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Comment by wookmaster | Hacker News Reader

Seems reasonable to not support an OS apple doesn’t support anymore

I'm fine with homebrew not supporting whatever versions they choose.

I think GP's issue is forcing the use of homebrew for what seems like a rather trivial install. Just make the binary easily downloadable. It's not like you can't open the curled script to see what it fetches and do it yourself. It's just that having to jump through this useless hoop is annoying.

My mac is running the latest version of Tahoe but I never liked homebrew. You can bet I won't install it just for one app.

Homebrew really helps when you want to install more than one app... And you want to keep them updated... And you want to easily delete some of them at some point.

Managing the install lifecycle with one set of commands for multiple apps is why I love Homebrew

I use macports for that. Never had any issue with it.

I never gave MacPorts a fair shot because I tried Homebrew first and it just worked for me.

Glad you get a similar experience with MacPorts.

Apple controls these computers? I am using Linux myself; I compile from source though. To me it would seem super-strange to use an operating system where a private entity decides what it wants to do.

Gentoo?

The people who pay for operating systems are paying for a private entity to decide what the operating system should do. They're paying for someone to compile it from source and get it to run on their computer and maintain it.

That's the whole point. Paying someone for that thing you also know how to do so they can consider that problem solved and focus on the things they know how to do.

>get it to run on their computer and maintain it.... forever and ever and ever.

Oh way, that last part doesn't exist.

Apple only supports for 3 years

Which device was only supported for three years? Even the final Intel Macs are getting six.

More than six. 2019/2020 Intel Macs get Tahoe 26.0 + about three years of security patches for Tahoe. The last Intel Mac will be out of support in probably late 2028.

Well, my iMac Pro is not getting Tahoe. That's an Intel Mac. No idea why they figured that's their line in the sand.

The iMac Pro is a 2017 computer, although it was sold until 2021. So given that it runs Sequoia, that's anywhere from six to ten years of OS support. OCLP will probably figure out how to patch Tahoe for the iMac Pro soon enough, but until then, you can rejoice in the fact that you don't have to run Tahoe.

It could be worse -- at least you didn't spend tens of thousands on a 2019 model Intel Mac Pro in 2023. (Yes, they still sold them, and owners of those will be SOL in 2028. That's probably the worst OS support story in recent Apple history, and it's for some of their most expensive machines)

Actually you are correct. I've been following the HN threads about Tahoe and even watched a few YouTube videos and could only facepalm.

But then again I'll get rid of the iMac Pro this year. I'll have technicians butcher it and salvage whatever they can from it -- I suspect only the SSD will survive -- and will then tell them to hollow it out and put an R1811 board inside it so I can use it as a proper standalone 5K screen. I don't care about Macs anymore, they limit me too much and I can't maintain multiple Linux machines just when I figure I would want to do something that Macs can't do (like experiment with bcachefs or ZFS pools and volumes and snapshots for my continually evolving backup setup).

Fair. The screens are really beautiful, absolutely worth reusing if possible.

I'll be decommissioning 40+ 2020 27" iMacs this year (i9-9900, 32 GB) and it's such a shame to see so many great displays and otherwise functional and plenty fast computers become, essentially, e-waste.

I agree, it is a huge shame. And the R1811 boards are more or less 300 EUR (~360 USD). Not many companies would agree to spend $360 on a near-future e-waste, per device, just to be able to extract the high-quality display. True shame.

But I've learned my lesson. While Apple computer served me well from 2019 to 2026, macOS gets less and less usable for me and the bunch of things I want to be able to do on it only increases, and its appeal only decreases (not to mention the very justified OCD I get when I look at how much crap is running 24/7 on it!).

The iPhone stays, though I wonder for how long more. But the Mac will be on its way soon enough.

Not sure where you're getting this from, but the latest MacOS works on devices from 2019 so it's at least 6 years of support. And homebrew supports versions from macOS 14 fully (and some support up to 10.15) which means full support for 2018 devices and potentially even devices from 2012 will work.

Sources:

https://eshop.macsales.com/guides/Mac_OS_X_Compatibility

https://docs.brew.sh/Installation#2

Well, Tahoe doesn't work on 2019 iMacs, and that chart shows the early 2020 Macbook Air isn't eligible either, so support duration varies a bit.

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