Which MBP will be the minimum requirement for the next macOS version, in your opinion? (Future-proofing)

[qqurioustiger8945]

I refer not to the next macOS version that follows right after Catalina, i.e. macOS 10.16.

I refer to the next version (whichever one that might be) that will stop supporting the 2012 non-retina model as the minimum requirement.

I'd expect the minimum requirement might be the 2016 Touch Bar generation. Although, it's quite a huge leap from 2012 to 2016 in terms of number of years (4 in this case).

I've noticed it's usually been roughly 2-3 years of differenece between minimum MBP's manufacture year:
10.8 -- 2007 MBP's (or newer)
10.12 -- MBP Mid 2010 (or newer)
10.14 -- MBP 2012 non-retina (or newer)

What are you expecting the next minimum MBP requirement might be? And is it going to be based on hardware, or just manufacture year alone, in your opinion?

 

[velocityg4]

Some possible options for 10.17/10.18.
- Anything with GeForce Graphics dropped along with integrated graphics only models of the same family.
- Anything without USB-C
- Anything without Thunderbolt 3
- Anything without a T2 chip if iMacs get them soon. (It's not unheard of for a recent model to be dropped like the 2008 Macbook/Mac Mini with Mountain Lion)
- Anything with an Intel CPU if ARM models come out next year. PowerPC just got Leopard then was dropped after Intel Macs came out.
- Anything pre Haswell, Broadwell, Skylake, &c. Because of some missing or outdated CPU instruction set.

 

[frou]

They're not obligated to come up with some semi-fictitious hardware feature requirement. Dropping support for old Macs is simply a matter of policy with no extra explanation.