I don’t think you’re making a fair comparison there really. You should be comparing Apple to someone like Dell, HP, Asus, etc.
What you’re really comparing Apple’s support to is your own, because you’re the one building and maintaining that PC’s hardware. Plus take a look at your 10 year old PC, does every component of it - motherboard, GPU, etc. still get security updates? Motherboards are one of the worst offenders in this area for just arbitrarily dropping support.
The fact that the PC ecosystem is so open is why it can last so long, but I don’t think it’s as imbalanced as you’re suggesting.
Absolutely and I think something a lot of people don’t realise is that something can absolutely work fine and still be unsupported. I dare say if we took at look at an average home-built PC, the vast majority would have some component to it that was out of support in some fashion.
That’s fair, but also not really the point I was trying to make.
Excepting of Windows 11 (which even then you could just do registry edits), Windows will install on older computers. Linux sits in the same boat. Apple on the other hand has a tight lock on their software, and drivers, and arbitrarily decide “this hardware is too out of date” even though if you fuss around with it, you can get a newer version of MacOS running just fine.
This is less applicable now what with Apple’s transition to ARM, but it’s something I worry about down the line. How fast will your OS be out of date on the first generation M1s? In a year or two?
I still think you’re making unfair comparisons here. It’s more effort to get MacOS installed on unsupported hardware than Windows, but just because it installs doesn’t mean it’s supported. Just because a few registry hacks can get Windows 11 on an old machine doesn’t mean a future windows update won’t suddenly break it (I mean they break even supported configurations from time to time). I get what you’re saying, Apple do sure go out of their way to prevent it, but even if Windows let you install it, an unsupported configuration is still by definition out of support and it can just stop working at any time without much recourse.
Intel mac’s bought a couple years ago soon won’t be able to upgrade to the latest MacOS version, this same thing happened when they switched from PPC to Intel. On the other hand you can install Windows 10 on a pentium 2 and hell, of you could figure out a way to get tpm 2 to work you might be able to get 11 going. Some Linux distros with modern kernels only recently dropped support for PPC. Point being Apple ended support intentionally as they just don’t give a shit about their customers, their only interest is in money.
You’re talking about an entire architecture change, though. If you’re going to compare like-for-like, try installing Windows 11 on an ARMv7 machine, never mind that Microsoft frequently drops support for older processors anyway.
Yes, I have installed Windows 10 and 11 on ARM v7. Infact Windows CE was running on arm processors for a good long time with continued support. Windows hasn’t dropped support for any processors at all to my knowledge. Windows 11 required TPM2 but that’s not a processor. Your motherboard is the determining factor there, you can actually buy a TPM module for pretty dang cheap. Considering most PC manufacturers have had TPM on their systems used for a while it’s not a large factor. Those most impacted were people who did custom built systems and bought cheap motherboards. I actually mentioned this is my original comment but… Here we are I guess.
While you’re right, I can’t go past High Sierra… after popping in a SSD and 16GB RAM, that motherfucker still tears it up. It helps that it has a dedicated GPU, I suppose.
Same experience as you with PC though—my partner’s 4670k/1070 were doing just fine until they tried to play Persona 5. That CPU just couldn’t handle the train station; all those people dropped it to under 10FPS. Ten year old machine though, played Elden Ring at about 40FPS at 1440p! (The 1070 was the most recent part in their machine.)
12600k/3070 now, and it handles EVERYTHING. I’m jelly. I’ve got a 9900k and it’s beautiful, but I get TotK stutters and they don’t.
I had a 4670k in mine, alongside a 970. It did most of the things I wanted well enough on medium-high, so I was mostly content. For a while I contemplated getting a newer CPU and slotting that in to squeeze some more time out of it, but after realising that Intel only supports their sockets for like a fortnight or so, I swapped to AMD for the new build.
What’s in your new build? I bet it blew your mind when you played anything you were used to!
I love both AMD and Intel, but the CPU socket being only for one generation is a full non-issue. If I’m going to upgrade my CPU, I’m going to upgrade my everything. I’ve legitimately never had the urge to only replace my CPU hahaha
I hate changing tech so I really just wanted to pop the CPU out and plonk in a stronger one. I figured it’d be a cheaper job than just building a completely new system, which to be fair it is.
