Which Macs will be officially supported by macOS 12? | Hacker News Reader

Which Macs will be officially supported by macOS 12?

eclecticlight.co

38 pointsingve82 comments

I think this might be jumping to conclusions too early. It's certainly possible - the T2 has been around for almost six years (and has been in every new Mac for four), so anything that doesn't have the chip is already well into it's lifecycle.

It stands to reason that Apple is going to want to leverage the T2 in Macs that have the chip, but this is a pattern of releases you'd expect if Apple is building out more security feature support for Macs with T2.

I'd say wait to see if the updates come to older Macs - it's likely they're still testing whatever fudges need to be in place for non-T2 models to make up for the missing functionality.

> the T2 has been around for almost six years (and has been in every new Mac for four)

You could buy a brand new iMac up to August 2020 that lacked the T2.

I didn't know this and it's pretty surprising to me. In any case it's all the more reason I don't think it changes anything here. I'd be really shocked if they outright dropped support for non-T2 Macs at this point in their lifecycle, especially if they were selling new machines a year ago without the chip.

It just stands to reason that macOS would become more dependent on security hardware over time and they would fudge whatever they need to separately in order to keep the older models working through their support life.

I've no insight into macOS internals but I'd suspect that by now there's some kind of software T2 chip in the kernel for these older Macs that performs as much as possible of the same function minus the tamper protection and hardware acceleration - and that they're pushing updates for that separately.

We'll find out next week at WWDC I guess.

> the T2 has been around for almost six years (and has been in every new Mac for four)

You're mixing something up here. In October 2016 (so less than 5 years ago) Apple started offering the first devices with its T1 chip (MacBook Pro 2016). The T2 chip debuted in the iMac Pro 2017.

This is completely inane speculation. "All the T2 Macs use the same firmware version......and therefore non-T2 Macs won't be supported in MacOS 12". Zero proof, but here we are, rewarding this drivel with thousands of page views and hundreds of comments

I take this article as "random guy on the internet says random things" to get people riled up. Who cares what this guy says? Next week Apple will spell out what's supported. Sheesh.

I probably wouldn’t be so harsh, but I agree.

This is uninformed speculation based on essentially a hunch about nothing significant.

Personally I don’t see why it deserves attention, but I think most of what I see on the internet is nonsense, so what do I know?

I’m still on Mojave since it is the last version with 32 bit app support (backwards compatibility is required for some apps I need). Pity. I’m also anti-touch bar, have no interest in Arm based Macs (no dual/triple boot), so effectively Apple have decided to ignore me as a customer (and my house hold history of 3 MBP, 2 imacs and 6 phones). I’m sure the competition will like my money ...

I am in the same situation, and I had the same mindset as you have. Not anymore.

> so effectively Apple have decided to ignore me as a customer

Replace Apple with (almost) any other recognizable brand out there and we are in the same scenario:

- I recently wanted to buy some Nike sneakers because my 5-year-old model doesn't stand it anymore. Guess what? All the new models are way different than the one I have. I don't like them, they look "bad" (too modern?). Nike is ignoring me as a customer

- I wanted to purchase an mp3 player. The model I wanted, of course, is not there anymore, and all the new models are just not for me

- I wanted to purchase the same jeans I had purchased 2 years ago from a recognizable brand. Sorry, no sorry; that model is not available anymore.

Companies are moving "forward" ignoring people like us. I guess that makes sense from an economic point of view for these companies. It's just sad for me, and I can't do much about it.

This is most evident in the smartphone market. I want a 4" phone with a decent camera and a headphone jack. Because I still primarily use my phone as a limited communication device. I don't watch videos on my phone at all. I do take pictures with it and I do sometimes listen to music on it. My primary device is still my computer and that isn't going to change. The large screen brings me exactly zero benefits for my use cases, and it makes it very awkward to use with one hand.

Yet guess what? Phones these days start at 6". And if you want to spend extra money on something of high quality, it's guaranteed to have a huge screen because you can't not want one.

So much for "voting with your wallet"...

I've been you, but moved on when I got an iPhone XS from work. PC is still the main device and I don't use the phone for video. Mostly reddit, music, podcast and the occasional picture. Things I do when on the move.

The missing headphone jack turned out be basically a non-issue, even though that kept me back from upgrading - the converter stays on the headphone jack at all times (I think the force to pull it out is higher than standard headphones jacks as well). It's very rare that I'm in a situation where I want to charge the phone while being connected to a headphone jack. Not sure I've experienced it yet.

