The case for and against macOS 15 Sequoia being the final release for Intel Macs
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The 2018 MBA was a veritable POS with a Y Intel processor and a fan deliberately not connected to the heatsink, so as to position it lower performance wise than the 13" Pro. It barely ran anything without severly throttling.
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I’m still babying a 13” 2012 MacBook Pro (with built-in CD drive) purchased brand new, although it’s stuck on Catalina 10.15 and barely hanging on, but I still get a fair amount of work done with it. Definitely noticing the software creep, even Chrome recently stopped updating the browser for it.
I could extend its life with OCLP but I’m gonna simply wait it out for an M4 MacBook Pro. That will be my machine for the next 8-12 years. I’m weird like that.
I could extend its life with OCLP but I’m gonna simply wait it out for an M4 MacBook Pro. That will be my machine for the next 8-12 years. I’m weird like that.
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The intel macs really were hobbled by Intel. That model of Air is less powerful than an iphone 8. Think about that.
It's probably only worth $50, if it's even sell-able. It belongs in a recycling facility and stripped for precious metals.
It's probably only worth $50, if it's even sell-able. It belongs in a recycling facility and stripped for precious metals.
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Things that could mitigate for earlier dropping of support but won't happen: Apple keeps the trade-in value on the Apple Store of the later-model Intel Macs higher than normal so that you're better incentivised to upgrade to a new M-series Mac once the OS updates cease.
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You can literally buy a first gen Macbook Air M1 for under $600 that is around 8x faster.
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My work laptop is a 2020 Intel model, so if Apple drops x86 support next year they'll have to replace mine. So some of us will benefit from the shorter update window, I guess.
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Managed to update my Late 2012 Mac mini to Sonoma yesterday to use Proton Drive with OpenCore Legacy Patcher easily with no issues, and seems to be working fast enough.
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Hmmm - have a 2020 Intel 27" Imac with 8 cores, big screen, large memory. Still not obvious what I would replace it with if I had to? Studio with external screen might do - but keep hoping that Apple will release a bigger Imac.
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Nothing weird about that at all! My 2011 MBP of the same era is in the "take to apple to recycle" pile as of 4 months ago. Haven't replaced it yet and making do with the ipad and a windows gaming machine.
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Intel Macs -- the products most acutely affected by the loss of MacOS support -- use mostly commodity components and are well supported by Linux. It is as realistic on Intel Mac hardware as it is on almost any other x86 system.
ARM Macs are still new on the scene, so long-term Linux support is very much an open question. Fortunately we have many years of MacOS support remaining. Perhaps by the time they age out of MacOS support, Linux support may well be mature enough to offer a reasonable path. Substantial progress has been made already, with the main problems being (as far as I know) a lack of drivers or even documentation for SoC components like graphics acceleration.
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Well. With HP, we have to wonder what kind of miserable subscription model the executives might come up with or if they will brick hardware like they do their printers.
And then with Lenovo, we have to wonder what kind of spyware the CCP has ordered them to bake into the firmware.
I would say that both HP and Lenovo are worthless because you can’t trust them.
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Hasn't Linus Torvalds used an Intel MBA for some years and even used an M2 model recently?
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This next update will probably be the last for my 2019 27" iMac. The hardware is definitely aging compared to my fairly new M2 Macbook Air, but I'm really going to regret junking it when the refresh cycle at work comes around next year because the 27" 5k screen is still gorgeous. I wish they'd put out some setup where the iMac could act as an external monitor for a M-series Macbook
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Well researched and laid out article!
The early 2000’s saw cheap laptops becoming more available (and being relatively useable) and 2015 saw Windows 10 being released for free for Windows 7 and 8 users. Together with hardware that was useful much longer (I only used my 386 for 4 years before I got a Pentium) we actually were using our Windows hardware much longer than we have before.
I think this has made us all think that prices should be lower and support for hardware should be much longer, and is artificially inflated (price) and reduced (longevity).
Not saying that longevity couldn't be improved on, but unless I am remembering things wrong, we currently are using our hardware longer than ever before and (with inflation added in) are paying similar prices for it.
The early 2000’s saw cheap laptops becoming more available (and being relatively useable) and 2015 saw Windows 10 being released for free for Windows 7 and 8 users. Together with hardware that was useful much longer (I only used my 386 for 4 years before I got a Pentium) we actually were using our Windows hardware much longer than we have before.
I think this has made us all think that prices should be lower and support for hardware should be much longer, and is artificially inflated (price) and reduced (longevity).
Not saying that longevity couldn't be improved on, but unless I am remembering things wrong, we currently are using our hardware longer than ever before and (with inflation added in) are paying similar prices for it.
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Fedora Asahi remix is actually quite usable already, so we're not that far away from it being daily drivable for most people.
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Assuming the physical condition is fine, those make fine Linux machines. You could easily sell that (or donate to your nearest Penguin afficiando). With an SSD they run fine for regular day to day use with a modern and up to date OS + software.
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It would be a lot easier for me to stomach the upgrade from my 2020 iMac 10-core, 128GB Ram, 4TB SSD, if Apple had actually updated the Mac Studio this year. Current rumours are none of the Pro Macs are seeing any updates until 2025, and there's no point in me sinking £7K on a M2-based machine with an older GPU that doesn't support raytracing. Hopefully the Macs coming (especially the rumoured "proper" Mac Pro) will make it a no-brainer, when they finally make an appearance
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Just the usual anecdotal information. Two 2015 Airs were purchased for somewhat immediate family members when they were in high school. These units took them through high school, college and now into adultish life. They still work fine. Save the bucks was my advice.
