macOS 26 Rumored to Drop Support for These Five Macs
The next major version of macOS, now dubbed "macOS 26," is rumored to drop support for several older Intel-based Mac models currently...
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Will MacOS 15 drop support for Intel?
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...which includes 2019 (intel) MBPs and the 2019 (Intel) Mac Pro, but excludes the i5/i7 Mac Minis which were being sold until mid 2023... Wouldn't be surprised if the i5/i7 Minis get added back to that list before release.macOS 26 Rumored to Drop Support for These Five Macs
The next major version of macOS, now dubbed "macOS 26," is rumored to drop support for several older Intel-based Mac models currently...
So things could change one way or the other, but it makes it pretty clear that MacOS 16 (now AKA MacOS 26) does still support Intel.
The last Intel Macs - the Mac Pro and i5/i7 Mini - were discontinued in 2023 - so they will go "vintage" in 2028. That's about hardware support & parts availability - but it's hard to offer any hardware support if there isn't a supported (but not necessarily current) version of MacOS to restore.
So if MacOS 16 comes out in late 2025, and gets the usual 3 years of support, that takes it to late 2028.
So, really, 16 is the first likely candidate for the "last Intel MacOS". Also, Apple could always extend the support for the "last Intel MacOS" until all of the Intel Macs were thoroughtly obsolete.
I would like that though I am not counting on it.
Also note that Apple seems to drop support based on Model Identifier (e.g. Macmini8,1) rather than hardware/specs. In which case if they retain support for the i5/i7 Mac Mini 2018 they would likely also retain support for the i3 Mac Mini 2018.
It will be interesting if they drop the Mac Mini 2018 though since they brought it back to the Refurb store as recently as ~ January. Even if only as a refurb, dropping OS for it less than 6 months later is kind of a jerk move. Like if they dropped the iPhone 13 Mini this fall.
I think very likely though I won't consider final until they say so publicly.
That seems like the right thing to do.
The other issue even for people who don't feel like they need to be on the latest OS is 3rd-party software support. Once Apple drops all Intel support from macOS it starts the clock from when many software vendors will stop release universal/fat application binaries (e.g. if macOS 16 is the last Intel macOS, MS likely won't release MS Office [Teams, etc] updates after 2028).
Yeah - the Apple software support lifecycle is a bit of a pain...
OTOH one of the chains around Windows' neck, which contributes to many of its annoying features (and is a big reason why Windows on ARM is still only bubbling under), is the extreme reluctance to drop support for older software. Until Win 11 came out they were still offering a 32 bit version of Windows 10 that could run old Win95 & DOS era software...
Then there's Apple, with regular software mass extinction events, such as completely dropping 32 bit support years ago. However, the upside of that is we get relatively smooth transitions from PPC to Intel and Intel to Apple Silicon... and less of the arcane stuff (like Windows' two competing control panels...)
Not sure which is best.
Of course, back in the good old days of the 80s, 90s and early 00s, hardware was usually seriously outdated after a couple of years, whereas today its only software rot that is preventing many people (away from the bleeding edges of AI, 3D or theatre-quality video) from rocking on with 10 year old hardware...
Although I have been annoyed by Apple’s approach a few times, such as not being able to use shared photo library, or iCloud collaboration features, because the hardware didn’t support recent-enough software, I much prefer Apple’s over Microsoft’s.
This is a good point and very true. Hardware finally got to a point in development where it can do most general things well. I still use a 16 year old Mac for some tasks and have new systems. Comes down to now software and what specifically you use your system for to determine what and when to buy. Once M1 came, it changed all philosophy of when to upgrade as per just want.
The (expected) supported Intel Macs all have T2 security chip. macOS 15 supported the 2019 iMac which is the last Mac without T2 (or T1) security chip. Booting Intel only via the T2 chip will have serious repurcussions for OCLP.
I think there's a middle ground. While cliche to channel Jobs, I agree with him about raising lowest common denominator. It makes sense to me to do that once in a while but what's frustrating is seemingly arbitrary cutoffs. I understood cutting off processors that wouldn't do 64-bit or didn't have AVX or maybe AVX2 or T2 but now it just seems like it comes down to years since release and whether it was a Pro model.
Also I think logistically dropping support shouldn't need to happen every year and it should be announced a year in advance.
Given the computer always felt like the bottleneck and the exponential increases in power year-over-year, it was hard to justify not buying a new computer every couple of years. It wasn't that long ago I worked for an otherwise fastidious company that just replaced all laptops every 2 years as a matter of course. Yet OS was expected to support any theoretically capable hardware and run applications from 20 years prior.
Now we have systems that are binary incompatible both ways due to OS/etc despite the shared ISA of their processors, and on the flip side we've created systems that can run binaries from different ISA pretty well.
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Well, we'll see what happens once Intel has been dropped and Apple Silicon machines start heading towards vintage-ness. Apple Silicon systems-on-a-chip ought to be easier to support - without all of those third-party drivers for GPUs etc. (or Apple drivers reliant on third-party code).
However, the other thing that has changed over the years is the importance of ongoing security updates (possibly overblown for some users) - which makes the end of support for an OS seem like a much bigger deal & means that old OS versions have to be actively supported, not just kept on the books. Plus "OS versions" now include thingts like Safari and Mail - probably the biggest attack surfaces - along with every last flipping utility App being Internet-enabled...
We now also have hardware-based security vulnerabilities (Spectre, Rowhammer, Meltdown etc...) that can't always be fixed in software without knobbling performance.
So I think that's partly what's stopping us rocking our "good enough" hardware for a decade. Of course, I'd never rule out a bit of deliberate planned obsolescence, too...
Except the same could already be said of the iPhone and yet they rarely take a break in their march to drop old models with almost every iOS release.
Also I doubt there is too much 3rd-party drivers in macOS. I am sure the AMD drivers were a collaboration but my guess is Apple wrote most of the other drivers. I doubt vendors' example drivers for Windows or Linux translate at all and then Apple seems to employ a lot of pretty custom/Apple-variant hardware (especially since T2).
Agree and there I think Apple would actually benefit from a) not releasing a distinct OS version every year and b) not dropping hardware with every release. Instead of telling people to update from Monterey to Ventura to get the security updates when their machine may not support it, they could just tell people to update to 12.7.6 to 12.8.2 and only support that version.
Agree -- at first that seemed convenient but I think the platform would benefit from some unbundling of iLife, Safari, and friends.
Or perhaps a kinder way to say it was deliberate indifference. That is not letting developers retain support for old hardware even if the resource savings are negligible or even blocking support (e.g. Nvidia drivers or AMD drivers for new AMD cards, etc) for things that would provide end-users/owners an alternative to buying a new system.
Apples's users would benefit. But the company benefits from the opposite.
You have to buy, rebuy and re-re-buy. Indefinitely.
Agree in the short/medium-term this keeps revenue flowing. But as a former boss of mine liked to say, with every action you can either build or erode trust. And similarly, every company needs to ask itself, will doing X bring us new customers? And if you're not bringing in new customers, what's the future of the platform?
I believe moving to Intel back in the day brought it new customers and ironically the leap forward with Apple Silicon brought it new customers. However, I don't think this combination of support policies brings it new customers.