Big Sur, which was released in Nov 2020, still supported the MacBook Air (2013) and the MacBook Pro (Late 2013). When Ventura is released only two years later, not even the MacBook Pro (2016) is supported, which was sold until Jun 2017. The fact that Ventura even drops support for a Mac that they sold until Dec 2019 (i.e., the "trash can" Mac Pro), is just mind-boggling.
I understand that they want to transition away from Intel Macs as fast as possible, but deprecating these Macs so aggressively is really terrible, both from a sustainability perspective and a consumer perspective.
I still keep a Mac mini (2011) around for guests to use for things that are not particularly sensitive (since it stopped receiving security updates a few years ago). It's not the fasted machine by any stretch, but it is still perfectly fine for watching movies, browsing the web, and anything else that does not heavily tax the CPU.
Can these machines even run Linux without losing hardware features (like T2 acceleration?)
The above said, I can see why they want to do it. It makes sense to want to stop supporting Intel macs as early as they can, and that means bringing down expectations of support life every year so it’s not a sudden cutoff that would cause an uproar.
It’s still B/S however you look at it though, and I feel really bad for anyone stuck on these platforms that feel like the rug has been pulled.
Did OS X have security updates then?
Meanwhile with the current transition Apple has yet to introduce a Mac Pro replacement over a year and a half in.
You don't really need Ventura if your current release is supported a long time.
It's got an i7 running at 4ghz, I paid for the graphics card update to 395x and 32gb of ram.
It still runs everything absolutely flawlessly. I have no plans to upgrade anytime soon. So hopefully will run the OS with a hack, as I don't see what this OS needs better specs for, considering i'm sure lower spec machines can run it, so it's just Apple cutting it off for being Apple.
Else then I hope to still get quite a few years out of this and will just have to deal with not having the latest OS anymore and hope the apps I want/use will continue to run.
Else it's back to Windows 10 for me, via boot camp.
I paid over 2 and a half grand for this machine, I want a longer life out of it particularly is it runs everything so incredibly flawlessly still. It doesn't seem worth it to drop another large amount of cash on a new device, plus Apple don't even do the 27" anymore and i'm not sure I want to lose windows compatibility.
Amazing longevity if you think about it that way.
But many computers last 7+ years nowadays in compatibility with everything, so that's not really a silver lining.
The main irony to me is that its common for different people to talk about how they are never upgrading their MacOS.
These systems have a lot of life left in them.
So yes, unless you are completely ignoring the security of your system, losing macOS support is a kind of soft kill switch for the hardware.
The problem I've run into is other software/libraries dropping support for older versions of MacOS. So far this is fixable, but it means if you need new features, libraries, or whatever in other, non-Apple products, you might not be able to get it. In these cases, there's nothing functional about the decision, it's just "we're cutting off support here". That is, I could install Linux on my Mac, and run the latest version just fine.
This isn't Apples fault, but the whole thing is sort of ridiculous to me. It puts real pressure on me to upgrade hardware for it's purposes solely because of arbitrary software support cutoff decisions. It would be different if it were "version x needs this hardware feature" but that's not the case.
The MacBook Pro (2016, 4 Thunderbolt ports, with Touch Bar) does have a T1 chip and is dropped, but the MacBook Pro (2017, 2 Thunderbolt ports, no Touch Bar) does not have a T1 (or T-anything) chip and is still supported in Ventura.
Consider Apple's transition from PowerPC to x86: the first intel Mac shipped in 2006; in 2008 Apple released Mac OS X 10.6/Snow Leopard which was intel only.
In 2020 Tim Cook said the Apple Silicon transition would take about two years and that Apple would "continue to support and release new versions of MacOS for Intel-based Macs for years to come" - without specifying whether "years" is 2, 3, or more.
I'm not one to capriciously suggest government regulation but I think there is space somewhere for something that says if you're going to offer a general computing product for sale that you need to provide support for it (in terms of bug and security fixes) for n number of years. 10 years seems appropriate in my non-expert opinion.
I use Linux on my PC laptops, but I’ve never installed it on a Mac because macOS has always integrated nicely with the hardware. Gestures seem to be a big hurdle.
Also, if security is your #1 priority you should pay the cost of the upgrade. Monterey is compatible with Macs as old as 2015. That means that Apple will sunset security support for it in 2024. That's nine years of supported life for your computer – not bad.