What are you still using an Intel Mac for?

[Yebubbleman]

This post might belong in a different forum (so, apologies to the mods in advance). But, in the spirit of the Intel to Apple Silicon Mac transition, I'll pose the following question:

For those still holding onto Intel-based Macs (however old or recent they may be), what are you still using your Intel-based Mac for? What are you doing/using with yours that cannot be done on an Apple Silicon Mac using Rosetta 2?

Personally, I have a small handful of 2014 and 2015 era MacBook Pros and Airs for running Mojave and the few 32-bit only apps I still have. But I also have a MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2019) for Boot Camp and x86-64 virtualization (both of which are non-existent on an Apple Silicon Mac). I'd imagine my reliance on these things will very quickly transition from "maintaining legacy compatibility with something I have a likelihood of using semi-regularly" to "security blanket" as time marches on. But, for now, that's what I'm rocking.

What about you? What are you still using an Intel Mac for that won't work on an Apple Silicon Mac?

 

[MBAir2010]

In honor of Steve Jobs!

there are at least 5 Macbook 2015 worthy thread here created this weekend
i will re-post my message what sums up my recent Intel experience:

Seems to me that anything that works for that person is a good thing no matter the age.
if someone like me can comfortably use 2012 macs with mountain lion
as their main set up today is great!
Now to recommend that set up to another member here is preposterous,
since i have no idea what they need the mac for.

i hoped this helped!

OH I use 3 intel macs for everything now for all my computing and entertaing needs.
im watching the Boba fett series on the macmini 2012 on a benq monitor to a bose stereo via airport.
im supposed to be re-designing a graphic on the macbook air 2010 11 using CS4.
im sorting files on 3 hard drives from 2010-2019 while posting messages here on my intel experience.
the newer macbook air M1 and macmini M1 are unplgged, and resting in their boxes on a shelf.

the humid 95º weather is keeping me inside now.

 

[turbineseaplane]

what are you still using your Intel-based Mac for? What are you doing/using with yours that cannot be done on an Apple Silicon Mac using Rosetta 2?

Dual boot gaming on Windows 11

 

[avkills]

I am going to need to use my Mac Pro 7,1 for quite a bit longer considering the investment. The Mac Book Pro was a company purchase.

 

[rm5]

I have a 2019 21.5-inch iMac in quite an interesting spec--3 GHz i5-8500, 32 GB of RAM, and a 1 TB Fusion Drive. (I haven't been able to find any others for sale in that configuration.) I bought it for $350, which is an insane deal considering they still regularly go for upwards of $500. I store it up at my university, and it's great to have in the dorm room during the year.

 

[cateye]

2015 MacBook Pro. Sits on a shelf above me humming along as my Plex Server. Haven't had to touch it in months and it has more than enough horsepower for that one simple task. I'll leave it be in that role until it dies a natural death.

Which I suppose isn't really what you were asking—I don't keep it specifically because it is an Intel machine, I keep it because it's functional and there's no need to spend money on a different machine for the job.

 

[gilby101]

For those still holding onto Intel-based Macs (however old or recent they may be), what are you still using your Intel-based Mac for? What are you doing/using with yours that cannot be done on an Apple Silicon Mac using Rosetta 2?

I would re-phrase that as: What can you do on your Apple silicon Mac that I can't do on my Intel 2019 iMac?

 

[Nermal]

Can I just say "everything"? I'm on an i9 with 32 GB and a 5700 XT, so I've yet to see a compelling reason to buy a newer computer.

 

[Yebubbleman]

Can I just say "everything"? I'm on an i9 with 32 GB and a 5700 XT, so I've yet to see a compelling reason to buy a newer computer.

Everything you do won't work on an Apple Silicon Mac?

 

[Nermal]

Everything you do won't work on an Apple Silicon Mac?

You have two distinct questions in your original post, "what are you using an Intel Mac for?" (the headline question in the post subject) and "what cannot be done on Apple silicon?". I've only answered the first, because I don't know the answer to the second. With that said, I presume - with the exception of VMs - that everything I do will work on Apple silicon as well.

[Edited for clarity]

 

[Salty Pirate]

I have an old imac, like a 2015, that I use exclusively as a movie server.

Infuse on the apple tv and the movies are parked on the intel imac.

 

[xbjllb]

I have a Mid 2010 Mac Pro with a Nvidia Quadro and one quad UAD card. Thea Render can only use Nvidia cards for monster core 3-D rendering which I do a lot of. The rest is audio production with a ton of old plugins. Mainly I'm waiting for the M4 Mac Pro next year or later this year. I have a 2018 intel iMac that lets me keep up to date with Sonoma and whatever programs require it. Unless I can get the same rendering performance with the M4 and Thea Render I'll keep around the old tower for rendering.

