With the announcement of an upcoming new macOS release also come the usual changes in which Macs will still be supported. MacOS 27 Golden Gate is an important release in this regard, as it will be the first release of Apple’s desktop operating system that will be entirely ARM-only, dropping support for all Intel Macs. It’s important to note that Apple will provide three more years of security updates for the final Intel release of macOS, so Intel users won’t be dropped like a brick immediately.
Still, the Intel Mac Pro was still being sold all the way up until mid-2023, and I’d be royally pissed off if my expensive 2023 Intel Mac went out of support a mere six years after purchase. They weren’t cheap machines, and while you can argue everybody knew the writing was on the wall for the Intel Mac Pro in 2023, it still feels way too short of a supported lifespan for such an expensive, high-end piece of equipment. It didn’t sell many units, I’m sure, but still.
In addition, MacOS 27 will be the last release to include the Rosetta 2 translation layer that allows Intel binaries to run on ARM macOS. I have no idea how many important applications are still Intel-only, but I have a feeling that number is going to be relatively small, and will become even smaller as the first macOS release without Rosetta 2 support nears release. On top op of that, I’m sure enterprising users will find a way to transplant Rosetta 2 onto unsupported macOS releases, and if all else fails, there’s always virtual machines.
If I had bought a Mac Pro in 2023, I would know what I was buying. I think 6 years of core OS support is a reasonable expectation, after which, the machine still functions, albeit without security support. But it could be reused for a Linux install to prevent the hardware from being e-waste.
That said, I suspect no one was buying these without any idea of what they were doing. I bet they were mostly enterprises keeping the existing fleet stacked. And they had to know time was short for the Mac Pro.
One use case I can think about is people who need endless amount of RAM. Although, by now, most software/datasets that required such amount of memory are probably now optimized for ARM or architecture/OS-agnostic and are probably now running on Linux and something akin to a ThinkStation.
For me, from 2003 until the time Apple ended support for Mojave, macos and Apple were the best solution around. The latest classic Mac Pro was legendary – I daily drove one for ages and, for a while, I quad-booted macos, windows, freebsd and Linux – and even Haiku ran perfectly well! MacOS could run everything. I had photoshop, I had quick access to most open source tools, a decent terminal. I could still run ancient scanners, deal with huge image scans (thanks RAM), drive audio interfaces and even reboot into Windows to (very rarely) play a game or deal with the oddball application. But 99% of what I had to do, I did under macos.
Then, little by little, Apple disappointed me. Migrating away from Aperture was a HUGE trauma. I relied on almost all its pro features. I didn’t like dropping 32bit support either. Some old software realistically will never get ported and not everything is an online tool with a huge attack surface. Then yea, the huge middle finger, let’s spend thousands of euros with audio interfaces – no thanks. I’d rather retire one day.
So now I live under Linux/FreeBSD, eventually boot into Windows for my IT gigs or to drive legacy hardware and the macpro is here if I need to load my old aperture libraries or use my hdmi capture card. Apple used to cover all my edge use cases and my daily needs and now they only cover the needs of users who are fully within the ecosystem or people who only depend on the most modern productivity tools.
An important bit of context here is that Apple has only been providing 6-7 years of support for their hardware since about 2012. Support for Mac Pro has been based on release year, not when you bought it.
If you bought a Macbook in 2015, you got 5 years of major updates (to Monterey) and then 2 years of security updates. If you bought the last Intel Macbook Air in 2020, you got 5 years of major upgrades (to Sequoia) and 2 years of security updates. Those are both 7 years total support.
If you bought a Mac Pro in 2023 (Intel) you get 3 years of major upgrades (to Tahoe) and 3 years of security updates. That is 6 years. Less but not much less.
How about the Mac Pro specifically?
Well, the 2012 Mac Pro Tower got 6 years of upgrades and 2 years of security updates – 8 total. The 2013 trash can Mac Pro got 8 years of upgrades and 2 years of updates – 10 total. The 2019 Mac Pro got 7 years of major upgrades and 3 years of updates – 10 total.
So, the 2019 Mac Pro is getting the exact same level of support, or even better support, as previous generations.
If you bought a Mac Pro in 2023, it was the 2019 model. And yes, that means you are only getting 6 more years of support. But if you bought the 2013 Mac Pro brand new in 2018, you would have only gotten 5 years of support. Even worse!
I am not defending Apple here. I do not use macOS. This is being typed on a 2012 Macbook Pro running version 7.0.10 of the Linux kernel and KDE Plasma 6.6.5. I hate old software. But Apple is offering the same level of support now that they have for the last 20 years. If you chose to be an Apple customer, it is a bit late to be outraged by that.
It’s a bit sad to see it go considering that Rosetta 2 is a top notch x86 code translator. It doesn’t need to die and in an ideal world apple would open source it so the community could continue its development rather than consigning rosetta 2 to the grave yard. Alas, the world is not ideal.
I am perfectly fine with ending Rosetta 2 MacOSAPI for Mac Apps at this point. There is little reason a Mac App should not be native by now. Dropping the macOS-x86 frameworks saves space and simplifies. I understand that, especially from an efficiency perspective. once upon a time, I would have disagreed, but this has been the status quo for a while, and all critical apps are available for Mac. I have not even used wine in a year.
I do wish/hope they keep the lower level Rosetta 2 available for things like running x86 vms on an arm Mac. This also helps with Wine which I do use ones in a while. I know we can still run older macOS in a VM, to keep Rosetta on a newer machine. If you want to, you can run Snow Leopard Server under a Rosetta2 vm. That lets use run PPC apps using rosetta1. :). Except you loose graphics acceleration.
mattsaved,
I would imagine most people don’t require legacy software for their daily use cases. However being able to run old software can be useful. Sometimes I feel inclined to pull out old software and give it a go, even if just to show the kids old games and software I grew up with. Apple’s 6-8 year target window isn’t very long, especially for irreplaceable niche software where the original developers are longer be around, it makes windows a safer choice for niche applications. Also sometimes the old software is just better. For example, many people feel that new software is getting enshitified. So even if a new version of say Adobe or Office is available, some users may prefer to keep running the old version as long as possible. Obviously the loss of rosetta 2 is unfortunate for them.