Apple Will End Support For Intel Macs Next Year (9to5mac.com) 67
Apple announced that macOS 26 "Tahoe" will be the final version to support Intel-based Macs, with future macOS releases running exclusively on Apple Silicon devices (that is, 2020 M1 models and newer). They will, however, continue to receive security updates for a few more years. 9to5Mac reports: In some ways, Apple has already stopped supporting some non-Apple Silicon models of its lineup. macOS Tahoe does not work with any Intel MacBook Air or Mac mini for instance. But Tahoe does still support some Intel Macs. That includes compatibility with the 2019 16-inch MacBook Pro, the 2020 Intel 13-inch MacBook Pro, 2020 iMac, and the 2019 Mac Pro.
Based on Apple's warning, you can expect that macOS 27 will drop support for all of these legacy machines, and therefore macOS 26 will be the last compatible version. These devices will continue to receive security updates for another three years, however. Going forward, the minimum support hardware generations will be from 2020 onwards, as that is when Apple began the Apple Silicon transition with the M1. M1 Pro and M1 Max MacBook Pros followed in 2021.
Based on Apple's warning, you can expect that macOS 27 will drop support for all of these legacy machines, and therefore macOS 26 will be the last compatible version. These devices will continue to receive security updates for another three years, however. Going forward, the minimum support hardware generations will be from 2020 onwards, as that is when Apple began the Apple Silicon transition with the M1. M1 Pro and M1 Max MacBook Pros followed in 2021.
OpenCore Legacy Patcher (Score:1)
Apple: "macOS Tahoe does not work with any Intel MacBook Air or Mac mini for instance"
OpenCore Legacy Patcher [opencorele...atcher.net]: "Hold my beer."
Sadly, this will probably be the end of the line for OCLP, since it's specifically Intel-only: no PPC (very old) and no "Apple Silicon" (not old).
Tahoe works with some 2019 and 2020 Intel Macs (Score:2)
Re: OpenCore Legacy Patcher (Score:1)
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What? You think that switching CPUs is somehow a bad thing?
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My 2012 MBP gets very uncomfortable in the lap after a short period time. My new MBP is as cool as a cucumber.
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It's a laptop.
If I wanted to sit at a desk, I'd use a desktop.
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Yeah...I'm generally just looking at web pages.
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More hours of life than I can functionally stay awake staying in one spot, generates basically zero heat, and does this without being crippled by the Atom in my netbook that I once bought in the hopes that it would do that job without sucking.
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Yeah. COD forbids company cut costs! Oh, the horror! Oh, the humanity!!!
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Putting the AI bloat aside, Apple only switched to their own silicon to cut costs.
And literally changing the narrative on performance and power usage?
Sure they're overkill for most applications- but that doesn't change the fact that an M1 doesn't *have* to use all of that performance. It can sit there not using... for 14 hours after your Intel PC dies.
Just about every CPU in a contemporary computer is overkill for most applications. That's simply not a useful metric.
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Apple only switched to their own silicon to cut costs
And the fact Intel stagnated on chip design and production for 5 years had nothing to do with it? Also their quality suffered. An Intel insider believes the bad Skylake QA was the final straw [pcgamer.com] for Apple to migrate off Intel.
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Apple only switched to their own silicon to cut costs
And the fact Intel stagnated on chip design and production for 5 years had nothing to do with it? Also their quality suffered. An Intel insider believes the bad Skylake QA was the final straw [pcgamer.com] for Apple to migrate off Intel.
2017? Three years to build M1? Seems optimistic. I'm pretty sure Apple was building Mac OS X on Intel internally even back before it was called Mac OS X as a hedge against PowerPC not keeping up, and it remained as a skunkworks project until they needed it, at which point they polished it and shipped it. It seems almost certain that Apple also had builds of macOS running on ARM (likely iPads) long before 2017. There were rumors that Apple was testing ARM-based Mac hardware back in 2014 (though this *mi
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2017? Three years to build M1? Seems optimistic
Skylake was launched in late 2015 with Apple probably doing QA in early 2015. M1 was launched in 2020 so 5 years.
