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macOS 27 Will Mark the End of an Era

losthismarbles said:
Misinformed if so, one could have had an even "leaner" Linux machine with exact said same (old/er) components; it being why i said i never "got" the HackIntosh thing.
Typical "lot of trouble for nothing" PC "enthusiast" stuff.. bother for the sake of bothering.

Again, just me.
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There are a ton of commercial software and plug ins that people may have invested in but were disillusioned with the hardware it ran on. That software won't run on any flavour of Linux without a translation layer, which defeats the purpose of rolling your own hardware - to get the most for your money.

I don't get your bafflement. The reason people ran hackintoshes was pretty obvious. For a minority, it was the geek thrills of getting something to work, which was never designed to. For most, it was getting a better user experience in terms of features or raw power for their money than Apple deigned to offer. I mean, were you really tempted by the last Mac Pro?
 
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Corefile said:
I think they'll give it a reprieve as there are still a lot of Intel Macs out there. Far more Intel Macs than Apple Silicon based Macs.
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Apple was pretty brutal when it cut off PPC in switching to Intel. I still remember the wailing and gnashing of teeth on this forum. People had invested in Powermac G5s, which came with Tiger 10.4.4 at the end. They got Leopard 10.5.x (which was optimised for Intel rather than PPC, anyway) and that was it. No more updates apart from the odd security/Java patch.

I will be amazed if Apple goes back on its word and releases Intel binaries for macOS 27.
 
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Corefile said:
I think they'll give it a reprieve as there are still a lot of Intel Macs out there. Far more Intel Macs than Apple Silicon based Macs.
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The issue isn't how many are out there, how many were sold, how much people paid for them, or how much they can still do. The issue is support cost.

Supporting older hardware is expensive. You don't just turn it on and see if it boots. There are detailed test procedures for every feature that have to be verified, and the effort grows geometrically with the number of hardware combinations that have to be supported. It's expensive.

And don't think this is just Apple's expense. Third party software developers have to support the same hardware that Apple supports, or their customers will walk. This can become a huge burden to smaller software houses that may only have a dozen or so employees.

Apple has a predictable roadmap for how long they support hardware after they stop selling it. This predictability helps their ecosystem partners manage their costs. Businesses that rely on performance typically replace their hardware more often than this anyway. It's primarily individuals and hobbyists who keep hardware longer.
 
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mdcmdcmdc said:
Supporting older hardware is expensive. You don't just turn it on and see if it boots. There are detailed test procedures for every feature that have to be verified, and the effort grows geometrically with the number of hardware combinations that have to be supported. It's expensive.
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Support is a cost which they got when they sold the Intel Mac. Using it as a means to validate Apple is lazy.
 
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mdcmdcmdc said:
The issue isn't how many are out there, how many were sold, how much people paid for them, or how much they can still do. The issue is support cost.

Supporting older hardware is expensive. You don't just turn it on and see if it boots. There are detailed test procedures for every feature that have to be verified, and the effort grows geometrically with the number of hardware combinations that have to be supported. It's expensive.

And don't think this is just Apple's expense. Third party software developers have to support the same hardware that Apple supports, or their customers will walk. This can become a huge burden to smaller software houses that may only have a dozen or so employees.

Apple has a predictable roadmap for how long they support hardware after they stop selling it. This predictability helps their ecosystem partners manage their costs. Businesses that rely on performance typically replace their hardware more often than this anyway. It's primarily individuals and hobbyists who keep hardware longer.
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THe other support cost is feature support. Supporting an old platform makes it much harder to re-architect the OS in major ways to take advantage of new hardware.

Its both money and opportunity cost.
 
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Corefile said:
Eight years ago was 2018 but Apple Silicon didn't appear until the end of 2020. I didn't know Apple went 2.5 years with no new products.
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By the time the new OS comes out in 2027, 8 years ago will be 2019. 7 years ago at that point will be 2020. Which is when the very last intel machines came out, the Intel 2020 macbook air. I have one of them on my desk here along with my 2013 trashcan, m5 ipad and 2024 M4 Max Macbook Pro.

It’s a disaster.
 
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throAU said:
By the time the new OS comes out in 2027, 8 years ago will be 2019. 7 years ago at that point will be 2020. Which is when the very last intel machines came out, the Intel 2020 macbook air. I have one of them on my desk here along with my 2013 trashcan, m5 ipad and 2024 M4 Max Macbook Pro.

It’s a disaster.
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What are you going on about 2027 for now? That's not what your original statement said.
 
