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Cuniac

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 23, 2013
502
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Phoenix
I'm trying to find what versions of the Mac OS Apple still provides support for. does anyone know?
 
I'm trying to find what versions of the Mac OS Apple still provides support for. does anyone know?

For now, supported versions of OS X are:

OS X Mountain Lion (10.8) - expect support to drop early 2016
OS X Mavericks (10.9) - expect support to drop early 2017
OS X Yosemite (10.10) - expect support to drop early 2018

Once El Capitan is available, you can expect support to early 2019.
 
For now, supported versions of OS X are:

OS X Mountain Lion (10.8) - expect support to drop early 2016
OS X Mavericks (10.9) - expect support to drop early 2017
OS X Yosemite (10.10) - expect support to drop early 2018

Once El Capitan is available, you can expect support to early 2019.

Thank you for your reply. Where did you find this information? is it in writing somewhere? I need it for a project :)
 
Informally, I've always understood that Apple supports the current version of OS X and the two previous versions.

Most recently, we saw this play out with the last update to Lion(10.7) coming in October 2014-or right around the time that Yosemite came out. Snow Leopard received its last security update in September 2013-right around the time Mavericks came out. The last security update to Leopard(10.5) was June 2011, and Lion shipped around July 2011.

With Apple moving from an 18 month-2 year update cycle to a roughly 1 year cycle for OS X in recent years, this means that an OS gets supported for roughly 3 years.
 
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For now, supported versions of OS X are:

OS X Mountain Lion (10.8) - expect support to drop early 2016
OS X Mavericks (10.9) - expect support to drop early 2017
OS X Yosemite (10.10) - expect support to drop early 2018

Once El Capitan is available, you can expect support to early 2019.
The pattern has been that Apple supports the current OS and the previous two major versions, for some time now. If the pattern holds, as soon as 10.11 ships, Apple will no longer update 10.8. There hasn't been an overlap like you describe.
 
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Thank you for your reply. Where did you find this information? is it in writing somewhere? I need it for a project :)

These are, unfortunately, only unwritten rules. Unlike Microsoft, Apple does not discuss lifecycle of their operating systems.
They are deduced from past patterns. Specifically, they are based on Apple's recent pattern of dropping support on previous OS X versions such as 10.6 and 10.7.
 
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