Also it was not the start of Apple making their own chips; Apple did not start in a vacuum. They had been making A series chips for a while before then. And as you stated they may have had prototypes for years. Skylake was the point where Apple finally decided Intel was not going to work out anymore.
PowerPC to Intel switch was needed (Score:4, Informative)
Fortunately the switch to ARM is not a return to the bad old days of terribly slow emulation. X86_64 Mac apps are translated from X86_64 to ARM binaries. It's not as good as recompiling the source but it's pretty damn close.
So no, the switch to ARM is not much of a hassle. Far less than previous architecture changes.
Re:PowerPC to Intel switch was needed (Score:5, Interesting)
The switch to ARM is one of the best things Apple could have done. Apple doesn't need the absolute best performance out there, where wattage is sacrificed. Apple needs best performance per watt, not just for energy use, but for heat dissipation. Even with this in mind, Apple Silicon Macs still run well enough.
Heat and dealing with that was a major issue. The Intel Macbooks I had either had to have fans on all the time, or were crazily throttled like the m3 (not M3... Intel m3) MacBook from the mid 2010s. The Apple Silicon machines? The M1s almost never turned on fans. My M4s only do when I'm doing a constant, heavy load like rendering. It is like night and day, and I don't mind sacrificing a bit of performance in return for a quieter machine that requires fewer fans.
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It would be nice to get back to the point where a potential buyer did not have to face the PC or Mac question.
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Apple doesn't need the absolute best performance out there
In some metrics, they still have it.
Single core performance, for example, is unmatched.
Multicore performance is matched, but only by very beefy CPUs that you wouldn't dream of putting in a laptop.
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What a shitty take.
Please tell me what other choice Apple had, when IBM was refusing to make a low-wattage G5 suitable for use in mobile computing. Was Apple supposed to just stop making notebook computers because you said so? Or maybe ship a "laptop" that would cause 2nd degree burns if you used it on your lap, while only having a battery life measured in double-digit minutes at most?
Would you similarly have advocated for them to not move to PowerPC in the first place, and instead just demanded that Moto
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The entire point of the AIM alliance was to make sure Apple wasn't dependent upon any one supplier. Yes, things weren't ideal with Motorola at the time either, but it's not clear to me that throwing PowerPC out the window was the only option.
(Also "IBM refused" to make a "low power" design is rather different from what actually happened, IBM had difficultly fulfilling their original promise to make a 3GHz part and Jobs threw a wobbly about it. Nothing about refusal or low power in there. I'm sure it'd have
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The fact it could not be delivered is neither here nor there for whether IBM was willing to make whole new architecture Apple's laptops,
IBM was willing to make laptop chips for Apple; however, they were not going to meet Apple's requirements for power efficiency. Also Apple needed improvements almost yearly from chips. That's a lot of R&D for one customer. And Apple was always going to be a small customer to IBM. I think even IBM's own server systems would be a bigger customer to IBM.
The idea that IBM could just rejigger the speeds of the existing designs is EXACTLY the reason IBM hated the Apple contract. If Jobs says, IBM I'm going to shift my purchases of chips to ones that are 100 MHz faster because we need a refresh this fall, that means even more chips are unsaleable and go in the trash. Yes the fabrication got better over time but only by a bit.
Not exactly. Jobs wanted improvement year to year. Increase in chip speed was only one thing. You are correct in asserting IBM did not want yearly changes
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(Also "IBM refused" to make a "low power" design is rather different from what actually happened, IBM had difficultly fulfilling their original promise to make a 3GHz part and Jobs threw a wobbly about it. Nothing about refusal or low power in there. I'm sure it'd have been easier for IBM to make a lower speed, low power, mobile part if that's what Jobs had been hyper-focused on. The 32 bit CPUs in the last generation of PPC Powerbooks weren't exactly rockets, with 1.67 GHz being the fastest 32-bit G4 released in a PowerBook. A 2GHz G5, or even a 1.5GHz G5, would have been a substantial step up.)
