Only 7 years of support from release date is unacceptable for a $2000+ personal computer.

[LogicalApex]

It does make sense but on most things paying more only gets you a fancier product.



They make the hardware not control it. At least not on Mac. You can install another OS on a Mac for example.



That only proves that it’s not locked down and Apple doesn’t have control. There are similar articles in the windows community where people figure out ways to get modern version of Windows installed on unsupported hardware.


I’m not sure if 10 years is realistic, but maybe. It has to be an arbitrary cut off will you make millions of things? You can’t just say well we can’t support this no more when you have a multi trillion dollar company. Making the limit based on the hardware would mean customers that didn’t know about hardware would get screwed because they bought something they didn’t know could no longer be supported for a very long. There has to be a set time.

They control the hardware as they decide what hardware all their computers consist of. On the PC side the hardware manufacturers are separate and can add hardware that Microsoft doesn't yet support in their OS. So MS can't control what the hardware in a PC looks like to the extent Apple can. That's what I mean by control. Not if you can force the device to install something else...

Apple has already branched the OS to support features based on the hardware. For instance, an Intel 2018 MacBook Pro running macOS 15 can't support features like reading the text from photos since that feature relies on the machine learning features of M-Series processors. The OS is still supported and installs on that MacBook. Apple could support Macs longer while disabling features that aren't supported...

They also did similar when they used to sell macOS upgrades...

The reality is Apple wants to support their devices long enough to make the "walled garden" feel decent, but they want to also not support them so long that you skip upgrading.

Also, the ways of installing Windows 11 on "unsupported hardware" isn't to hack the OS. Before MS backpedaled on their limitations to remove them... The way of doing it was simply to add flags to the install that Microsoft added to the OS! It wasn't a hack in any real sense...

 

[seek3r]

Yes, which is the fork M/soft made after WinXP, they went the NT route instead of having 2 branches of software, NT really was for offices, and XP should have been Win-Home, but M/soft decided 1 is better, that is NT, and we have been abused since, Windows is a crime.. it is not software, but a criminal action, ongoing..

NT was and is a much much better kernel and architecture, the first time they switched to NT for a release for everyone was 2k, which was one of the most solid OS releases I can remember, I ran 2k on my compaq laptop (that initially came with NT 3.5 on it) in HS and loved it.

 

[seek3r]

Apple and M/soft are running, ruining, both, both guilty of the same crime, and I have yet to figure out, why it is legal for Apple Inc to be allowed to sell a device and not "allow" the user to determine what OS they want, this is ant-competitive,Ford cannot demand you only use a certain brand of fuel, so why it is OK for Apple to say you can only use Mac OS?

Where does Apple say that, at least as far as Macs go? There is not a single Mac that is locked down like that…

 

[seek3r]

If you know anything about Win11 you would know it is NT, and that my friend goes back to the middle 1990's.. 99% of the crud that ruins Win11 is 40 yr old code.. Win11 is 96% bloatware, of which 99% of devices don't need that code, it is a scam to sell more devices.. M/soft could strip Win11 to 5% of what it is now, and every device from 1995 to 2025 would run 100%.. No question what M/soft is doing should be the subject of a world class action suit.

And MacOS (and all of Apple’s other OSes) is Darwin, which is NeXTSTEP, which goes all the way back to the ‘80s,

the Linux kernel dates back to 1991

Solaris, still in use and development by Oracle, dates to 1992

the most popular RTOS, VxWorks, dates from 1987

etc

So what’s your point?

 

[TruthAboveAllElse]

I think this thread is ridiculous. That said, my absurdly over priced and built like tanks washing machine and dryer have a 20 year parts guarantee.

Well home appliances should have multiple decades long support.
Computers still advance too quickly for that.

Also IMO, there is no need for every home appliance to have "smart" features. It is annoying how difficult it is to find unconnected appliances these days.

 

[TruthAboveAllElse]

Where does Apple say that, at least as far as Macs go? There is not a single Mac that is locked down like that…

Also the analogy you responded to is flawed.

You cannot easily install alternate OS systems to car's infotainment systems. Which would be a more direct comparison.

People are just very used to the Microsoft pioneered business model where the hardware comes from a different company than the software, that Apple seems like an anomaly.

