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When will Apple drop macOS support for M1 systems?
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A: I read it on FaceBook.
B: i read it on a web forum
C: i interpreted my dream last night with that as the result
D: i just feel it
Fixed it for you.
i realize this is a crime punishable by death (or worse, being ostracized by everyone), but i have never been on facebook... 🤯
Good for you. I wish more people would take that position. Social media posts that are blatantly false, that get believed by people, is not good. And this has nothing to do with MacBook so I will let myself out the back door.
Apple unofficially support down to -2 versions of macOS. So concurrently with Ventura, Apple also supports Monterey and Big Sur. The problem is, Apple never have an “LTS” version of macOS. This support train only moves forward. When the next macOS is released, Big Sur will stop getting updates. So the window of older hardware on their tail end of support is very short.
This is in contrast with iOS, where Apple is still pushing security updates to iOS12, a -4 version.
Hopefully with Apple Silicon, Apple can do the same to macs as iOS. There are iPads running M1 chips. It would be weird if those iPads receive longer software support than the Mac counterparts.
This is in contrast with iOS, where Apple is still pushing security updates to iOS12, a -4 version.
Hopefully with Apple Silicon, Apple can do the same to macs as iOS. There are iPads running M1 chips. It would be weird if those iPads receive longer software support than the Mac counterparts.
Phones start to fall apart in one way or another after year two, on average. 5 years of support for phones is fine. The forced heavy usage is what does it. What's not good is having to pay $1000 every couple of years. That's not good. But that's got nearly nothing to do with support.
If the laptop vendor's driver page for that laptop omits Windows 10, then that laptop doesn't truly support Windows 10. That said, any Ivy Bridge or newer laptop will have a drivers page for Windows 10. Generally, you'll get better mileage on Haswell and newer laptops for Windows 10, but Ivy Bridge is truly the oldest where you'll get support. A Sandy Bridge laptop will meet Microsoft's requirements for Windows 10, but not be truly supported by the vendor. And, still, an Ivy Bridge laptop will still be able to run a supported version of Windows until 2025. 13 years for a computer is outrageously amazing. No one come anywhere near close to that anymore.
Actually, you're wrong about that. Again, 13 year old laptops are supported (by the vendor and with drivers) for Windows 10.
It's more work to get Ventura running on a 2015 Mac. Windows 10 will install on hardware whose manufacturer doesn't have drivers for it. Like you said, the experience isn't going to be great and stability issues are likely to arise. But you don't need to do any kind of tweaking of anything to get to that point. Just install Windows and go. The vanilla Ventura installer will bark at you by default.
You have clearly not run Windows 10 on a Haswell or Broadwell laptop then. I've NEVER had issues. Mind you, all of my PCs are business class and fetching drivers is a breeze. But the mileage is generally smoother and, unlike the rather inefficient Monterey, Windows 10 is smooth as butter and I'm not having the fans roar every time I do something that wouldn't have incurred that same mileage on Big Sur or earlier.
Imperial evidence? Like evidence given down from the emperor himself?
Yes, Apple generally supports things for AT LEAST that long. But basing it on that alone is unscientific at best. Even basing it on whether or not Apple still sells products with the M1 is also unscientific at best. Apple makes the chips, and in all cases where that's true (i.e. iPadOS, iOS, watchOS, tvOS), Apple is going to keep supporting the OS until they deem that they can't anymore due to the hardware actually being lacking. A8 is still supported for tvOS and HomePod software. A8 support was dropped in iOS back in iOS 13 in 2019. It was finally dropped from iPadOS in iPadOS 16. Clearly, Apple hasn't yet implemented anything in tvOS mandating that they finally nuke support for the Apple TV 4th Gen/HD.
It's not even typical for MOST Pros anymore! We're talking about people for whom a 28-core Mac Pro (2019) wasn't enough power for in 2019! That's a really tiny percentage of even the community of high end video/graphics/scientific professionals! VERY few people need an Mx Max SoC. Even fewer need an Mx Ultra. Even fewer need something beefier than that. And EVEN FEWER THAN THAT need to upgrade every three years because the software (that itself hasn't been optimized for those high end configurations yet) is somehow demanding it. My point is that your take on how often high end users should upgrade is either (a) skewed to the REALLY small number of absolute highest-end use cases or (b) several technology generations out of date.