The book "Infinite Loop" had a take on this, too. The whole Power line had issues, and increasing clock speeds would be problematic for it. Andy Grove paid Apple a visit, and showed them their roadmap. Apple took them seriously (for a change), seeing that Intel's CPUs would leave the Power chips in the dust, both in pure GHz performance and power consumption. It was a no-brainer for then to switch to Intel, whilst leaning how to design their own chips, with the A4 being released in 2010.
Remember, the whole
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The entire point of the AIM alliance was to make sure Apple wasn't dependent upon any one supplier. Yes, things weren't ideal with Motorola at the time either, but it's not clear to me that throwing PowerPC out the window was the only option.
And that didn't happen. Motorola could never keep up. IBM was the only one that had any chance; however, what Apple wanted was constant updates to the chips. Neither Motorola nor IBM was willing to do that. Most chipmakers would prefer to make one model for years and years without changes, maybe only a node shrink. For example, IBM designed the Xbox 360 chip. It basically the same chip in production for 11 years with 4 node shrinks. For Apple, it was never going to get better going forward. There is a reaso
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The entire point of the AIM alliance was to make sure Apple wasn't dependent upon any one supplier. Yes, things weren't ideal with Motorola at the time either, but it's not clear to me that throwing PowerPC out the window was the only option.
And that didn't happen. Motorola could never keep up.
Could have. Didn't want to. They were more interested in low-end CPUs with specialized hardware to accelerate gaming, targeting game console manufacturers and set-top box manufacturers as their primary customers..
There is a reason why there was never a laptop G5 chip. IBM would not invest in designing a power efficient mobile chip; none of their Power systems were laptops.
Pretty much, yes. Apple left AIM because nobody could build an efficient laptop chip. Apple left Intel because they did, but only briefly, and then sat on their laurels while the iPhone CPU basically caught up.
Actually it'll happen in 2028 (Score:2)
Apple provides security updates for the three most-recent major releases of macOS. So, as long as Tahoe continues to get patches, Intel Macs will continue to be supported.
Mostly 2027 (Score:2)
Apple provides security updates for the three most-recent major releases of macOS. So, as long as Tahoe continues to get patches, Intel Macs will continue to be supported.
Only for a handful of 2019 and 2020 MacBook Pro and Mac Pro.
For most of the currently supported Intel Macs running Sequoia, 2027 would be the last year.
In theory, on very rare occasions, for particularly heinous bugs, patches occur beyond that 3 year window.
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Only for a handful of 2019 and 2020 MacBook Pro and Mac Pro.
This is true. but older Macs falling off the "supported" list is not exactly a new phenomenon - it's always been a somewhat arbitrary distinction (as OLP, and before that dosdude1's patchers, helped people overcome).
But the architecture change obviously raised an insurmountable cliff in this regard. I can't say I'll be throwing out my 2020 Intel MBP because of it, though... at least assuming Firefox continues to support it for a while.
will apple rosetta 2 end at the same time? (Score:3)
will apple rosetta 2 end at the same time?
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Magic 8-Ball seyz: "Signs point to Yes"
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https://arstechnica.com/gadget... [arstechnica.com]
details there.
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Rosetta 2 will be removed in macOS 28, with only a very limited version left behind exclusively for very old unmaintained games that need certain frameworks.
T2-Mint FTW (Score:4, Interesting)
The T2 chip makes installing a vanilla Linux distribution on Macs somewhat more problematic - but I've found that T2 Mint [github.com] works pretty well out of the box.
The only issue I've had is with waking the machine from sleep at times. I haven't put much work into getting that sorted, yet, but I'm sure it's doable. Regardless, a cold boot is quite zippy.
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Super helpful - thanks! :)
macOS 26 runs on some Intel Macs (Score:3)
But these are likely rare enough that if I were starting a brand new app today that would require macOS 26 I'd make it Apple Silicon only just to simplify testing and support.
Good (Score:3)
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Maybe I can pick up a used Mac for a hundred or two and slap Linux on it
Make sure it's 2018 or older. The 2019 and 2020 Intel models are being picked up by developers for macOS 26 testing.
