[fixermark]

I know that in the past, when you fought to upgrade a machine past Apple's recommendations, you could end up with a machine that was technically working, but so slow it was practically unusable.

It's possibly the case that Apple's lack of upgrade support is a feature, not a bug (though it introduces the complexity of eventual lack of security support).

[ivraatiems]

That makes sense, except:

1) It's up to the user to decide whether a machine is usable for their needs or not, not Apple.

2) Locking users in at an older version and then refusing to support that version even just 3 years after it's come out is just too short a time window.

3) Offering no way for users who need an old version to get it except illegally is a non-starter for any purpose, security or not, again, because 3 years old is just not old enough to so completely phase it out.

While I agree that lack of usability is a concern, it seems to me that between lack of upgrade-ability, short OS version lifespans, and early phaseouts of old versions, Apple is intentionally forcing users to consistently upgrade once every 3-4 years at most. Fine business model, terrible for the end user, and a real detriment to Apple for me personally when the competition doesn't behave that way to that extent.

[iSnow]

>It's up to the user to decide whether a machine is usable for their needs or not, not Apple.

Well yes, but it is also a business decision. Further supporting an old machine with a changing toolchain means additional costs for development, testing and troubleshooting. Those are costs that Apple has to bear.

I won't contest your point that 3-4 years is too early, just saying that there's more to supporting old hardware than just including the same drivers as in the last release.

[ivraatiems]

You're absolutely right, but at the same time, if something WILL work but may not work optimally (or may not be supported for business reasons), I think it's more appropriate to say "hey, this is not recommended and if you do it you're on your own" than "you may not do this, no matter how well you know the risks." Apple chooses the latter path.

[yuhong]

In particular, Mac OS X don't even run well with only 4GB of RAM anymore, and older machines use DDR2 where 4GB SO-DIMMs (and any other sticks based on 2Gbit DDR2) are rare and expensive. I wonder what is the current status of this bug BTW: http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/42426/can-i-upgrade...

[pornel]

I've upgraded 4GB 2007 iMac to Mavericks and it worked very well (for its age).

Mavericks introduced RAM compression, so for RAM-constrained machines it may be even better than the previous OS.

[glassx]

> In particular, Mac OS X don't even run well with only 4GB of RAM anymore

It actually runs great. I'm using a 2011 Air w/2GB (cheapest back then) and El Capitan and it's almost as fast as my 24GB Mac Pro.

I push it a bit with Logic Pro X + drum samples (for my V-Drums), but it handles that without complaints. But for web, videos and programming there isn't much of a difference.

[yuhong]

But note that the Air has a SSD.