Is There a Commonality Between Big Sur Compatible Macs That Can't Run Monterey? If so, what?

[Yebubbleman]

With macOS Mojave, it was obvious that the reason why Macs that could run macOS High Sierra, but not Mojave were kicked out of the latter due to not having hardware that supported Metal.

With macOS Catalina, the only change in requirements was the nixing of support for the 2010 and 2012 Mac Pros (which seemed to be more a matter of Apple not wanting to continue to support Mac Pros on the stipulation that they use an aftermarket graphics card upgrade).

With macOS Big Sur (and someone please correct me if I'm wrong here), it seemed to be a matter of Apple not being able to get proper device support for Ivy Bridge (in terms of updating the firmware) and that Apple similarly couldn't work with the manufacturer of the Wi-Fi chipset on the 2013 iMacs to produce an updated driver, thereby kicking that model out as well.

Do we yet have an idea as to the technical reasons as to why some of the Macs able to run macOS Big Sur got left out of macOS Monterey? The dividing line doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense on the surface.

For instance, the Late 2013/Mid 2014 15" MacBook Pro and the Mid 2015 15" MacBook Pro use the same CPUs (and, in the case of the lower-end model, the same graphics as well). Similarly, all three models of 15" MacBook Pro, as well as the 2014 Mac mini, all use Haswell CPUs. Furthermore, the 2014 Mac mini uses the same Haswell CPUs present in both the 2014 MacBook Air (on the low-end model) and the Mid 2014 13" MacBook Pro, yet both of those MacBooks are excluded, while that Mac mini remains supported.

If Apple wanted to drop support across the board for Haswell based Macs, that'd be one thing. But they're still supporting two Haswell Macs! I have no clue what the 2013 Mac Pro still has, in terms of hardware support, that enables Apple to continue supporting it with new OS upgrades. Similarly, aside from being extremely slow and under-performant, I don't know what the 2015 12" Retina MacBook is lacking that the other 2015 Macs have (other than a keyboard that isn't total crap).

Does anyone have any insight as to the technical reasons as to why some of these Big Sur capable Macs were left out this time?

 

[frou]

You're kinda chasing ghosts because it's a false premise that the only reason Apple drops support for Macs is technical reasons. This is real life. Humans. Business.

They always want to encourage people to buy new Macs and will force the point if and when they feel they can get away with it.

Why is the 2013 Mac Pro still supported? Presumably because Apple neglected that product segment so badly that they effectively ended up giving a public apology statement to the pro media industry, and so they're giving owners a year or two more of support than usual to smooth things over in terms of sentiment.

 

[Yebubbleman]

You're kinda chasing ghosts because it's a false premise that the only reason Apple drops support for Macs is technical reasons.

They always want to encourage people to buy new Macs and will force the point if and when they feel they can get away with it.

Why is the 2013 Mac Pro still supported? Presumably because Apple neglected that product segment so badly that they effectively ended up giving a public apology statement to the pro media industry, and so they're giving owners a year or two more of support than usual to smooth things over in PR terms.

They have never not dropped Macs due to anything other than technical limitations. The notion that they do for marketing purposes is the false premise here.

 

[frou]

Where's the archive of official Tech Notes then? If they're not even willing to write it down, then no way is it 100% consistent.

 

[Yebubbleman]

Where's the archive of official Tech Notes then? If they're not even willing to write it down, then no way is it 100% consistent.

Just because Apple doesn't spell this sort of thing out doesn't mean that Apple doesn't have technical reasons for dropping support for a given Mac model. In most cases, them doing so didn't align with a particular Mac's age, last date of sale, or anything else, but rather had more to do with components. Hence why I'm asking those that have tinkered with it if they've figured it out.

 

[iHorseHead]

They have never not dropped Macs due to anything other than technical limitations. The notion that they do for marketing purposes is the false premise here.

Really?
What about MacBook: Late 2009 or later and MacBook Pro Late 2009? They have the same hardware.

 

[Yebubbleman]

Really?
What about MacBook: Late 2009 or later and MacBook Pro Late 2009? They have the same hardware.

They have the same CPU and the same system chipset (which is shared on the same chip with the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M). That's not to say that they have the same Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, sound, storage controllers, etc. It's often inability for those components to receive driver and/or firmware updates that leads Apple to drop support for those models, especially when there's no technological (or even marketing) reasons for ditching. In the case of the MacBook Pros that you mentioned, the release dates were three months apart. There's no other reason to put in a cut-off even from a marketing approach when we're talking about such a short time difference. One probably used Marvell and the other one used Broadcom and maybe the Broadcom module had support that Apple was able to leverage in an update whereas Marvell didn't.