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I did that several years ago, but it was a Power Mac G5. Getting a GPU that works with Linux and the PPC bootloader is a little tough but worth it if you want to get Wayland or an X11 compositor up.
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Voodoo 5 yay.
Do any current browsers have performant JIT for PPC?
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80% of the Internet is broken with it
Some would argue that's a feature...
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Re: Good (Score:2)
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Nice try, though. [geekbench.com]
What's up with those sour grapes?
End of the road for Intel OCLP too (Score:2)
OCLP reintroduces past libraries and Kexts (drivers in Windows parlance KLMs in Linux parlance) into new versions of MacOS. Being that Tahoe/MacOS26 will be the last intel mac, it means that OCLP will not be able to put MacOS 27 onto intel Macs.
Well, thanks to OCPL, at least most intel macs will be supported (on MacOS 26) until fall 2028.
I need to plan accordingly for my Mini late 2018 and Air early 2015
I really hope that, when Apple discontinues the M1 architecture, OCPL can pick up where they left off, an
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I'm typing this on my 2012 11" Air, it just won't die and I am holding out for a hopeful 11" size system this fall, but I have no idea if that will come out.
I even run VMware Fusion on it (i7/8g ram) and it's ok for simple work tasks.
I have a few Intel Mini's running Esxi and that is a really impressive platform for a home lab.
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He is talking about "open core legacy patcher". A tool to put 'unsupported' macOS versions on older Mac's.
No idea why people fancy using abbreviations no one can know what they mean and are hard to Google.
If you want to use an abbreviation from a certain point on in a text, it used to be custom to use the full term once, and introduce the abbreviation.
Re: End of the road for Intel OCLP too (Score:2)
Why is it hard to Google for it? Other than an unrelated Wikipedia page, everything from DDG is on topic.
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Because it is a rare topic, and does not get high ranked.
If you have no relations to Macs, it does not show up.
I for example know it only by accident since perhaps 6 weeks or so ...
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I just tried Google as well: just searching for "OCLP" gives it has the first hit.
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I need to plan accordingly for my Mini late 2018 and Air early 2015
Just FYI - Linux Mint installed and ran wonderfully on my 2015 MacBook Pro. Anything that predates the T2 chip should be easy to install Linux on (and it's possible for the T2 models as well).
No security patches? (Score:2)
tldr; Could be just me but a company with this much money can afford to issue security patches at least. I know I'll have a new MBP soon and only up to Monterey works on this one but still.
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Apple typically provides mainstream support for a macOS release for a year, and then security patches for the two years following.
For example, macOS 13 (Ventura) was launched in the fall of 2022. It is receiving security patches until (at least) the fall of 2025.
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tldr; Could be just me but a company with this much money can afford to issue security patches at least.
You couldn't bothered to read the second sentence of the summary? "They will, however, continue to receive security updates for a few more years."
Oh well, but my 2017 iMac is still running great (Score:2)
Linux (Score:1)
Finally! The year of the linux desktop, here it comes!
Old hardware is old....sigh. At least Linux is an option but even latest linux and older hardware isn't always a great fit.
Meh. Already put Ubuntu on it anyway. (Score:2)
Made the switch when the Macos install got severely borked. Almost certainly something I did, but multiple recovery attempts failed and I wasn't interested in paying some genius-in-name-only too much money to fix what I barely had a use for to begin with.
Clickbait title does not match article (Score:2)
The irony of using the name Tahoe for this (Score:2)
In 1988 CSRG, University of California, Berkeley released 4.3BSD Tahoe which IIRC was the first port they made of BSD to a non-DEC processor.
CM Mach and 4.3BSD Tahoe were the parents of NeXTSTEP (1989) which when merged with Classic Mac OS and refreshed with more recent Mach & BSD implementations through Darwin (2000) ultimately gave us the modern Mac operating systems.
In 2025 we learn that the Tahoe name has been dusted off for the last portable version of macOS.
I'm loving the irony.