My new computer is running on a Ryzen 9 7900X3D, alongside an Intel Arc A770 LE. The last-gen graphics cards cost way too much where I live, and the current gen I don’t really want to touch with their crazy power consumption and proclivity for spontaneous combustion, coupled with their ridiculous prices. Figured I’d give Intel a go, and I’m actually really satisfied with it!
My biggest “wow” moment was honestly opening up a project in Synthesizer V and seeing it all render instantaneously, whereas before I’d need to wait for some 10-15 seconds for it to build a buffer for a small part of the song. Doesn’t even matter how many tracks I have, it’s so speedy!
The big problem with popping a new CPU in is how slow all the other stuff on your mobo is. Your old mobo maybe has one m.2 port? Might even be SATA m.2? We never used it on the 4670k machine. Also RAM speeds, if you could pop a 13900k in there, it’d be right crippled by DDR3. Always new mobo with new CPU for me. Also because I upgrade my CPU every 7-9 years, and stuff changes insanely. My partner’s mobo has FOUR GOSH DANG m.2 SLOTS. FOUR! We almost went SATA-less but had an unopened 4TB HDD so we popped that in there.
No m.2. I was overall okay with the speed, it just wasn’t completely keeping up. The way I see it, if I could’ve plopped out the CPU and swapped for something a few years newer, like 2017 or so, I’d probably have been much less inclined to build a new computer altogether.
I don’t like switching tech much. It’s such a hassle. I kept my OnePlus One around until 2020, at which point I replaced it with a second-hand iPhone XS because Apple supports their phones forever by phone standards. I work as a software dev, so I already spend 8 hours of my day mucking about with tech, it’s not something I’m overly keen on doing in my off hours.
Thus far I’m really enjoying m.2, it’s a lot smoother than running cables and stuff for a SATA drive. I have a few SATA ports I believe but I still have a m.2 slot open, so we’ll see! I think I’m more keen on getting a NAS for storage at this point.
I was an immediate Android adopter with the Dream/G1, then the G2 when it released. Then my partner got an iPhone. I played with it for like a half hour, and was like “this is so goddamn smooth.” I switched to an iPhone 5, and used it for ALMOST FIVE YEARS! They did give me a free battery replacement, but after five years, it still worked just fine. I’m a hardcore PC enthusiast (currently have three machines I’ve built, one more in progress, and a SFF in planning) but I’m never switching back from iPhones. My G1 got hella slow after like a year (understandable; it’s new tech) and custom ROMs helped. Same story with G2 (nightmare to install custom ROM on that…)
I also work on computers all day, and play on computers at home. I just want a phone that goes fast, can handle me never deleting a single text, and can go fast with 10k+ photos, even 3-5 years old. iOS DOMINATES this. I never have to do a full format, I restart my phone maybe once every two months. I don’t like or use iTunes except to make the easiest fucking incremental full system images ever. When I finally got a new phone, I plugged it in, clicked NEW PHONE, and it made it EXACTLY THE SAME as my previous phone. Zero effort. I’m on an XS max now and I’m only considering upgrading because the new models have 120hz screens, which ugh… yum. Also would be nice to have less ISO grain when taking low light cat pix.
Haha I feel this. I have to say I rather miss early smartphone days. Just looked up the Dream G1 and it was such a fun design. There’s almost no innovation nowadays which makes sense, market segment has stabilised. At most we see those rubbish foldables with screens that break over a weekend.
I’m likely sticking to Apple too. I absolutely have my gripes with them, but when it works (which is most of the time) it works really well. I had an Android/Google smart TV box on my dumb TV, and it was okay. Super laggy, very unresponsive, crashed every so often, but once it worked it was mostly fine. Sometimes there were audio sync issues and whatnot. Got an Apple TV a while ago and it’s dreamy by comparison. It also slots in with the rest of the Apple ecosystem, so I can watch films and whatnot late at night, with surround sound in my earbuds, while my roomie is sleeping soundly in the other room.
