Re both discontinuation of Windows 10 and Mac OS for Intel Macs: it is criminal that the two biggest corporations in the world cannot maintain softwares for millions of hardware units and force their untimely retirement.
That still leaves a perfectly adequate machine for most common uses.
The most painful parts are (1) it's a bit hot and loud under load; (2) you need to patch modern software like git, likely with little hope to upstream; (3) waiting hours for those "simple" things to compile - which, in the end, tells us something important about what we'd consider "simple" nowadays.
For both retro and previous-generation hardware, security is the most important concern. Patches for PowerPC kept coming until 2011 or so (that's almost 10 years after that particular machine was released). I'd expect the Intel Macs to keep getting official patches until 2030, and in the meantime I wouldn't be surprised to find community efforts to extend that. "Sorbet Leopard" was a thing for PPC Macs, the Hackintosh community is much stronger than back then.
Yeah but they'll be stuck on macOS 26. That's effectively the planned end of that community, they're not interested in running old versions of macOS on PCs.
With Apple reducing the supported models so drastically [0], the OS may also no longer support most of those older hardware-components anymore.
[0] https://www.macrumors.com/2025/06/09/macos-tahoe-compatible-...
I give it ten years until the websites of that community straight up disappear.
People still use PPC Macs to do work: <https://lowendmac.com/2025/skeuomorphic-icons-a-photoshop-pr...>.
People still write new software for System 6: <https://jcs.org/system6c>, <https://amendhub.com/jcs>.
Those are all hobby projects for 20-30yro machines, few of which are left around. There are millions of Intel Macs in excellent shape. Someone will carry the mantle.
Make no mistake - most of these devices won’t be used as pdf readers - they will end up in the landfill. This is part of the business model, and we + the environment pay for it.
The iPad 3rd generation was released in 2012, so the 2016 9.3.5 iOS release gave 4 years of security/bugfix support for the WiFi-only version of that device.
Which means there is a decent chance an iPad running 9.3.2 is vulnerable.
And there have been thousands of CVEs since 9.3.2. Most of low severity, but not all.
This is in a lot of the reporting about the topic and linked repeatedly in these comments. Please don't repeat false information.
Now you're right that this particular really old version also doesn't get security updates - but boy do I not have that expectation, and I would be surprised if anyone acting in good faith did.
I have 7 Macs that I use to operate 3 businesses (and 2 more by way of consulting); precisely none of them use the App Store.
1. The security issue i mentioned earlier applies to macs. It’s a bit easier to mitigate because an older mac can run a newer non-system-linked browser. But e.g. firefox is dropping support for 10.14 (released in 2018) this year (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-users-macos-101...)
2. If you keep your os up to date as long as possible, new features will drag performance down to the point of being nearly unusable. So you’re forced to tradeoff between security+features and performance.
Of course, with a old mac you can always install linux to extend its lifespan… but that’s not thanks to apple
This should be possible with computers too.
Your average PC build will be completely outdated after ~5 years, suffer some type of hardware failure, or have nearly all of it's software (BIOS, OS, drivers) dead and unsupported by then. It is then only usable by enthusiasts / developers, and ends up in a landfill otherwise.
Cars still work after 15 years and have plenty of electronics in them.
Phillips HUE bulbs from 2012 are still going.
Not to mention apps (usually banking apps) that plainly refuse to work if you aren’t running the last version.
This might have been true 20 years ago, it really no longer is. My main personal computer has a CPU that was released in 2014. I got it for free from a company that was getting rid of it, I guess they could justify getting better machines. I replaced the HDD with an SSD, but that's it. I don't know when the computer itself booted the first time since I'm not the first owner, but chances are that it's about 10 years old at this point.
I mostly use Debian, but Windows supports this computer just fine as well.
The main reason electronics become unusable these days is software bloat (e.g. going from Windows 10 to Windows 11), not the hardware, and a Windows PC still feels like it can last way longer than an iPad can.
Literally everything else, that is not Apple hardware.
With all respect to PCs, my HP Pavilion DV6000 from 2006 works acceptably with Windows 10 once it got SSD.
As for Microsoft, much like the last few versions of windows, people will just continue to use it anyway. I am!
Like billions of other people, her phone is her computer. But she occasionally runs into a web site for work, or from a government agency, that requires a real computer.
At what point do you think this becomes ridiculous? Like are we angry they're not still supporting PowerPC? Would three more years have made a difference to you? 5 more? 10 more? What's the magical number would have made you happy here?
Intel laptops are sooooo slow. So extremely painfully slow. They’re quite bad. I’m largely a windows users, but my god old Intel laptops are bloody awful. Leaving behind old and bad things isn’t bad.
Besides, an older Intel MacBook will continue to work in its current form. It doesn’t need another 10 years of updates.
Which ones and how?
A person or company being able to afford something is not a compelling argument.
Well we can say with confidence what Apple determined the answer to be. Only a few dorks on HN will care that a 5 year old laptop won’t get the new macOS update.
5 years is admittedly a bit short. But the M1 was a quite frankly revolutionary upgrade. So it’s a one off.
Netbsd manages to support PowerPC somehow... So yeah maybe they still should. They certainly have the money to do so.
For example, I have a 3rd gen Intel Xeon that runs circles around regular newish processors in brute processing force (think compiling and such). Yet, MS doesn't officially support it anymore with win11. I know you can circumvent the TPM requirement, which I do, so I'm still using it, but this just shows how arbitrary this limit is.
In Apple's case, at least they can say it's a different architecture and whatnot.
Some resellers still have them in inventory, at least I came upon one a few weeks ago.
That makes it a 3 yrs EOL situation. Pretty terrible considering the prices of these devices.
At least the notorious Chromebooks were sold super cheaply (notorious for their non-existent update policies) - not the case here
They were also still being sold by Apple the last time I bought a MacBook pro, which was around 2022 iirc
Google thankfully relented and took up the maintenance burden, which ended with this policy
As long as we can install linux on it, they can drop support. I don't care a single bit
- Not being able to install debian on M3/M4 has been the only thing that keeps me from retiring that machine, I'd rather keep changing broken components and batteries, because even though moving away from x86 is the right thing to do from an efficiency point of view, we don't have an open standard between manufacturers so their ARM chip, and every other ARM chip, are effectively a proprietary architecture in which the customer ultimately lose because he has no control on its own hardware
But it costs a lot, and non corporate users will probably not even know about those nor want to pay that price.
There's also enough community interest to maintain Win10 support for more legitimate projects: <https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat>.
I'd also like EU to step in and mandate a continued patching period proportional to the number of deployed devices. After all, it's in their own interest: many devices used in day-to-day administration/operations likely do not need an upgrade; landfill is costly; etc.
I don't see much morality in MS's practices, but at least it's straightforward. Like buying a phone with a 2 year warranty, if you actually wish for 10 years instead you'll be paying for the 8 extra years separately.
I recently sold my old computer with a i7-5820K. It's from 2014, but with 6 cores, 12 threads and 4 Ghz it is still fast enough for video and photo editing, and playing CPU intensive games like GTA or Red Dead Redemption 2. But can't run windows 11 because of TPM.
They haven't released a new Intel-based product / product-line since August 2020, and haven't shipped any new units of the same criteria since June 2023.
While new versions of macOS will not be available to them, macOS Tahoe will almost certainly EOL in Fall 2028. That means their Intel-based devices will have a lifetime anywhere from 5 to 8 years at worst, depending on your time of purchase.
Maybe I'm just used to this at this point, but I think this is pretty reasonable.