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magbarn said:
It’s much worse than that many of us have been using OCLP and I even have my 2017 Mac Mini running MacOS 26 perfectly fine.
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Really? I have tried a few times, and for the majority of users Tahoe does not work well at all on OCLP… Sequoia yes, Tahoe no.

Here is a post where OCLP team announced: 'they cannot commit to an OCLP update for Tahoe' and so they will no longer accept any donations. There seems to be no future for the project. Apr 4, 2026.
 
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QuantumPulse said:
The Luddites of this community amuse me. 🤭 I appreciate when ppl hold on to older machines out of affection, but the reverse snobbery is quite amusing.
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Me with my MacBook 4,1 (early 2008)

1776539853968.jpeg
 
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switz said:
One would be really surprised how many of current Mac Store apps require Rosetta to run. It has been five processor models since Intel and folks are still dragging their heels to make their products compliant. The gravy train for older apps will stop when Rosetta gets turned off and while I would miss many of these programs, they were warned to get their programming act together and join our current operating system reality.

No sympathy for the antique programmers who seem to be riding it out to just drop the ball on their customer bases of many years.
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But why not allow backwards compatibility using Rosetta 2? It doesn’t make sense! The hit to your customers is worse than the “bad” developers who got the shaft from Apple along the way for not updating to a different hardware spec.
 
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match14 said:
Intel Macs still getting 2 years of security updates?
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That's the case for some of the later model Intel Macs. Older models may be able to run on Sequoia (via Open Core Legacy Patcher), which should keep getting Apple security updates for about another 18 months. After that, Linux may be the only option to keep vintage Intel Macs "updated", because it sounds like Open Core Legacy Patcher may never be compatible with Tahoe.

Personally, I'd rather buy a new MacBook Neo or Mac Mini than bother trying to get my old Intel Macs working properly on Linux. And keep on happily using my 2017 5K iMac for those tasks like photo editing that don't require any internet connection. But that's just me.
 
I just came in to say that I appreciate what Intel did for Apple when the PowerPC CPUs weren't cutting it. However, I am so very grateful for Apple embracing the potential of ARM technology and giving us Apple Silicon.

uller6 said:
I’ll miss intel only for the Linux compatibility keeping old machines alive well past their OSX support lifespans
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Yeah, that was awesome. I was able to breathe new life into a 2011 iMac before giving it to someone by installing Mint. However, I am confident that the Linux community will find a way to run Linux on Apple Silicon Macs. One distro is already making progress. https://asahilinux.org/
 
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neuropsychguy said:
I set up a Hackintosh about 10 years ago. It was not hard to do if you bought components that worked (much gratitude for all the people who tried different combinations!). It was much cheaper than an iMac at the time (ignoring the great screen) and ran OS X, which was (and is, in my opinion) better than all Linux distros. Okay, I haven't tested them all, but I started running and trying out different flavors of Linux in the 1990s and still use Linux nearly every day. Most are fine to good, but all lack the polish and features of OS X / macOS.

I eventually turned that Hackintosh into a Windows / Linux dual boot system and then just a Windows + WSL system, (which is pretty great), but the Hackintosh was good while I ran it. Much of it was simply a learning experience.
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I played a lot with building hackintoshes around the Snow Leopard / Lion era. It was fun, and it was a good way for people to learn about how intel Macs / OSX really worked. At that time Macs were significantly more expensive than laptop brands like Acer, but I imagine once you’d fallen in love with Snow Leopard, you ended up moving on to Apple hardware.

For me, I’d loved 68k Macs but was underwhelmed and felling a bit ripped off from investing a silly amount of money in a PPC Mac, and drifted off to PC land, but it was building hackintoshes that got me to buy a 2009 15” MacBook Pro - which was one of my favourite (along with my Mac Pro 5,1) Mac’s I’ve ever owned.

I imagine more recently, people were building hackintoshes because their classic Mac Pro 5,1s had reached their limit of expandability / upgradability, but users wanted to keep their software setup /workflows , but didn’t have the cash ( or desire ) to spend on a Mac Pro 7,1. That’s a case where I could see a hackintosh being a valid option.
 
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I set up a hackintosh several years ago as a hobby experience and enjoyed it as my main computer at the time was a Mac Pro running at the time the latest OS. For me the hackintosh was just a hobby and see if I could get it operating. I did and my grandson was young and helped me along the way. We both had a good time and he eventually ended up always remembering the fun time and sometimes confusing ways to get that computer to work. It still a working computer and it has a lot of memories.
 
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