I'm not impressed with Apples long term MacOS support on older hardware.

[+Warwagon MVC]

It's my opinion Mac's long-term OS support is not great. The fact that I can't run the newest MacOS on a 2011 MacBook Pro 17 inch with an i7 with 8GB (just got it free yesterday) is embarrassing. It's not like they have THAT many computers to support.

 

Same goes for my 2011 iMac 27-inch 16GB of ram and SSD and my 2011 Macbook pro 15-inch i7, 8GB of ram. If you use a patching tool you can get Catalina installed but you don't have graphic acceleration.

 

Clearly people will say it's the drivers from 3rd party such as AMD, but all Apple has to do is throw money at them and have then make new drivers.

 

At my GF's house I'm running a laptop with an i3 that I upgraded to an SSD running Windows 10, that laptop is NINE YEARS OLD!! Same year as this MacBook pro 17 inch.

 

[macoman]

I am with you in this as well... I have a MacPro 2010 that I have to use the Catalina patch to install it. I have in there 32GB of ram, 8GB radeon 580. I have also a MacBook Pro 2012 that is supported by Catalina but it will not be supported on the next macOS upgrade.

[+Steve B Subscriber²]

I have to agree 100%.  My first Mac ever was the mid-2011 27in iMac.  I ran into the this problem.  I was surprised.  I knew certain functions wouldn't work because of the actual hardware limitations but, I couldn't go with the idea that Apple just decided "ok, yours is too old now, moving on".  My machine ran perfectly fine.  I believe they would get more buyers for their products, even at their price levels if Apple would support the stuff a while longer.  The fact that most people can run Win10 on hardware that is 10 years old says A LOT.

 

That said, I bought my second Mac.  M1 Mac mini. 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD.  I hope this will last and be supported long enough. Lol. 

[+Good Bot, Bad Bot Subscriber¹]

How many PCs total do you have exactly and why? I would have sold those years ago. I don't think have owned any kind of PC past eight years.  I have a desktop, laptop, and a couple of server boxes. The Wife also has a laptop. That seems like a lot of machines.

[+Steve B Subscriber²]

1 minute ago, Superuser said:

How many PCs do you have exactly and why? I would have sold those years ago. I don't think have owned any kind of PC past eight years.  I have a desktop, laptop, and a couple of server boxes. The Wife also has a laptop. That seems like a lot of machines.

I don't think you may have been asking me but, I'll answer it too. Lol.  I sold my iMac a few years ago.  My only computer is a Windows 10 gaming tower which someone else in the household uses and my M1 Mac mini.

[+Warwagon MVC]

21 minutes ago, Superuser said:

How many PCs total do you have exactly and why? I would have sold those years ago. I don't think have owned any kind of PC past eight years.  I have a desktop, laptop, and a couple of server boxes. The Wife also has a laptop. That seems like a lot of machines.

Between the 2 at my GF's house  and the spare laptop in my car

 

Total would be 13. .. Though i'm sure i'm forgetting one.

 

One of which is the 27 inch iMac which is now 10 years old and that machine is still a VERY capable machine.

[+Good Bot, Bad Bot Subscriber¹]

3 hours ago, warwagon said:

Between the 2 at my GF's house  and the spare laptop in my car

 

Total would be 13. .. Though i'm sure i'm forgetting one.

 

One of which is the 27 inch iMac which is now 10 years old and that machine is still a VERY capable machine.

You didn't answer why? LOL You just have PCs hooked up all over the house sitting around?

[+Warwagon MVC]

17 minutes ago, Superuser said:

You didn't answer why? LOL You just have PCs hooked up all over the house sitting around?

This is what all the computers do. This doesn't count all the spare laptops I have downstairs  probably 20+ most are old and given from customers. I also have 2 all in one PC's unused downstairs not on my list. I think I hoard laptops from a child hood experience. Was at radio shack late 80's early  90's and wanted a laptop to program basic in the basement. Obviously they were prohibitively expensive at the time. I Think that's why I hold on to these! To have what i Never had as a child  I still fire some of the old ones up and play some old games.

