Rogue01

saarek said:

6 years is a fair timeline. They haven’t screwed over Intel users like they did with the PPC transition and Snow Leopard.

I came back to say the same thing.  PowerPC got Tiger and Leopard, and that was it.  The last PowerPC iMac, the iMac (iSight) in late 2005, only got Tiger and Leopard and that was it.  Cut off with Snow Leopard, 3 years after the transition to Intel.  But Apple finished the Intel transition to all Macs in 270 days, not 3 1/2 years for Apple Silicon.  At least Intel Macs, which there were probably far more in circulation in 2020 than PowerPC Macs in 2005, got Big Sur, Monterey, Ventura, Sonoma, Sequoia, and now Tahoe.  Granted, I would rather have a more robust macOS with a two year release cycle than this fast pace one year cycle and more bugs in the OS.  We still have a lot of Intel Macs at work that will run macOS 26, so those won't be replaced any time soon.

Mike Wuerthele said:

Rogue01 said:

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.

Until relatively recently, I had household serving duties on a 2012 Mac mini.

Nobody's saying the hardware shuts off next year. And, as discussed in the article, the last stuff will get security updates for a while.

Very true Mike, but you know a lot of people have a hissy-fit thinking their Mac is useless without the latest operating system and want to hate Apple for it.  There are always some that will make that type of comment.

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.

So it is Aqua, without any color, from 2000.

With iOS 7, the heavy transparency was awful because everything blended over itself and over the next few iOS updates, the transparency was significantly reduced so you could actually see what you were doing without elements from behind bleeding into everything else.  I imagine the same will occur again.  The screenshot above showing the Home Screen looks just like iOS 18, with a few minor tweaks to the icons.  Not that much of a change.  Not exactly a 'radical' design change as all the websites claimed.

Last year's AI (Apple Intelligence) was the biggest cluster***k in Apple history, far worse than MobileMe.  Running false ads, advertising the iPhone 16 with Apple Intelligence when it never had Apple Intelligence until MONTHS later, and very limited.  To the point where Apple pulled the false ad when they admitted they can't roll out a new Siri because it doesn't work.  Pulling AI summaries because they don't work.  They were not wrong last year, and Apple Intelligence is still a joke.  They will roll out iOS 26 and it still won't have Siri updates and it will be 'coming soon', because your heavily quoted Gurman said Spring 2026.

So I would imagine people have come to expect false promises by Apple at WWDC and then when Fall comes, Apple admits most features are unavailable.