macOS Tahoe signals that the end is near for Intel Macs, dumping all but four models

All Intel MacBook Airs and Mac minis are gone; just a few other models remain.

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[approximate_pi]

The answer for old hardware (in the realm of x86, at least) is ALWAYS Linux.

For apple’s ARM machines too, Asahi works great

 

[approximate_pi]

I feel for you if you were one of the last Intel MacBook Air buyers in 2020 right before the M1 came out, but 5 years of feature updates and still another 2 to go of security patches isn't that bad. There's also OpenCore Legacy Patcher that will very likely allow you to run macOS 26 just fine (and future versions too as long as they still have x86 architecture support)

Personally I deliberately was a buyer of the top end intel 2020 air because I wasnt sure how smooth the rollout of the ARM machines would be, while it was super smooth I have no regrets about my decision, it served me well and I picked up an M4 air earlier this year in anticipation of them dropping more intel support this year.

5 years (really nearly 6 given those machines were released march 2020 and MacOS 26 wont be fully released until sept or oct 2025) of full support and then an additional 2 or 3 years of security updates isnt terrible for those machines

 

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Asahi won't even boot on M3 or M4 Macs. It's experimental and suggesting anything but is a disservice.

I wouldnt count it as experimental on M1s or M2s, it’s basically just missing thunderbolt support at this point. I have an M1 mini running Asahi as my primary workstation in my garage workshop and it’s rock solid

Yes, Asahi hasnt caught up to M3s and 4s, but given the context of this thread is “what to do with older machines” and the M4s are brand new and even the M1s are still supported by Apple I dont think that’s relevant.

 

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Some of those are old apps I keep around (Divvy is a favorite)

Holy crap, I didnt even realize divvy wasnt being maintained anymore, just looked, the release we’ve all been running is 5 years old! I love the app, it replaced spectacle for me, guess now I have to worry about what to replace divvy with eventually

 

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If it has a Touch ID sensor, that won't work. Other than that, any MacBook built before 2020 will fully support your preferred Linux distribution without any major issues.

Not quite, there’s also a known bug that was introduced with Apple’s latest firmware updates that breaks sleep on a number of T2 machines. The current workarounds are a bit messy, I’d bet it’s cleared up sometime soon though, there’s going to be a lot of interest and this prob more resources for the T2 linux folks with the new dropped machines