I have a mid 2010 quad running High Sierra - I use Illustrator, Photoshop and Indesign daily... what I'm curious about is how much time I have left to keep this desktop before either Apple or Adobe moves to the point where I can't use this tower. It's not about speed, its compatibility. I know at some point this 5,1 won't be OS X upgradable and that Adobe will make older OS Xs outlawed - they've done it three times before (been on Mac/Adobe since 1989). I only upgrade hardware when they put their standard issues on the back of my neck )
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MP 1,1-5,1 How much time do I have left?
- Thread starter rickwtexas
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Apple has a three year software support cycle, it's always the current macOS release having active development and the two previous having maintenance support. High Sierra supports ends the day Apple releases 10.16, in a normal year, you would have around the September/October timeframe before having to upgrade your Mac Pro to Mojave - this year the schedule can be delayed some months.
Next year Mojave will be unsupported and then Adobe, probably every one else, will remove MP5,1 official support.
I feel like you have plenty of time left. I'm running me cMP 3,1 on Catalina with no issues at all using Dosdude1's patching software and a upgraded nVidia GT710 graphics card.
Compatability to some degree comes with the OS that Adobe supports, as @tsialex says above. In a strict support environment, Mojave could be the end. Things like AVX support requirements mean full stop on cMP. But I can't tell you if Adobe is thinking that. And while Adobe has not supported CS in quite some time, I have CS6 on one system and CS5 on another, and they work fine for my purposes. So while Adobe may stop support of cMP, it may still work.
The road ahead is hopeful, with.a little murky - while cMPs can be extended beyond their useful life: modern GPUs, NVMe SSD, Catalina! - they are 10+ year old platforms. It's a miracle they've lasted this long.
My advice is to start saving now, such that in a year or two if the need arises, you'll be ready.
The road ahead is hopeful, with.a little murky - while cMPs can be extended beyond their useful life: modern GPUs, NVMe SSD, Catalina! - they are 10+ year old platforms. It's a miracle they've lasted this long.
My advice is to start saving now, such that in a year or two if the need arises, you'll be ready.
This is a question I had been pondering for a quite a while. In terms of performance my Mac Pro is still adequate for most purposes, though the single core performance is poor by modern standards. My concern was about software compatibility and security patches. Intel already stopped releasing microcode updates for the processor a while back and Mojave has just over a year left with Apple security updates.
Although it may be technically possible to install Catalina on older Mac hardware I do believe there are compromises and every update is really Russian roulette because of changes that Apple might make. I do quite a bit of web design and always want two working computers, so I recently bought an i7 mini to use as my main machine.
The Mac Pro has basically gone into semi retirement, but when the security updates dry up it will still be a usable off line production machine for a couple years or more using legacy software. The difficulty I had in moving to the mini was a concern that it might quickly be outdated by a switch to ARM processors, however it seems likely this will be a five year transition. Software developers are not going to drop Intel users overnight.
Although it may be technically possible to install Catalina on older Mac hardware I do believe there are compromises and every update is really Russian roulette because of changes that Apple might make. I do quite a bit of web design and always want two working computers, so I recently bought an i7 mini to use as my main machine.
The Mac Pro has basically gone into semi retirement, but when the security updates dry up it will still be a usable off line production machine for a couple years or more using legacy software. The difficulty I had in moving to the mini was a concern that it might quickly be outdated by a switch to ARM processors, however it seems likely this will be a five year transition. Software developers are not going to drop Intel users overnight.
