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by adur1990 2146 days ago
Thank you for all your replies.

One point I may have missed point out more clearly: The 6+ years I plan to use this thing is also due to environmental considerations.

First, I am a big advocate of the right to repair. I think it is consumer-friendly and more sustainable. One of my Apple Silicon concerns is, that the new Macs won't be as repair-friendly as the current generation. MacBook are already not repairable at all, I guess this trend will continue to the Desktop lineup (except the Mac Pro maybe).

Second, almost all my devices eventually have a second live, sometimes even a third live. My first MacBook (first white Intel MacBook) was used by my wife for 3 years after I used it 5 years. Then the plastic body started to fall apart, so I sold it on eBay for a decent price. My first Mac Mini (2,1) was used for about 6 years. Then, I upgraded the 32-bit Core Duo CPU to a 64-bit Core2Duo, got 4 GB RAM and a SSD. I patched EFI to support 64-bit OS and the Mac Mini runs as a little home-server (Pi-Hole, Time Machine, Nextcloud). And finally, my 2011 15" MacBook Pro still runs Catalina (thanks to DosDude's Catalina Patcher tool). This is were currently my music production and recording happens (yes, really!). This machine has still more juice than the new 13" MBP.

So, the point is, however, I want run macOS as long as possible on this machine and then give it a second live (what ever it will be then). And I'm afraid this will be a problem because either a) (if I buy Intel) macOS will drop support for Intel in 5-ish years or b) (if I wait for Apple Silicon) the iMac won't be upgradable and everything glued and soldered to the max, which also makes repairs impossible.

Do you have any thoughts on this matter?

And what I can read from your comments is a) Don't hesitate if you need/can afford/can live with macOS and b) it's probably time to leave the Apple ecosystem. Anyways, you gave good points to think about, thanks a lot!