselves were forced to backtrack a bit since too many modern pc boards were perfectly capable of running without it.
 
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turbineseaplane said:
Correct.
It was a forced obsolescence move from Microsoft that would have made Apple proud.
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The thing about those surface products is that they were just as expensive as Macs, but without the ability to run macOS.

I will miss the Intel era because of bootcamp, but it was time to move on. Those still holding on can grab M2 Macs at very good prices if they know where to look or just go with the M4 Mac mini.
 
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If you have an older Intel Mac, you might consider waiting another two years before buying a new one. For instance, if you purchased an Intel Mac in 2019 or 2020, you’ll likely get seven to eight years of use, which is a significant advantage for many users. In contrast, my Windows laptop usually requires replacement every three years because it starts slowing down or experiencing glitches that cannot be resolved by a firmware/software update.
 
>macOS 27, coming next year

LOL, it may be revealed next year, but it comes out earliest 1Q/2027.

So nothing to worry about for 2 years.
 
VivienM said:
I was playing with a Mac running Big Sur a little while ago, ended up OCLPing it, but you could certainly feel the end-of-supportness on Big Sur by 2024-2025. I can't even remember if you still could get current Chrome/Firefox or not...
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I have a 2014 15" MBP running Big Sur. I was trying to install some Remote Desktop software for work access, the software would not install on an unsupported system. I also tried to update brew (the command line package manager). That also complained that Big Sur was no longer supported. I ended up wiping MacOS and installing Linux which did allow me to install the remote desktop client.
 
I think that is fair to be honest. I got my Intel Mac in Jan 2020 and it will run the latest OS until Oct 26 so nearly 6 years of major updates. I think that is good. I will carry on using the MacBook until it breaks. I really don't know if I will buy another apple machine. I don't really know where they are going, although they have done support of Intel machines well.
 
When do you all think the Original M1 with 7 GPU will be Obsolete for them to care about? Some Core Duo first machines had less Mac OS X to gravitate on an era where an OS like Tiger, Leopard or Snow Leopard would last way more than a year.

They will show whether they truly care about Apple Silicon or just want to sell new units.
 
OGdrknight said:
If you have an older Intel Mac, you might consider waiting another two years before buying a new one. For instance, if you purchased an Intel Mac in 2019 or 2020, you’ll likely get seven to eight years of use, which is a significant advantage for many users. In contrast, my Windows laptop usually requires replacement every three years because it starts slowing down or experiencing glitches that cannot be resolved by a firmware/software update.
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Which is the model of the Windows laptop?
 
0423MAC said:
It works perfectly fine and Microsoft themselves were forced to backtrack a bit since too many modern pc boards were perfectly capable of running without it.
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Yes, I am aware of that, I have plenty of machines running Windows 11 unsupportedly. Had a bunch more too that I got rid of.

But... at the end of the day, you can't let family members or work machines use Windows 11 unsupportedly. Microsoft reserves the right to brick it in any monthly update, and while I am perfectly willing to take the risks on my own machines (it helps that I also have my Macs...), I don't think non-techie people can rely on unsupported Windows 11 as a daily driver.
 
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OGdrknight said:
In contrast, my Windows laptop usually requires replacement every three years because it starts slowing down or experiencing glitches that cannot be resolved by a firmware/software update.
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What Windows laptops are you buying?

Go and get a decent business laptop, e.g. Lenovo ThinkPad T series. Should be able to last you a lot longer than three years...
 
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adamw said:
The end of the line for Intel CPU Macs... Expect Intel Mac resale prices to drop like a rock.
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They pretty much have. Intel prices are incredibly low compared to a similarly used machine with the current architecture. Apple devices retain value well except when it comes to machines with unsupported hardware.
 
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macjoshua said:
Some of y'all weren't around for the PowerPC transition and it shows. The speed with which they abandoned support and development for those chips is legendary.
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Boy was it ever! I bought my last PowerBook on the cusp of the Intel announcement. The rumor mill wasn’t so active back then. And once support dropped I quickly found my PowerBook to be losing ground quickly for even web browsing. We had this thing called adobe flash and PPC support ended quickly. Found out fast just how much of the world was still using that dumb plugin.
 
VivienM said:
Except completely unsupported thanks to Microsoft's TPM 2.0 requirement, etc, unless there's a way to enable the on-processor TPM with Apple's UEFI firmware...
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It’s super easy to transplant the Windows 11 WIM into the Windows 10 installation framework.
 
Reminder that Apple only supported PowerPC for 2 years after the transition to Intel. I wouldn’t say this was overdue but it’s certainly longer than I thought it would take them.
 
VivienM said:
Are you talking about real support or official support?

Official support, yes, they dropped a ton with Windows 11, they didn't drop any with 24H2 for upgrades I don't think. Only for new systems. But if you have, say, an Intel i5-8xxx, you still get 24H2 just fine. Whereas a 7xxx has never been offered Windows 11 and the installer will tell you to get lost if you don't add some registry keys to bypass the CPU check.

Unofficially, the baseline for pre-24H2 versions was the 45nm C2D/C2Q, 24H2 requires an instruction that was added in... Nehalem?... I think. I have run 23H2 on a C2Q Q9650 and 24H2 on an Ivy Bridge in BIOS/MBR mode too, both actually work just fine.

This is part of what makes me so angry at Microsoft. At least when Apple drops support for something, they actually remove the code and the OCLP people have to add it back somehow. Microsoft left all the standard NT 6 code still there, but just put these additional checks in the installer at the last minute.
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But the MS installer is really easy to bypass because of the way MS created the installation software.
 
After all, I would conclude that it is not a big deal if this is the last macOS for Intel, because it means at least three more years of full official support for the latest Intel Macs, BUT the point where Apple should make a positive move and clearly announce it is that it will provide security support for Intel Macs for longer than that, but also updates for key Apple applications so that these computers are not excluded from the entire Apple ecosystem. That's 50 million users on Intel Macs. This cannot and should not be ignored, both from an environmental and business perspective, as well as user trust in Apple.
 
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