Supporting old hardware costs money because you need to write more tests. Of course there aren't technical limitations for any but the lowest specced Macs.
Things have changed the past few years but for a while upgrades to CPU performance weren't that meaningful between generations. A CPU that's over ten years old will still perform fine for light desktop use, because that's honestly all you need in most cases. All you need is a RAM upgrade and an SSD!
There are some specific Mac downsides for using older models (the insufficient cooling solution in some laptop models, for example) that will impact long term usability, but the hardware still has a ways to go.
With how much performance you can get out of an older laptop that cost a third of a Mac from the same era by installing an OS like Linux, it's a shame that Apple is abandoning these devices. The same is true for many smartphones; all the modern advancements are nice to haves, very different from the turbulent smartphone era around the late 00s.
Apple needs to sell hardware to make the money needed to fund development but they exclusively focus on very expensive high-end devices, which naturally have a very long life span if it weren't for the software. I wouldn't be surprised if the higher end M1 Macs still be perfectly usable around the time when the 2k38 bug will wreak havoc across the world.
>Supporting old hardware costs money because you need to write more tests.
Not supporting old hardware has major costs too: ewaste pollution. But of course those costs are 'externalized' and not borne by Apple, but by everyone else.
For what it's worth, Apple supports old hardware for extremely long times. Even after Treble or whatever it was called, Android smartphones have way less support. macOS Ventura is supported on machines that are six years old. macOS Big Sur, which is the oldest supported macOS, runs on machines that are ten years old. And OCLP pushes that even further.
In contrast, just look at how ridiculously short many component drivers in the Windows area are maintained. Yes you can run modern Windows, but good luck getting security fixes for all the third party component drivers.
In contrast,
Please don't act like six years is a long time to offer support. I have a 17-year-old Mac that runs the Windows 10 latest patch set just fine, and makes for a fine space heater at the same time.
The difference is, once again, Apple by supporting the drivers and fixing bugs. Good luck getting patches should, say, the no-name Bluetooth chipset in your Windows laptop have some sort of security issue.
The problem I've encountered with several older Apple and Android devices is that the hardware works just fine, and the older version of the OS also works well enough, but more and more apps begin to require a newer version of the OS.
When I can't install, upgrade, or use these apps by normal means, the usefulness of the otherwise-fine device dwindles.
For the apps I've experienced this with, I don't even think they truly need the newer version of the OS. I imagine the developers just wanted to reduce testing and customer support overhead in most cases.
For any app functionality that may actually require a newer OS version, I'd probably be just fine if that functionality were disabled/unavailable on older devices, especially if it let me use the rest of the app.
You do understand that there's an arbitrary cut-off caused by this that leads to things like perfectly usable devices no longer receiving browser updates? Effectively, they do stop working for anybody who does anything with the internet.
> "Because of dependency on architecture and system changes to any current version of macOS (for example, macOS 13)," the document reads, "not all known security issues are addressed in previous versions (for example, macOS 12)."
> In other words, while Apple will provide security-related updates for older versions of its operating systems, only the most recent upgrades will receive updates for every security problem Apple knows about.
Which doesn't contradict what you're saying.
Admittedly, the parent phrased it poorly, saying "but it means you don't get security updates" when they really meant "but it means you don't get security updates for all problems".
Sure but many people will upgrade when their laptop stops getting updated for a few versions, which they would not have done had their hardware still been supported with up-to-date software.
> Not supporting old hardware has major costs too: ewaste pollution.
I would not be at all shocked to find that, by volume, Android devices that vendors have refused to support with software updates over the years take up far more space in landfills.
Things have changed the past few years but for a while upgrades to CPU performance weren't that meaningful between generations. A CPU that's over ten years old will still perform fine for light desktop use, because that's honestly all you need in most cases. All you need is a RAM upgrade and an SSD!
There are some specific Mac downsides for using older models (the insufficient cooling solution in some laptop models, for example) that will impact long term usability, but the hardware still has a ways to go.
With how much performance you can get out of an older laptop that cost a third of a Mac from the same era by installing an OS like Linux, it's a shame that Apple is abandoning these devices. The same is true for many smartphones; all the modern advancements are nice to haves, very different from the turbulent smartphone era around the late 00s.
Apple needs to sell hardware to make the money needed to fund development but they exclusively focus on very expensive high-end devices, which naturally have a very long life span if it weren't for the software. I wouldn't be surprised if the higher end M1 Macs still be perfectly usable around the time when the 2k38 bug will wreak havoc across the world.