Why Are Yosemite Features Missing On "Older" Macs

[nim6us]

I've been patiently waiting for the past 9 months on Yosemite's release, eager to take advantage of all the new features. Imagine my disappointment when after the install I found that some of the best features of Yosemite are not available on my late 2011 MBP. No AirDrop from mobile devices to MBP, no Continuity, no Instant Hotspot and more.

While I'm extremely frustrated with this fine print revelation that was only made known after Yosemite went live, I really want to know why. Is this just a case of there's some hardware in newer Macs that is not available in older Macs, or is this marketing, Apple locking out older systems in order to encourage them to upgrade? Does anyone know?

 

[leventozler]

Hardware limitation

https://www.macrumors.com/2014/06/17/yosemite-handoff-bluetooth-le/

 

[inselstudent]

I might be wrong, but isn't the AirDrop feature dependant on some kin of wifi standard thats only available on newer machines?

 

[bbfc]

I might be wrong, but isn't the AirDrop feature dependant on some kin of wifi standard thats only available on newer machines?

Most of Continuity is dependant on newer technology that isn't available on older Macs. Bluetooth LE being the main one.

It's been known ever since Apple announced Yosemite what Macs it would support fully.

The only feature I was really looking forward to is SMS Relay and Phone Calls. The rest are of no use to me.

 

[nim6us]

Well... I guess I can live with that. Although I was looking forward to raging against a manipulative Apple marketing team. However that's why I thought I'd ask, the last thing the internet needs is another uninformed blog rant. Maybe the silver lining is that I can use this as a reason that I have to upgrade

 

[GrumpyTrucker]

It's been known ever since Apple announced Yosemite what Macs it would support fully.

In fairness, it's been known by people who frequent these sort of forums and were following the beta stages of Yosemite closely, or are the kind to actually read the small print on Apple's site. Anyone who only heard of the announcements about the new new features would be hard pressed to find anything Apple actually said that indicated it would be limited to certain Macs. They made a huge deal of it at WWDC and I think it really should have been mentioned then that there would be hardware limitations.

Since the biggest limitation is BT LE then it really should be made to work with adapters on older Macs but, as usual, it doesn't appear that is the case because (prepares to be flamed) they'd prefer us to buy new Macs than be able to carry on using 3 year old ones with all the bells and whistles of a new OS. Before anyone starts about how long should Apple support "old" hardware, most normal working people don't consider a $2000 computer old at two to three years. These aren't phones that can be upgraded for $200 every two years. These machines are fully hardware capable of running Yosemite and all its features, except for the lack of BT LE.

Yes, that bit about wanting us to buy new stuff is a little OTT I admit but it doesn't appear to be a hardware limitation that's not insurmountable, so they must have consciously made a decision at some point not to allow an adapter to provide the functionality.