 

[sevoneone]

There are technical limitations we may not even know about. Last year a bunch of Late 2013 and Mid 2014 13" MacBook Pros were being bricked when upgrading to Big Sur because a firmware update, I believe for a component related to the I/O boards, was failing mid install. It was something that went completely unidentified in the beta and public beta builds. It was months before Apple added support for those systems back to the Big Sur installer.

Apple's thing is super tight integration between hardware and software. When you want everything to "just work," be secure and use as little power as possible, just a single chip can be the difference between something new working or regularly crashing the entire system.

When those issues pop up, Apple can decide if it is worthwhile to workaround/recode, test, revise, test, repeat until stable just to be able to continue to support a 7-8 year old product. A handful of small issues are likely enough to tip the scales, but it certainly is not as arbitrary as "That's enough updates for that Mac."

 

[iHorseHead]

They have the same CPU and the same system chipset (which is shared on the same chip with the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M). That's not to say that they have the same Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, sound, storage controllers, etc. It's often inability for those components to receive driver and/or firmware updates that leads Apple to drop support for those models, especially when there's no technological (or even marketing) reasons for ditching. In the case of the MacBook Pros that you mentioned, the release dates were three months apart. There's no other reason to put in a cut-off even from a marketing approach when we're talking about such a short time difference. One probably used Marvell and the other one used Broadcom and maybe the Broadcom module had support that Apple was able to leverage in an update whereas Marvell didn't.

All I'm gonna say is that Dosdude1 and others can even make Mavericks run perfectly on MacBook Early 2008.
So……………………Idk. Sketchy
I think you might not know a lot about computers, because all you had to do was to add the MacBook Pro 2009 into plist file and it'd boot and work and I don't understand what's the point of this thread.
All you are saying again is that dosdude1 is smarter and more intelligent than the entire team at Apple then.

 

[iHorseHead]

Where's the archive of official Tech Notes then? If they're not even willing to write it down, then no way is it 100% consistent.

It's pointless to argue with thing.
All I'm saying is that I had MacBook Early 2008 and with dosdude1's patch it ran Mountain Lion and Mavericks better than Lion and also, DosDude1 got Nightshift to work on MacBook Pro mid 2010, while Apple couldn't.

When I read such posts all I'm getting is that dosdude1 is a very smart dude and even smarter than the entire team at Apple and also that Windows is better, because with Windows even your kind of cheap computer from 2003 could run Windows 7 but expensive Mac Pros can't run Mountain Lion nor received security updates.

 

[kode54]

What about the Late 2013 21.5" iMac I bought my dad in November of 2014, instead of getting the crappier but still supported 2014 model, which has the same generation of CPU, Haswell. That mysteriously cuts off at Catalina.

What about my Haswell powered 2014 15" MBP, which I bought in early 2015? That drops off the face of the earth at Big Sur.

Sort of understandable that both would lose support after Big Sur, since there's some possible SGX requirement that may make it into the last Intel versions of macOS.

 

[Yebubbleman]

All I'm gonna say is that Dosdude1 and others can even make Mavericks run perfectly on MacBook Early 2008.
So……………………Idk. Sketchy
I think you might not know a lot about computers, because all you had to do was to add the MacBook Pro 2009 into plist file and it'd boot and work and I don't understand what's the point of this thread.

Just because dosdude1 is able to make it work doesn't mean that he's able to make it work in such a way to meet Apple's standards. I don't doubt that Sierra and High Sierra wouldn't have been fine on even a late 2008 Aluminum MacBook or a Late 2018 Unibody 15" MacBook Pro, for that matter. But I'm only basing that off of the GPU and the CPU and Apple uses a host of other components that get way less attention when nerds like us look over this ****. There's zero reason to cut support for a 2009 13" MacBook Pro, but allow a 2009 unibody MacBook otherwise. There's a three month difference between the announcement of one and the announcement of the other!

All you are saying again is that dosdude1 is smarter and more intelligent than the entire team at Apple then.

No. That's what YOU'RE saying. What I'm saying is that Apple has reasons and that they're not rooted in marketing or forcing people to buy new Macs. The 2009 13" MacBook Pro and Late 2009 white MacBook HAS to be an example of this because it otherwise makes zero sense.

It's pointless to argue with thing.
All I'm saying is that I had MacBook Early 2008 and with dosdude1's patch it ran Mountain Lion and Mavericks better than Lion and also, DosDude1 got Nightshift to work on MacBook Pro mid 2010, while Apple couldn't.