I know and work with graphic designers, video editors, and animators. None of them rocking an M1 Pro (let alone M1 Max) will need to upgrade when the M3 Pro and M3 Max inevitably become available. Hell, I'm sure they're still not even pushing the M1 Pro to its limits yet! Again, you're talking about extremely high-end use cases where 28 cores of Xeon or 20 cores of M1 Ultra is already not enough. That is such a small percentage of people working in those fields and those are workstations that are very unlikely to even be owned by individual users rather than businesses anyway.
It doesn't make the sense in 2023 that it would've in 2018. The gains are not great enough to justify the spend without the spend being a serious waste. No one with an M1 Max 16-inch MacBook Pro needs to get an M2 Max 16-inch MacBook Pro. And there won't be enough of a difference between the M1 Max and the M3 Max for that to really justify the expense except for those that should've gotten an M1 Ultra Mac Studio anyway. But even then, performance gains are not projected to be that significant.
Your stance made way more sense back in the PowerPC G5 days or even the early days of the Mac Pro where the generational processor boosts mattered over that short of a time. Two processor generations is nothing nowadays. Even still, there's no serious jump coming down the road that compares to the jump from, say, 9th Generation H-series Intel processors and M1 Pro and M1 Max. We're back to minimal jumps.
Yes, but just how many post-production houses have you worked for? I don't doubt that one place upgrades that aggressively. But I will absolutely argue that is not the average at all and I've worked for a bunch of them. IT shops will generally support a machine at least through the end of its warranty period; past that they won't keep it past the point where it needs a paid repair (because that is wasted money). For Apple, up until recently, that was a hard three years. Now, if you are an enterprise, it's four. And regardless, they'll renew to support you for up to five.
Again, that's standard IT practice at most places. 3-5 years unless your needs justify getting it sooner.
Considering how similar M2 is to M1, this is not that wild of a stretch. There are only very few obvious differences in the base M1 that could possibly make it get dropped earlier. But even in that case, I see no reason why M1 Pro, M1 Max, M1 Ultra, M2, M2 Pro, and M2 Max wouldn't then still lose support together. Base M1 has DDR4 RAM, all other Apple Silicon Mac SoCs have DDR5. Base M1 doesn't have any ProRes encode/decode engines, M1 Pro, M2, and M2 Pro have one, while M1 Max and M2 Max have two (and M1 Ultra with four). I have no clue what OS change Apple would introduce that would necessitate either of these things, but if that's where they draw the line, then I could see M1 getting dropped before the others. But I otherwise totally buy that M1 Pro/Max, M2, M2 Pro/Max, and M1 Ultra will all lose support at the same time.
I believe that average is higher. A lot of them had 8 years of the latest release and 10 years of releases getting security updates.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/202...es-than-they-used-to-heres-why-its-a-problem/
Apple GENERALLY drops support when at least one of three things are true:
- A component is no longer supported by the vendor and Apple needs to update the driver for it
- Apple changes the OS in a fundamental way such that a key hardware feature is required (for Ventura, that seems to be hardware-based HEVC decoders on the processors)
- It is more trouble than it is worth to keep supporting hardware and/or the user experience sucks.
This has been consistently true (possibly with the one exception of where Apple drew the line with macOS Monterey; allowing some Haswell systems, but not others). This has especially been true on the iOS and iPadOS side where there is only Apple Silicon and no third party CPU or SoC.
Apple is going to drop support for the M1 SoC when there is a hardware feature that it deems vital for a future macOS release that the M1 SoC doesn't have. What that feature is? Who knows. M1 isn't that old, and Apple still has to figure out when it's dropping Intel support first.
And, although they've been doing this at each release since Catalina, it's not always a given that Apple will change the minimum system requirements. Mountain Lion (10.8.x), Mavericks (10.9.x), Yosemite (10.10.x), and El Capitan (10.11.x) all had the exact same minimum system requirements. Similarly, Sierra (10.12.x) and High Sierra (10.13.x) both had the exact same minimum system requirements. Even Mojave (10.14.x) and Catalina (10.15.x) were virtually the same on minimum system requirements (with the only exception being Apple dropping support for the 2010 and 2012 Mac Pro towers, presumably due to the aftermarket video card requirement being unwieldy to support). From Catalina to Ventura, Apple has moved system requirements up. One can only presume that part of that is to eventually work towards macOS being Apple Silicon only (as supporting both architectures probably costs extra development resources as well as results in an OS that takes up more space on disk).
Apple drops iPhone models from support for the same reasons. The iPhone 6S and 6S Plus held the record for longest supported iPhone and were dropped from support at the exact same time as the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus. And that's because features in A11 became a must, not because the phone reached a certain age.
