Sad to see 2015 Macs not being supported. Hope that 2017 models will get the next macOS update.
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macOS Ventura Drops Support for Older Macs, Works With 2017 and Later Machines
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Oh, but surely being able to edit iMessages or search in Mail and have it actually work are features too intense for my humble quad-core iMac. Yeah, there’s no justifying what Apple is doing here 😬
The mighty Intel Core m3 in the 2017 MacBook Retina is very much essential for the raw computing power required for mail searching - so much so that the Intel Xeon E5 in the 2013 MacBook Pro just can't handle it!! 😂
1. Computers younger than 7 years are also affected. For instance, you could have bought a new Mac mini (2014-model) in early 2018 and be unable to upgrade after only 4 years.
2. Many people use their computers for a very long time, especially nowadays. My grandmother's laptop was manufactured in 2009.
3. These decisions of Apple are made very arbitrarily, so we have every right to question why they do this. Furthermore, the environmental impact of these kinds of decisions is very real.
Playing the devil's advocate: Windows 11 also has very aggressive system requirements, because older Intel-chips have security issues and serious limitations. There might also be a graphical requirement for Metal playing a role here.
It's surprising to not see Skylake on the list of supported CPUs for Windows 11. Seems like not that long ago when Skylake was current.
Exactly this. My 2016 MBP was *very* expensive. I justify that because I always plan to use my Macs for at least 7 years. And that’s never been a problem. I also tell that to people to encourage them to understand that Apple computers are worth the money
This damages Apple’s reputation for me. I don’t feel like I can trust them with my money.
Am I going to switch to PC? Nope, I’m going to assume I’ll have to upgrade more often so I’ll buy used Macs at cheaper prices
Hey, maybe that was their plan all along? Finally doing something good for the environment that isn’t also better for their pocket book
I'm surprised nobody has posted this yet, but it looks like a major cut off is hardware 10-bit h.265 HEVC decode support.
forums.macrumors.com
Sierra does not support hardware HEVC decode at all.
High Sierra supports hardware 10-bit HEVC decode.
2017 Core m3 MacBook + 10.12 Sierra: Cannot decode cleanly.
2017 Core m3 MacBook + 10.13 High Sierra: Decodes it with 25% CPU usage
2017 Core i5-7600 iMac + 10.12 Sierra: Cannot decode cleanly.
2017 Core i5-7600 iMac + 10.13 High Sierra: Decodes it with 10% CPU usage
2017 Core i7-7700K iMac + 10.12 Sierra: Cannot decode cleanly.
(I returned the machine though because it was too loud.)
A 2015 Core i7-6700K iMac running macOS 12 Monterey would behave roughly like the 2017 Core i7-7700K running 10.12 Sierra for this test. So yeah, in this regard, my Core m3 MacBook is more powerful than a 2015 Core i7 iMac.
See above.
Interestingly, I did some testing way back when, with 10-bit HEVC files. With the Sony 10-bit 4K Nature HEVC demo video:
4K HEVC 10-bit on the 2017 Core m3 MacBook is gorgeous!
Here is High Sierra's QuickTime with my 1.2 GHz Core m3 MacBook (2017), playing back a very, very high bitrate 10-bit h.265 HEVC file. It's buttery smooth, with ~25% CPU usage. It was as expected, but nonetheless I'm pleased. :D The file is here: http://www.4ktv.de/testvideos/ Note that...
forums.macrumors.com
Sierra does not support hardware HEVC decode at all.
High Sierra supports hardware 10-bit HEVC decode.
2017 Core m3 MacBook + 10.12 Sierra: Cannot decode cleanly.
2017 Core m3 MacBook + 10.13 High Sierra: Decodes it with 25% CPU usage
2017 Core i5-7600 iMac + 10.12 Sierra: Cannot decode cleanly.
2017 Core i5-7600 iMac + 10.13 High Sierra: Decodes it with 10% CPU usage
2017 Core i7-7700K iMac + 10.12 Sierra: Cannot decode cleanly.
(I returned the machine though because it was too loud.)
A 2015 Core i7-6700K iMac running macOS 12 Monterey would behave roughly like the 2017 Core i7-7700K running 10.12 Sierra for this test. So yeah, in this regard, my Core m3 MacBook is more powerful than a 2015 Core i7 iMac.