Again, Apple has standards that are higher than indie hackers. Just because you can get something to run doesn't mean that you can necessarily guarantee a decent experience long term. Again, for all we know, it could be that Apple couldn't push out a firmware update to those models of Macs (or, more likely an individual component on one of those Macs). With Big Sur, Apple literally couldn't make a driver update for 2013 iMacs and they literally couldn't continue to update Ivy Bridge firmware for 2012 Macs. That was a purely technological limitation that caused those Macs to be left out of the Big Sur party. That's usually why Apple does this. Their MO has ALWAYS been to have as many devices running the latest release as is possible. They do this TO A FAULT with iOS/iPadOS devices. I'd almost rather some of those iPads be left on a version of iPadOS that runs smoother than one that runs like molasses but is newer.

When I read such posts all I'm getting is that dosdude1 is a very smart dude and even smarter than the entire team at Apple and also that Windows is better, because with Windows even your kind of cheap computer from 2003 could run Windows 7 but expensive Mac Pros can't run Mountain Lion nor received security updates.

Cheap PCs from 2003 may meet the minimum system requirements for Windows 7, but without DRIVERS for Windows 7, the experience will be crap. The same goes for trying to run Windows 10 on anything older than 2012. The only difference is that Microsoft allows you to try anyway; they just differ you to your hardware manufacturer for support. Apple enforces those requirements and only supports running a given macOS release on things that they're willing to support that given release on. Unless you can tell me something other than "Dosdude1 got it to work, therefore Apple had no good reason to cut off support", then I'm going to assume you have nothing that isn't anecdotal to add here.

What about the Late 2013 21.5" iMac I bought my dad in November of 2014, instead of getting the crappier but still supported 2014 model, which has the same generation of CPU, Haswell. That mysteriously cuts off at Catalina.

Your Late 2013 21.5" iMac lost support because Apple couldn't produce a driver for the Wi-Fi card in that particular iMac.

What about my Haswell powered 2014 15" MBP, which I bought in early 2015? That drops off the face of the earth at Big Sur.

That Mac can run Big Sur (unless you're saying that it can't run past Big Sur). As for why the 2014 models can't run Monterey, barring the NVIDIA graphics, it doesn't make too much sense seeing as the versions of the 15" MacBook Pro that don't have the NVIDIA graphics are pretty much the same computer as their 2015 counterparts (save for a different trackpad, a combusting battery, and a faster SSD).

Sort of understandable that both would lose support after Big Sur, since there's some possible SGX requirement that may make it into the last Intel versions of macOS.

That's at least a theory to go off of! That's what I was looking for with this thread! Thank you!

 

[iHorseHead]

Just because dosdude1 is able to make it work doesn't mean that he's able to make it work in such a way to meet Apple's standards.

You don't even read what I write, so there's absolutely point in discussing it with you. I said that Mavericks works better THAN Lion did and he was able to get the nightshift and everything to work on "unsupported" Macs and it worked perfectly.

No. That's what YOU'RE saying

No, you said it. You said that DosDude1 is more intelligent than the entire team of Apple.

Again, Apple has standards that are higher than indie hackers.

MB 4,1 RAN MAVERICKS AND MOUNTAIN LION BETTER THAN LION​

 

[Yebubbleman]

You don't even read what I write, so there's absolutely point in discussing it with you.

I read what you wrote. You just don't write effectively.

I said that Mavericks works better THAN Lion did and he was able to get the nightshift and everything to work on "unsupported" Macs and it worked perfectly.

No, you said it. You said that DosDude1 is more intelligent than the entire team of Apple.

And you're accusing me of not reading what you wrote? I never said that DosDude1 is more intelligent than the "entire team of Apple". I said that Apple makes cuts for specific technological reasons. Effective communication on your part will go a long way here.

Also, Lion was a crap OS. Mavericks wasn't great either, but there were performance enhancements made in Mavericks which explains improved performance.

MB 4,1 RAN MAVERICKS AND MOUNTAIN LION BETTER THAN LION​

See above. Your boldfacing and all caps don't compensate for poor communication skills on your part.

 

[iHorseHead]

I read what you wrote. You just don't write effectively.

You obviously didn't. Most everybody else can understand what I write.

but there were performance enhancements made in Mavericks which explains improved performance.

So older Macs should have been supported.

Your boldfacing and all caps don't compensate for poor communication skills on your part.

Nope, read what I wrote and do your research.

 

[Yebubbleman]

You obviously didn't. Most everybody else can understand what I write.

I actually did. You said that I said that Dosdude1 knows more than Apple. I did not say that. You said that. Again, this goes back to poor writing and communication on your part here.

So older Macs should have been supported.