Monterey was not the most efficient macOS release. Big Sur performed WAY better on hardware that tops at Monterey. In fact, machines that top out at Big Sur run Big Sur way better than machines that top out at Monterey run Monterey. That's a byproduct of Monterey more than it is the hardware.
Apple isn't fully supporting iOS 12. They're only patching major holes and as they come up.
Microsoft has done similar with Windows XP and Windows 7 long after support ended there for similar major things. It's not technically full support. More like extenuating circumstances support.
That said, I would LOVE an LTS version of macOS. But you're totally right in that it would never in a million years happen. And if it did, it would be the kind of thing where they'd only support Macs in an Apple Business Manager instance.
That’s better than nothing. On macOS side, anything older than -2 versions won’t get anything at all. So iOS12, -4 version from current iOS, still getting patched to me is a positive sign. 😊 Hopefully Apple do something similar to macs with Apple Silicon, as it would be really weird if the M1 macs got shorter software support than the M1 iPads.
My point is that it's not true support.
That's "oh crap, we discovered a critical vulnerability that is not your usual vulnerability and there are enough of you out there that we'd be irresponsible to not patch this for you" support. Microsoft does it too, but that doesn't mean you should be on iOS 12, Windows XP, or Windows 7. Just that the vulnerability was so severe that pushing out a patch was the only morally right thing to do. Those are not very common. It's also not like other vulnerabilities are patched in the same update.
Also, you have A8 Apple TVs still supported while every iPadOS device with an A8 lost support this past fall. iPadOS taxes the M1 way less than macOS does. So, it's entirely possible (and maybe even likely) that iPadOS will support M1 models longer than macOS will.
Most businesses do not plan to operate their computers past 5 years which is a pretty safe bet for Apple OS support. Home users are more likely to hit the "obsolete" status and even then can continue to use them just without updates.
Most everyone got it right. 7-10 years from date of original manufacture. My 2013 Mac Pro is nearing end of life. Still get security updates running Big Sur, will run Monterey, but not Ventura. In my experience, the very low end machines won't or shouldn't be upgraded after 5 years and the very high end machines have a longer life span practically and support wise..7-10. A real pro sways out way sooner, just us consumers have to judge how long we should keep a machine. Honestly my stock MacPro 2013(20GB, 2TB, upgraded) does fine, but eventually the software that I want to run won't be supported on old OS, so I will upgrade in the next year. 10+ years, not bad. I remember when you could only expect 3-5.
The iPad Air2, introduced in 2014, only *just* lost the latest software support, and still gets security updates.
It launched with 8.1 and it goes all the way to 15.7, 8 major versions it’s supported.
A 9 year old iPad… and it lost support in its ninth year.
That’s quite impressive, to me at least.
I don’t think any Intel Macs got a full nine years of support, besides maybe the mid 2007 iMac which was supported from tiger to El Capitan.
Comparing Mac updates to the iPhone is a little less fair, the iPhone always gets less ram, and as a newer mobile product, obviously has to take more time to catch up to the desktops and laptops.
But still, the iPhone 6S got full support from iOS 9.0 to iOS 15.7, I think the most updates a smartphone has ever gotten.
I can’t really think of any other smartphones that came out in 2015 and were still getting feature updates in 2022 and security updates until at least 2024.
Most android phones from that era are still stuck on their initial version
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I don't know, but I am guessing sometime before the heat death of the universe. Other than that, I'm pretty sure it is not something to worry about. support usually gets dropped by vendors when the older systems do not have features that are required to run the newer OS's. As there have not been any of those yet, probably quite a ways off
In my experience, a given Mac will start seeming conspicuously slow on whatever the current OS is quite a bit before it becomes totally unsupported.
Whatever it is, it won't be long enough.
Personally I think Apple should be held responsible for supporting the latest OS on their Macs/iPhones/iPads/watches/ATV/etc. for 10 years at the bare minimum. Anything short of that is causing massive amounts of unnecessary electronic waste. As one of the richest companies in the world, Apple can certainly afford that, they just don't because they're not being legally forced to. Hopefully the EU of whoever else will impose it on them eventually.
In any case, hopefully the OpenCore Legacy Patcher project will continue to exist beyond x86 Macs, as I have a feeling it will continue to remain very relevant still.
Personally I think Apple should be held responsible for supporting the latest OS on their Macs/iPhones/iPads/watches/ATV/etc. for 10 years at the bare minimum. Anything short of that is causing massive amounts of unnecessary electronic waste. As one of the richest companies in the world, Apple can certainly afford that, they just don't because they're not being legally forced to. Hopefully the EU of whoever else will impose it on them eventually.
