Apple stopped selling the M1 in “official” channels in March 2024, but still sold it at Walmart until earlier this year. It will be interesting to see when they start the 5 year clock. My guess is March 2024.
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Think the m1 models will be supported for quite awhile yet.
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headlessmike
macrumors 68000
The microcode update comes from Intel (or AMD), so when the CPU is no longer supported there will be no more microcode updates. And Windows might not check BIOS versions—modern PCs don't even use a BIOS for that matter—but they do check CPU microcode versions and will update if necessary.
M1 Pro and Max came one OS later so, even if they get the same number of OS updates they will get one more OS update compared to base M1, regardless. At this point it's reasonable to assume that MacOS 28 will be the last for the base M1 Macs, which means that M1 pro/max should go to 29.
Again we don't know the policy for Apple Silicon yet, we can only make predictions based on what Apple has done with Intel Macs and their iPads. iPads have had a very clear pattern since 2014, 7 OS updates for the pro/air/mini and 5 for the base. But then again, will things change with M1? I made some speculations a couple of years ago in the iPad forum about that, since based on current pattern, the iPad air M1 will be supported for longer than the pro M1, since it came later, so I made an assumption in 2023, saying that maybe Apple will decouple the pro and the air giving 8 years to the pro and 7 to the air and mini, but we'll only know once the first M1 stops getting OS updates. Currently if nothing changes the iPad pro M1 will end on iPadOS 28 while the M1 air should end at iPadOS 29.
jclardy
macrumors 601
This was useful in the Intel era. We are already at over 5 years for the M1 Air, but more importantly the M1 Air was being sold as new for 5 years since it's release (at Walmart), which is unprecedented for the Mac (I guess except for something like the 2013 Mac Pro...which Apple itself sold new for years without any updates.)
My guess is we are going to see Apple Silicon Macs supported for 7 years.
Support for the 2014 Mini lasted until the end of Monterey. Mine continues on running the current Linux Mint.
Apple also sold the 2012 non-retina MacBook Pro for several years. It was the last Mac notebook with a built-in optical drive.
The policy is muddy, as in opaque and slippery. The 2014 Mini has a Haswell CPU. It was sold as new until 2018. Intel ended support for that in 2021. Apple supported the2014 with Monterey which was released in 2021, then there was that year for full support and two more years of security updates ending the fall of 2024 so ten full years of support from introduction and six years of support after sales stopped.
The 2018 Mini was sold as new until the very end of 2022. Full support ended with Sequoia introduced in 2024, so six years from introduction but only two years after sales stopped. Security updates will end in the 2027, so nine years after introduction but only 5 years after sales stopped. The 2018 uses a Coffee Lake CPU and Intel ended support for that in 2025.
There is no pattern there I would bet on. Personally I suspect that the 2018 Mini got the ax early because the HD 630 graphics couldn't manage Liquid Glass.
And that leads to the question what can the M1 not handle that Apple thinks is the new hotness? Augmented Idiocy comes immediately to mind. The M1's NPU is pretty slow, (11 TOPS vs 38 for the M4.) But the M2 and M3 aren't really that much better. So it's going to be interesting.
thistleknife
macrumors member
macaddiict
macrumors 6502
... but the M1 Airs from Walmart came new out of box with software newer than the "discontinued" 2024 date, indicating that production continued beyond 2024.
The graphics on that thing were awful from the word go. It struggled with YouTube on a 30" monitor. I hooked up an eGPU to it, not even anything special, just a wx4100 in an old sonnet chassis, and it is soooooo much better.
throAU
macrumors G4
Legitimately:
- Secure Enclave / secure exclave / memory protection features added in later M series
- Memory integrity enforcement (added in M5 generation)
Happy_John
Suspended
This is the biggest question, ands you say, it always was with the Intel Macs.
Apple "cuts off" older machines (no longer supports them in newer version for macOS) for two reasons -
1) so the newOS doesn't need to contain multiple versions to support legacy hardware or give an alternative to features that cannot be supported on older hardware. This makes sense - the install package Intel + AS version of MAcOS is absolute massive compared to the AS only install.