You've still got another 1.5 years of security updates & probably two or three more point releases left, so not sure why you downvoted / disagreed with my earlier post about power pc to intel that was faster & harder.
Expensive is a relative term. To me expensive was;
- dropping £2.5k on a 17" MBP without AppleCare & having 3 logic board replacements within 3 years (granted I got refunded after the recall) but in the meantime was 'forced' to buy another MBP.
- buying an iPad 3 which lasted a whole 6 months before the 4 came out & the iOS support was cut short.
- persuading my then GF to buy the lampshade G4 iMac " £1800 which had support cut after 2 years.
By your own argument you're getting the 7 years albeit you're missing out one major release and all features probably wouldn't have been available to you anyway.
Transitions only happen thankfully every so often, this one will be fine for years to come.
Is it hard to stomach? Sure, but that's the way Apple rolls, I'm probably holding to the 3rd gen although that's my gamble given the iPad debacle, I'll probably cave in & get a M2 Pro next year.
Will your MBP stop working in 2 years? Nope it'll be fine (I've still got others that keep on truckin') otherwise suck it up, trade it in & get a M1/M2/M3 or keep it as a back-up.
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Isn’t this pretty much what everyone was predicting the moment Apple Silicon was announced? PowerPC support was dropped from Mac OS X during the last transition with a quickness. I was figuring on either 2024 or 2025 as the last release that would boot natively on Intel Macs when Apple Silicon was announced in 2020, which is still longer support than PowerPC got when Intel came along. Yeah, it sucked for the people who were buying PowerMac G5s in 2005, but by 2009 they were no longer able to boot a new Mac OS X. Back then of course the cadence of “major” releases of Mac OS X was slower than now, so in terms of “number of releases” it was much smaller, but in terms of “number of years”, it will probably wind up being about the same.
And it won’t be a problem here either. Your Mac will continue to work just fine when Ventura comes out. Yes, you won’t have a couple small individual features here and there, but all the software you run will continue to support Monterey (or even earlier) for years to come, plus you’ll have another 2 years of security updates for Monterey. You’ll continue to be able to send and receive iMessages, to log into Apple services, to use third-party software just fine. At that point your laptop will be… 8 years old, so that fits right into your timeline.
Just because you can’t boot the latest OS doesn’t mean your computer is suddenly useless or unsupported.
But the performance difference of the time was massive between the PowerPC and the Intel devices. Maybe not so much with the PowerMac and iMac G5 but they went from a PowerBook with a single core 1.67 GHz with a 167 FSB to the MacBook Pro with a dual core Intel 2.16 GHz with a 667 FSB in a year not to mention 4x the L2 cache. As powerful as Apple Silicon is, I think that the transition from PowerPC to Intel was a little more drastic and getting that old PPC code out of the OS was needed.
Okay, but Snow Leopard introduced no new functions at all... So few people cared about not being able to run it. And Mac OS X Leopard still received security updates until 2011 (2012 even). That's 6 years of support. We will see how it goes this time
I'd reckon the move to AS is greater especially on battery life, maybe it's just we've been conditioned with the Pads & Phones?
The install base was smaller at the time so less folk to peeve off, plus it brought in a whole winblows crowd so was expected to be faster.
& not forgetting SJ, he would've been relentless on it no doubt, as IBM had been promising the whole powerbook G5 for ages, bridges were burnt at that point!
“Brand new” in the same way the (expensive, flagship desktop) 2005 PowerMac G5 was “brand new” up until the first Mac Pro was released in mid-2006. That machine only booted “current” major versions of Mac OS X until Snow Leopard came out in 2009. They got one major Mac OS X upgrade, Leopard, which came out in 2007. That one was particularly painful too because Snow Leopard introduced a lot of low level API changes and niceties that applications quickly moved to making 10.6.x a minimum requirement. Sure, that was “three years”, but only really two releases, as the cadence was longer between major releases back then.
Sort of. Snow Leopard was marketed as “no new features”, but the truth is there were a lot of under-the-hood changes that wound up making it a landmark “minimum version required” for applications for many years thereafter. It also obtained the reputation of being the most stable/reliable version of Mac OS X for several years as well (earned or otherwise). So, if you bought a PowerMac G5 in 2006 and couldn’t boot Snow Leopard in 2009, you were pretty pissed.