In any case, hopefully the OpenCore Legacy Patcher project will continue to exist beyond x86 Macs, as I have a feeling it will continue to remain very relevant still.
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why would the EU do that? because of your personal opinion? what if someone else thinks it should be 9 years? or 11? hmmmm.....
I would expect M1 Macs to lose future support around the same time as the A14 devices, may be a year or two later.
Given that both iOS 16 and macOS Ventura basically require an Apple product made during or after 2017, I’d expect M1 computers to lose support with the version of macOS released in 2028.
But then, again, apple likes to surprise. Mac OS X mountain lion, Mavericks, Yosemite and El Capitan all kept the exact same system requirements four years in a row.
iOS 11 anf iOS 12 kept the same system requirements, as did iOS 13, 14 and 15.
And given that Apple is still using the A14 in products introduced just as late as… 5 months ago, and the current iPad Air, iMac and the lowest end Macbook Air are still on the M1, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it last even longer.
Also I highly doubt Apple’s itching to ditch an entire line of MacBook airs, MacBook pros, Mac minis, iPads, and iMacs that all have the exact same specifications that quickly.
Given that both iOS 16 and macOS Ventura basically require an Apple product made during or after 2017, I’d expect M1 computers to lose support with the version of macOS released in 2028.
But then, again, apple likes to surprise. Mac OS X mountain lion, Mavericks, Yosemite and El Capitan all kept the exact same system requirements four years in a row.
iOS 11 anf iOS 12 kept the same system requirements, as did iOS 13, 14 and 15.
And given that Apple is still using the A14 in products introduced just as late as… 5 months ago, and the current iPad Air, iMac and the lowest end Macbook Air are still on the M1, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it last even longer.
Also I highly doubt Apple’s itching to ditch an entire line of MacBook airs, MacBook pros, Mac minis, iPads, and iMacs that all have the exact same specifications that quickly.
I use an 8-year-old iMac that is still receiving updates (security, apps, Safari) even though my OS is two versions old, which is the most recent OS that is officially supported. It has not "stopped working" 🤣
PowerMac11,2
Released October 19, 2005
Discontinued August 7, 2006
The first macOS to require a Mac with Intel processors, thus dropping support for PowerPC-based Macs, was 10.6 Snow Leopard. Snow Leopard was shipped in August 2009, three years after the transition was complete.
I understand that changing the architecture and ending support for the old processor are not the same thing. But it's a reminder that Apple "has no regrets" even for buyers of the expensive MacPro. Probably in future support will be approaching the iPhone support period.
Released October 19, 2005
Discontinued August 7, 2006
The first macOS to require a Mac with Intel processors, thus dropping support for PowerPC-based Macs, was 10.6 Snow Leopard. Snow Leopard was shipped in August 2009, three years after the transition was complete.
I understand that changing the architecture and ending support for the old processor are not the same thing. But it's a reminder that Apple "has no regrets" even for buyers of the expensive MacPro. Probably in future support will be approaching the iPhone support period.
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everything here is speculation, and future changes are probably more based-on where apple is at the moment and where they're headed, than the timing of past changes.
it's apple's products and OS, ultimately, and they can (mostly) do what they want. and we can go with them, or hold back. what else is there? 🤔
it's apple's products and OS, ultimately, and they can (mostly) do what they want. and we can go with them, or hold back. what else is there? 🤔
Agree.
We haven't seen an Apple Silicon Mac lose support or move to security updates only yet. So it really doesn't make sense to speculate too much.
My prediction, however, is that Apple will treat MacOS support for Apple Silicon Macs a lot like it does for its other Apple Silicon devices, iPhones and iPads, which have gotten around six years with full OS support (then moving over to infrequent security updates and beyond).
But still, the whole "Apple used to do this so obviously that's never changing or will be about the same" hasn't ever been true.
Apple always tweaks and changes something here and there, and no two products have had the exact same life cycle, except maybe for generations of iPhones (which still don't follow a completely predictable pattern).
Apple has never made a statement on this topic at any point and there has never been a set number of days that Apple guarantees latest MacOS support for Macs specifically.
WTF are you talking about? I just retired my 2012 mini over the weekend. After 10 years of faithful service it finally reached the end of support with the release of Ventura. 8 years of updates + 2 more years of security updates. I can't complain about 10 years of support for an OS.
That being said, I did wait until the M2 mini was released to try to give myself the best chances keeping it for years to come.
