At a certain point, it’s no longer profitable for a company to continue supporting old systems. And that rarely has to do with power and almost entirely due to it being 8-year old devices with practically no remaining user base.
Yes I understand what you are saying, but there is no need for it, Operating systems didn't require suddenly more powerful computers, years ago it made sense because the machine just couldn't handle it, but today my machine handles everything just fine and is higher spec than machines Apple has determined can run it.
You make it sound like it's some crazy high cost for Apple to do this, yet this small open source project seems to be able to do it and for them it would be much more difficult.
In terms of Apple's support, it's been awful, they provided one set of bootcamp drivers for the graphics card a year after release and even that was out of date when it was released, therefore I have to get the gfx card drivers from a third party.
Hacks are in no way shape or form equivalent to official support. Both in functionality (this thread is full of people talking about small issues popping up more and more frequently, especially in the latest OS versions which actually have specific requirements like AVX2) and in terms of actual support. The level of work required from a community project is magnitudes smaller than from the company.
> It's a computer I paid over £3,000 for, that got cut off 7 years after release for no valid reason as a customer.
> Yes I understand what you are saying, but there is no need for it, Operating systems didn't require suddenly more powerful computers, years ago it made sense because the machine just couldn't handle it, but today my machine handles everything just fine and is higher spec than machines Apple has determined can run it.
You say you understand, but I already said it has nothing to do with power and explained why. Bringing it and the cost of the machine up again isn’t going to change this. At its core, it’s a cost benefit analysis. Each system supported adds tests, customer support, etc. Direct, actual costs to the company. At a certain point, the number of users using a specific system does not justify those costs. Apple looked at that analysis and decided that the costs are no longer justified. 8 years later seems like an entirely reasonable amount of time for that.
Apple do this on purpose to make people buy new machines, it wouldn't be expensive for them too provide a small amount of support, if they are not willing to do that they shouldn't be making such machines. 6 years is not a long time.
That shows that this is hardly an Apple problem, and hardly a problem of "Apple forcing you to buy new hardware". Entire companies come and go in those 8 years. Do you expect every company you ever buy products from to support them forever? That's an absurd ask.
Also I suppose, i'm sit here using my iMac now and it runs everything without a glitch, as good as when it was new, likely better because of the updates to the software, so it's just disappointing to see that it could go to waste. I usually like to wait until things break before replacing them, so already debating replacing a perfectly functional machine hurts a little. Hopefully I will get a few more years out of it.
I guess a big shame is not being able to plug a Mac Mini into the display, but that is on me, I knew that was the case when I bought it.
p.s Windows 11 support was the TPM chip? I believe that is relatively easy to get around? Could be wrong here, but I think it was mostly a move from MS to make people update to a highly level of security, but again it's not really needed.
Edit: PowerPC support was droped after 3 releases - Tiger (10.4) being the first to support Intel, Lion (10.7) dropped support. Granted, that was over a 6 year period. 68K to PowerPC felt quicker...
At some point in time it is just not profitable anymore to provide further FEATURE updates for free anymore.
"after release" isn't even the metric we should be using. Rather we should measure starting from when the machine is _no longer sold_. Take the "Mac Pro 2013" (aka Trash Can Mac). It was introduced in 2013 but for sale by Apple until December 2019. macOS 13 Ventura, released October 2022, dropped support for it. That's only 3 years of support!
For Windows you’re not comparing the same thing. Apple ships a new major OS release on a yearly cadence compared with Microsoft’s 7 years. Some people might prefer Microsoft’s approach. People buying into the Apple ecosystem understand Apple takes a different approach. Also Microsoft isn’t your one stop shop for support. While Windows may be supported for 7 years, i doubt your OEM is supporting your firmware for that long. Apple ties firmware to operating system so that is easier to understand.
I’m an avid Mac user, but the short lifespan of Macs is an anomaly in the world of computers.
I use my old MacBook Pros as Windows and Linux machines now. They’re plenty fast and, honestly, feel much faster with Windows than they did with macOS.
I can understand why Apple deprecates old hardware, but cutting expensive machines after only 7-8 years is really disappointing. There are a lot of these machines in great condition out there.
My parents and in-laws all got burned by Apple’s early deprecation. When you’re not a hardcore daily computer user, these machines can easily last over a decade and do just fine for web browsing and other common tasks.
But you asked what would you expect. At least don’t block me to update. Tell me it’s not officially supported. But let me install whatever OS I want, at my own risk.
The problem is not even the OS. It’s the whole ecosystem of apps that require a certain OS version.
I’m stuck on 10.13 with my iMac from 2012. The hardware serves me well, it does exactly what I need it to do. I’m just stuck on an old OS.
I’m gonna try OpenCore legacy patcher for sure.
I feel like that was the case in the 90s and earlier, but now? An 8 year old computer is quite capable of doing the kinds of basic browsing that most non-geek users do. But without the newest macOS, they are open to security vulnerabilities.
I actually use my iMac with my windows laptop for work, by plugging in a video capture device via USB and going via HDMI to the laptop, it works okay, but i'm not sure i'd want to run a shiny new Mac this way.