An i9/32GB RAM MBP now costs under $350 used. It will only get better.
- When will their toolset drop support for compiling for Intel / x86_64?
- When will they drop Rosetta2?
Compiling/delivering universal binaries is something that as a developer, especially for some markets, you’d like to keep. meaning we try to support older Macs as possible.
For Rosetta2, it might be less needed with all apps transitioned, but for developers using containers, it might be more important to have Intel based containers for a longer period.
• Rosetta will remain available as a general-purpose tool through macOS 27 to help developers migrate their Intel apps, with limited gaming-focused functionality continuing beyond that timeframe
• Intel-based Macs will continue receiving security updates for 3 years following macOS Tahoe
• After the general Rosetta support ends, Apple will maintain a subset of Rosetta functionality specifically for older unmaintained gaming titles that depend on Intel-based frameworks
Apple killing gaming on their platform again, like they did with the 32->64 bit transition...
No, "new" ports to arm of 5 year old games sold at full price as app store exclusives don't count...
Says the Ars Technica article about this topic.
Doesn't sound like Wine at all to me...
This is is great to hear, but even 3 years are probably not enough. 2020-made computers should be used 5+ years more.
Based on appstore accepting only last {#}os SDK (not deployment target). Usually Xcode (and Safari) gets support for the previous OS. meaning,
Xcode 26 min macOS is Sequoia 15.x.
So, Xcode 27 min macOS will be macOS 26.
That gives about 2.5 years for Intel Macs to allow complete AppStore integration.
I guess https://github.com/xtool-org/xtool might become more dominant. iiuc, it also valid to use it on "a Mac" even if it was phased out :)
I guess Apple Rosetta support will be a mix of interests.
1. Apple currently has interest in getting games on their platform. They even made a debugger tool running on Windows so a game dev could profile/debug from his Windows machine :)
2. Unless Apple will have enough power (meaning they will have leverage over games devs), they won't be able to decide when they completely drop Rosetta2.
3. Most likely that companies with personal connections with key people at Apple would take part in when/if the pull the plug on Rosetta2. I guess big software companies might be able to convince Apple is they'll decide to remove it prematurely.
Most of the games I have from Steam/GoG on my M1 Mac are running through Rosetta2 ... and that probably won't change in the future.
It seems like dropping Rosetta2 is yet another way for Apple to murder their own relevancy for any kind of gaming... despite ok hardware.
Apple in the past couple of years was all like, "oh look, gaming on macOS is good now".
I can run a 1995 game OOB on my Windows laptop in 2025.
My question is: on macOS, what's the actual market for casual games, like most of what's on Apple Arcade - especially against iOS? What's the market for the few AAA titles they promote - vs Windows?
People want their existing libraries. With Arm64 in the way, developers who up until now only had to target x86, will care even less. Factorio only cared because they already had a Switch port underway: <https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-371>
Dropping Rosetta2 will be the final nail in the coffin. If Apple did actually care about games, they would strike a deal with Codeweavers to integrate Crossover directly with the system.
Maybe I'll finally get a proper Windows gaming machine.
The problem with all MacBook after my generation is their keyboard sucks. They have some variant and tiny improvement every year but it still sucks. The 1.5mm key travel is about the minimum I could take. Both butterfly and new scissors, despite giving them time I never quite come to terms with it.
But I guess this is one more year of macOS and perhaps two more for Safari + security. 2028 will be the final deadline.
That said, keyboards are personal preference, so I wish you luck in finding a good replacement. I also quite enjoy current ThinkPads.
[1] https://www.rtings.com/keyboard/reviews/apple/magic-keyboard...
After we fought very hard for it. Otherwise it cost you $300 or something just for keyboard replacement.
But yes the certain aspect of "feel" for butterfly was great. I really like its key stability. I often wonder if it wasn't so thin, had the typing distance of 1.3mm would reliability drastically increase and feels a lot better.
This actually reminded me a study 40% of people can't tell the difference between Coca Cola and Pepsi. And then some 30% can taste the difference but can't tell which is which, 10% can tell but don't have preference.
I guess I am in the extreme minority. You could blindfold me and I could tell you by typing which keyboard is which. And this is not to brag but I much rather I don't have these high standard. Life would be a lot happier.
Maybe it’s age, but the older one feels mushy
So practically speaking you went from old scissors to new scissors.
So the 2019 16-inch MacBook Pro and the 2020 13-inch MacBook Pros got non-butterfly keyboards.
But the 2015 keyboards are still superior.
If I remember correctly the current Thinkpad should have the same key travel distance as my MBP / old scissors.
But new scissors definitely have better key stability, something carried forward from butterfly ( although not as good as butterfly ). And for people who have preference with key stability it is a better choice.
But I never update the OS because I don't want to deal with anything that might break my environment.
It seems an overly limiting way to interact with a device and you're giving up a lot of the benefits of a general computing device for some artificial but inconsistent rules.
To each their own though.
