How long will the 5,1 Mac Pro be able to run future versions of OSX?

[fuchsdh]

Wow, TB2 has come so far. It's almost as fast as USB3 except for writes where it was like 1/4 of the speed.

I'm trying to remember now, what was the reason we needed to alter everything to include this?

Because if you're on a Mac, even Thunderbolt 1 is going to be realistically faster than USB3. The Anandtech article just proves that unoptimized drivers and crappy BIOS support makes spending the coin for it on Windows pointless for storage. Even aside from that TB has serious advantages.

 

[slughead]

Driver issues, more or less.

The 2006 Mac Pro was a bit of a wonky situation- it was a 64-bit machine, but lacked 64-bit EFI firmware. Apple could have chose to work around the issue but didn't for whatever reason.

I can't imagine why they'd start dropping support for the 2008+ machines- they're truly 64-bit workstations and all the drivers required to boot them are 64-bit.

In other words, there is no technical reason why those machines (and the 2010 release in particular, with isn't as old as you'd think) would be dropped from support. I would think that the 2010 machine would be good for another 4 or 5 releases of OS X, given that they don't seem interested in overhauling the kernel or releasing OS 11 any time soon.

-SC

Totally agree. However I should point out that one of the reasons they dropped support for 2006 MP was invariably that the 7300GT and later radeon x1900 was only capable of EFI32. Apple didn't feel like getting overly complicated in their "requirements" page and couldn't work around this problem. Apple could choose to do this in the future when they decide they don't want to support the 5870/5770 -- they could neuter 10.11 (OS X 11 ??) like they did OS X 10.0 ("no Mac older than G3 allowed! for no reason!") by having a list of supported motherboards (something easily fixed, IIRC--definitely easier to fix than using Chameleon to emulate EFI 64).

 

[slughead]

Apple has found another way to force obsolescence. The crappy thing about it is that they have made the new features dependent on BT 4.0, which sort of makes sense, and WiFI AC, which makes no sense whatsoever.

In DP3, you have to have an Airport card that loads the BCM4360 kext. (wireless AC). If not, you are literally kept in an Airdrop circle that specifies "Older Macs" (I am NOT making this up)

Don't like arbitrary restrictions? Perhaps you're not thinking differently enough. Perhaps you'd like to see Apple's new iRe-education camps. By the end you'll get an "A Clockwork Orange"-type reprogramming where you endure horrible pain at the sight of PCIe slots.

I am going to be seriously pissed if I have to upgrade my cMP to use handoff/et al.

 

[riggles]

I am going to be seriously pissed if I have to upgrade my cMP to use handoff/et al.

Sorry, but if your cMP doesn't support AirDrop in Mavericks now (like mine doesn't) it's not going to support Handoff in Yosemite. Sadly.

 

[Silly John Fatty]

Just a question guys, in your posts you often mention "cMP", what exactly does that mean? I only know of oMP (old Mac Pro) and nMP (new Mac Pro). So just wanted to know to make sure I understand everything in the conversation

 

[h9826790]

Just a question guys, in your posts you often mention "cMP", what exactly does that mean? I only know of oMP (old Mac Pro) and nMP (new Mac Pro). So just wanted to know to make sure I understand everything in the conversation

C for classic, cMP = oMP

 

[Macsonic]

Just a question guys, in your posts you often mention "cMP", what exactly does that mean? I only know of oMP (old Mac Pro) and nMP (new Mac Pro). So just wanted to know to make sure I understand everything in the conversation

Hi Sanchez25. cMacPro or oMacPro are the same models. It's just a preference of some members whether they like to use "classic" or "old". I personally prefer "classic Mac Pro" as I feel it implies of "highest quality" like the classic hits of the 70s or classic movies.

 

[Silly John Fatty]

I see! Thanks guys

 

[deconstruct60]

Historically, Apple supports machines for 6 years, however they've broken this trend with Mavericks; the system requirements didn't change from Mountain Lion. Yosemite also doesn't change the system requirements, so iMacs from 2007 will still be supported up to Q4 2015, for example.

Not really a huge break from support policies. On the hardware side Apple's Vintage/Obsolete policy is no mystery.

"Vintage products are those that were discontinued more than five and less than seven years ago.... "
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1752

Once the hardware goes on vintage/obsolete list there is generally no rational business reason to keep supporting software on those configurations. Even less rational when that would be free ( no charge ) support. Obsolete hardware is pulled from regression QA testbeds. Not just at Apple, when hardware hits other vendors' vintage/obsolete lists the firmware/driver/software updates typically stop there too. This isn't an "Apple thing".

Apple has dropped software support faster than going onto the vintage list. (e.g., PPC based Macs ), but there should be little to zero expectation that it is going to go longer than hardware support.

The iMac 2007 probably will get dropped next year as it moves onto Vintage list qualification status. The relatively recent sags in iMac sales (i.e., missing $1000 border offering) probably help stretch the 2007 models out this far ( as substantive block of folks not moving forward). The OS going to 'free' and expanded coverage is in large part to get the pool of users on the OS larger. While the "newest version" adoption rate is much higher than Windows, they have needed boosts to keep the rate higher.

Looping back to the MP 5,1 .... there is highly likelihood that it is going to hit the vintage/obsolete list as soon as possible given the guidelines. Much closer to 5 than the 6 (maybe 7) allowed. Intel has already put the W3000 CPUs on their vintage/obsolete list. The rest of the hardware standard components are quickly going that way also.

This handwaving in this thread about the 3rd party doo-dads can bolt onto a standard config to kludge around obsolete/vintage/out-of-modern-compiance hardware issues has little to nothing to do with professional software QA testing. In vast majority of cases there is no budget for tracking a growing number of permutations of a standard config over time. Even less likely when the software is "free".