 

This is my office .. or at least part of it.  The two systems on the counters are my cloning workstations and workstations I plug hard drives into them and get files off them and or clone them and scan them for bad sectors. Those computers in the corner, some are just the case, some are the entire computer.

 

 

Theater PC
laptop which displays the security camera above my TV
Brix Pro -old couch computer, use for video chatting on my TV 
Couch computer - Main upstaris workstation on the couch.
Security Cam PC
Macbook Pro - Not used much
iMac - Not used much
HP Prodesk at sara's house- Emby server
Server - file server / emby server
Basement ProDesk workstation - my main workstation downstaris
Laptop at sara's house to work from her house.
Spare laptop in car. - in case my laptop at sara's house fails on me
Celeron NUC PC as my voice mail server

P5 133 - old gateway computer to mess with dos games and other stuff.

Chromebook I got for $5 at the it's $5 store. I never use it but I have it.

[Xenon]

On 09/07/2020 at 10:38, warwagon said:

It's my opinion Mac's long-term OS support is not great. The fact that I can't run the newest MacOS on a 2011 MacBook Pro 17 inch with an i7 with 8GB (just got it free yesterday) is embarrassing. It's not like they have THAT many computers to support.

The entire reason they don't is so that you have to go buy a new iMac every few years, it has nothing to do with support but locking you into a purchasing cycle. But at least you can get the new iMac in blue. 

[+Warwagon MVC]

9 minutes ago, Xenon said:

The entire reason they don't is so that you have to go buy a new iMac every few years, it has nothing to do with support but locking you into a purchasing cycle. But at least you can get the new iMac in blue. 

Yep so F*ck them. I'll buy a PC instead.

[+Good Bot, Bad Bot Subscriber¹]

17 minutes ago, warwagon said:

This is what all the computers do. This doesn't count all the spare laptops I have downstairs  probably 20+ most are old and given from customers. I also have 2 all in one PC's unused downstairs not on my list. I think I hoard laptops from a child hood experience. Was at radio shack late 80's early  90's and wanted a laptop to program basic in the basement. Obviously they were prohibitively expensive at the time. I Think that's why I hold on to these! To have what i Never had as a child  I still fire some of the old ones up and play some old games.

 

This is my office .. or at least part of it.  The two systems on the counters are my cloning workstations and workstations I plug hard drives into them and get files off them and or clone them and scan them for bad sectors. Those computers in the corner, some are just the case, some are the entire computer.

 

 

Theater PC
laptop which displays the security camera above my TV
Brix Pro -old couch computer, use for video chatting on my TV 
Couch computer - Main upstaris workstation on the couch.
Security Cam PC
Macbook Pro - Not used much
iMac - Not used much
HP Prodesk at sara's house- Emby server
Server - file server / emby server
Basement ProDesk workstation - my main workstation downstaris
Laptop at sara's house to work from her house.
Spare laptop in car. - in case my laptop at sara's house fails on me
Celeron NUC PC as my voice mail server

P5 133 - old gateway computer to mess with dos games and other stuff.

Chromebook I got for $5 at the it's $5 store. I never use it but I have it.

Holy crap! I am here thinking you have a big house or something. Do you live in a studio apartment? LOL I guess you do not do much cooking. Is it a safe bet the girlfriend will never be sharing a space with you?

[+Warwagon MVC]

1 minute ago, Superuser said:

Holy crap! I am here thinking you have a big house or something. Do you live in a studio apartment? LOL I guess you do not do much cooking. Is it a safe bet the girlfriend will never be sharing a space with you?

That's the basement. This is the other half ...

 

I live upstairs

[adrynalyne]

1 hour ago, warwagon said:

This is what all the computers do. This doesn't count all the spare laptops I have downstairs  probably 20+ most are old and given from customers. I also have 2 all in one PC's unused downstairs not on my list. I think I hoard laptops from a child hood experience. Was at radio shack late 80's early  90's and wanted a laptop to program basic in the basement. Obviously they were prohibitively expensive at the time. I Think that's why I hold on to these! To have what i Never had as a child  I still fire some of the old ones up and play some old games.

