How long do the Intel mac's have?

[woolypants]

I'd suggest it'll be three years from the date the last Intel Mac goes off sale. However, there won't be support for many new features in that time.

Let's say the last Intel Mac went off sale today.

macOS Oct 2023: Yes.
macOS Oct 2024: Yes.
macOS Oct 2025: No—but there will be support via point updates for the Oct 2024 release.

 

[james2538]

Apple still has Intel Mac's in their line-up so I would hope that my 2020 MacBook Pro will still have MacOS updates in 2 years but I have a bad feeling next year will be the end for the 2020 MacBook Pro. What do you say?

ArsTechnica has an excellent article that goes over the average number years of support Macs get, broken down by OS feature updates and OS Security updates. It doesn't bode well for pre-transition computer processors.

Some Macs are getting fewer updates than they used to. Here’s why it’s a problem

Dropping old Macs can be justified, but some are dying before they should be.

arstechnica.com

Not to mention if you're running Windows 10 in Boot Camp on your Intel Mac, support for that ends in October 2025. Windows 11 can only be officially virtualized on Intel Macs since the TPM chip they have isn't compatible.

Assuming we get a Apple Silicon Mac Pro early next year, that will be the last computer to transition. The process started in November 2020, so I'd expect it to be done within 5 years with releases in the Fall:

• 2020 - macOS 11 - Adds support for ARM Processors
• 2022 - macOS 13 - Drops support for any 6th-Gen or earlier Intel Chips
• 2023 - macOS 14 - Drops support for any Mac without T2 chip
  • AKA 2017 MacBook Pro, 2017/2019 iMac, 2017 Macbook
• 2024 - macOS 15 - Drops support for any 8th-Gen or earlier Intel Chips
  • AKA 2018 MacBook Pro, 2018 Mac Mini, 2018/2019 MacBook Air, 2017 iMac Pro
  • I foresee this being the "Leopard" (OS X 10.5) of the ARM Transition
• 2025 - macOS 16 - Drops support for all Intel Processors (No more BootCamp)
  • AKA 2019/2020 MacBook Pro, 2019 Mac Pro, 2020 MacBook Air, 2020 iMac
  • I foresee this being the "Snow Leopard" (OS X 10.6) of the ARM Transition
• 2026 - macOS 17 - Drops Rosetta 2 support
• 2027 - macOS 18 - Probably when the first M1 computers will start to miss out on features

TL;DR: Expect your 2020 MacBook Pro to stop receiving feature updates in 2025 and security updates in 2026.

 

[jwolf6589]

ArsTechnica has an excellent article that goes over the average number years of support Macs get, broken down by OS feature updates and OS Security updates. It doesn't bode well for pre-transition computers processors.

Some Macs are getting fewer updates than they used to. Here’s why it’s a problem

Dropping old Macs can be justified, but some are dying before they should be.

arstechnica.com

Not to mention if you're running Windows 10 in Boot Camp on your Intel Mac, support for that ends in October 2025. Windows 11 can only be officially virtualized on Intel Macs since the TPM chip they have isn't compatible.

Assuming we get a Apple Silicon Mac Pro early next year, that will be the last computer to transition. This process started in November 2020, so I'd expect it to be done within 5 years:

• 2022 - macOS 13 - Drops support for any 6th-Gen or earlier Intel Chips
• 2023 - macOS 14 - Drops support for any Mac without T2 chip
  • 2017 MacBook Pro, 2017/2019 iMac, 2017 Macbook
• 2024 - macOS 15 - Drops support for any 8th-Gen or earlier Intel Chips
  • 2018 MacBook Pro, 2018 Mac Mini, 2018/2019 MacBook Air, 2017 iMac Pro
• 2025 - macOS 16 - Drops support for all Intel Processors
  • 2019/2020 MacBook Pro, 2019 Mac Pro, 2020 MacBook Air, 2020 iMac

TL;DR: Expect your 2020 MacBook Pro to stop receiving feature updates in 2025 and security updates in 2026.

3 years? Well that’s fine.

 

[transphasic]

2024?

I’d say 2748, about the time that the klingon empire joins the federation.

 

[orionquest]

I think this all depends on what Apple will do with the Mac Pro. Currently it's intel. Will they update it to AS cpu, or keep it as an intel only Mac or both. Either way if Apple is still selling an intel computer currently it should contiune to receieve updates for a few years. I can't imagine them cutting off a current offering on a new OS release. But hey it's Apple, they give, and take away....

