When Apple starts preparing their first Apple Silicon only version of macOS, we will know long in advance.
When they discontinued 32 bit application support, they gave over a year and three months worth of notice and warnings
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Rules for Mac OS dropping hardware support and for retiring Mac OSs
- Thread starter Andrey84
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When they discontinued 32 bit application support, they gave over a year and three months worth of notice and warnings
I can understand dropping hardware compatibility after several years with machines that are 7-8 years old. What irritates me more is that the OS itself, as far as updates to fix glaring bugs, are completely dropped after a year or so. Look at Catalina, the worse OS in my opinion. It had serious glaring bugs. Unable to do search in TV App or the Music App. Even viewing Music in column view the scroll bar areas unresponsive to clicks. Apple ID-iCloud services sync issue. At lease provide some kind of bug fix support for the OS only for a couple of years.
Exactly, therefore I don’t understand the assumption of there being another rule or logic based on when the product was last sold. It’s quite clear, they are dropping Macs dependent on the model year.
Apple is obligated to support/service with their official Vintage/obsolete policy. It’s not just hardware but providing security/critical updates. Historically the update/support window has been 7-8 years. It doesn’t mean the Mac’s support the latest OS, but get critical updates for the older supported OS on the devices.
Thanks - where does it say it in the policy though? I only saw that they are obliged to provide service and spare parts for repair.
Obtaining service for your Apple product after an expired warranty - Apple Support
Learn about your options for getting service and parts for Apple devices that are past their warranty period.
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With the Apple-provided apps like Xcode, support doesn't even extend to the end of security updates. You get about 6 months before the app is marked as incompatible. And it also encourages 3rd-party app developers to drop non-current MacOS versions before they otherwise might. This is what makes Apple's support system the most frustrating, being treated like a lower-class person for using a non-current MacOS is almost immediate.
For supporting evidence see how the Late 2014 Mac Mini (Last sold 2018) and the Late 2013 Mac Pro (Last sold 2019) were both supported by Monterey (2020), despite Monterey generaly only supporting 2015+. This long term support is also consistant with Apple providing software security macOS updates for all non-vintage/obsolete Macs sold within the last 5 years.
I'm not sure what was different about the 2017 21.5" iMac but that is disconcerting.
Theory (a): For some reason Apple is using November as the cutoff, which required supporting the Mac Pro (sold December 2019) but justified not supporting the iMac (sold October 2021).
Theory (b): Apple cut a year of support from Ventura/Sonma as part of a plan to systematicaly shortening support, with only current/prior year discontinuations now supported past the release date cutoff. Either 5+ years of security updates is a myth or Apple plans to start providing an extra 4th year of security updates to Monterey onward to compensate.
Both Theory A & B imply the 2018 Mini, last sold 2023, will be supported by MacOS 2024.
Theory (c): Apple has internal support 'guidelines' not rules they are willing to break. The 2017 21.5" iMac must have been even more inconveinent to their timelines than supporting the 2013 Mac Pro was, which might be bad news for the 2018 mini but is probably worse news for the early 2019 iMac.
If all theories are equally likely then Theory-A is the only path giving the 2020 5K iMac support in MacOS 2025. Theories B & C both point to MacOS 2024 as the last with Intel support.
Not really what?
This thread is about OS support and you'll notice that whenever Apple announce OS requirements, they use model years, not identifiers. So your original post "correcting" Siliconguy was rude and wrong.
"Apple designates the models and they say there is a 2012"
In terms of Apple support these 2 "models" have the same exact support.
Small point: The issue is not a driver. The GPU hardware itself is incapable of running any modern GPU API including Metal, Vulkan, or DX12.
There are hardware requirements for modern graphics APIs. The Radeon HD 5000 series doesn't meet any of them, across the board for all vendors. Metal has extremely similar hardware requirements to Vulkan and DX12. Metal has features that simply cannot run on the Radeon HD 5000 hardware because the underlying hardware required to run them is missing.
So this demonstrates it well… Note the dip during arch difference (PPC>Intel). We’re transitioning from Intel to Apple Silicon; I expect a shorter support timeline on my Intel MacBook compared to say an M1, which came out shortly after.
You hit this on the head; I spent some quality time reviewing code on Sonoma (compared to Ventura) and as expected the love is going to Apple Silicion. Likewise, I noted in particular my Vega 20 doesn’t like Sonoma compared to Ventura in terms of battery life or performance indicating possible vendor support loss or lack of optimization for integrating with the updated Darwin. Prime example.
Likewise, there is no monetary incentive for Apple to pay for vendor support after four years of a manufacture date. You can only extend AppleCare up to three years and you’re talking 12 months of a product life cycle, and hence 36 months +12 months equals 48 months of total support that Apple at a minimum will pay to ensure that third-party vendors support their product. After that? It’s on Apples good graces, or in my experience, whether or not the product continues to pass quality assurance during code review of newer builds.
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No official roadmap AFAIK. Some features and specs are more likely to end up as abandonware, like the last PPC macs, last Intel macs with Nvidia graphics. In the future, I imagine late touch bar models will get axed before their time, like the M2 touch bar MBP. 2020 Intel macs as well.
Which makes me think… when will Apple discontinue Rosetta 2? It will be interesting, because there’s still a lot of -mostly open source- software only compatible with Intel. And Rosetta 2 works pretty well, so I’d like to jump into Apple Silicon Mac before Rosetta 2 is phased out.