It sounds like something like the iPhone 12 mini would work for you if you gave it a shot. It's a bit larger (5.4") than something like the iPhone 4 (5") but it doesn't feel like a huge phone. I'm intending to replace my iPhone XS with a device of that size when its time for me to get a new phone.

There are adapters which let you charge and listen to music at the same time, this one[1] for instance is only £1.49 which is low enough that I might give it a go if I need it, sight unseen. But you're right, I've not needed this functionality yet.

[1] https://www.shein.co.uk/2-In-1-Charger-Cable-Adapter-p-21317...

I can't consider an iPhone unless I can run Android on it. The restrictive nature of iOS kills it for me. I'm currently using a Pixel 4a and it's the least shitty phone money can buy.

The iPhone 4 was not 5", it was only 3.5". The iPhone 5 had only a 4" screen, the iPhone 6 was 4.7".

The iPhone 4 had a 3.5" screen but was 5" in physical size. iPhone 12 mini is 5.4" screen with ~5.7" physical size. So a bit larger, but not by that much.

I assumed that the real issue was not the screen size but rather the physical size of the device (which is obviously tied to the screen size).

No, the screen size, regardless of the size of the entire device, is important because that's what its usability depends on. The bigger the screen the more area for you to reach when you use it with one hand. My previous phone was a Pixel 1, it had a 5" screen with large bezels on top and bottom. My current one is a Pixel 4a that has the screen cover as much of the front as technically possible. It's sometimes harder to reach the navigation bar at the bottom and the status bar at the top because they're physically in places where the Pixel 1 had bezels. (the two phones have exactly the same physical dimensions btw)

Yeah, even in the same physical size a larger screen is not strictly better. It's mostly better, but my thumb has not gotten longer just because the screen is bigger and things which I used to be able to reach with it are now out of reach.

Simple thing: phones are getting larger, but people remain the same size.

Some phones come with a "single handed mode" where the entire contents of the screen shrink to a window in the corner. So they are recognizing that large screens are a problem. That's great. Now I wish I could take a saw to this thing and get rid of the dead space around that window.

Sadly, the number of people who want 3.5" screens is very small these days. I suspect the die was cast when Asian women (despite stereotypically having more petite hands) voted with their wallets for large (5", 6"+) phones.

Smaller phones sell less well, this is borne out by sales figures across geographies and brands, to the point where even the iPhone mini is 5.2" -- it would considered humongous back in 2007.

So yes, while I sympathize (and I have small hands myself), I think it's a losing battle, like CD vs MP3. Personally I've just adapted to the iPhone 11 size.

Asian women somehow like huge phones for some reason.. I've seem some that were literally small tablets (think 7-8" without folding) and they were always carried by Asian women when I saw them. Maybe this is coincidence. But I've never actually seen these phone models on the market in Europe so I don't think so.

Personally I don't like phones too small, for me the Samsung S-series (5.8" with bezels e.g. S8, 6.2" without bezels e.g. S21) is perfect for me. I have a OnePlus 8 now which is S8+ sized and that's too big for sure. It's not even the one-handed use, it's just clamping it in my hand, it's just too wide for comfort. Especially with a case on it.

I'm in the same boat. My phone is mainly just lying around on my desk when I'm at home. Why poke around on a tiny screen when I have a triple-screen setup with a proper keyboard?

And since early 2020 I've been at home a LOT. So I get 3-day battery life now because I simply don't use my phone. In these times a 4" phone just for outside would be nice. Once things pick up again though I wouldn't mind the bigger screen to read books on the subway to work.

Your sneakers and jeans don't contain all your workflow, apps you purchased, files etc. You'll just be switching to a different logo on your clothing :)

But I agree there's nothing we can do about it. I moved away from Apple privately too (still use it for work) and I miss it less than expected.

> - I recently wanted to buy some Nike sneakers because my 5-year-old model doesn't stand it anymore. Guess what? All the new models are way different than the one I have. I don't like them, they look "bad" (too modern?). Nike is ignoring me as a customer

That's not a great example, actually- Nike is renowned for issuing re-releases, they're making a killing catering to the sneakerhead collector market.

I call BS on all of your reply.

Microsoft keeps backward compatibility with most of the past releases of its OS.

It's feasible, it's doable.

I think the increased performance of Apple Silicon along with its exemplary battery life will attract enough people that it’ll more than cover any folks who need x86 for multiple operating systems.