My gripes are mostly with the platforms being so locked down. I wish I could get xbox game stream on the Apple TV, but because of the vetting process it’s not allowed on iOS at all.
Funny thing about upgrading phones, I was thinking about maybe swapping to the new phone this year, not because I strictly need it (though my camera has some sort of blemish) but the potential USB-C port is very tantalising. Now I’m thinking about holding off until the self-swappable batteries might come. Unsure if my XS would hold up until 2027 or beyond, but I wouldn’t be too surprised. The battery has under 80% health, but still runs at peak performance so I’ve not bothered having it changed. Changing it would also only cost about $70 so it’s not a huge deal either.
Sure, it’s a walled garden. A very well protected one at that, almost like a prison. But it’s a damned nice garden. I’m still entertaining the thought of buying one of the new ARM minis.
I will ABSOLUTELY look into this. I love my lil lappy. In High Sierra, system preferences recognizes my GPU as Intel HD anyway, so maybe my GPU is already unsupported. It did me well back when I got it, though—I needed a mobile Team Fortress 2 machine and it ran like a champ!
I’ve heard of issues with the GPU, and I’m fortunate to have never had an issue with mine. Well, I suppose it isn’t recognized now, so maybe that’s an issue? Or just a setting I should change. All I use it for anymore is sorting my million photos and when I need to video chat hahaha
In my experience when it starts to mess up you get white screens or artifacts on boot. Apple had a replacement program on these so if you’re the second owner you might have gotten one that doesn’t overheat.
Nice. Forgot to say: if you get the amd gpu disabled you lose the displayport. It’s hardwired into the radeon. Never known anyone who cared but its worth saying.
It’s funny how Apple does offer decent support from a phone perspective, but their computers get dated fast.
I just recently built a new PC after having my previous one for ten years. I didn’t strictly need to but I wanted to upgrade, my old PC is still fine.
Apple doesn’t offer that kind of support for their computers.
I don’t think you’re making a fair comparison there really. You should be comparing Apple to someone like Dell, HP, Asus, etc.
What you’re really comparing Apple’s support to is your own, because you’re the one building and maintaining that PC’s hardware. Plus take a look at your 10 year old PC, does every component of it - motherboard, GPU, etc. still get security updates? Motherboards are one of the worst offenders in this area for just arbitrarily dropping support.
The fact that the PC ecosystem is so open is why it can last so long, but I don’t think it’s as imbalanced as you’re suggesting.
Disclosure: I don’t own any apple products
Even Desktop CPUs stop getting security updates. Intel 7th gen is on the chopping block soon.
Absolutely and I think something a lot of people don’t realise is that something can absolutely work fine and still be unsupported. I dare say if we took at look at an average home-built PC, the vast majority would have some component to it that was out of support in some fashion.
That’s fair, but also not really the point I was trying to make.
Excepting of Windows 11 (which even then you could just do registry edits), Windows will install on older computers. Linux sits in the same boat. Apple on the other hand has a tight lock on their software, and drivers, and arbitrarily decide “this hardware is too out of date” even though if you fuss around with it, you can get a newer version of MacOS running just fine.
This is less applicable now what with Apple’s transition to ARM, but it’s something I worry about down the line. How fast will your OS be out of date on the first generation M1s? In a year or two?
I still think you’re making unfair comparisons here. It’s more effort to get MacOS installed on unsupported hardware than Windows, but just because it installs doesn’t mean it’s supported. Just because a few registry hacks can get Windows 11 on an old machine doesn’t mean a future windows update won’t suddenly break it (I mean they break even supported configurations from time to time). I get what you’re saying, Apple do sure go out of their way to prevent it, but even if Windows let you install it, an unsupported configuration is still by definition out of support and it can just stop working at any time without much recourse.
Intel mac’s bought a couple years ago soon won’t be able to upgrade to the latest MacOS version, this same thing happened when they switched from PPC to Intel. On the other hand you can install Windows 10 on a pentium 2 and hell, of you could figure out a way to get tpm 2 to work you might be able to get 11 going. Some Linux distros with modern kernels only recently dropped support for PPC. Point being Apple ended support intentionally as they just don’t give a shit about their customers, their only interest is in money.