The performance improvement on the m1+ just make it a no brainer for me though even if I hated the keyboard I'd carry around an external one just for the extra power.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> is ultimately unnecessary—and it would lead to a lot of good hardware ending up in landfills.
So this didn't need to happen at all
() I’m aware of Asahi Linux, but that is not what I run.
I'm generally not a fan but hell, that's peanuts
Got mine for $460
That said, cheap Macs never really grabbed my attention and more than a cheap ChromeOS box does. I want to pay for more features, not less. I already have a media transcode server, there's really nothing I could use a Mac mini for besides maybe the world's most lame set-top box.
Looks like keyboard, touchpad and webcam are not upstream. It's not clear to me if you need a custom kernel, or just out-of-tree drivers.
Suspend, audio and graphics are "partially working".
Also 2020 is the last Intel models. Late 2025 is the Tahoe release, and then you get 3 years of updates, meaning a total of 8 years of software updates for that 2020 machine.
Thats all pretty standard levels of software support, and again, it won't suddenly stop working in 2028.
So less than 5 years of OS updates.
Less arduous than gutting an iMac to turn it into a standalone monitor but seems highly likely the latency would feel annoying.
I tested it out the other day and it's relatively OK.
I will not care about a multi trillionaire company's bottom line.
Projects like NetBSD are innovative because they work on all devices.
While Apple hardware is innovative because its cutting edge, MacOS is mid at best.
More things can be done through the web interface than before, but it's still not web first, and not being able to push a button because your OS is 6 years old is pretty frustrating.
As a developer, it’s super-annoying that Apple is so aggressive in deprecation stuff, it forces us to frequently spend a bunch of extra time and energy updating our stuff to make sure it’s compatible woth latest macOS.
As a user though, this means that the experience of actually using a mac feels fresh and modern, and there’s a unity in design language that isn’t available anywhere else. It doesn’t take much digging in Windows settings to find windows that feel straight out of Windows 98, because Microsoft is so terrified of breaking things. macOS just feels better because of Apple’s aggressive deprecation policies, and I very much prefer it.
I found Apple's aggressive change as a user also frustrating. I don't WANT to constantly be rebuying apps and hunting down alternatives to abandoned programs to keep doing what I was doing yesterday.
*Yes, I know why. I don't care.
But yeah agree entirely there. When upgrading from my somewhat cranky old 5k iMac a while back, I decided I'd never buy another iMac. The 24" was out. So I bought a Studio Display and a mac mini. At least I can upgrade the computer separately, which has happened already (M2 mini -> M4 mini). I expect the Studio Display to last a long time as you can actually buy parts for it.
I'll be doing that with our 5k Intel iMac. Of course the Mac has to be running, which is more power draw than a monitor alone.
Also hopefully all the special-case handling for 'managed resources' can be dropped (but I guess that would also imply no longer supporting any external non-Apple GPUs).
I'm actually looking forward to a 3D-API that can fully focus on a single GPU architecture that's developed side-by-side with its 3D API - it will be a nice testing ground of what the future of 3D APIs could look like.
Aren't the graphics APIs on consoles that, more or less?
- Tahoe-supporting Intel Macs will get full access to all the new features, and they'll still get security updates for the next three years.
- By 2028, they'll be out of the Apple ecosystem.
- Intel-powered Macs that will support Tahoe include the 2019 16-inch MacBook Pro, the 2020 13-inch MacBook Pro, the 2020 27-inch iMac and the 2019 Mac Pro.
Plenty of newer image processing and AI features are M-series only.
https://developer.apple.com/metal/Metal-Feature-Set-Tables.p...
The only people buying a Mac Pro in 2023 are people who are buying it because they specifically need Intel and they know that Intel on the way out, but they just still need it for something.
If you purchased a Mac Pro in 2023 and didn’t realize this was happening you have no business buying a computer. No one in an Apple Store is gonna push you towards a Mac Pro, it’s a very niche product.
I went to the Apple.com "find your mac" tool and even knowing what I wanted to get back, I couldn't even convince it to recommend a Mac Pro. https://www.apple.com/mac/best-mac/
My Early 2015 Intel MacBook Pro has a GB6 Single Core of 974, and Multi Core 1931.
An Early 2025 M4 MacBook Air has a GB6 Single Core of 3700, and Multi Core 14600.
That is 3.7x faster at single core and ~7.5x faster in Multi Core over the span of 10 years. May be M5 is even faster.
On GPU Metal MBP 2015 is roughly ~5500 while 2025 M4 is roughly 55000. So 10x.
Edit: The M4 Pro has a TDP of 32W and PL2 of 40W. So not a very good comparison to Max 28W of Intel Core i5-5257U. But still adding it here.
M4 Pro GB6 3840, Multi Core 20400. Metal 105814.
mdp2021•20h ago
# The Exit Strategy // After two decades, Apple has announced its final version of MacOS for Intel. Guess that means Hackintoshing is done, too