macOS Tahoe is the final software update that Intel-based Macs will get, as Apple works to phase them out following its transition to Apple silicon.
During its Platforms State of the Union event, Apple said that Intel Macs won’t get macOS 27, coming next year, though there could still be updates that add security fixes.
↫ Juli Clover at MacRumors
Not particularly surprising, but definitely not great for someone who bought one of those ungodly expensive Intel Mac Pro only a few years ago – it wasn’t taken off the shelves until 2023. That’s a hard pill to swallow, and definitely something I do not think should be legal.
It’s time to install Linux on it 😀
Or FreeBSD — as I’m reading this item using a MacMini running FreeBSD 12.
And my older MacBookAir now only runs FreeBSD 14.2 (soon to be updated to 14.3).
Oh. This is very cool. Do you mind me asking what year? Does everything work?
@LeFantome
MacMini model A1347:
Replaced HDD with SSD.
– notes to self: https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~fbsd-mac/Notes_A1347_fb12.txt
MacbookAir model A1466:
Boots from external SSD.
– wifi driver is GPL so requires recompiling the kernel.
– touchpad driver is … “touchy” so I often use a trackball (Kensington Orbit w/ Scroll Ring)
hope that helps. P.
Thank you!
I did not realize the A1466 covered so many years.
I have Chimera Linux running on 2013 and 2017 Macbook Air. I may try FreeBSD on one. If I use a different distro, the WiFi works on both. On Chimera, I also have to compile the WiFi myself. Boo Broadcom.
Apple dropped PowerPC support much more quickly…
If you bought an intel mac after the public announcement (june 2020) then you knew what you were in for.
That is rough. That means the 2023 Mac Pro only gets five years of support, which is roughly half what you normally get from a mac.
No. If you mean the Mac Pro released in 2023, that’s an M2 chip. There’s no known date that the M2 chip will stop receiving updates. If you mean someone buying a 2019 Mac Pro in 2023, then yes, they “only” get about 3 years of support. Of course, that’s knowingly buying a computer that’s four years old and one that was on Intel chips three years after Apple began transitioning to Apple Silicon. Everyone who bought that Mac Pro in 2023 knew what they were doing. There’s nothing to be shocked about here.
One of the things that all Mac users have had to come to accept since the transition to Apple Silicon is that you can’t spend more money to future proof your machine. The cheapest Mac Apple releases in 3 years will be more powerful than the most powerful Mac today. You need to spend your money for the computing performance you need today, not to preserve speed for 7 years from now. ARM performance is moving too quickly for that.
beosforever,
For single threaded performance, there’s not much difference between the regular,pro,,max,ultra models from the same generation, so any single threading improvement tends to be shared between them. Multithreading is where these CPU models are really differentiated. Assuming I can take “the cheapest apple releases” to be the lowest performing model, I’d point out the claim doesn’t quite hold up retroactively.
The 8 core M4 model, does not beat out the 10 core m1 pro, you’d need to go one model up.
At the high end, not even the M4 max beats out the M1 ultra.
(Removed links to get around wordpress moderation, sorry)
cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Apple+M1+8+Core+3200+MHz&id=4104
cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Apple+M1+Pro+10+Core+3200+MHz&id=4580
cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Apple+M1+Max+10+Core+3200+MHz&id=4585
cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Apple+M1+Ultra+20+Core&id=4782
cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Apple+M4+8+Core&id=6374
cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Apple+M4+10+Core&id=6040
cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Apple+M4+Max+14+Core&id=6347
The 3 year lifespan you are suggesting seems pretty bad TBH. If I knew hardware was going to become deficient in 3 years, I’d personally take that as a signal that I need to upgrade to something that will last longer. I concede many people don’t care, but between non-serviceable/non-upgradable products and our “throw out & buy again” culture, I think we are wasting resources and damaging the planet long term.
I do not know how to fix this, but it sucks that corporations have tied their success to this waste.
So, the people who bought Intel-based Macbook Pros in 2019 got 6 years of OS upgrades, same as the people who bought gaming laptops in 2016 (or build gaming rigs in 2016 and are locked to a 2016 CPU). WIth the difference that Microsoft provided no major OS upgrades during that time, so they got exactly 0 OS upgrades.
The exception is the Intel-based Mac Pros, but anyone buying an Intel-based Mac Pro after the M1 was announced knew they were buying a last-of-its-kind dinosaur.
In other news, the industry has to keep the e-waste churn to a minimum acceptable level (to shareholders) so OS vendors can pretend OS upgrades are free, nothing special here.
Define “major upgrade”.
I wouldn’t consider the upgrades done by Apple now on a yearly basis to be major upgrades.
Then MSFT has 21H2, 22H2, 23H2 already for Windows 11. Windows 10 now vs at release are quite different beasts.
For Windows, a major upgrade is when the 10-year EOL countdown timer resets.
The problem with 0 major upgrades for Windows 10 is that the 10 years of security patches Microsoft promised count from June 2015 (when Windows 10 was released), not from October 2022 (when 22H2 was released). That way, Microsoft can end security patches for Windows 10 in October 2025 and still stick to the letter of its “10 years” promise.
This means that my Alienware 17 R1 (the 2014 refresh) will only get 11 years of security patches. Meanwhile, my ancient HP Compaq nx9420 from 2006 will get 19 years of security patches. What a crappy deal. Things are even worse for people who bought the Alienware 17 R3 in 2016, as they’ll get only 9 years of security patches. If I hadn’t bought my 17 R1 used on eBay 3 years laters, I’d be mad.