But if we look at other things we find hardware and software linked, and no complaints about it.

Washing machines, fax machines, printers, cars, etc.

 

[Annv]

Given that most tech has plateaued a few years ago, 7 years is nothing for a computer and not enough even for a phone.

For example, iPhone SE from 2016 works just fine even today (apart from some apps like Teams), 9 years later.

An iMac 2017 is the most powerful computer in my household, but it cannot run the newest macOS. It works under Win 10 anyway, so no big deal.

I find that my main PC from 2013, with upgraded storage, PSU and RAM, is powerful enough for my work and can even run many games. It's also dead silent. I don't think I'll buy a new one any time soon.

Any slowness I encounter is always due to unoptimized software. It won't benefit much from newer hardware. For example, if it only uses 1 CPU core, what's the point in having a 12-core CPU?

Besides, I would not be able to use my VGA monitor and a PS/2 mouse that I like a lot.

 

[seek3r]

Any slowness I encounter is always due to unoptimized software. It won't benefit much from newer hardware. For example, if it only uses 1 CPU core, what's the point in having a 12-core CPU?

The OS makes good use of multicore chips for background tasks even if your foreground app isnt heavily multithreaded

Besides, I would not be able to use my VGA monitor and a PS/2 mouse that I like a lot.

Why can’t you use a vga monitor or ps/2 mouse on modern machines? Get the right adapters and you’re good. My daily driver keyboard is an ADB Apple Extended Keyboard from 1987 using an ADB—>USB adapter, and on both my secondary machine in my office, which is linux so I can not care about the command key, and across my garage on a couple workstations I have several IBM model Ms of the same vintage using PS/2–> USB adapters just fine

On the VGA side 3 of my workbench displays are CRTs with VGA, adapters work great (a caveat there, finding a VGA adapter for a given input that supports 1600x1200 properly is a bit of a pain, my latest round of adapters are USBC, and it did take some trial and error to find the right ones)

 

[redheeler]

The OS makes good use of multicore chips for background tasks even if your foreground app isnt heavily multithreaded

Why can’t you use a vga monitor or ps/2 mouse on modern machines? Get the right adapters and you’re good. My daily driver keyboard is an ADB Apple Extended Keyboard from 1987 using an ADB—>USB adapter, and on both my secondary machine in my office, which is linux so I can not care about the command key, and across my garage on a couple workstations I have several IBM model Ms of the same vintage using PS/2–> USB adapters just fine

On the VGA side 3 of my workbench displays are CRTs with VGA, adapters work great (a caveat there, finding a VGA adapter for a given input that supports 1600x1200 properly is a bit of a pain, my latest round of adapters are USBC, and it did take some trial and error to find the right ones)

The old Apple ADB keyboards have a nice feel! I tried one for a while a long time ago but it was a bit too bulky for my liking. I use a modern small-profile mechanical keyboard now.

 

[cjsuk]

Given that most tech has plateaued a few years ago, 7 years is nothing for a computer and not enough even for a phone.

For example, iPhone SE from 2016 works just fine even today (apart from some apps like Teams), 9 years later.

An iMac 2017 is the most powerful computer in my household, but it cannot run the newest macOS. It works under Win 10 anyway, so no big deal.

I find that my main PC from 2013, with upgraded storage, PSU and RAM, is powerful enough for my work and can even run many games. It's also dead silent. I don't think I'll buy a new one any time soon.

Any slowness I encounter is always due to unoptimized software. It won't benefit much from newer hardware. For example, if it only uses 1 CPU core, what's the point in having a 12-core CPU?

Besides, I would not be able to use my VGA monitor and a PS/2 mouse that I like a lot.

All the parts in your equipment have a finite lifespan. They don't expire suddenly on a certain day but in a large enough population, it turns into a failure bell curve. This defines the part's MTTF (mean-time-to-failure). Your hardware is made of thousands of parts with independent MTTF which combine and produce a bell-curve like distribution of the total system failure risk.

The majority of PCs from 2013 have already failed and been disposed of or have been disposed of before the MTTF kicks in and makes them a tangible risk to the users. You have survivor bias here and are most likely running on luck. Do not assume that 7 years is nothing for a computer from your own sample of reality.

