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How long will OS X support the Core2Duo 64-bit processors?

J

jonathanc

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 6, 2011
10
0
I know that in recent releases of OS X, PPC CPU's and (possibly) CoreDuo/Solo CPU's have been dropped by OS X.

Looking past Lion, how long do you think Core 2 Duo processors will be supported?

Or does the fact that they are 64-bit processors, mean that they will be supported as long as OS X remains 64-bit?

I have a mid 2009 13" MBP with a 2.26 GHz C2D and I have a strange fantasy about still being able to use it in 10 years time.
 
We don't know, but we can assume, that 64-bit CPUs will be supported for quite a while, as they have been used longer in Macs than the 32-bit Core Duo CPUs, which was only in Macs for a year or so. When the iX CPUs will have been used in Macs for five years, Apple may drop the C2D eventually someday, as they want to support more and more hyper-threading I suppose.
 
It's not the CPUs, it's the architecture of the CPU. Apple dropped PPC because Intel CPU were faster, cheaper and easier to build with multiple fabs around the world.

Apple is likely to drop Core Duo support in Lion (not officially confirmed yet) because it doesn't have 64-bit support and it's cheaper and more efficient to build Mac OS with one CPU architecture than to support multiple ones. Also, the number of Macs with Core Duo are much smaller, making it easy for Apple to drop the support.

Apple is not going to drop the 64-bit support for any time soon. There are no 128-bit CPU architecture plans for the consumers or enterprises in the next 5-10 years and along with this, there are no 128-bit OS coming either as it is not needed for the next few decades.

The question here then is, what features will Apple use exclusively in the Core iX series that C2D doesn't have?

It is highly likely that Apple is not going to drop C2D for a long time (3-5 years at most). The number of Macs with C2D is huge compared to Core Duo.
 
As the previous posters indicated, no one really knows, and the Core Solo/Duo are probably being phased out because they are 32bit. Phasing out the Core2 because they are only 64bit won't happen.

My best guess at the moment is that the Core2:s won't be killed all at once, but rather indirectly phased out by other requirements such as a GPU with support for OpenCL and other stuff like that.
 
RAM requirements could also phase out support. Require a min of 4GB RAM say with 10.8 or 10.9 and that'd knock a lot of machines out.
 
considering the current and pretty recent MB airs, white macbook, and the mac mini run on C2D as well as less than a year old macbook pros i doubt they'll drop support for it for a long long time,
 
From now on it will be an issue of speed like on Windows. They will start listing GHZ speed again instead of just CPU series. The people with 1.8ghz C2Ds will be hit first since a version of OSX Might require over 2ghz, that is not as far away as people think, maybe 2-3 years.

Eventually it might require quadcore support but that would be a goofy requirement, Apple would have to design an OS that has a key feature that specifically requires 4 cores.
 
aiqw9182 said:
Only thing I can see Apple phasing out anytime soon after the phase out of 32-bit processors are those that only have a 32-bit EFI.

http://www.everymac.com/articles/q&...-bit-macs-64-bit-efi-boot-in-64-bit-mode.html

After those get dropped the technical limitations of processors won't be an issue for a while and machines will likely get cut off by other system requirements before the processor requirement.
Click to expand...


This was my thoughts too. Shame, because according to that my iMac is capable of 64-bit EFI but blocked by Apple.

Although, it's all just guesswork, and 10.8 will be a good 2 years away I think, and hopefully I'll have a job and a new iMac by then :p
 
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