![]() ![]() The few exceptions to roughly five years of OS support – which must please their owners no end – are the Mid 2007 20” iMac at 7 years and the Mid/Late 2007 MacBook Pro at a whopping 7 years 2 months. However, the first Mac Pro – retailing at $2,499, nearly 5x the price of the Mac mini – only received 5 years and 11 months support, a little over a year more than the Mac mini. For this reason, you can forgive Apple for not support it as long as a Mac that is double in price. Retailing from US$499 in 2005 for the original model and $599 for later ones, it was Apple’s cheapest Macs since the 2000 model iMacs and the ATI eMacs coming in behind at $799. It came with no accessories, assuming you had a monitor and USB keyboard and mouse from your existing set up. It originally aimed at Windows users, hoping to entice them to switch. The original MacBook Air falls short at only 4 years and 6 months and the Mid 2007 Mac mini falls short of the five year mark also, both models due to not being able to run Mountain Lion. Looking through the table, it seems the average supported life from Apple is just over five years, with a few exceptions. It is the first time since the release of Mac OS X 10.3 Panther in 2003 (which required built-in USB) that no hardware hikes have been included and extends a lot of Macs supported life by another 12 months at least. The news that OS X 10.9 Mavericks will run on the same hardware as OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion is a huge boost for current Mac users. I am assuming Apple will increase it and doubt very much that a 2007 iMac or a 2009 MacBook capable of running 10.8 and 10.9 will be supported in a 2014 operating system.įor the purpose of this article, we will assume those early machines running 10.8 (and soon 10.9) will end OS support in August 2014, which is roughly when 10.10 should be released. ![]() ![]() Apple are releasing a new version of OS X each year, so 2014 should see 10.10, and nobody knows what the hardware requirements will be. This should be reflected in the price you pay.įor Macs capable of running Mac OS X 10.8, I have included support life for 10.9 Mavericks, as all Macs that can run 10.8 will be able to run 10.9, which is due to be released later this year. Of course, if you buy one later on, nearing the release of the next version or purchase a used machine, you get less support. This gives the maximum support life of each product. Below is a table listing each Mac product line.įor each product line, I have listed three versions (if available): the earliest version of each line to support OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, 10.7 Lion, and 10.8 Mountain Lion. Therefore it had an officially supported life of 5 years and 2 months.ĭoes buying an expensive Mac Pro give you longer support life over the cheaper Mac mini, or does the higher price of a MacBook Pro reward you with longer support life over a consumer-aimed MacBook? Let’s find out. It was supported through 10.6, but it couldn’t run Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, which was released in July 2011. But how much truth is there in this? How long does Apple support their devices with up-to-date operating systems? By support I mean from the moment a Mac or iDevice is released until it is no longer supported by a version of Mac OS X or iOS.įor example, the first MacBook was released in May 2006 and came with Mac OS X 10.4. There's a good chance you'll be buying a new laptop before the current models become unsupported.Apple fans have been disgruntled over the past few years with an apparent forced obsolescence of hardware. The laptop you buy today will be supported for a long time to come, and you'll keep getting new features for at least a few years. A 2013 MacBook Air could be running macOS Big Sur and still getting updates today, nine years later.Īll of this is to say that if you're thinking about buying a new MacBook and you want to make sure you're not throwing away your money, you can rest easy. ![]() For example, macOS Big Sur, released in 2020, received a security update as late as December 2022. Older versions of macOS also continue to get security updates for a while after subsequent versions are released. Even though Ventura drops support for a few models, that's still an impressive track record considering there are almost no Intel-based Macs being made anymore.Īnd of course, even if your MacBook is no longer getting major updates, you can technically still use it, and apps usually continue to support older versions of macOS for a while longer. This is a major architectural shift, but even then, Apple has been supporting a lot of Intel-based models with each macOS release. It's also worth noting here that Apple has been transitioning from Intel-based MacBooks to its own Apple Silicon processors since 2020. ![]()
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