The thing with survivor bias is that you can confidently walk yourself into a difficult to escape failure scenario. I hope you have backups, I hope they are tested and I hope any software you use has portable file formats that work on hardware that is made in 2025...

----

A fun one. A friend had a plastic Core 2 Duo macbook a couple of years back (still). She said she'd keep it until it died. It died. Backup on USB stick? Well not verified. She lost everything.

 

[Zdigital2015]

Yes, which is the fork M/soft made after WinXP, they went the NT route instead of having 2 branches of software, NT really was for offices, and XP should have been Win-Home, but M/soft decided 1 is better, that is NT, and we have been abused since, Windows is a crime.. it is not software, but a criminal action, ongoing..

The Windows 3.1/95/98/ME/XP codebase was an evolutionary dead end. The NT codebase was/is not. Maintaining two separate codebases that have to run the same applications with two different underlying frameworks, APIs and kernels is a waste of time, talent and treasure.

If Windows is a criminal action, feel free to go back to using a calculator and a paper ledger.

Your logic is severely flawed.

 

[SDRLS]

A $10,000 Dell workstation purchased in 2017 cannot run Windows 11, which came out in 2021, only 4 years later.

This is how computers work. Sometimes you get lucky and have a period of time when support is longer, sometimes shorter.

Of note - the last PowerPC Mac only got OS support for *TWO YEARS* after it was discontinued. The last Intel Mac has already gotten far longer life.

The last 680x0 Mac only got OS updates for two years as well.

You do realize that's not exactly true right? I have a Dell Poweredge Mx7000 From 2014 that runs Datacenter server like it was made for it, and a Precision Tower5810 That cost about 15K when i bought it, and currently has Windows 11 Pro. and STILL gets security and firmware support from dell to this day. Dell literally tells you they will support workstations and servers for between 15-20 years or more depending on the model. I also have an HP Z420 (2012) I got refurbed in 2013 for just over 5K (its Orig specs had it at almost 7K) that i have to this day with Server2025 Datacenter on it that is still receiving intel, Microsoft, & HP support.

Apple would NEVER in a million years. You get about 2 maybe 3 years of full software support. then they tart cherrypicking for the next 4 years and then you're out to pasture. Not to say that the hardware can't handle it, I'm typing this on a 2017 MBA as we speak on Sequoia. Not a single issue with speed or anything. on MacOS 18 and yet apple says nope past MacOS12. The OCLP team shouldn't be keeping Macs alive Apple Should!

 

[noblesoul117]

Not really. This may be the history of recent practice, but I am not aware of anything to suggest that Apple provides any sort of "gurantee" of X years of hardware/software support for a new Mac purchased today.

True, there is not documented guarantee from Apple as far as I'm aware. But a couple of decades of precedent point to 7 years. Has this ever been broken? I feel like it might've been during some of the architecture transitions, but I'm not certain.

To add some more personal context to this situation, I got the PowerBook G4 running Tiger as my first Mac. It was great. … Then Leopard was announced along with Intel Macs, and my PBG4 was suddenly very dated. I definitely used the max out of it through 2009 or so but it could never keep up with Intel-based advancements and speed. So even though the $2k PBG4 was "supported" for 7-whatever years and Tiger got its security updates, this machine was already heavily deprecated in terms of performance.

As I alluded to I believe many Mac Pro users also felt caught off guard by the architecture transitions + slow Mac Pro update cycles, especially with the recent Apple Silicon launch. Some of these events just happen.

But aside from one-off events, I believe Apple is pretty dependable with >5 year software support. And whatever security bugs do fall through the cracks after OS updates are terminated are probably minuscule and probably not opening the user to major risk. A 10+ year Mac is perfectly usable for someone who's only doing basic email, web browsing, using some old apps, etc. This whole convo just began because OP isn't viewing the situation realistically. Their used Mac is gonna be in good shape (without posing a severe security risk) for a good many years, if they so wish.

 

[russell_314]

They control the hardware as they decide what hardware all their computers consist of. On the PC side the hardware manufacturers are separate and can add hardware that Microsoft doesn't yet support in their OS. So MS can't control what the hardware in a PC looks like to the extent Apple can. That's what I mean by control. Not if you can force the device to install something else...