 

This is my office .. or at least part of it.  The two systems on the counters are my cloning workstations and workstations I plug hard drives into them and get files off them and or clone them and scan them for bad sectors. Those computers in the corner, some are just the case, some are the entire computer.

 

 

Theater PC
laptop which displays the security camera above my TV
Brix Pro -old couch computer, use for video chatting on my TV 
Couch computer - Main upstaris workstation on the couch.
Security Cam PC
Macbook Pro - Not used much
iMac - Not used much
HP Prodesk at sara's house- Emby server
Server - file server / emby server
Basement ProDesk workstation - my main workstation downstaris
Laptop at sara's house to work from her house.
Spare laptop in car. - in case my laptop at sara's house fails on me
Celeron NUC PC as my voice mail server

P5 133 - old gateway computer to mess with dos games and other stuff.

Chromebook I got for $5 at the it's $5 store. I never use it but I have it.

Warwagon the hoarder. 

[+Batfink Subscriber²]

I've got to admit I'm not a fan of how apple obsoletes their computers, I would have loved it if they did a bit of a Ubuntu (or even pre-Windows 10 M$) and had a long term support channel for their consumer desktops on certain versions and only dropped previous/legacy computers after those releases.

 

For example if they supported:

El Capitan (10.11) from 2015 - 2025 (support ended in 2018)

High Siera (10.13) from 2017 - 2027 (support ended in 2020)

Catalina (10.15) from 2019 - 2029 (due to end early next year)

 

I still have a great Mac Pro 3,1 (2 x 3Ghz Quad Core Xeon, 32GB Ram and an NVIDA Quadra 4000 2GB)... It works really well... It's stuck on El Capitan but does everything you would want it to do.  My 2012 iMac is on Mojave (10.14) and my 2017 iMac is on Catalina (10.15).

 

Maybe I should move them all to Linux!!

[+Warwagon MVC]

41 minutes ago, adrynalyne said:

Warwagon the hoarder. 

Or as I call it "Wh*ore'der"

[+InsaneNutter MVC]

Something I find kind of ironic is Windows 10 performs a lot better on my MacBook Air Mid 2012 than Catalina does. Most applications just seem to take forever to start these days on OSX. Where as loading the equivalent application on Windows 10 results in it pretty much instantly loading.

 

I might well wipe my OSX install and some point and install a patched Big Sur as it will apparently run pretty much perfectly.

 

I appreciate my MacBook Air is pretty old at 9 years old, however it does everything I need a laptop to do. So it my eyes its seems a waste to buy something newer, given the current state of the world its not like I'm going anywhere I need to take a laptop these days either.

[adrynalyne]

4 minutes ago, InsaneNutter said:

Something I find kind of ironic is Windows 10 performs a lot better on my MacBook Air Mid 2012 than Catalina does. Most applications just seem to take forever to start these days on OSX. Where as loading the equivalent application on Windows 10 results in it pretty much instantly loading.

 

I might well wipe my OSX install and some point and install a patched Big Sur as it will apparently run pretty much perfectly.

 

I appreciate my MacBook Air is pretty old at 9 years old, however it does everything I need a laptop to do. So it my eyes its seems a waste to buy something newer, given the current state of the world its not like I'm going anywhere I need to take a laptop these days either.

It’s been (IMO) common knowledge that macOS is slower than Windows for quite some time now. Apple put so much time into making it looks pretty and consistent, that they put performance as an afterthought. Ironic, since they don’t do that with their hardware. 
 

 

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

 

As I understand it, Apple's business model is to bundle the operating system in with the the cost the hardware you are purchasing from them, and using the latter to amortize the cost of maintenance over time.  This is a bit different from Microsoft, which does OEM its operating system to different hardware vendors as well as sell retail licenses and SaaS licenses (E3, E5, Microsoft 365, etc.).  Because Apple is not generating recurring revenue from operating system sales like Microsoft, they may only be willing to maintain them for a shorter period of time.