 

[woolypants]

I think this all depends on what Apple will do with the Mac Pro.

That's an interesting perspective, but Apple does have a habit of throwing even incredibly expensive kit under the bus when it comes to updates.

I mean, those people who bought the 1st get gold Apple Watch costing over $10,000... I honestly thought Apple would somehow remedy this by maybe allowing the use of the watch case with upgraded Series 2 innards (as crazy as that sounds). But nope. Just a few years later, and these people had a very expensive gold paperweight.

I suppose if you can drop $10K on a bit of consumer tech then you probably don't care that much. But still.

This is especially terrible considering how poorly those Series 1 watches performed, and how nearly useless they were for much outside of notifications (unless you enjoyed watching the progress spinner).

Apple is always perilously close to the Osborne Effect. Today's products are great, but tomorrow's will be even better. Yesterday's products? Ah, who cares?

They break this rule with the iPhone, of course, where support for older products is impressive. But this is very deliberate. It keeps entire families in the iPhone ecosystem. You upgrade and pass on that iPhone to a family member. They're brought into the iMessage and Photos ecosystem. At that point it's genuinely hard to get out of it. They upgrade at some point to a new iPhone. The circle of life continues! This is exactly how it happened with my family members. My wife hated "Apple stuff" (and still does!). But she took my old iPhone 4. Now she couldn't exist without her iPhone 8 Plus and is thinking about upgrading soon (but, my God, it's going to be tough teaching her how gestures work...).

This doesn't really apply to Mac hardware, unfortunately. There isn't the lock-in because the apps most of us use – Microsoft Office 365, Adobe Creative Cloud – are available on PC anyway. The iMessage lock-in is nowhere as strong.

 

[XboxEvolved]

I would say with how Apple has been in the past during major transitions such as OS9 to X, PPC to Intel, a lot shorter than you should have in terms of totally new OS updates. If you look especially at the Intel switch, from the first Intel computer released (1/10/06) to the first version of Mac OS not supporting PPC (08/28/09), you have about 3-4 years from November 2020 so anywhere from next fall, to fall 2023 it won't get new OS updates.

However as many have said, you will definitely get security and bug updates and beyond that, there are a lot of ways to expand the longevity of your computer.

 

[kevink2]

Excuse me?? How long do I have for my 2020 Mac? I hope till 2025.

My 2015 got 7 years of new OS upgrades. Plus slow security updates expected for another year.

I suspect your 2020 won't get until 2027 for new OS's. Apple wanting to move off Intel.

 

[woolypants]

It's worth remembering that Apple still sells Intel-based Macs. This isn't quite as ancient history as it might seem.

1. Mac mini 3.0GHz 6-core Intel Core i5
2. Mac Pro Intel Xeon W
3. Various offerings in the refurb store, including MacBook Pro models with i7 and i9 chips.

It's right to say there will be a countdown timer started for Intel support in macOS, and that it won't be set for very long.

But that timer hasn't started just yet.

 

[sam_dean]

Apple still has Intel Mac's in their line-up so I would hope that my 2020 MacBook Pro will still have MacOS updates in 2 years but I have a bad feeling next year will be the end for the 2020 MacBook Pro. What do you say?

macOS Version from 2020-2027
macOS Security Update from 2007-2029

But to be honest are the features of macOS Ventura is not good neough? I'm pretty happy with 2019 macOS Catalina until now. I am only replacing my 10yo iMac because it's that old and hasn't received a Security Update in over half a year.

 

[Smartuser]

“mac’s” don’t have any time because “mac’s” don’t exist.

 

[orionquest]

“mac’s” don’t have any time because “mac’s” don’t exist.

If you want to be perverse, I know a person named Mac, they exist.

Any more extra ordinary comments you wish to share?

 

[Smartuser]

If you want to be perverse, I know a person named Mac, they exist.

Any more extra ordinary comments you wish to share?

I was just having fun with the "mac's" since someone resurrected this thread that had its last post on October 30.

At least the person you know is called "Mac" and not "mac" or "MAC", so I have no issues with their name . The plural of their name would be Macs, not "mac's".

For more comments, check what I wrote upthread.