But you see, back in 2006, you had to pay for Windows upgrades, so my nx9420 was afforded the ability to pay to upgrade all the way to Windows 8.1 and reach parity with the Alienware 17 R1.
Then the free OS upgrades came to Windows. And with it, the need to produce unnecessary e-waste. I will keep my 17 R1 because it has an Nvidia 3D Vision screen and emitter, but most similar hardware will unfortunately be thrown away even if perfectly functional.
kurkosdr,
I find it preferable when operating systems are paid for and OS vendors have a monetary incentive to support the hardware that consumers bring to the table.
This “pretend OS upgrades are free” has created a perverse incentive for OS vendors to make consumers buy new hardware for a new OEM license. I knew it was a bad idea when microsoft announced windows upgrades would be free. However it stemmed from the inconvenient fact that there was very low demand for windows upgrade by consumers. The market had become saturated and consumers weren’t buying into microsoft’s value proposition for new operating systems. This is how we end up with microsoft relegating capable but old computers as unsupported ewaste to encourage new OEM sales.
The sentence you quote was obviously cynical.
And yes, I am aware that there was very low demand for windows upgrade by consumers after Windows 7, in fact, MacOS has reached a similar stage today. But that’s the beauty of “free” OS upgrades, you upgrade whether you want it or not (and generate unnecessary e-waste in the process). It’s why “free” OS upgrades are so profitable for OS vendors and why the model has been adopted by every consumer-facing OS vendor.
What was the last time you were allowed to buy an upgrade license for an OS?
How is Linux explained then? Debian has no responsibility to support anything by that logic, but they do.
People aren’t the customer with Windows. Dell, HP, or whomever are the customer, and it creates perverse incentives like arbitrarily cutting off hardware. The upgrade cycle was hidden by intel’s release cadence and improvements, but then it stopped.
There’s a good argument to be made about unbundling the OS from the hardware. it would shift who the consumer is away from corporations.
The free upgrades help Apple keep a consistent base, and they do a better job of managing features then MS does. MS does a bad job of evolving their OS. Suprise! LOL
Besides, Apple is a hardware company, and when I’m buying hardware, I better get free updates. LOL
The market saturation is real, and we should probably switch to a more socialist OS development model. 🙂 Windows has evolved as much as it needs to evolve, and it’s time to release it to the world.
Flatland_Spider,
To be honest, I was referring to windows here.
Debian and FOSS operating systems don’t have a financial incentive to support old hardware, but then they don’t have a financial incentive to stop supporting it either especially because the work has already been done. It’s interesting for you to flip the table like that, which I wasn’t expecting, but do non profits need a financial incentive? I’ll have to think about this.
Yes! I think this bundling has been extremely detrimental especially in mobile where hardware and software are practically fused together and we struggle to separate them after purchase.
You’re right that “free upgrades” helps push users along, but I still think those financial incentives lead to planned obsolescence even in the case of apple such that perfectly good hardware becomes unsupported because apple can’t financially justify indefinite support. Whenever hardware subsidies the software, it creates an implicit conflict of interest in favor of ewaste. I think it’s better for consumers when hardware manufactures and software vendors both target ubiquitous interoperability standards rather than hardware being sold tethered to specific operating systems. The choice to abandon hardware should lie with the consumer, not apple, microsoft, (or debian 🙂 )
Yeah, I think it’s evident. This is why companies are pushing customers so forcefully to cloud and subscription models to get away from local ownership.
Flatland_Spider,
I don’t if you chose debian because they’re a non-profit, but I think the linux question might be asked in terms of redhat too.
Redhat certifies hardware, but they don’t sell it. If you want to keep paying for redhat licenses on old hardware, I don’t think redhat will mind or stop you. Your the one paying redhat and not the manufacturer. Redhat gets paid whether you buy new hardware or not, which means there’s no incentive to make your hardware obsolete. At least in terms of ewaste incentives, this seems much better than the windows model where microsoft has a financial stake in customers throwing out working hardware.
Debian was strategic. 🙂
RH bumped RHEL 10 minimum hardware requirements to x86_64-v3, and Suse bumped SLES/LEAP to x86_64-v2. Alma Linux adds patches back in to support x86_64-v2.
https://docs.redhat.com/en/documentation/red_hat_enterprise_linux/10/html-single/10.0_release_notes/index#architectures
Flatland_Spider,
Interesting that if RHEL doesn’t support the hardware Alma Linux may be an option.
Weirdly, Apple cut of my original iPad Pro before it cut off the Intel Mac Pro, my Intel Mac Mini, or my iPhone. The iPad still gets updates, but not the latest OS.
I’m not sure people bought the 2023 Mac Pro. I’m assuming it was more for businesses who could use the tax write off. Besides, it will probably still get updates like my iPad for a few years.
So October 2028 will be the end of security updates. I shall set up a virtual machine with macOS Tahoe on my x86 PC then as the last supported version of macOS.
It would have been good if Apple gave an extra-long timeframe for security updates to Tahoe. Like another 5 years of “best effort” security updates after 2028 to the OS and Safari just so you can say that the $50k Mac Pro bought in 2023 got 10 years of “support”.
I wonder if the “Tahoe” code name is a reference to 4.3 BSD Tahoe.
macOS major releases have been named after California landmarks for a while now mate.
*flashbacks of Apple dropping PowerPC support for Intel*
What’s “Pro” about Mac? If any component dies then user is screwed, meanwhile in PC land you can grab any of the standard components and be back in matter of minutes. Crapple’s “pro” hardware becomes junk if just Ssd fails.