Comment by yladiz
1 month ago
How long do you expect them to support Intel processors though? It’s been like 6 years since the last MacBook release had any Intel processor, and Apple doesn’t make OS updates anymore, so it doesn’t surprise me that Homebrew stopped too.
Are you implying that a 6 year old hardware is as good as a paperweight? Outside of the Apple fairyland this is just bonkers.
I'm not blaming the Homebrew project/developers here, but the fact that many people are okay with deprecating perfectly fine hardware.
No, he’s asking what you think a reasonable support timeline is. An open source project supporting hardware 6 years old is pretty awesome.
6 years is really not a long time at all. You can probably find heaps of open source software out there that compiles and runs perfectly on 20 year old PCs. It's not like the maintainer has to do much to retain support--they just have to not make the software dependent on new operating systems.
Bits don't rot.
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NixOS is an open source project that runs great on my 2013 Dell laptop. I think the real point of distinction is that brew depends on Apple's OS and SDK, which somewhat ties their hands, while other OSs don't.
I managed to sell my battered old 32-bit Thinkpad on eBay last year. I couldn’t put Trixie on it, but Bookworm installed fine.
There's been a huge step up in basically everything going from intel to apple silicon. It's not a comparable hardware in any sense, and as such, it really does feel like it became a paperweight? I know I never wanted to see an intel macbook ever again the moment I tried M1. It's maybe hard to comprehend how different it is if you haven't used both. And at the same time I'm happy with my x86 desktop for 10+ years. Only thing that really improved in that span was storage.
So I wouldn't say this applies globally to apple users/products, but the post-intel era is a special case. If nothing else, they are helping the environment by not feeding that (literally) hot garbage with more electricity.
You're on macOS. you should know full well that they do not care about those values.
I have one of the last Intel Macs and works perfectly fine (on Sonoma). How long should I expect working tech being supported?
I am already looking at Linux, but still need to get out of the Apple ecosystem. I am not going to spend +2500 Euros every 5 years on a laptop
Sonoma will be getting its last security update imminently (possibly tomorrow).
What does saying "working tech" do for you? If I have a working Samsung CRT from 25 years ago do I ping them about smart TV support? Nowadays it's a shitty situation with planned obsolescence; but 6 years for an open source project dedicating resources to a dead end is more than enough and appreciated.
And given the performance jump from Intel to Apple Silicon, the perceived difference is 10+ years even.
Sure, but 2019s Intel Macs are aboslutely usable for most tasks, and given much of the agentic dev. happens... somewhere remotely, it is more an opportunity to reuse this equipment for various tasks, rather than pollute the already dirty Earth with more electronic waste.
1) usable for most tasks != pleasent to use for most tasks
2) using an Intel Mac as your main computer, for most tasks != using it as a home server
Years, honestly. After all, Intel Macs just received a major macOS release from Apple only 12 months ago. MacPorts manages to support all the way back to Leopard!