Snippet: On Future OS Support for Older Hardware ☇

Low End Mac’s Simon Royal points out that Windows 7 or 8 will run just fine on hardware Apple has long since abandoned. While this will create a knee-jerk reaction from a few, you have to realize that there are a lot of ancient PCs still being used in office environments (remember how long Windows XP hung on?):

At Low End Mac, we are proud users of older machines and older versions of the Mac OS. I know of the struggle to keep your older Mac running alongside modern machines. But when you have spent twice the price of a Windows counterpart yet receive only half the supported life, you can see why some Mac users are not happy.

Either way, some may say it’s not fair that Apple has moved on from some Macs, but there is a fine line between latest-and-greatest and old-and-established. A Mac running 10.5 or 10.6 will probably still be very useful for a number of tasks, especially the Intel-based models. (Disclosure—my tertiary machine is a Power Mac G5 running 10.5 and is still used regularly for this site, along with a MacBook Pro and an iPad.)

Your most obvious option is to buy a new Mac, but that’s not a great answer. You feel cheated; you feel like your money has been wasted.

While it would nice to keep a piece of computer hardware until it physically wears out, Apple still has a pretty big window of support for Mountain Lion, and if you livelihood requires you to have something newer, or a specific piece of software, you could arguably justify a newer machine as a business cost. Otherwise, not always having the latest OS release on an older machine is just a byproduct of saving some money.