I also will miss having x86 in a Mac but I’m ready to have all day battery life in a 16” MacBook.

Unless those apps are particularly performance sensitive, I'd recommend updating the host OS, and run the 32bit stuff in a Mojave VM.

I still run a Sierra VM for a billing/invoicing app I haven't migrated off of yet.

I wouldn't want to use it for my IDE, but for stuff you need occasionally, it's fine IME.

Do you have by chance instructions on how you put sierra in a VM? Which VM product do you use and how is the performance (especially GUI responsiveness)?

I use Parallels. I honestly don't remember how I set it up initially (I still used Sierra on the host when I originally set it up, for a different reason, relating to the terrible setup process of that same software being unreliable, and not wanting to repeat it whenever I reinstalled my host OS).

I just did a quick test - if you make a bootable macOS USB installer (instructions here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372) and then use the 'New VM' wizard in Parallels, it detects the USB drive as an installer source. It may also detect a downloaded installer App too, but I don't have one (that isn't on a bootable USB drive).

Performance is not like native, obviously, but it's workable enough for utility programs. VMWare Fusion has an option to prefer an eGPU, so that may give better results than e.g. the Intel graphics if you're on a Mac mini (and have an eGPU). But I don't know specifically how Fusion does with macOS guests. I only have it so I can build Vagrant boxes that support VMware, I don't actually use it for anything else.

Just get a Dell to run these 32 bit Mac OS apps you require!

I have several Mac Pros; the ones before 2013 were actually upgradeable so I put 16 GB in all of them and 2x2 TB SSD; I run Mojave thanks to Dosdude. They're perfectly fine for app development. I plan to buy M2 though once M3 comes out since I have a feeling amd64 will be phased out relatively quickly. You don't have much choice if you develop for iOS.

I’m in similar situation. Didn’t upgrade from Mojave and like my system so far but wondering where to go from here. What competition would you recommend in terms of hardware+system?

Lots of modern Linux is excellent. Ubuntu, Linux Mint and so on.

Even Windows 10 is much better now than Windows used to be. WSL can be great!

For hardware - take your pick.

Microsofts own line of laptops are pretty good.

But nothing really replace macOS for me. I've tried, and can get a long way with Linux or Windows.

macOS is still the desktop OS for me.

I'd more easily switch to Android from iOS than I could give up macOS for good! :-)

Pop_os! has easily been the "easiest" distro to use for me. Zero-fuss monitor and screen resolution detection, which seems to be one of the biggest annoyances these days.

Pretty much the only thing I like about macOS is installing hammerspoon, and the only reason I use mac at all is work requires it, so take my preferences with a grain or two of salt

What apps? Just curious

Lightroom 4 in my case – I've switched to CaptureOne with Adobe's Cloud-only move, but I have a library of old photos that I still need to access from time to time.

For me, Macromedia Fireworks CS4. It does everything I need, so I don't feel like upgrading to Adobe's new cloud subscription plans.

> Macromedia Fireworks CS4

Wow. I have fond memories of FW (in a job far far away).

I'd have _thought_ one of the alternative (i.e. non Adobe) vector apps that came out would be able to replace it though? No? (I'm not a designer by any means, I just happened to fall into a role where I ended up doing some really basic CRUD app UI design work because they had no one else).

“New” subscription plans, started almost eight years ago.

I assume Fireworks runs adequately in your setup but it’s not like that’s your only alternative to a subscription, there’s the Affinity products, Pixelmator, GIMP of course, and I’m sure others that run natively.

MS Office 2011 comes to mind. There are also many macOS games that are 32-bit and were never updated.

Yet here I am as a Linux user actually hoping the competition can even catch up on the hardware side of things, since it's all so locked down when Apple does it.

But I have no illusion about a future for the x86 arch on mobile devices, like laptops. There is none. You can bury yourself next to its dead corpse of course.

I don't know what you think the competition is, but you don't need a new computer to run old programs. And your new computer won't be better than your old one, if it still compatible in the way you seem to care about.

All the competition is moving in the same direction. That you can not run your old legacy programs from 15 years ago on a dual boot with a competing OS. Nobody wants you as a customer with these terms, why would they? You sound needy, difficult and cheap. If you don't even intend to replace your existing software with new software from their store, they wouldn't even want to waste an ad view on you.

And the direction of a trillion dollar industry isn't going to be influenced by your lack of being able to run Office '98 on a dual boot.

