Mike Wuerthele
It wasn't mentioned at the WWDC keynote, but it may have been obvious. Apple has now made it clear that macOS Tahoe is the end of the line for Intel Macs.
Admittedly, I missed my guess on this a bit. I though that September 2025 was probably be when Apple cut off support for Intel Macs in new versions of the operating system. This was until our very own Marko Zivkovic discovered an early compatibility list including a bunch of Intel hardware still.
Just the same, the writing has been on the wall. Apple's Intel-powered Mac days are coming to a close.
There will probably be security updates for a few more years. There will be folks hanging on to hardware for a while after that, but probably not as long as they are now.
The reveal was made at the State of the Platform discussion a few minutes ago. We've already seem some aghast folks on social media talking about it, and some others sad to see it go.
For the last Intel Macs released about this time of year in 2020, that means that there will be full support through September 2026. There are a few hangers-on from before 2020 this time around, but not a lot.
Macs that Apple has cut off from support, including the last few original cheese grater Mac Pro aluminum towers have been able to install modern operating systems through OpenCore. The release of macOS 26 in September of 2025 will likely pose some problems for them, as every supported Intel Mac that remains has a T2 chip.
That T2 greatly complicates looking at the OS code to figure out how to shoe-horn it on an older machine, unless Apple has made some interesting encryption choices. They've done an amazing job over the years migrating GPU drivers and providing support on a very low-level for other hardware, but it looks like those days are about over.
Presumably, the shift to all Apple Silicon code in September of 2026 in macOS 27 will cut some bloat, but also completely cut out every vestige of Intel code.
And, maybe even Rosetta 2. It didn't take that long for PowerPC support to get cut out of the then Mac OS X. We'll see how that goes.
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Andrew O'Hara
Marko Zivkovic
Malcolm Owen
Andrew Orr and Mike Wuerthele
Amber Neely
Andrew Orr
16 Comments
The prices for Intel based Macs on eBay are about to PLUNGE.
6 years is a fair timeline. They haven’t screwed over Intel users like they did with the PPC transition and Snow Leopard.
Just because it can't run the latest macOS, doesn't mean the computer is dead.
Many Mac users still have older Macs that can do various tasks. I still use a MacBook Air 11" 2012 with Catalina for general use, with a new battery and 1TB SSD. Super lightweight and doesn't need to run the latest OS for general use stuff. My iMac 27" 2020 will still run macOS 26 for years, even after support ends, and I can still run Parallels with Mac OS X Snow Leopard with Rosetta and macOS Mojave for Mac 32-bit apps that never got updated for 64-bit, and Windows 10 x86. I also have a MacBook Pro 13" i7 with Catalina and Windows 10 in Boot Camp. People still find ways to use older Macs. I still make music CD-Rs for the car and a vintage 100 CD changer using a Power Mac G5 and an older version of Toast Titanium.