If it's like the Intel transition, it could go:
First version to support Intel = 10.4
First Intel ONLY version = 10.6
First version to drop Rosetta = 10.7
Following similar logic I estimate:
First version to support Apple Silicon = Big Sur (MacOS 11)
First Apple Silicon ONLY version = TBD (I'd guess MacOS 15? - to be announced this year)
First version to drop Rosetta 2 = MacOS 16?
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Of course, one huge difference was that Rosetta 1 did its emulation in real-time and bogged down performance. Rosetta 2 - translates the binary when first run and then runs the translated binary with minimal overhead, so it doesn't have the same drag on the system as Rosetta 1. That might reduce the need to get rid of it because it doesn't really give you a performance hit and the compatibility benefits are useful.
Still - it would be nice to save disk space through not having universal binaries of some apps, and get developers to update to more modern frameworks and fresh, rather than legacy code.
As others said, there's no formal document on how long Apple will provide SOFTWARE support for machines. A good rule of thumb is:
- 6 years for new operating system support.
- 3 years for security patches
There's a wonderful program called MacTracker that lists almost all products Apple ever sold, and their support, along with other information. You can download it at https://mactracker.ca/ .
TECHNICAL ANSWER:
Support varies because of various reasons. These reasons include:
- Manufacture support. For example, if Intel isn't providing support for a certain processor, Apple won't release an update for it.
- Hardware isn't powerful enough for a new feature. For example, bluetooth hardware and Airdrop, or the graphic card isn't powerful enough for certain effects.
ABOUT APPLE SILICON:
All machines sold that have Apple Silicon can run the latest version of MacOS without any problem. It's unknown if Apple will have some type of policy like "5 years of support after the machine is last sold" or "we will only provide security updates when we no longer sell the machine" (i.e. Apple Watch Series 3). I don't see the point in guessing about this either. We'll find out when it happens.
- 6 years for new operating system support.
- 3 years for security patches
There's a wonderful program called MacTracker that lists almost all products Apple ever sold, and their support, along with other information. You can download it at https://mactracker.ca/ .
TECHNICAL ANSWER:
Support varies because of various reasons. These reasons include:
- Manufacture support. For example, if Intel isn't providing support for a certain processor, Apple won't release an update for it.
- Hardware isn't powerful enough for a new feature. For example, bluetooth hardware and Airdrop, or the graphic card isn't powerful enough for certain effects.
ABOUT APPLE SILICON:
All machines sold that have Apple Silicon can run the latest version of MacOS without any problem. It's unknown if Apple will have some type of policy like "5 years of support after the machine is last sold" or "we will only provide security updates when we no longer sell the machine" (i.e. Apple Watch Series 3). I don't see the point in guessing about this either. We'll find out when it happens.
The first intel machines, Mac OS X 10.4 was released in February 2006. Mac OS X 10.5, Leopard, was the last version supporting Power PCs, which was supported (that is, updated with patches) until August 5, 2009.
Mac OSX 10.6, Snow Leopard, was released on August 28, 2009, and was supported until July 25, 2011.
That's over 5 years of
For Rosetta 1, that was software that was licensed, and I believe the license was not renewed (source: https://web.archive.org/web/2014071...s+Rosetta+Transitive/2100-1016_3-5736190.html).
I believe Rosetta 2 (converting code from Intel to AS) is made in-house by Apple (source: https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/22/21295475/apple-mac-processors-arm-silicon-chips-wwdc-2020). If this is the case, then Apple can continue supporting Rosetta 2 as long as they desire.
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Your math is a little off. The last release of Leopard (10.5.8) in mid 2009 back to the first Intel Macs in early 2006 was only 3.5 years. It was pretty abrupt, but none of that is really relevant to today though. Apple was in a very different place at the time. Everyone needs to remember they were working internally on the Intel transition and the iPhone at the same time with only a fraction of the resources they have now. Cutting off PowerPC after only 3 years was a tough but necessary choice. There are also a lot more Intel Macs than there ever were PPC Macs. I suspect Intel will get support for one more macOS release and 2-3 years of security updates which will bring it to 7-8 years after the first M1 Macs.
You're right. I worded it badly. It should be "the ability to run PowerPC programs", not "PowerPC support" (i.e. running the newest OS).
I had a PowerBook 1.25GHz before, and Leopard was extremely slow on that thing.
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Interesting point. I didn't know that.
Then coupled with the fact that Rosetta 2 doesn't really add a system overhead, the only disadvantage of keeping it around for a long time is that is the disincentive to developers to update old code to universal.
We have four Apple Silicon Macs in the house, and I can live Rosetta free on all but one of them. And then that's only for some weird software that my old Dashcam needs to process footage and something else (which I can't remember now). Everything else is native. Point is - many users might not need Rosetta 2 much longer anyway.
Um, which Leopard was it? The one that was extremely slow or the one that was quick and snappy? 😁 Do you mean Panther? Tiger (10.4) came out after Panther (my sig shows what Power Mac/MacOS X I still have and use) and Leopard (10.5) came out after Tiger and was the last PowerPC-enabled version (though there was a PPC version of Snow Leopard, but nothing ran on it, because everything was Intel by then).