Apple has already branched the OS to support features based on the hardware. For instance, an Intel 2018 MacBook Pro running macOS 15 can't support features like reading the text from photos since that feature relies on the machine learning features of M-Series processors. The OS is still supported and installs on that MacBook. Apple could support Macs longer while disabling features that aren't supported...

They also did similar when they used to sell macOS upgrades...

The reality is Apple wants to support their devices long enough to make the "walled garden" feel decent, but they want to also not support them so long that you skip upgrading.

Also, the ways of installing Windows 11 on "unsupported hardware" isn't to hack the OS. Before MS backpedaled on their limitations to remove them... The way of doing it was simply to add flags to the install that Microsoft added to the OS! It wasn't a hack in any real sense...

I think we’re talking about two different things. The ability to install a certain OS on hardware versus is the hardware supported by the OS manufacturer. The hardware supported would be the hardware listed as minimum system requirements by Microsoft. Anything else is not supported. If you have a problem with the OS, they’re not going to help you. It’s the same way with Apple. They have a list of officially supported hardware. You can make those newer operating systems work on older hardware, but Apple does not support this. If you bring it into an Apple store and ask why is this not working, they will tell you you’re running an unsupported OS.

 

[MilaM]

The majority of PCs from 2013 have already failed and been disposed of or have been disposed of before the MTTF kicks in and makes them a tangible risk to the users. You have survivor bias here and are most likely running on luck. Do not assume that 7 years is nothing for a computer from your own sample of reality.

This is a very bold claim, and I highly doubt what you say is true. Do you have some statistics to back this up? I'm genuinely curious.

If you look at portable computers, then yes. Most will be of little use because the batteries are dead by now and spinning rust also tends to fail after a certain amount of time. The electronics on the other hand are much more durable. I have a Core 2 Duo MacBook from 2010 with a SSD drive that still boots and even connects to my Wifi. Is it a computer I would use as a daily driver? Of course not. A 8 to 10 year old iMac on the other is a still a really nice Mac to use for non-demanding tasks. My mother uses one and is quite happy with it. Once all apps are loaded, I would not be able to tell the difference between the 2015 iMac 5K and a model from say 2020.

 

[BaldiMac]

This is a very bold claim, and I highly doubt what you say is true. Do you have some statistics to back this up? I'm genuinely curious.

If you look at portable computers, then yes. Most will be of little use because the batteries are dead by now and spinning rust also tends to fail after a certain amount of time. The electronics on the other hand are much more durable. I have a Core 2 Duo MacBook from 2010 with a SSD drive that still boots and even connects to my Wifi. Is it a computer I would use as a daily driver? Of course not. A 8 to 10 year old iMac on the other is a still a really nice Mac to use for non-demanding tasks. My mother uses one and is quite happy with it. Once all apps are loaded, I would not be able to tell the difference between the 2015 iMac 5K and a model from say 2020.

Desktops are less than 25% of the market, So assuming 65% or more of portables aren't in use after 12 years seems pretty reasonable to me.

 

[seek3r]

This is a very bold claim, and I highly doubt what you say is true. Do you have some statistics to back this up? I'm genuinely curious.

The biggest buyers of computers, in order are regular businesses, then hyperscalers and the like (aws, azure, etc), then governments. All have regular refresh cycles in the 3-5 year range, and then they ewaste their gear, most of that ewaste is tossed. It’s a solid assumption

 

[cjsuk]

This is a very bold claim, and I highly doubt what you say is true. Do you have some statistics to back this up? I'm genuinely curious.

If you look at portable computers, then yes. Most will be of little use because the batteries are dead by now and spinning rust also tends to fail after a certain amount of time. The electronics on the other hand are much more durable. I have a Core 2 Duo MacBook from 2010 with a SSD drive that still boots and even connects to my Wifi. Is it a computer I would use as a daily driver? Of course not. A 8 to 10 year old iMac on the other is a still a really nice Mac to use for non-demanding tasks. My mother uses one and is quite happy with it. Once all apps are loaded, I would not be able to tell the difference between the 2015 iMac 5K and a model from say 2020.

Source: actual qualified electronics engineer who was responsible for reliability engineering.