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I actually have one of these. It's not terrible for the workloads I've thrown at it, which is admittedly light.
The un-upgradeable storage is a much more annoying handicap
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I recently got rid of my M1 Ultra Mac Studio in favor of an M3 Max MacBook Pro. VERY fast machine. I kept the Studio Display, and use it with the MacBook when working at my desk. The M4 Max MacBook Pros look to be even better, judging by the M4s in the new iPad Pro.
This is the first time in my life I’ve had a laptop as my main computer. I think in the Mac world that the days of the Desktop computer are done for all but a few use cases. The M3 Max laptops (and presumably their successors) are that good.
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Seems like that 2019 iMac that oddly launched without T2 (perhaps because they didn't redesign it around not supporting internal hard drives at that point or something) is all that's holding OCLP together right now, since I guess when everything is T2 all the bootloaders will be encrypted and less reverse engineerable?
It will be kind of exciting to see what the community does at that point though, almost like a fork of Intel macOS to keep it going as long as possible
It will be kind of exciting to see what the community does at that point though, almost like a fork of Intel macOS to keep it going as long as possible
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I have the 2020 version with a quad core i5. The fan is supposed to pull cool air in from one vent, through the heatsink, then push it out the exhaust vent. Unfortunately that nice gap between the heatsink and lower shell means most of the air bypasses the heatsink. On a suggestion from the internet at large, I placed a small bit of thermal pad on top of the heatsink which forces more air through it and conducts some heat to the lower shell. This perked things up drastically, way faster sustained clock speeds though still throttled on most sustained loads, if not nearly as much. Stock it would throttle down to 800Mhz all core (yes, that's right), after the mod it could typically sustain 1.2-1.3Ghz or so. Bottom shell did get noticeably warmer, but not objectionably so.
Now, just 4 days ago I replaced the Intel Air with an 13" M3 Air in Midnight, 16GB RAM, 512GB storage. Compared to the Intel Air it's an absolute unit and I'm loving it. Unfortunately as everyone knows, passive cooling. I knew this going in, and am fine with it. Out of curiosity last night I placed it on my laptop cooling pad used for my gaming laptop on hot days. Guess what? Similar increase in performance to the Intel Mac with the thermal pad mod. Just sitting on the cooler gets Cinebench scores up to M3 MBP levels. I'm sure this is nothing new to anyone here, I just thought it was interesting. I have no intention at this point of doing the thermal pad mod to this machine as it's plenty fast as is, and the lack of a fan would mean ALL the heat energy is transferred to the bottom shell, and then my lap. Not something that's advisable I'm sure...
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Asahi is already pretty solid on ARM Macs, really only major thing missing for complete use is thunderbolt support. Graphics support is lagging MacOS obviously but has gotten pretty good, I’ve been daily driving it on an M1 mini for a while now, if Apple dropped support for the M1s tomorrow Asahi would already be a reasonable path forward for most folks. By the time Apple actual does drop support Asahi will almost certainly be a reasonable path forward for anyone
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I wish Apple would actually just publish support windows for both its hardware and software.
It doesn't need to be 8 years! Just give us a number that we can plan around.
On the software side, in particular, they need to stop being cagey about when they stop providing security updates for a particular OS release.
Heck, even if they don't commit to a timeline in advance, they should at least tell us when it happens.
It doesn't need to be 8 years! Just give us a number that we can plan around.
On the software side, in particular, they need to stop being cagey about when they stop providing security updates for a particular OS release.
Heck, even if they don't commit to a timeline in advance, they should at least tell us when it happens.
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Supporting more models means maintaining more code. Maintaining more code costs more money.
Apple may also be mindful of the need to keep the platform moving; after OS 9 and Cocoa there's probably at least some fear that for what is only a niche platform, long-tail support can be used as an excuse by third-parties to invest less, giving a worse experience to the majority of users.
Should have used a dongle.
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Of course it's not, I just mentioned Linux running on older machines to show that there's no technical difficulty with them running an up-to-date operating system.
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Just bought a 2015 iMac 5K for £120. The screen is awesome, and it's nearly the same panel as the £1500 Studio Display. It's also very upgradable, once you're past the glue strips. It's amazing how cheap the 5K iMacs are now.
Current plans are to do some upgrades and run it for a few years, maybe with OCLP. When it's really too old, replace the innards with a Displayport input board and drive it from a modern Mac Mini. Should keep it going for a while yet.
Current plans are to do some upgrades and run it for a few years, maybe with OCLP. When it's really too old, replace the innards with a Displayport input board and drive it from a modern Mac Mini. Should keep it going for a while yet.
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I'll likely be installing Linux on my partners 2016-era MBP as it's now officially retired from active use. It's being replaced with my early 2020 Intel Air simply due to better support. The Air gets one more version update, the Pro is on security only. Now, I'd like to try Linux on the Air at some point as well, but will the T2 and haptic track pad present difficulty is what makes me wonder. I can't say I've looked too deeply into this TBH. I should probably do that....later on..
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TacticalGeek
Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
Nice! I just retired a 2012 13" Retina MacBook Pro this year. It's crazy how long these things can run.
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