There are times when Apple kills off computer shortly after launch, but that’s on relatively low power computers.
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I refuse to buy an Apple Silicon Mac with only 8 GB RAM!
- Thread starter AlixSPQR
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Also, you can’t compare support with release date of last software you have to say release of software that dropped it. For example, the 2006 Core duo MacBook Pro was supported from 2006 until 2011 that’s because the computer was discontinued in 2006 and macOS Snow Leopard became no longer the newest in 2011.
The 2005 Power Mac G5 was Apple's top of the line, most powerful computer at the time and it only got two compatible versions of Mac OS X.
Which is one of the reasons why Apple switched to Intel. And cooler 🥶processors.
I have one of those sitting in the basement. I imagine that many others were pretty annoyed over the short support period but perhaps Apple didn't have the big-money customer base that they got when they went Intel.
How much would it take you to part with one? Yes I am one of those weird PowerPC guys.
Whatever the reasoning may have been, Apple established a precedent. There's no way to know how long a Mac will be supported for. One can only guess.
You mean you will boycott a model line that has 8GB RAM in the base model of that line?
If so, I suspect that will be an unsuccessful boycott and invisible to Apple.
I think what the OP is saying, using the same analogy, is that they will refuse to buy any Cayman because the base Cayman does not have a sports exhaust.
Furthermore, if and when the base Cayman does get the sports exhaust, the price must not be any higher.
I think the primary reason Apple does this is that it's important for their marketing to offer a $999 laptop to entice buyers to consider Apple. At the same time, Apple wants buyers to pay more, so they make the base model very, um, basic. That way they can have their cake and eat it too—entice buyers with the low entry level price, but make the machine so basic that it's easy to upsell a portion of them. And it's on the upsell that they really make their money, because their profit margin for larger RAM and SSD must be substantial.
The quicker obsolescense for the base model may be more a consequence of that primary marketing strategy rather than something they deliberately target.
I agree you are not buying 2100$ machine (M2 Air 16GB apple care plus 35watt charger in India) for 1 year I will highly recommend to get at least 16GB ram
i'd say 99.5% of people dont need 16gb the 8 is blazing fast on the new M2... its more efficient, think of electric car vs gas... its different, hard to compare, I really wish people would stop doing this and driving them selves crazy, in reality it will be fine 
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!Don't applications need essentially same amount of RAM when running on an AS Mac as an Intel Mac? I'm guessing the difference is that, when you run out of RAM, swap might work faster on the AS Macs; but then you don't want to be swapping a lot to the SSD.i'd say 99.5% of people dont need 16gb the 8 is blazing fast on the new M2... its more efficient, think of electric car vs gas... its different, hard to compare, I really wish people would stop doing this and driving them selves crazy, in reality it will be fine
Yeah, that resulted in just under five years of support: The PowerMac G5 was discontinued in August 2006, and Leopard, which was the last OS that could run on the PowerMac, lost its support in June 2011.
Though the 2019 MacPro is a more expensive computer, even after accounting for inflation. So they might give it an extra year or two. I'm guessing it gets seven years.
I haven’t tested it myself, but theoretically, transitioned, optimized apps would use less ram. Like on the iPad.
Why does it have to be the entry level machine if you want 16BG? I am at a loss to see why this is a headline issue when you can buy one. Others may want it. So why bring this up.
Don’t quote me on this, but I think the difference is largely in how well RAM caching works. Basically, a demanding workflow that involves loading multi-GB datasets or 3D models into RAM for processing won’t magically use less RAM than before, but if you have several applications open that use 1-2 GB of RAM each and you’re not using them all simultaneously, Apple Silicon machines are really good at juggling the RAM from backgrounded apps to make room for RAM usage in whatever apps you’re actively using.
It sounds like you're saying that, if the active program starts to use enough RAM to require swapping, and there are other open but inactive programs that are using a lot of RAM, then instead of repeatedly swapping the active program's RAM to disk, you do a one-time swap of one or more inactive programs to disk to make more room. But why use that algorithm on AS Macs and not Intel Macs?
The only thing I can think of is that this type of algorithm might require a fast SSD, and thus would not work as well on an 2019 Air as an M1 Air, since the latter's SSD is twice as fast. But the 2019 14"/16" MBP's did have quite fast SSD's for their time -- perhaps faster than those on the M1 Air.
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My guess is that the 2019 Mac Pros sold in extremely low quantities. If I'm right, it wouldn't make much sense to devote too much time and resources to supporting it with new versions of macOS that long. The manpower and resources are much better utilized for Apple Silicon versions of macOS than a discontinued architecture.
Sounds plausible about the quantities, especially compared to their consumer devices. Though a few years ago Apple acknowledged it wasn't supporting its pro customers as well as it should have (the "apology tour"), and subsequently took steps to correct that. Given this new focus, they might still want to give seven years or so of OS support after the Intel Mac Pro is discontinued.
Or, if you want, you could count 8 years after the 27" iMac was discontinued, which would be early 2029. Historically, over the past 10 years, they've been averaging about 9 years of OS support across all models.
But of course none of us actually knows--just some fun speculation
. We shall see what Tim Cook meant when he said, in June 2002, that "We expect to release new software for Intel based Macs for years to come".He also said "...we have new Intel based Macs in the pipeline that we’re really excited about." Not sure what happend to those. Will there be a new version of the Intel Mac Pro?
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