That's actually not how capitalism works. I don't always like it either, but these threats of I'm going to with hold this pocket change money. It's a such a misunderstanding of capitalism. It's like a 15 year old gamers threatening to not buy EA games.

> so effectively Apple have decided to ignore me as a customer

yep. as a customer you are worthless, you count nothing, and nobody at apple gives a flying fck about your opinion.

but that's just apple. if you hadn't realized before it's just because you didn't want to see that.

NB: This is just someone speculating.

I'm starting to get really bored of all the Apple speculation.

Some of the articles recently have literally been, "We might see <feature> in the <mac model> announced at WWDC, or we might not". It's getting ridiculous.

Tell me about it. The amount of YouTube videos where talking faces proclaim what Apple (or whoever) will or should do next with no understanding of what they just said is overwhelming my feed.

Maybe I’m ageing towards being a curmudgeon, but it really seems like the voices that are loudest online are by far the least informed across the board.

Watching Rene Ritchie try to explain what “pro users” need from an iPad, or how the M1 means it’ll soon run xCode, is really disappointing when you think about how many people believe that if someone has a YouTube channel or a blog they must be a subject expert.

Now that apple sees a renewed interest for their laptop thanks to the m1 chip, they may want to start deprecating all the old macs, to "encourage" people to buy the newer ones..

i hope it won't become a habit. Desktops and latops are work environments, not fashion accessories like iphones. Professionals don't like to change their gear if they don't need to.

> Professionals don't like to change their gear if they don't need to

Speak for yourself :) The reason I got into this business, is that I'm a sucker for tech. And now that it's a business expense, I'm always on the lookout for an excuse to buy new hardware.

Also, I don't think they need to unduly encourage upgrades to the new hardware. M1 Reviews have been almost universally positive.

In all fairness, this sounds more like you consider new tech a perk, a toy. Meanwhile, professionals get gear not to tinker with it, but to meet their mission objectives/business goals, and changing gear is considered unnecessary overhead (unless - as it seems to be in your case - new tech is the mission objective).

Writing this on my trusty T520 Thinkpad. 10 years, still going strong, still the main battle station for my professional life.

It is possible to be professional while still having some fun ;)

In all fairness, one person in either direction doesn't show anything in regards to how a whole class of users use their hardware or what their preferences are.

Who tests new configurations for when things die or for when it's time to upgrade hardware? New cluster configurations?

> changing gear is considered unnecessary overhead

Or being prepared

Having to throw out an iMac bought a year ago (there was at least one model without a T2 chip at that time IIRC) absolutely should count as unnecessary overhead, though.

> Meanwhile, professionals get gear not to tinker with it

I really dislike the word "professional". It often is used to gatekeep, which I feel you are doing right now.

Lots of professionals in our space enjoy new laptop day. You can't be mission oriented 100% every day.

Well most people can't...

You'll be surprised how much you can get away with not staying up-to-date on your software. Desktop software is mostly mature and you aren't losing much anything by using several-year-old versions. In other words, it feels as if updates rarely bring useful features and are more about moving stuff around to keep the developers and designers busy.

- sent from my 2012 macbook running mojave

> Desktops and latops are work environments, not fashion accessories like iphones. Professionals don't like to change their gear if they don't need to.

I think even smartphones are no fashion accessory anymore including the iPhone.

I’m in the market

If they release the perfect system rumored I will totally tolerate mac os 12 and just selectively move some files from my prior machine instead of restoring it and all of its complications on the new device

Big Sur will be EOLed in November 2022. If they really cut off v12 from late-2015, they will have provided 7 years of support by then. Slightly earlier than their usual 8-10 years cycles, but arguably warranted by the significant technological change of T2.

I don't think they'll push hard on replacement; after a bit of (warranted) skepticism, the m1 is selling itself. Besides, what really matters to them is the yearly iPhone cycle; as long as that keeps spinning, they can be generous with the rest of the ecosystem.

Wouldn’t call iPhones fashion accessories. Overpriced - maybe.

This might finally be the end of Hackintoshes, as it would appear that they are gearing up to exclude all macs without a T2 or M1 (that is, without any Apple custom silicon).

Worth noting is that all such macs need an internet connection to Apple for ARM-chip activation (just like an iPhone or iPad) to be restored to a factory state.

https://sneak.berlin/20201204/on-trusting-macintosh-hardware...

The switch to ARM was essentially the end of the Hackintoshes because running macOS on QEMU or similar will be unbearably slow.