 

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky

 

[astropheed Veteran]

It's like you don't think Apple is a status symbol. I love my iPhone, and I'm buying the M1 iMac and iPad. But I know what I'm getting into.

[+Warwagon MVC]

Another thing that ROYALLY PI*SSES ME OFF about Apple, is they do not let you download the installer for a newer version of the OS to an unsupported Mac JUST to make a USB installer.

 

With Windows, even if the computer isn't capable of running Said OS version I can still use the current OS version to create a Bootable USB OS installer for another workstation.

 

Recently had a 2012 Macbook pro come into my office. The upgrade didn't go smooth and I wanted to clean install Catalina. I had a USB installer for HIgh seira and Big Sur but not Catalina. I wanted to clean install using a usb rather than installing an older version and doing an upgrade.

 

So I went to all 4 of my Mac's, 3 where 2011's 1 was 2010. Went to the app store to download Catalina just so I could make a bootable usb installer from the terminal but they wouldn't even let me download it and the only way to get it is from the App store. I tried a Catalina patcher tool to create one but it bombed out trying to create the usb.

 

[Brandon H Supervisor]

glad it's pretty easy to install newer versions of macOS on older models. there's a hacker dev that hosts a script that unlocks the ISO for older models. the only downside that they haven't solved yet is for models that have dedicated AMD graphics they lose hardware acceleration unless you do an extra step to switch to just the internal graphics.

 

I haven't updated to Big Sur yet but I have a early 2011 MBP at home running High Sierra. It's not my main machine but I do mess with it from time to time and it runs just fine on newer versions.

 

edit: the script covers for downloading the installer too; it uses a direct URL from Apple's server to download the installer then patches it. Then it's up to you to put on CD/USB as desired.

[+Warwagon MVC]

6 minutes ago, Brandon H said:

glad it's pretty easy to install newer versions of macOS on older models. there's a hacker dev that hosts a script that unlocks the ISO for older models. the only downside that they haven't solved yet is for models that have dedicated AMD graphics they lose hardware acceleration unless you do an extra step to switch to just the internal graphics.

 

I haven't updated to Big Sur yet but I have a early 2011 MBP at home running High Sierra. It's not my main machine but I do mess with it from time to time and it runs just fine on newer versions.

Yep, that's the case with all the Mac's I have acquired. I tried using one of the Mac's that I used that Hack to install catalina on. Went to the App store thinking because I already had it, it might let me redownload it. But it bombed out with some error. It could be, because the installation was a hack job.

 

I realized if you had access to a mac which already had the installer, it's possible to copy the folder from the app directory usb flash drive and then put it on the older system to create the usb flash drive. Which is why i'm now creating a collection of those installers. But god damnit apple, it shouldn't have be this complicated! 

 

I also know you can do an internet install by holding down some keys on bootup, but I think it only gives you the factory version of the OS. When I tried it on my 2011 iMac, I think it downloaded Lion.

[denchikchyb]

On 09/07/2020 at 17:38, warwagon said:

It's my opinion Mac's long-term OS support is not great. The fact that I can't run the newest MacOS on a 2011 MacBook Pro 17 inch with an i7 with 8GB (just got it free yesterday) is embarrassing. It's not like they have THAT many computers to support.

 

Same goes for my 2011 iMac 27-inch 16GB of ram and SSD and my 2011 Macbook pro 15-inch i7, 8GB of ram. If you use a patching tool you can get Catalina installed but you don't have graphic acceleration.

 

Clearly people will say it's the drivers from 3rd party such as AMD, but all Apple has to do is throw money at them and have then make new drivers.

 

At my GF's house I'm running a laptop with an i3 that I upgraded to an SSD running Windows 10, that laptop is NINE YEARS OLD!! Same year as this MacBook pro 17 inch.

 

I totally agree with you on this. I would like to have all the features, regardless of the year of manufacture of the device

[macoman]

I used this patcher to upgrade all my old Apple computers to the latest version of Big Sur 11.6 https://github.com/barrykn/big-sur-micropatcher

I haven't found any issue and works like a charm.

[macoman]