You’re talking about an entire architecture change, though. If you’re going to compare like-for-like, try installing Windows 11 on an ARMv7 machine, never mind that Microsoft frequently drops support for older processors anyway.
Yes, I have installed Windows 10 and 11 on ARM v7. Infact Windows CE was running on arm processors for a good long time with continued support. Windows hasn’t dropped support for any processors at all to my knowledge. Windows 11 required TPM2 but that’s not a processor. Your motherboard is the determining factor there, you can actually buy a TPM module for pretty dang cheap. Considering most PC manufacturers have had TPM on their systems used for a while it’s not a large factor. Those most impacted were people who did custom built systems and bought cheap motherboards. I actually mentioned this is my original comment but… Here we are I guess.
laughs in early 2011 15” MacBook pro
While you’re right, I can’t go past High Sierra… after popping in a SSD and 16GB RAM, that motherfucker still tears it up. It helps that it has a dedicated GPU, I suppose.
Same experience as you with PC though—my partner’s 4670k/1070 were doing just fine until they tried to play Persona 5. That CPU just couldn’t handle the train station; all those people dropped it to under 10FPS. Ten year old machine though, played Elden Ring at about 40FPS at 1440p! (The 1070 was the most recent part in their machine.)
12600k/3070 now, and it handles EVERYTHING. I’m jelly. I’ve got a 9900k and it’s beautiful, but I get TotK stutters and they don’t.
I had a 4670k in mine, alongside a 970. It did most of the things I wanted well enough on medium-high, so I was mostly content. For a while I contemplated getting a newer CPU and slotting that in to squeeze some more time out of it, but after realising that Intel only supports their sockets for like a fortnight or so, I swapped to AMD for the new build.
What’s in your new build? I bet it blew your mind when you played anything you were used to!
I love both AMD and Intel, but the CPU socket being only for one generation is a full non-issue. If I’m going to upgrade my CPU, I’m going to upgrade my everything. I’ve legitimately never had the urge to only replace my CPU hahaha
I hate changing tech so I really just wanted to pop the CPU out and plonk in a stronger one. I figured it’d be a cheaper job than just building a completely new system, which to be fair it is.
My new computer is running on a Ryzen 9 7900X3D, alongside an Intel Arc A770 LE. The last-gen graphics cards cost way too much where I live, and the current gen I don’t really want to touch with their crazy power consumption and proclivity for spontaneous combustion, coupled with their ridiculous prices. Figured I’d give Intel a go, and I’m actually really satisfied with it!
My biggest “wow” moment was honestly opening up a project in Synthesizer V and seeing it all render instantaneously, whereas before I’d need to wait for some 10-15 seconds for it to build a buffer for a small part of the song. Doesn’t even matter how many tracks I have, it’s so speedy!
That’s a FANTASTIC machine!
The big problem with popping a new CPU in is how slow all the other stuff on your mobo is. Your old mobo maybe has one m.2 port? Might even be SATA m.2? We never used it on the 4670k machine. Also RAM speeds, if you could pop a 13900k in there, it’d be right crippled by DDR3. Always new mobo with new CPU for me. Also because I upgrade my CPU every 7-9 years, and stuff changes insanely. My partner’s mobo has FOUR GOSH DANG m.2 SLOTS. FOUR! We almost went SATA-less but had an unopened 4TB HDD so we popped that in there.
No m.2. I was overall okay with the speed, it just wasn’t completely keeping up. The way I see it, if I could’ve plopped out the CPU and swapped for something a few years newer, like 2017 or so, I’d probably have been much less inclined to build a new computer altogether.
I don’t like switching tech much. It’s such a hassle. I kept my OnePlus One around until 2020, at which point I replaced it with a second-hand iPhone XS because Apple supports their phones forever by phone standards. I work as a software dev, so I already spend 8 hours of my day mucking about with tech, it’s not something I’m overly keen on doing in my off hours.
Thus far I’m really enjoying m.2, it’s a lot smoother than running cables and stuff for a SATA drive. I have a few SATA ports I believe but I still have a m.2 slot open, so we’ll see! I think I’m more keen on getting a NAS for storage at this point.
