I worked at a telecom equipment company many years ago that kept products in production for long times, sometimes decades. In my final role there (I left in 2008), my team supported one particular product that had been designed in 1994, and was full of obsolete components. Our purchasing people had done lifetime buys on nearly every component on that board, but now that stock was drying up. We had no choice but to bite the bullet and redesign the board using modern components. It was an engineering expense that added zero new revenue, but it was necessary to keep a production line going.
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Think the m1 models will be supported for quite awhile yet.
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Vincent Hanna
Suspended
Abazigal
Contributor
Apple is a company that makes money primarily off hardware. The longer you keep your current Mac around and not upgrade, the less money they make. At the same time, cut off support too quickly, and you risk alienating your user base. It’s a fine needle to thread.
Unless…
macfacts
macrumors 603
apple doesn't stop software support due to the hardware not being fast enough for the software. proof: open core legacy patches on legacy pcc hardware.
I dunno, a lot of GPUs in macs over the years have been utter trash. I've got two 1st gen i7 macs with OCLP. The one that could take a GPU upgrade is great, runs like a champ. The one that can't? Effectively unusable.
4sallypat
macrumors 603
Work, personal and travel.
I never mix them up keeping them separate - and don't care to take my valuable work Mac on holidays.
travel must be linked with work or personal....so 2 would be enough
Even at some airports are asking travel for business or pleasure
Even at some airports are asking travel for business or pleasure
I've had my M1 MacBook Air for five years now, and it's still going strong!
It still renders audio and video projects pretty quickly, along with multi-tabbed browsing, thanks to the 16 GB of RAM. But I do want to eventually get a Pro-chip Mac Mini desktop for home use, and take it up even further with 48 GB of RAM and a 1 TB SSD, while I keep using the M1 Air when on the go, until they drop support for it, after which I'll upgrade to a 15" MacBook Air.
It still renders audio and video projects pretty quickly, along with multi-tabbed browsing, thanks to the 16 GB of RAM. But I do want to eventually get a Pro-chip Mac Mini desktop for home use, and take it up even further with 48 GB of RAM and a 1 TB SSD, while I keep using the M1 Air when on the go, until they drop support for it, after which I'll upgrade to a 15" MacBook Air.
Flint Ironstag
macrumors 68000
Business or pleasure? That's my concern. I travel because I can. Y'all answer crap like that?
Apple should be careful with its early M-Series Customers, we stuck with Apple after the gRaphics card issue with the 17" and 15" Laptops, ignored or suffered through the Keyboard issues and Intel Chips being noisy, and bought the M and M1 Series of Macs and helped them dominate the Industry, when cheaper Computers were available and upgradeable.
My M1 Air shows no signs of slowing down. 🙂 I also have an M4 Air with 24/512 here in the house and I don't notice much of a difference if I'm honest. Then again I'm a casual user.
Abazigal
Contributor
I have admittedly run into my first bottleneck with the M1 MBA.
I recently bought this monitor on Amazon. I found out the hard way that it works by having the computer see it as 2 separate displays. Not an issue for my windows work laptop. However, my MBA can only run it as a single screen, thus limiting its usefulness.
UPERFECT Delta 15.6" Dual Monitor Portable Monitor for Laptop Screen Extender 1080P HDR 360° Folding Stacked Triple Monitor with Stand for Laptop PC Phone Game Console (No Driver Needed)
UPERFECT Delta 15.6" Dual Monitor Portable Monitor for Laptop Screen Extender 1080P HDR 360° Folding Stacked Triple Monitor with Stand for Laptop PC Phone Game Console (No Driver Needed)
amzn.asia
This should presumably work with the M4 or M5 MBA.
gank41
macrumors 603
I have an M1 MBP from Nov 2020 and semi-recently did a complete reinstall and setup as new and WHOH is it so much better.. I wasn't having performance issues really, but was having a permissions issue that needed a reinstall. It's almost like brand new again.. A 5½ year old computer. I tend to replace my computers every 5 years or so, but this has me rethinking things.
On my M1 MBP, I use Logic to record our band and then tend to have maybe 10 or so apps open all day beyond that just for daily use stuff. Then I have an M1 MBA from my work, they sit side by side, and the work MBA only runs a bunch of web pages and Citrix apps and MS Office, work stuff.. I see NO reason this MBA can't continue for years like this. Any "intensive" type of apps we use for our work are all through Citrix, so that's an easy one. It's only got 256GB of space, though, and I see our org's "you're running out of space" message via Jamf, but I still tend to have roughly 50-60GB's free when that comes up.
