Official vendor support is rarely free.
If you want a support contract on Linux, you gotta pay for it.
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macOS Tahoe Might Support One Fewer Mac Than Previously Rumored
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Official vendor support is rarely free.
If you want a support contract on Linux, you gotta pay for it.
Apple has proven that they can and will drop support for random products they see fit, without any rhyme or reason. Let’s see how long M1 Apple wants it to last. My guess is it will last roughly as long as the same A chip that got released at the same year.
That’s some quite incredible money for value right there tbh. And customers like you are exactly what Apple hates: using devices for way longer than they want. Yes, it is good for the environment and so on but they want you to pay for new hardware on a semi-regular cycle. What’s good for customer is bad for company, what an irony.
Yep. Which is why I waited for the M1 iMac until I replaced out old 2011 iMac. These computers last forever. Even my 2011, 10 years later, was fine - once I replaced the HDD with a solid state drive. But, the lack of updates for a couple years was the dealbreaker.
My hope was the M1 would give me 6-8 years of OS updates…
Well…
there’s unpatched microcode that creates vulnerabilities Apple cant mitigate since Intel has already EOLd the procs
There’s the fact that for all its power that machine is likely outperformed by the lowest end M4s today (which among other things means that a lot of the folks who were willing to shell out for an imac pro, most of whom either needed it for work or were companies that bought them for employees, have long since upgraded to more modern machines. $8k is a lot for an individual, it’s not in the total cost of employment of an employee that needs that machine)
there’s maintaining a whole codebase for Intel that they’re trying to get away from and the cost and probably more importantly time it takes to test releases and patches on old machines
there’s the fact that the procs dont have NPUs that can handle a lot of the machine learning Apple uses that’s been driving a lot of new feature work
there’s the old GPUs whose drivers need to be maintained
there’s the problem of stocking parts for those machines
and there’s a lot more
Oh, and here’s the big one: there werent that many (compared to the larger pool of macs) sold and a lot less of them are in use today as people upgrade. Supporting old hardware becomes a larger and larger amount of work targeting a smaller and smaller group of customers over time. Eventually the diehards still using that hardware arent enough to justify it.
Do I wish Apple officially supported some hardware longer? Sure. Do I get why they dont? Yup
I bought a used 2017 iMac Pro over a year ago for $800. I've gotten great use out of it and will for another 2 1/4 years and then I'll decide what to do with it. It has certainly paid for itself though.
If you're spending $8K for a Mac, then it's very likely that it's revenue-generating and that it pays for itself, maybe in a few months or a year or two years.
- iPad Pro (1st generation) 8 versions of iOS/iPadOS supported
- iPad Pro (2nd generation) 8 versions of iOS/iPadOS supported
- iPad Pro (3rd generation) 7 versions of iOS/iPadOS supported and still going
Sure there is, for the reasons I described above.
Intel just last week released microcode updates for 8th gen Core processors from 2017. Let's not pretend Intel is the limitation here.
An Intel patch to fix a security vulnerability is a lot different than the Apple Silicon and macOS sitting down the hall from each other developing 5-10 year roadmaps together.
Still gonna rock my Mac Pro 2019 for years to come; my M1 mini is just a side media server at the moment.
Yes it is the same reason the hospitals are against healthy people and health in general as they would not be able to pay wages or fix the roof and replace the equipment. Health is sickness, sickness is health.
Obviously a non-structural thing like a target vector needs to be changed in order to change this "ironic" situation.
Keep in mind, they're not doing what Microsoft is doing. Microsoft has left the code to run Windows 11 on all kinds of unsupported systems (e.g. despite all the talk about UEFI/Secure Boot, you can install/boot 11 on a BIOS/MBR setup just fine, the same boot loader they've been using since Vista is still there). Apple is actively removing code, drivers, etc for the hardware that they're no longer supporting - it's just that so far, the OCLP folks have had good luck adding that back in..
I did the math again earlier this year because I'm planning on requesting an M5 MBP and upgraded monitors soon, and figured out that my employer's outlay for:
* my work M1P 16" Macbook Pro
and accessories:
* a pair of, at the time, expensive 27" displays from Dell that now flank my personal 34" LG at home for my home office setup, also planning on requesting upgrades there
* 3xeach trackpad/kb w' touchid/mouse (all of which act for me as auxillary + basically glorified touchid module in the kb's cases since I use my own gear at home
[ oh and I use one of apple's mice as a travel mouse that lives in my bag]* a pair of caldigit TS3+ docks (which I'll request upgrades too with the new machine)
* funding towards a nice office chair because I'm WFH and that's a perk
* the subsidy for my current cell and my previous 2 as BYOD (not counting the subsidy for my cell service because I'm on call, that's ongoing)
* 2xthe top of the line at the time logitech webcams
* 2x8tb SSDs that I got from IT last year
All represent a grand total of ~2 days of my total cost of employment (defined for my math as the approximate cost of salary, 401k and bonus, health coverage, and some HR overhead) - and with tax breaks on capital expenses I wouldnt be surprised if it's really 1 day or less, maybe even zero since some of it can be additionally be written off as R&D in additon likely
Bonus:
* the yearly cost of several AWS machines I have permently provisioned as test machines for me, not shared team resources (~$30,000/year, our footprint on AWS overall is massive so it's a rounding error but large in this context) dwarfs that, every single year.
tldr $8k seems like a lot for an individual laying out cash, but the iMac Pro was targetted, as you say, at being a machine for revenue generating folks, a stopgap while the Mac Pro was languishing, and was a relatively minor expense for most of the buyers, and for most of them now long since deprecated and ewasted as far as the company's concerned (whether the recyclers resell them or not used for other users doesnt change the math for business that bought it originally)
All that is to say GGP was not the target market for iMac Pro and their saltiness over the deprecation timeline vs cost is a reflection of that
This.