 

[dennis264]

I lost my beloved Late 2009 27" a few months ago. It was my TV and Plex. So I got myself an actual TV and replaced it with Late 2018 Mini. I then Pimped it out. It will be dedicated to running macOS 10.14 to current. I generally like to have the ability to run every macOS on actual hardware, so I replaced the iMac with a Mid 2010 MacBook. The best of the "MacBook" MacBooks.
So that's what I use my Intel Macs for, to be able to run Mac OS X 10.6 to macOS Sonoma.

 

[avro707]

or those still holding onto Intel-based Macs (however old or recent they may be), what are you still using your Intel-based Mac for? What are you doing/using with yours that cannot be done on an Apple Silicon Mac using Rosetta 2?

Windows 11 Pro for Workstations - native applications using the GPUs. They don't work very well on virtual machines.

GPUs are either W6800X 32GB or the other machine has dual W6800X Duo 64GB cards. Both machines are 28 core Xeon.

After these I'll be moving over to a PC workstation. That's a good distance away since these two 2019 Mac Pros are running very well.

 

[ThunderSkunk]

Solidworks, Inventor, Revit, Catia.
In our work, an Apple Silicon mac is merely a speedier email checker, but a far less convenient one than an ipad mini, phone, or even watch at this point i suppose.

 

[Larsvonhier]

Mac Pro 3,1 - 5,1 for almost everything at work:
email, DATEV exchange, E-CAD (KiCAD, Altium (via Parallels), LTSpice), documentation/photos/video clips, video chat/meetings (Teams), remote access (AnyDesk, Teamviewer, ARD), VPN, network & file sharing, scanning/printing, programming/development (Xcode, Visual C, ...)
@ThunderSkunk : Two co-workers already switched to Apple Silicon and still do all of the above, so "you might be holding it wrong" ;-)

 

[Ctrlos]

I have a 2011 Mac Mini that works well enough for base home computing tasks. With its RAM and SSD upgrade it also runs Windows 10 without any issues on Bootcamp.

 

[BanjoDudeAhoy]

I have a 2009 MacBook and a 2006 Mac mini.
They’re both essentially Nostalgia Machines and are dual-booting macOS and Windows XP
They can’t be used for all that much modern-ish stuff, but the odd old game runs nicely.

 

[thenewperson]

Installed Sonoma on my 2015 MBP (via OCLP) and use it as an Airplay target ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[entropi]

Duplex document scanning (the flatbed still uses a PPC-mac!) and some audio work. All because of drivers missing for M-based macs.

 

[MBAir2010]

oh good more pro Intel macs posts since yesterday
right now i am watching Eurpsport coverage of the tour de France stage 16
which i had some trouble with last month on both M1s during the Dauphine,
seems to me the newer software has regulations on what we can watch.

 

[avro707]

right now i am watching Eurpsport coverage of the tour de France stage 16

Not surprising the restrictions. In my country we get rubbish coverage of that - so I don't bother watching. Prefer to ride a bike myself.

 

[Boyd01]

Still using my 2018 i7/64gb Mini for everything here and now that we know it will support Sequoia, I plan to stick with it to the end (another two years, presumably). I use professional GIS software (for making maps) heavily in a 32gb Windows 10 Parallels VM. I don't really know, but have to assume that wouldn't work (or wouldn't work as well) on Apple Silicon. It's not like I just use Windows ocassionally to play games, it's a major focus of what I do. The software (Globalmapper) isn't officially supported on the Mac in a VM, but it works just fine. It's not a cheap program, and I wouldn't want to chance trying to run it with some kind of ARM emulation.

The solution others suggest is just getting a separate Windows machine. That would be nice on an unlimited budget, but I'm retired, living on a modest income and that would be hard to justify when my intel Mini still works fine. Beyond that, I really like the integration of Windows and MacOS on Parallels and would surely miss that. I did use separate Windows machines for years until I got this Mini in 2020 and am very reluctant to return to that.

 

[johannnn]

I have a 2017 iMac 27" with 32GB RAM and 512GB SSD. It's still very fast.

 

[avro707]

The solution others suggest is just getting a separate Windows machine. That would be nice on an unlimited budget, but I'm retired, living on a modest income and that would be hard to justify when my intel Mini still works fine. Beyond that, I really like the integration of Windows and MacOS on Parallels and would surely miss that.

Well you could very easily do Bootcamp as well on that machine and probably access it via a virtual machine if you wanted for some things, then reboot into proper windows for the stuff that must be done natively in Windows. Best of all worlds.

And the thing with having another separate PC is it takes up space, and unless you get a really top end workstation, they aren't built as nicely.