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macOS 27 won’t be supporting Intel anymore

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Re: macOS 27 won’t be supporting Intel anymore

#51

Post by troad »

tsunamifury wrote: post #49
troad wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a stretch to call Apple's ARM transition "planned obsolescence". The M-series chips are very clear improvements on what came before and there is a clear rationale for that transition. We're talking here about an OS that hasn't even come out yet, that will get years of security support, for computers that Apple hasn't been selling for several years now. Seems pretty reasonable.

I have a MacBook from 2017 and and m3 air today. For day to day tasks there is no difference.

I have a MacBook Pro from 2016 and an M4 Pro from last year. There is a night and day difference.

I think "M series chips are no better than ten year old Intel chips" is a take that would be somewhat difficult to sustain, given the data.

Re: macOS 27 won’t be supporting Intel anymore

#52

Post by GeekyBear »

alin23 wrote: post #14

Wait, so.. how are we supposed to test Intel builds of our macOS apps from now on? I get it that macOS has to evolve, but that doesn't mean all apps have to drop Intel support at the same time. On hardware-level apps like my Lunar app I have plenty #if arch(arm64) because some features like reading the brightness nits or reading ambient light is different or completely missing based on the architecture. I need to tes…

> Wait, so.. how are we supposed to test Intel builds of our macOS apps from now on?

In a older version of the OS running in a virtual machine?

Re: macOS 27 won’t be supporting Intel anymore

#53

Post by Ygg2 »

atroon wrote: post #27
stetrain wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because Apple is the King of Deprecations. Google might wear that particular crown: https://killedbygoogle.com

Apple is the King of Hardware Deprecations. Google is the King of Software Deprecations. You're both right.

They are the Kings of Apple Ecosystem Deprecations - not just hardware. I'm comparing them to the x86 and the Windows ecosystem.

Google is the God-King of Killing software.

Re: macOS 27 won’t be supporting Intel anymore

#54

Post by ryukoposting »

apetrovic wrote: post #46
ryukoposting wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wait, so.. how are we supposed to test Intel builds of our macOS apps from now on? You don't. You could stay on an old MacOS. Apple would prefer that you tell your customers to stop being poor and buy a new computer. They will make your situation increasingly unbearable until you do. The overwhelming majority of people haven't needed a new computer since 2016. The current economic situation makes a new computer a w…

That's overly dramatic. I don't think a new Macbook Air today is a worse value proposition than some Mac from 35 years ago. I just checked Apple prices from 1991: - Mac Classic II, the slowest of the bunch, $1.900, or about $4.661 today - Quadra 900, the fastest model in 1991, was $7.200 ($17.663 today) - PowerBook 170 was $4600 ($11.285)

"Value" and "price" aren't the same thing. A new computer in 1991 cost more, but it also covered a vastly increased set of use cases versus a machine from 5 years prior (assuming the hypothetical 1991 computer buyer had even owned a computer before). Today, you can buy a used MBP with an M1 and it will do everything a new MBP can do, and the differences compared to a new machine will be imperceptible to most users.

Plenty of people would even be perfectly happy on an x86 Mac, too. Sure, there would be a perceptible difference compared to a new machine, but not enough to justify the price. That's what obsoleting Rosetta is about, it's about artifically making x86 Macs so unbearable that would-be happy users have no choice but to buy something else.

Re: macOS 27 won’t be supporting Intel anymore

#55

Post by mghackerlady »

alin23 wrote: post #14

Wait, so.. how are we supposed to test Intel builds of our macOS apps from now on? I get it that macOS has to evolve, but that doesn't mean all apps have to drop Intel support at the same time. On hardware-level apps like my Lunar app I have plenty #if arch(arm64) because some features like reading the brightness nits or reading ambient light is different or completely missing based on the architecture. I need to tes…

IIRC Apple supported 10.5 extra long because of it being the last PowerPC MacOS. I wouldn't be surprised if they do something similar here. Keep an intel mac around, and you should be fine

Re: macOS 27 won’t be supporting Intel anymore

#56

Post by mghackerlady »

ieie3366 wrote: post #10

I bet it must feel good for the macOS engineers to remove the intel support. Probably much easier to do development for the OS as well

If it's anything like the last time they dropped intel, I wouldn't be surprised if they make sure darwin still builds on x86. Going all arm all the time is good business, but it isn't like apple to not have some kind of fallback

Re: macOS 27 won’t be supporting Intel anymore

#57

Post by ryukoposting »

tsunamifury wrote: post #49
troad wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a stretch to call Apple's ARM transition "planned obsolescence". The M-series chips are very clear improvements on what came before and there is a clear rationale for that transition. We're talking here about an OS that hasn't even come out yet, that will get years of security support, for computers that Apple hasn't been selling for several years now. Seems pretty reasonable.

I have a MacBook from 2017 and and m3 air today. For day to day tasks there is no difference.

Eerily similar story here. My wife was using her 2017 MBP (the one they got sued over) and she adored it until Tahoe suddenly caused Chrome to run like hot garbage. I bought her an open-box M3 Air. She likes the color. It doesn't provide any more value to her life than her 2017 MBP did, and yet we're out $1000 because Apple said so.

Re: macOS 27 won’t be supporting Intel anymore

#58

Post by mleo »

al_borland wrote: post #31
alin23 wrote: post #14

Wait, so.. how are we supposed to test Intel builds of our macOS apps from now on? I get it that macOS has to evolve, but that doesn't mean all apps have to drop Intel support at the same time. On hardware-level apps like my Lunar app I have plenty #if arch(arm64) because some features like reading the brightness nits or reading ambient light is different or completely missing based on the architecture. I need to tes…

Keep an Intel Mac around or drop support. They followed the same path when moving from PPC to Intel.

And 32-bit to 64-bit.

Re: macOS 27 won’t be supporting Intel anymore

#59

Post by tyingq »

akreal wrote: post #48
tyingq wrote: post #15

I'm curious what options that leaves for docker. I assume the pattern of building/running linux/amd64 containers on MacOS is pretty widespread. Edit: "Apple says that it will continue to support older, unmaintained gaming titles with Rosetta along with software running Intel binaries in Linux VMs beyond macOS 27 . There could also be future security fixes." - https://www.macrumors.com/2026/02/16/macos-tahoe-26-4-rose…

AFAIK all ways of running docker on MacOS rely on a amd64 virtual machine with Linux kernel in it.

docker --platform linux/arm64 depends on amd64 ?

Re: macOS 27 won’t be supporting Intel anymore

#60

Post by andor »

zitterbewegung wrote: post #6
kalleboo wrote: post #4

I hope they keep around the underpinnings for Rosetta 2 (without the macOS parts) just to keep supporting Intel virtualization for things like Docker. Heck then anyone who really needs to run some old Intel app can run a virtualized older version of macOS. But I wonder if they're eager to drop support for the Intel TSO memory model from their CPUs.

Apple will keep Rosetta 2 support for Intel virtualization. See https://developer.apple.com/documentation/apple-silicon/abou...

The page doesn’t actually say that explicitly
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