One last look at software support as macOS 26 Tahoe winds down the Intel Mac era

Second, there’s the Apple T2 to consider. The Macs with a T2 treat it as a load-bearing co-processor, responsible for crucial operating system functions such as enabling Touch ID, serving as an SSD controller, encoding and decoding videos, communicating with the webcam and built-in microphone, and other operations. But Apple has never opened the T2 up to anyone, and it remains a bit of a black box for both the OpenCore/Hackintosh community and folks who would run Linux-based operating systems like Ubuntu or ChromeOS on that hardware.

The result is that the 2018 and 2019 MacBook Airs that didn’t support macOS 15 Sequoia last year never had support for them added to the OpenCore Legacy Patcher because the T2 chip simply won’t communicate with OpenCore firmware booted. Some T2 Macs don’t have this problem. But if yours does, it’s unlikely that anyone will be able to do anything about it, and your software support will end when Apple says it does.

Does any of this mean anything for Apple Silicon Mac support?

It will likely be at least two or three years before we know for sure how Apple plans to treat Apple Silicon Macs. Will the company primarily look at specs and technical capabilities, as it did from the late-’90s through to the mid-2010s? Or will Apple mainly stop supporting hardware based on its age, as it has done for more recent Macs and most current iPhones and iPads?

The three models to examine for this purpose are the first ones to shift to Apple Silicon: the M1 versions of the MacBook Air, Mac mini, and 13-inch MacBook Pro, all launched in late 2020. If these Macs are dropped in, say, 2027 or 2028’s big macOS release, but other, later M1 Macs like the iMac stay supported, it means Apple is likely sticking to a somewhat arbitrary age-based model, with certain Macs cut off from software updates that they are perfectly capable of running.