The electronics aren't as durable as they think you are. The principal failure is likely to be MLCC capacitors which have a finite life defined by thermal cycles and other ageing that ends in a short. Approximately 7 years if you're lucky. These are a damage amplifier as there are a hell of a lot of them on most devices. The next point of failure is electrolytic capacitors in power supplies which have a lifespan defined by temperature. This can go down to merely 2000 hours at 85ºC so they have to be heavily derated and kept cool, which they are not always. Also power supply X2 capacitors tend to like to due spectacularly after a few years.

So extrapolating that into manufacturing, data of which is not generally publicly available, defines the support and warranty outcomes which manufacturers sell you. Hence why your extended support usually runs to 3 years. that's outside the bulk of the failure hedge that the manufacturer makes. They expect to lose 10-15% of devices during an extended warranty period. After that period the failure rate makes it unrealistic to consider providing extended warranty for. This is the 3-4 year risk window. After that, the 5-7 year is where the bulk of the failures occur. 7-10 years is where the survivor bias comes in. Realistically for every device that survives to 10 years, there have been 30 that didn't or were taken out of service because the 5-7 year risk window was too high.

Now I can say with certainty, as I know someone who works on this, at the NHS here in the UK they have a lot of desktop machines. A hell of a lot. They have to keep a huge stock per trust sitting there because the failure rate is quite high. By 5 years there's a 25% (1 in 4) failure rate from HPE at least which is too much to sustain. By 7 years that moves to a 75% failure rate. That is factored in to warranty and service supply for replacement hardware which is neatly summarised by "replace hardware every 3 years".

Fundamentally, the stats drive the warranty offers so you can infer the lifespan from that. If PCs all lasted 10 years they'd be giving you 5 year warranties out of the box. If your PC has a 1 year warranty then it's probably made of Shenzhen landfill sweepings.

Laptops definitely lower lifespan. They are mostly constrained by the fact that the batteries crap out fairly quickly and the manufacturer doesn't keep a supply. So corps write them off and they are disposed of. Also poor thermal design causes a lot of stress on the parts in them.

Here's a nice picture. This is a cross section of an MLCC capacitor which has been through a few too many thermal cycles. Dead short. Will take the whole machine out. In fact this stuff happens quite regularly on recent-ish hardware. Already seen an M1 iMac with a shorted MLCC kill it dead.

 

[cjsuk]

The biggest buyers of computers, in order are regular businesses, then hyperscalers and the like (aws, azure, etc), then governments. All have regular refresh cycles in the 3-5 year range, and then they ewaste their gear, most of that ewaste is tossed. It’s a solid assumption

AWS still runs landfill Haswell trash from 2015 (c4 instances for example). And they do indeed crap out quite regularly. Amazing how many instances we've lost on old hardware.

McDonalds computing that lot.

 

[Annv]

All the parts in your equipment have a finite lifespan. They don't expire suddenly on a certain day but in a large enough population, it turns into a failure bell curve. This defines the part's MTTF (mean-time-to-failure). Your hardware is made of thousands of parts with independent MTTF which combine and produce a bell-curve like distribution of the total system failure risk.

The majority of PCs from 2013 have already failed and been disposed of or have been disposed of before the MTTF kicks in and makes them a tangible risk to the users. You have survivor bias here and are most likely running on luck. Do not assume that 7 years is nothing for a computer from your own sample of reality.

The thing with survivor bias is that you can confidently walk yourself into a difficult to escape failure scenario. I hope you have backups, I hope they are tested and I hope any software you use has portable file formats that work on hardware that is made in 2025...

----

A fun one. A friend had a plastic Core 2 Duo macbook a couple of years back (still). She said she'd keep it until it died. It died. Backup on USB stick? Well not verified. She lost everything.

I believe all that could break has already broken, like a PSU that I replaced a while back. Samsung SSDs are reliable, so I feel safe about my data. Still, keeping most thing in OneDrive, and my software has a full backup feature.

Literally anything except the motherboard is replaceable, and even if it breaks, I will be able to boot my SSD with a new computer and all the software.

We did so when my son's ASUS ROG broke (motherboard failure), and he didn't even need to reinstall Windows, just run the installer for some programs on his new desktop.