The T2 chip isn't a hindrance. If you can get hold of macOS itself then you can crack it to bypass any software checks. It's just bytes on your SSD after all, and you're free to change all of them. These chips only matter for Apple services like iCloud, iMessage the app store etc. All offline uses can and could be cracked.

> All offline uses can and could be cracked.

Sure, but that's a significant amount of work; AIUI macOS/amd64 works pretty much out of the box with minimal tweaks to DSMOS. If it uses cryptographic protections (say, decrypting the kernel) added to T2 firmware, this becomes a lot more of a hassle to build a macOS distribution that runs without a T2.

In any case, this is a polar bear on an iceberg: in a relatively short while, Apple won't be shipping anything intel, and a few years after that macOS will be ARM-only.

As someone who's used Hackintoshes for fifteen years, it's very sad, but on the other hand I'm so excited about the potential of the Apple Silicon chips and Apple's renewed investment in Macs that I'm not mourning too heavily.

Apple sure don't want to make development on their gear easy do they. I bought a very cheap mac mini a few years ago with the aim of producing an app but despite trying to get something they would support for a while, its now effectively a very pretty brick.

I am now loathe to buy a newer one. Obviously the best thing to do is throw down on a macbook air with an M1 and hope they keep updating it long enough that I can get decent resale for it when I am done with the 20 minutes of xcode I need it for each week.

Android is so much easier.

This article refers to the "T2 chip" a lot, which I had to google for: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208862

"The Apple T2 Security Chip is Apple's second-generation, custom silicon for Mac. The T2 chip delivers capabilities to your Mac, such as encrypted storage and secure boot capabilities, enhanced image signal processing, and security for Touch ID data. (...)"

The T2 chip does some useful things in Mac OS, but it makes running Linux a pain

If memory serves, the T2 chip was introduced with the touch bar macbooks. There were later macbooks that had regular hardware Fn buttons, but you would be able to tell if they had a Touch ID power button.

Of course, that doesn't help you identify the desktop macs (e.g. mini) that have a T2, since it's just another logic board chip

It's funny the way the naming has shaken out (e.g. macOS 12 is contemporary with iOS 15, and major versions of both are released at the same cadence) because it makes it look like MacOS is younger than iOS, despite being over twenty years older.

So the previously beloved mid-2015 MacBook Pro is unlikely to be compatible? Guess I'll keep it as a legacy machine running Mojave to run 32-bit apps.

Traditionally people have always hacked around these restrictions to make MacOS compatible with more Macs than apple planned for.

Case in point - I still use a 2008 MacBook Pro, running Catalina. It works absolutely fine, despite this model not being officially supported by Apple for a long time now.

How did you do that? I'm interested...

http://dosdude1.com/catalina/

If you are running Big Sur now, you still have another full year (and a half) of support anyway.

I'm still on Mojave because I don't want to lose 32bit games. I reckon that, as long as one stays away from Safari and uses an updated openssl for most things (e.g. via homebrew), the risks of keeping an old version running are minimal.

> mid-2015 MacBook Pro is unlikely to be compatible?

Disappointing if true - they were still sold until mid-2018.

My late-2013 MacBook Pro isn't supported either, but Apple already said that Big Sur would be the last release for that model.

I guess it will soon be time to look for an upgrade.

> Apple already said that Big Sur would be the last release for that model.

They have? Damn.

> I guess it will soon be time to look for an upgrade.

But what to upgrade to? With no Boot Camp, the M1 Macs aren’t an option for me...

> But what to upgrade to?

I have have NO idea. I don't want the first generation M1, so I might just wait a year.

It would be unacceptable if MBP 2015 wasn’t supported. For years it was the only MBP one could buy in terms of keyboard reliability.

RIP onboard ports. Welcome to dongle land, Please open your wallets and stuff your pockets.

If we are talking rumors,

> The schematics showed the HDMI port, a USB-C/Thunderbolt port, and an SD Card reader on the right side of the machine. The left side features two additional USB-C/Thunderbolt ports and a MagSafe charging port, for a total of three USB-C/Thunderbolt ports instead of four as we have today.

https://www.macrumors.com/2021/05/14/macbook-pro-leaks-confi...

Damn, MBP 2015 is the last proper macbook for me out there. Guess I'll have to keep it to run Apple ecosystem software.

Oh that's not good if it's true. Dropping Macs as young as 2017 is not really fair IMO.

I love the taste of e-waste in the morning.

True but my doctor tells me to cut down on the leaded solder at breakfast time.

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