I was an immediate Android adopter with the Dream/G1, then the G2 when it released. Then my partner got an iPhone. I played with it for like a half hour, and was like “this is so goddamn smooth.” I switched to an iPhone 5, and used it for ALMOST FIVE YEARS! They did give me a free battery replacement, but after five years, it still worked just fine. I’m a hardcore PC enthusiast (currently have three machines I’ve built, one more in progress, and a SFF in planning) but I’m never switching back from iPhones. My G1 got hella slow after like a year (understandable; it’s new tech) and custom ROMs helped. Same story with G2 (nightmare to install custom ROM on that…)
I also work on computers all day, and play on computers at home. I just want a phone that goes fast, can handle me never deleting a single text, and can go fast with 10k+ photos, even 3-5 years old. iOS DOMINATES this. I never have to do a full format, I restart my phone maybe once every two months. I don’t like or use iTunes except to make the easiest fucking incremental full system images ever. When I finally got a new phone, I plugged it in, clicked NEW PHONE, and it made it EXACTLY THE SAME as my previous phone. Zero effort. I’m on an XS max now and I’m only considering upgrading because the new models have 120hz screens, which ugh… yum. Also would be nice to have less ISO grain when taking low light cat pix.
Haha I feel this. I have to say I rather miss early smartphone days. Just looked up the Dream G1 and it was such a fun design. There’s almost no innovation nowadays which makes sense, market segment has stabilised. At most we see those rubbish foldables with screens that break over a weekend.
I’m likely sticking to Apple too. I absolutely have my gripes with them, but when it works (which is most of the time) it works really well. I had an Android/Google smart TV box on my dumb TV, and it was okay. Super laggy, very unresponsive, crashed every so often, but once it worked it was mostly fine. Sometimes there were audio sync issues and whatnot. Got an Apple TV a while ago and it’s dreamy by comparison. It also slots in with the rest of the Apple ecosystem, so I can watch films and whatnot late at night, with surround sound in my earbuds, while my roomie is sleeping soundly in the other room.
My gripes are mostly with the platforms being so locked down. I wish I could get xbox game stream on the Apple TV, but because of the vetting process it’s not allowed on iOS at all.
Funny thing about upgrading phones, I was thinking about maybe swapping to the new phone this year, not because I strictly need it (though my camera has some sort of blemish) but the potential USB-C port is very tantalising. Now I’m thinking about holding off until the self-swappable batteries might come. Unsure if my XS would hold up until 2027 or beyond, but I wouldn’t be too surprised. The battery has under 80% health, but still runs at peak performance so I’ve not bothered having it changed. Changing it would also only cost about $70 so it’s not a huge deal either.
Sure, it’s a walled garden. A very well protected one at that, almost like a prison. But it’s a damned nice garden. I’m still entertaining the thought of buying one of the new ARM minis.
You can go to Catalina through the dosdude patcher if you (or some enterprising shop) disables the amd gpu with demux.
…fuck, really?
I will ABSOLUTELY look into this. I love my lil lappy. In High Sierra, system preferences recognizes my GPU as Intel HD anyway, so maybe my GPU is already unsupported. It did me well back when I got it, though—I needed a mobile Team Fortress 2 machine and it ran like a champ!
Yeah it’s a little on the hands on side but you can either pay for the license and do it yourself or pay them to do the whole thing
Interesting!
I’ve heard of issues with the GPU, and I’m fortunate to have never had an issue with mine. Well, I suppose it isn’t recognized now, so maybe that’s an issue? Or just a setting I should change. All I use it for anymore is sorting my million photos and when I need to video chat hahaha
In my experience when it starts to mess up you get white screens or artifacts on boot. Apple had a replacement program on these so if you’re the second owner you might have gotten one that doesn’t overheat.
Original owner! I had a 2008 MBP that had an unfortunate… “accident” that allowed me to upgrade to the 2011 model in warranty.
Nice. Forgot to say: if you get the amd gpu disabled you lose the displayport. It’s hardwired into the radeon. Never known anyone who cared but its worth saying.