Do YOUR research. That's not how this works.

Nope, read what I wrote and do your research.

I did. Many times in fact. Doesn't make sense. Either you are trolling, English isn't your first language, or your writing isn't great. I'm not going to give you grief for any of those being the case. But I will for you telling me that I didn't and that what you're saying makes sense when it clearly doesn't. Similarly for me not doing my research. Aside from combing all 20+ pages of the Monterey thread, I have done much more research on these things than you have, clearly.

Now, unless you have something constructive to add here, please stop.

 

[iHorseHead]

You said that I said that Dosdude1 knows more than Apple. I did not say that. You said that. Again, this goes back to poor writing and communication on your part here.

No, you said that. I can read what people say between the lines.

Do YOUR research. That's not how this works.

I did. Apple was just lazy and didn't write kexts and wanted to sell new Macs.
Simple as that.

I have done much more research on these things than you have, clearly.

Okay, then provide sources to your research and I'll provide mine.

Either you are trolling, English isn't your first language

I'm not trolling and my English is at C1 level. I speak 5 different languages and am currently learning the 6th, so… I mean feel free to correct my grammar mistakes or whatever you find or whatever bothers you. I don't mind.

Now, unless you have something constructive to add here, please stop.

You're the one that keeps quoting me and replying to me. You don't provide any resources of your "research" and you haven't even answered why Dosdude and you haven't answered to my main question:

How DosDude1 was able to make Mavericks patch that ran perfectly on such an old Mac? Even better than Lion. It's pretty obvious that Apple just dropped the support, because they wanted to sell more Macs.

Also, how come you can just add MacBook Pro 2009 into plist file and it'll boot and it'll work? You keep talking about Apple's standards, but the fact that DosDude's patched Mavericks ran better than Lion shows that Apple's standards aren't always perfect + same with MacBook 2009, Pro 2009.

Also, according to you I'm trolling, because I disagree with you and dare to criticise Apple.

 

[Yebubbleman]

No, you said that. I can read what people say between the lines.

Also, according to you I'm trolling, because I disagree with you and dare to criticise Apple.

You can't even keep your own argument straight. These two quotes say it all. Also, it's one thing to read between the lines. It's another to put words in my mouth. You may know English, but you sure don't communicate effectively here.

 

[iHorseHead]

You can't even keep your own argument straight. These two quotes say it all. Also, it's one thing to read between the lines. It's another to put words in my mouth. You may know English, but you sure don't communicate effectively here.

And you think you do communicate effectively?
Anyway, I'll stop giving you attention. Think what you think.

 

[Bartek Pękala]

Apple fanboys at their best, love it. The only reason for Apple to stop updating these machines is money, obviously. As @iHorseHead wrote above, dosdude1 and the likes of him can easily make it work. It might not be up to Apple standards, sure, as it will easily exceed them by actually working. You clearly have no clue what are you talking about, which you notably stated by using argumentum ad personam and calling them "indie hackers". There was really no need to go personal with this.

 

[SmOgER]

It's marketing. There's virtually no difference between MacBook Air 2013 and 2014.

 

[Yebubbleman]

It's marketing. There's virtually no difference between MacBook Air 2013 and 2014.

Both models lost support with Monterey. Both had support for Big Sur. So, I'm not entirely sure what point you're trying to make here, but I think you might've invalidated your reasoning behind it...at least as you wrote those two sentences.

 

[SmOgER]

My bad, thought they supported 2014 model. But I still don't believe they dropped it due to technical reasons.

 

[macOS Lynx]

You're kinda chasing ghosts because it's a false premise that the only reason Apple drops support for Macs is technical reasons. This is real life. Humans. Business.

They always want to encourage people to buy new Macs and will force the point if and when they feel they can get away with it.

Why is the 2013 Mac Pro still supported? Presumably because Apple neglected that product segment so badly that they effectively ended up giving a public apology statement to the pro media industry, and so they're giving owners a year or two more of support than usual to smooth things over in terms of sentiment.

They have never not dropped Macs due to anything other than technical limitations. The notion that they do for marketing purposes is the false premise here.

Unless one of you work at Apple and are part of the team making these decisions, neither of these takes are an absolute truth.

The matter of the fact is we can't prove if Apple is dropping devices based on hardware limitations. We can assume some things, but assumptions are not facts.

 

[SmOgER]

The matter of the fact is we can't prove if Apple is dropping devices based on hardware limitations. We can assume some things, but assumptions are not facts.

We actually can prove that some models are being dropped with each release not because of hardware limitations. And in fact it has already been done by forcefully installing/tweaking the OS on officially unsupported models and testing them to work just fine.