$200 for 2 extra ports and ethernet. And to re-enable a GPU core they disabled.
16GB ram limit 512GB storage limit un-upgradable
You are better off getting a Mac Mini, its the same performance.
16GB ram limit 512GB storage limit un-upgradable
You are better off getting a Mac Mini, its the same performance.
- plus a 4.5k monitor
- plus a webcam
- plus a better mic & speakers
And this monitor and webcam setup is probably better than most 4k monitors and most webcams, at least at the entry-mid level ranges.
What do you do with this monitor when Apple stops supporting the first generation of ARM CPUs and you have to upgrade to a new Mac in 4 years ?
Big Sur still runs on iMacs from mid 2014. (And MacBook Airs from mid 2013.) [1]
And most apps will continue to run on older macOS for several more years anyways.
Plus, while a good monitor might technically last 15 years... that doesn't mean you want to keep using it. New technologies like Retina, P3, micro-LED, etc. mean that by the time you want to upgrade your computer, you often want to upgrade your monitor too.
Every single time Apple has changed the hardware architecture of their machines.
The last generation of PowerPC macs was only supported for two years. The first generation of Intel macs was only supported for 3 years. The second generation of Intel macs was supported for >8 years.
That's five and a half years. Not three.
And the last PowerPC iMac was late 2005, and supported until Snow Leopard in late 2009. That's four years, not two.
So I guess that is the one case of not supporting four year old hardware (barely), but that's not analogous to the M1 since it dropped support for the old architecture, not an older model of the new architecture.
The first generation Intel Macs used Intel Yonah cores "Core Duo". Those were the ones released in january 2006. These models were discontinued in September 2006, and replaced by Intel Penryn cores "Core 2 Duo".
The main difference being that Intel Yonah cores only support SSE3, while the Penryn cores support SSSE3 and up to SSE4.1 (there is some variation here).
Lion required "Core 2 Duo" hardware, Leopard is the actual last OS that supported the early "Core Duo" macs, and received its last update in 2009. Back then, this was kind of frustrating, because Leopard was released in 2007, so basically those with the very first Intel-based macs only got 1 major OS upgrade. That is, the first generation Intel-based macs reached EOL at the same time as the last generation of PowerPC macs.
I guess the technically-correct thing to say is that the very first generation of Intel macs only got 3 years of support. This is in strong contrast with the Core 2 Duo macs released 6 months later, which got much longer support (some up to Mountain Lion... which had its last update in 2015, 9 years later).
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For this reason, I'm not buying M1 macs. Makes more sense to wait 1 year or so if you can stretch it and get M2s or M3s, chances are any of those will last you a decade.
I completely agree with you that Apple will kill Intel support ASAP. IIRC they guarantee ~2 year of support or so, so probably 2 years after they discontinue their last Intel model all support for Intel will be gone. Makes absolutely no sense to buy an Intel mac right now unless you get them for peanuts and only want it for the next 2 years or so.
I still don't understand where you're getting three years from.
If you check the official Lion support page from Apple, you will see that it requires an Intel "Core 2 Duo", that's the model that came after the Intel "Core Duo" (without a 2 in between) that shipped with the early Intel macs.
Snow Leopard (the version before Lion) does support the "Core Duo" processors, but they can only run 32-bit apps there, because the very first Intel Macs from Jan 2006 used 32-bit Intel CPUs. The ones that replaced them in September 2006 had x86_64 CPUs.
Apple killed support for PowerPC and 32-bit x86 at the same time with Lion.
32- vs 64-bit support is an app support issue, not OS support.
Snow Leopard released in 2007 is the latest OS version to support these CPUs. Lion released in 2009 didn't support them.
For me that was a killer back then and I had to upgrade.