I think I'd be fine using these machines for years still, but software tends to be tuned more for current hardware as opposed to older machines. It'll be up to Apple, ultimately, on whether they think it should be supported still. I hope they keep these things going, though. No way I can afford to replace it! Not in this economy.
On my M1 MBP, I use Logic to record our band and then tend to have maybe 10 or so apps open all day beyond that just for daily use stuff. Then I have an M1 MBA from my work, they sit side by side, and the work MBA only runs a bunch of web pages and Citrix apps and MS Office, work stuff.. I see NO reason this MBA can't continue for years like this. Any "intensive" type of apps we use for our work are all through Citrix, so that's an easy one. It's only got 256GB of space, though, and I see our org's "you're running out of space" message via Jamf, but I still tend to have roughly 50-60GB's free when that comes up.
I think I'd be fine using these machines for years still, but software tends to be tuned more for current hardware as opposed to older machines. It'll be up to Apple, ultimately, on whether they think it should be supported still. I hope they keep these things going, though. No way I can afford to replace it! Not in this economy.
Happy_John
Suspended
Doing a complete wipe back to factory settings and a new install and setup on any Apple device every year / couple of years can make a massive difference and can potentially save you money. Always do this first if you think your hardware is sluggish and you need a newer model, and if the machine you have is internally air-cooled with a fan, open up the case can clean out the built-up dust inside the machine and on the fan itself.
That chunk of money then stays in your bank account.
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Happy_John
Suspended
Apple is a company that makes money primarily off hardware. The longer you keep your current Mac around and not upgrade, the less money they make. At the same time, cut off support too quickly, and you risk alienating your user base. It’s a fine needle to thread.
Unless…
Well, this has been a shift with Apple relatively recently - charging subscriptions for software and services, while making the base configs of their entry level Macs actually very good value. Adding adverts into Maps is more of the same.
I'm not looking forwards to ads in Maps, but I'm happy if charging subscriptions for software and services means less extortionate hardware prices; I'll just minimize the subscription ( don't need Creator Studio subscription, have my own NAS anyway so I don't need massive amounts of iCloud storage, etc).
I've a feeling it's something Apple have thought about a lot about regarding older Apple Silicon - it's not at all the same as the last gen of Intel machine - providing legacy intel support is a headache and has a cost, but AS based machines far less so.
Yes, they want people to upgrade their M1 MBAs and Pros to "new" MBAs and Pros, they want people to buy Neos, but they're still going to make money of the subscriptions form people on M1 MBAs, so there's less incentive for Apple to but the M1 Macs on the "unsupported" list sooner rather than later.
macfacts
macrumors 603
I did a little more play-testing...
It's crazy how my M1-chip MacBook Air (with 8-core graphics and 16 GB of unified RAM) is actually slightly faster than that 16" MacBook Pro that's a year older (with 2.6 GHz 6-core Intel i7 processor, 32 GB of RAM, and AMD Radeon Pro 5300M GPU with 4 GB dedicated VRAM). As such, that 16" Intel MacBook Pro currently serves as my "backup" Mac, like if something is being repaired or updated on my M1 Air (such as when I had the keyboard on it replaced over three months ago) or when I need to do something requiring an Intel processor (like running a certain game on a Windows XP virtual machine and making a Let's Play video of it). Of course, MacOS '27 will be dropping support for Intel Macs, so that will put my M1 Air at an even further advantage (along with once I eventually get an M5 Pro -equipped Mac Mini for home use once that's available and I've worked up enough money for one, while I still use the M1 Air as I'm on the go!)
It's crazy how my M1-chip MacBook Air (with 8-core graphics and 16 GB of unified RAM) is actually slightly faster than that 16" MacBook Pro that's a year older (with 2.6 GHz 6-core Intel i7 processor, 32 GB of RAM, and AMD Radeon Pro 5300M GPU with 4 GB dedicated VRAM). As such, that 16" Intel MacBook Pro currently serves as my "backup" Mac, like if something is being repaired or updated on my M1 Air (such as when I had the keyboard on it replaced over three months ago) or when I need to do something requiring an Intel processor (like running a certain game on a Windows XP virtual machine and making a Let's Play video of it). Of course, MacOS '27 will be dropping support for Intel Macs, so that will put my M1 Air at an even further advantage (along with once I eventually get an M5 Pro -equipped Mac Mini for home use once that's available and I've worked up enough money for one, while I still use the M1 Air as I'm on the go!)
Happy_John
Suspended
Happy_John
Suspended
macfacts
macrumors 603