From this experience (and yet another laptop that literally fell apart after 7 years), I've concluded that laptops are not worth it. If they break, proprietary parts are too expensive to fix — repair would cost me 2/3 of the laptop price. So, I've decided to never buy them again, switching to custom-made desktops where all is replaceable and upgradeable.

 

[Annv]

The OS makes good use of multicore chips for background tasks even if your foreground app isnt heavily multithreaded

The i3 has 4 threads, and 1 is used by my main program (not fully most of the time), OS, Chrome and other background software run on the other 3. Feels sufficient for now.

Why can’t you use a vga monitor or ps/2 mouse on modern machines? Get the right adapters and you’re good. My daily driver keyboard is an ADB Apple Extended Keyboard from 1987 using an ADB—>USB adapter, and on both my secondary machine in my office, which is linux so I can not care about the command key, and across my garage on a couple workstations I have several IBM model Ms of the same vintage using PS/2–> USB adapters just fine

On the VGA side 3 of my workbench displays are CRTs with VGA, adapters work great (a caveat there, finding a VGA adapter for a given input that supports 1600x1200 properly is a bit of a pain, my latest round of adapters are USBC, and it did take some trial and error to find the right ones)

Yes, adapters are a possible solution, and I'll do so if nothing else is left.

 

[PieVsCake]

This really boils down to internet / malware protection. As other commenters have stated above it is unrealistic to expect Apple to provide "Your Purchase Date" +10 years of security updates.

The machine will continue to work indefinitely as long as you are ok with the increased chance of your machine being affected by a malicious actor. Malware / security technology is constantly evolving and can't be supported effectively by OS owners without making older tech obsolete.

Take it from the Windows side. Microsoft realized with all the CPU / boot hack malware hitting Windows that they needed to step up security. BAM TPM2.0 / CPU requirements for Windows 11. Will windows 11 boot without TPM 2.0 or on older x86 CPUs? Absolutely. Will the security functions that rely on the new hardware function? Nope.

Developers have their own versions of tools and modules that need to be kept "current" to support newer products.

Keeping legacy tools / code standing up for an extended period of time leads to bloated install sizes and reduced performance. Do I want my Mac to boot / perform 15% slower so that the 1% of people on the OS with old hardware can continue to have a safe and sane browsing experience for their 15 year old mac? Not really.

It sucks to have a recently purchased product end up "non-supported" but that's why you do your research and make sure whatever you purchase is going to meet your needs for the time that you will own it and use it. There was a reason it was a "great deal" on ebay.

 

[seek3r]

The i3 has 4 threads, and 1 is used by my main program (not fully most of the time), OS, Chrome and other background software run on the other 3. Feels sufficient for now.

The OS has a lot more threads than just some background apps main threads, for that matter chrome by itself is well threaded too

Yes, adapters are a possible solution, and I'll do so if nothing else is left.

There’s literally zero downside 🤷‍♂️

 

[Annv]

There’s literally zero downside 🤷‍♂️

I've experienced some display adapters blinking. Other than that, yes, this approach should work.

 

[960design]

Especially considering these machines are sometimes sold direct from Apple for 2 or more years between updates. Mac Mini went 4 years between updates at one time.

And then there’s Apple’s refurbished store, which is currently selling iMacs that were released in 2021. You buy it today and possibly only get 3 years of security updates.

Plus we have the used market to consider, where you can pick up an “obsolete” machine that is still perfectly usable (but not supported by Apple).

And yes I know you could switch to a different operating system (at least with Intel machines), but that defeats the whole purpose of owning a Mac.

Maybe the EU can take care of this. No doubt this creates far more e-waste than the USBC/lightning port fiasco ever did.

Restrict new OS versions to newer machines. I’m fine with that. It’s refusing to provide basic security updates that is the main issue here.

Where did you see this?
It is my experience that Apple identifies items as vintage and obsolete by their last availability date.

Obtaining service for your Apple product after an expired warranty - Apple Support

Learn about your options for getting service and parts for Apple devices that are past their warranty period.

support.apple.com

When I hear comments like this I often ask a few questions for comparison:
-- How old is your current automobile?
-- How old is your current house?
-- How long have you been in your current relationship?
-- How old are your children ( if appropriate )?