2) to force users to upgrade to a newer model. This happened with certain Intel Macs, and this is where OCLP was a godsend for users.
As of yet, I can't see situation 1 applying to M1 Macs anytime soon, unless Apple Intelligence or later versions of Metal become core to running macOS ( they're not). Depreciating support for older bluetooth and wi-fi really won't reduce bloat to any significant degree.
To support an Macbook neo with 8gb ram with lower multicore/gpu performance and lower bandwidth longer than M1 Macbook air with 16 gb ram...would be so hilarious .. so embarrassing and i hope Apple knows this...
To eliminate this embarrassment would be to end their support on the same time..so M1 will last for another 2-3 years, probably until 28-29'
To eliminate this embarrassment would be to end their support on the same time..so M1 will last for another 2-3 years, probably until 28-29'
maflynn
macrumors Broadwell
Did you just reply to yourself? 😳
WarmWinterHat
Suspended
My Mac laptop from 2017 had active software support up until maybe about a year or two ago. Still, every now and then when there’s a security issue with Safari or the OS, I have seen a couple of updates. This laptop is 9 years old!
Guys, look at the iPhone and iPad for a good indicator.
The processor usually matters, but in specific cases matters significantly less than the year a device was released.
The iPhone 7 with A10 (2016) received updates up to iOS 15.
The iPad 6 with A10 (2018) received updates all the way to iPadOS 17.
The iPad Pro with A10X (2017) received updates until iPadOS 17 as well.
…but the iPad 7 with A10 (2019) went all the way to iPadOS 18.
You might argue, well, of course, the latest supported device from 2019 had the most ram… but that’s not true. The A10X Pro had 4 GB, the A10 iPad 7 only had 3. And the iPhone 7+ also had 3, while the iPad 6 only had 2 along with the regular iPhone 7.
It’s understandable why they may have dropped the iPhone first, battery life concerns, given that the iPhone has a significantly smaller battery than any iPad and hits to iPhone battery life are significantly more detrimental to its usage than the iPad, and also the iPad is used in education where they usually require a certain amount of years of support.
But the iPad Pro 2017 was genuinely a more powerful machine than the iPad 7 by a pretty wide margin, it easily could have received OS 18. That purely seems down to the fact the iPad 7 is newer, and Apple wanted to give it at least a full five years, again likely for education.
This tells me that the MacBook Neo likewise will at least always receive five full years of support, maybe even more, even if it means that it technically receives longer support than more capable machines.
For example, the current Neo will almost certainly receive support at least through macOS 31, the M1, even the M1Pro and Max, likely will not.
Same with the iPad, it’s very likely the M1 iPad Pro and Air are dropped before the A16 iPad 11.
The good news is, going off of Apple‘s past patterns, and considering that they are still supporting the 2018 iPad Pro, it’s very likely that we will not see Apple discontinue software support for the first Apple Silicon machines until macOS 29 at the earliest, and that is still 2 and a half years away.
Unless of course we see a situation where Apple keeps support list identical for several years running like they did with iOS 13, 14 and 15, or OS X mountain lion, Mavericks, Yosemite, El Capitan.
I think it’s also very likely that macOS 27, 28 and 29 all keep the same system requirements, meaning the first M1 machines wouldn’t be dropped until macOS 30.
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ignore what others tell you...only Apple will tell you if you are wrong or right my friend; in my view you are one of the best from this forum
headlessmike
macrumors 68000
The 8th gen Intel chips used in the 2018 mini and the 2 TB 13” 2020 MacBook Pro reached end of life from Intel in 2025 as you mentioned, which in the past has always been the point when Apple cuts macOS support as well. The GPU performance probably didn’t help its case though.
Well, my 2014 MacBook Pro running macOS Big Sur got an update in February (version 11.7.11 build 20G1443). So it's supported for over 12 years already and that's an Intel Mac. It makes sense that Apple's much more powerful Apple Silicon Macs will be supported for much longer, maybe at least for 20 years?