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Comment by prmph | Hacker News Reader

Proper macOS virtualization, for example.

Also, I do not want to have to upgrade my machine and OS every few years just to keep up with apps that stop working or installing, not because the hardware is no longer capable, but due to ridiculous obsolescence policies. Heck, I can not run the latest version of a lot of software (including basic developer tools) on one of my MacBooks, simply because it is running Monterey.

A proper package manager CLI is also sorely needed. Delegating that to Homebrew and MacPorts doesn't cut it.

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Even my MacBook Intel from 2015 is still receiving updates. It's slow, but everything works.

Same here, it can’t run models but it’s got all the applications I run with no problems. Sounds more like a user error or an app preference error.

Hmm, let's see:

I tried to install stuff with Homebrew; it kept warning me that they don't support such an old macOS. Almost everything I wanted to install with it, it tried to do a source build, because the binaries did not exist for it. At one point it was building LLVM to install a dependency, which ran for almost one whole day, I kid you not, and still failed

Also, the latest version of Podman (both CLI and desktop) does not run properly on Monterey. Even if you manage to install those, you cannot create a Podman VM, because it relies on some newer Apple virtualization tech instead of QEmu, and that is not supported on Monterey.

MS Office, Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop, etc... The latest versions of these do not run on Monterey.

These are just a few of the examples.

On Big Sur, things were even worse. The latest versions of VSCode, VSCodium, Brave browser, and many things you might want install with Homebrew, etc. do not run on it. You will have to hunt for specifc old versions to install.

I mean that is unfortunate, but those are app specific problems not problems necessarily with Mac. Exhausted example but if pull up a raspberry pi 2 I’m not going to expect it to run the latest version of rust.

If the app devs drop support for a system that sucks, but it’s the devs decisions. One system I run I’ve had to air gap since it is out of date, but I’m not blaming apps. Though I gripe with the openjdk decision to not support Apple intel, it’s what it is.

Edit: im sure linux distros have problems as well, just like windows does with this. (Why can’t windows 95 run oblivion with 20 mods on it?)

Those are all third party services that decided to stop shipping Intel releases for their Mac software. That isn’t Apple’s fault.

In general Rosetta2 is much better than QEmu, but you do need macOS 26 to get even basic things like AVX2.

In general, the model on Mac is that you need to run latest. It's not like you're gonna use it for a production server, they're meant to be personal devices, so upgrading them is not a major issue.

MacOS 27 drops Intel support, but 10 years of updates is a long run. The 2015 MBPs were so good.

Honestly, Homebrew is so healthy[1], and modern Apple is so corrupted by greed, that I'm sure I don't want Apple to try to Sherlock it. Can you imagine? To get a package published, you'd need the developer subscription, and Apple would block any package that threatened any of their revenue streams. Not to mention that they'd probably want to also run the scan the MAS does to ensure you're not using any "private APIs." No thanks, Apple has no role to play here.

[1] (Personally, macports hasn't been my jam in decades)

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