In any kind of business, people are expensive, not hardware.
Why did people buy Mac IIfxes? Why did people buy all those exotic accelerator cards in the early 1990s? Because those things massively, massively improved productivity - if you can turn a task that takes say, 30 minutes of machine time (i.e. the human is idling in front of the machine for 30 minutes while waiting for the machine to complete) into a 15 minute task, you've basically doubled the output from the human for a much, much cheaper cost than hiring a second human (who would need a second computer anyways, even if it's a cheaper one).
Obviously, there's a limit, you wouldn't spend $10K to turn a 30 second task into a 29 second task... which is also why those exotic accelerators are long gone.
As I said in another thread recently the SE/30 I have hanging out on my desk these days for funsies was $6,500 new, which is a whopping $17,000 today adjusted for inflation, for the base model (and that's not not counting the ethernet NIC in its PDS slot, which I dont know an exact cost on but certainly wasnt cheap either - lets me keep the machine on my network even today
). The iMac Pro, which really filled basically the same exact niche (high end all in one workstation), was a cheap machine by comparison
It's probably a good time for Tim Apple to step down and announcing it at WWDC would be fantastic for the morale of Apple users.
Let’s be real. We’re talking about major iPadOS updates. Not semi-updates to old versions like 16.7.11 to fix a random bug. These don’t fix most of the known vulnerabilities in current iPadOS 18.
Processor microcode updates are all about security updates. Once the hardware is taped out, there are no additional features to be had. The two teams don’t need to sit side by side. Apple just needs to pay Intel for extended support.
You've lost me completely. iPad Pros support 8 years of the major OS releases. Not "6-7" that you posited.
Intel dropped an end service announcement for 8th/9th gen CPUs. No more microcode updates after starting July this year.
No 2xTB early 2020 support in MacOS also seems plausible. That model had the late 2020 13” M1 MBP as a replacement, while the 4x TB model was not replaced until late 2021 when the 14” Apple silicon appeared.
As for Apple Silicon, I’ll predict 8GB gets phased out just as fast as Intel for something like:
MacOS 27: M1 and newer
MacOS 28: M1 and newer
MacOS 29: M2 and newer
MacOS 30+: M2+ with 16GB+ RAM for a long time
No 2xTB early 2020 support in MacOS also seems plausible. That model had the late 2020 13” M1 MBP as a replacement, while the 4x TB model was not replaced until late 2021 when the 14” Apple silicon appeared.
As for Apple Silicon, I’ll predict 8GB gets phased out just as fast as Intel for something like:
MacOS 27: M1 and newer
MacOS 28: M1 and newer
MacOS 29: M2 and newer
MacOS 30+: M2+ with 16GB+ RAM for a long time
You provided iPad Pro (2nd gen) as an example.
The 12.9-inch product was launched in June 2017. The last major update was iPadOS 17 launched in 2023. We received 6 years of major software updates.
Original: iOS 10.3.2
Current: iPadOS 17.7.6
The trap folks fall into is believing that there's any strategy to EOL of systems to their OS. I think it's all done entirely in a Marketing meet a week or so before WWDC.
The 2018 and 2019 MacBook Pro share the same model identifier and BoardID, so they won't be dropping the 2018 MBP unless they also drop the 2019. Choices, choices...
macOS 26 will drop support for several older Intel-based Mac models currently compatible with macOS Sequoia, according to a private account on X with a proven track record of leaking information about Apple's software platforms.
macOS 26 will be compatible with the following Mac models, the account said:
That is the exact same list that was previously reported by AppleInsider, but there could be one slight difference, the leaker said with uncertainty.
- MacBook Air (M1 and later)
- MacBook Pro (2019 and later)
- iMac (2020 and later)
- Mac mini (M1 and later)
- Mac Studio (all models)
- Mac Pro (2019 and later)
According to the private account on X, it is said that macOS 26 will also drop support for the MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2020, Two Thunderbolt 3 ports). However, the account said they "don't quite believe" that, so do not put too much stock into that particular claim. Just know that this particular model is potentially on the chopping block too.
We do not link to the account due to its private nature, but we consider it to be a reliable source.
macOS 26 is rumored to be named macOS Tahoe. Apple will announce the software update during its WWDC 2025 keynote, which begins on Monday.
Article Link: macOS Tahoe Might Support One Fewer Mac Than Previously Rumored
No Intel Mac mini? This was sold "as new" until early 2023...
I read elsewhere that it is also now designated as vintage...yet 2023 is only 2 years ago. What gives?
I read elsewhere that it is also now designated as vintage...yet 2023 is only 2 years ago. What gives?
Standard Apple practice.
Apple sold the 2015 until 2018. Still only got 7 macOS feature updates.
If you buy an old model from Apple, you take your chances.