Apple Silicon - Live Fast and Prosper...?

[Eithanius]

This Intel to AS transition thing, it had me thinking. The past architectures be it x86 or PPC, Apple's processor upgrade path has always been relying on Intel and IBM/Motorola's CPU timetables. Hence Macs don't get updated (notwithstanding minor CPU speed bumps) as fast as ARMs counterpart on iDevices.

Take for example my 2010 MBP, started its life on Snow Leopard in June 2010. The last supported macOS was High Sierra in 2017. Last security update was just 2 months ago, in Sept 2020. Not bad for a 10-year run. I've also rigged my MBP to run Mojave, extending its life another year or so, but that's another story.

Let's look at the equivalent iOS or iPadOS from a historical point of view. I'll take my iPhone 6 case in point since it is still being supported on a still-being-updated iOS 12. iPhone 6 started with iOS 8 back in 2014. Assuming iOS 12 updates end this year, that makes only a 6-year run.

One major downside with iOS is that whenever I've upgraded an iOS version, Apple stopped signing the previous version, making downgrades impossible. Are we seeing the same thing with macOS going forward - unable to downgrade AS Macs back to its originally shipped OS..?

And are we supposed to be seeing the same thing with AS Macs, with shorter supported life span just like the iDevices.

 

[Erehy Dobon]

What you are proposing is pure speculation that currently doesn't appear to be a big threat.

Apple could have easily configured macOS years ago to prevent downgrades by locking OS software versions to firmware versions (the latter which can't be downgraded).

Realistically, Mac hardware ownership is considerably longer than iDevice ownership.

I have a five year old Retina iPad mini. It's running iPadOS 14.2 pretty well. Will I upgrade it to iPadOS 15? I'm not sure of that.

 

[southerndoc]

Apple's upgrades haven't been dependent on Intel. Intel updates CPU's regularly, but Apple chooses not to update except annually. Expect the same with Apple Silicon. You'll get the same upgrades annually as iPhones and iPads.