Yes and no. I’d agree that the absolute peak performance between Intel and Apple Silicon isn’t necessarily that different, but the performance efficiency different is massive. The fact that my M1 MacBook Air was performance competitive with my 90W 8700K desktop and my M1 Max pretty much blows it out of the water CPU-wise (and matches the GPU performance of the Radeon 6600XT that’s in it) for FAR less power draw is the real discontinuity. And performance efficiency was a big part of the PowerPC to Intel transition as well, certainly for the mobile devices. Yes, in terms of absolute raw computing power we’re not getting as big a jump. But when you consider battery life, heat, fan noise… I’d say the move from Intel to Apple Silicon is a bigger discontinuity than PowerPC to Intel. Certainly in an age where even smartphones have more than enough raw computing power to do most of what most people need to accomplish with computers, I’d say those sorts of metrics are more valuable than sheer computing power.
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Further to my previous post: Apple has built its ecosystem around HEVC. Even iPhones record video in 10-bit HDR 4K HEVC these days.
Macs prior to 2017, even high end ones, don’t support this in hardware and often struggle with playback of these files.
Macs released 2017 or later support this and don't struggle at all. (This includes my 1.2 GHz Core m3 fanless MacBook.)
I suspect at the electronics recycling/reselling company I work at, we'll be getting a bunch of pre-2017 Macs over the next couple of years... (Though we have indeed gotten a lot of 2015 MacBook Airs in the past that I was able to install Monterey on.)
People are throwing away fully functional 2015 MacBook Airs?
BTW, the recycling spot near my house is run by a guy that collects old Macs. He said he got a mint working original Mac with all the fixins which he then sold for 5 figures (CA$). Damn.yet we point to why was the Mac Book pro cut off 2019.
If the cut was was 2017 I think people would be fine and the MacBook Pro should be the oldest machines supported. The the ones that the youngest cut off.
I said earlier I am ok with my old 2015 machine not being supported. I honestly was sitting on replacing until M2 on the MacBook pro line but I have to have a personal machine that supports the latest OS due to Apple dropping support for XCode of the older versions by April. It is my lively hood. Even though work provides my work machine I have to have a personal machine if I want to change jobs or do side work forcing me to stay current. It is fine for a job hunt to have an old machine as long as it is running the latest stuff. Not fine otherwise. The really young cut off does make me fearful dropping what is going to be nearly 4k on a new machine if it is only going to last 3-4 years compared to getting nearly 7 out of the last one. I get the more powerful machine so they last longer. Not the other way around plus I need the horse power.
The MacBook Pro cutoff is 2017, not 2019, according to the Ventura page. ("MacBook Pro 2017 and later")
Yeah. 2017 MacBook Pro is supported.
@1129846, perhaps you mistook the 2019 Mac Pro requirement for the MacBook Pro? (2019 makes sense for the Mac Pro because the previous model Mac Pro is from 2013.)
yeah that makes more sense. I read 2019 and Mac Pro.
I can deal with the 2017 cut off for the MacBook pro. It does make me feel a little better at getting an 14 in M2 MacBook pro in the future. Now can Apple hurry up and make one of those. I do not want to get an M1 version of it. At this point I can deal with my dying 2015 a little longer just it is on its last legs with the battery swelling.
We get them from school districts retiring them among upgrading to newer machines; in this case, they are probably upgrading to M1 MacBook Airs and figured they had no need to hold onto the older Intel Airs. Besides, we only recycle stuff that doesn't work; anything that's still usable we re-sell at our eBay store (and I will wipe and re-install the Mac OS onto them, along with any other necessary repairs or updates).People are throwing away fully functional 2015 MacBook Airs?
I fully expect to get 5 – 7 years out of M1-based machines (speaking here of “the earliest Apple Silicon computers”) in terms of current OS upgrades, which is about par for the course. If you’re a developer and development is your livelihood, I’d expect that a new laptop every 5 years ought to be part of the budget. And truly, unless the development work you’re doing is on applications that heavily utilize the GPU, development is absolutely possible on a fanless M1 or M2 MacBook Air. Yes, your compile times might be a little longer, but it’s not like anyone “has to” spend $4K every 3 years on a Mac to do development, and if they do “have to” then they ought to be charging enough for their work that the expense is more than covered.