> You make it sound like it's some crazy high cost for Apple to do this, yet this small open source project seems to be able to do it and for them it would be much more difficult.
Hacks are in no way shape or form equivalent to official support. Both in functionality (this thread is full of people talking about small issues popping up more and more frequently, especially in the latest OS versions which actually have specific requirements like AVX2) and in terms of actual support. The level of work required from a community project is magnitudes smaller than from the company.
> It's a computer I paid over £3,000 for, that got cut off 7 years after release for no valid reason as a customer.
> Yes I understand what you are saying, but there is no need for it, Operating systems didn't require suddenly more powerful computers, years ago it made sense because the machine just couldn't handle it, but today my machine handles everything just fine and is higher spec than machines Apple has determined can run it.
You say you understand, but I already said it has nothing to do with power and explained why. Bringing it and the cost of the machine up again isn’t going to change this. At its core, it’s a cost benefit analysis. Each system supported adds tests, customer support, etc. Direct, actual costs to the company. At a certain point, the number of users using a specific system does not justify those costs. Apple looked at that analysis and decided that the costs are no longer justified. 8 years later seems like an entirely reasonable amount of time for that.
I disagree. It's six years after they stopped selling it.
Apple do this on purpose to make people buy new machines, it wouldn't be expensive for them too provide a small amount of support, if they are not willing to do that they shouldn't be making such machines. 6 years is not a long time.
Windows 11 dropped support for 7th generation and earlier. Your 2015 iMac, having a Broadwell/5th or Skylake/6th generation processor, would have also not been compatible. To have hardware compatibility, you'd have to have gone all the way up to a 2019 iMac with Coffee Lake.
That shows that this is hardly an Apple problem, and hardly a problem of "Apple forcing you to buy new hardware". Entire companies come and go in those 8 years. Do you expect every company you ever buy products from to support them forever? That's an absurd ask.
Yeah, I understand, it's just annoying to me that most of the things we have now in our culture that we rely on are so replaceable and need to be replaced fairly regularly, it feels like it's no longer the case as you get older, you can be more settled in life as you have bought and have all you need, that's not the case because you have to replace it fairly regularly.
Also I suppose, i'm sit here using my iMac now and it runs everything without a glitch, as good as when it was new, likely better because of the updates to the software, so it's just disappointing to see that it could go to waste. I usually like to wait until things break before replacing them, so already debating replacing a perfectly functional machine hurts a little. Hopefully I will get a few more years out of it.
I guess a big shame is not being able to plug a Mac Mini into the display, but that is on me, I knew that was the case when I bought it.
p.s Windows 11 support was the TPM chip? I believe that is relatively easy to get around? Could be wrong here, but I think it was mostly a move from MS to make people update to a highly level of security, but again it's not really needed.
Yes, and it was utter bullshit that Microsoft pulled this and I'm still infuriated that the entire world just shrugged and went "at least Windows 10 still works" or even "well, you can't expect your device to be supported forever". I have 15 year old computers that STILL FUCKING WORK PERFECTLY but they're arbitrarily not supported by W11 anymore. I guess Microsoft never heard of e-waste. Fuck Microsoft. Fuck Apple.
Here's a thought. Your iMac from 2015 employs an Intel processor. The writing has been on the wall for any Intel based Mac since the introduction of the M series. I was frankly amazed that they supported Monterey on as many models (yours included) as they did. I can foresee only the Mac Pro being supported in macOS 14, with support for Intel disappearing in macOS 15.
Edit: PowerPC support was droped after 3 releases - Tiger (10.4) being the first to support Intel, Lion (10.7) dropped support. Granted, that was over a 6 year period. 68K to PowerPC felt quicker...
To add to this point, there are also less developers available who are willing and passionate about developing the next balcony, band aid and workaround for the half dead horse.
That’s a career dead-end.
Each and every developer wants to work on the new stuff.
At some point in time it is just not profitable anymore to provide further FEATURE updates for free anymore.
Hacks are in no way shape or form equivalent to official support. Both in functionality (this thread is full of people talking about small issues popping up more and more frequently, especially in the latest OS versions which actually have specific requirements like AVX2) and in terms of actual support. The level of work required from a community project is magnitudes smaller than from the company.
> It's a computer I paid over £3,000 for, that got cut off 7 years after release for no valid reason as a customer.
> Yes I understand what you are saying, but there is no need for it, Operating systems didn't require suddenly more powerful computers, years ago it made sense because the machine just couldn't handle it, but today my machine handles everything just fine and is higher spec than machines Apple has determined can run it.
You say you understand, but I already said it has nothing to do with power and explained why. Bringing it and the cost of the machine up again isn’t going to change this. At its core, it’s a cost benefit analysis. Each system supported adds tests, customer support, etc. Direct, actual costs to the company. At a certain point, the number of users using a specific system does not justify those costs. Apple looked at that analysis and decided that the costs are no longer justified. 8 years later seems like an entirely reasonable amount of time for that.