[themagician]

This is an interesting idea, and I am actually curious what Apple is going to do going forward. A "Snow Leopard"-esque release would be nice, but I think what would be better is an LTS release. Historically, you get a new Mac and you usually only get 5-6 years before they drop your model from the latest release. This has always made some sense to me, as after 4-6 years, you do start to feel it.

I bought an M1 Max that is now almost 4 years old and it still feels new to me. I can't really imagine a change that would happen in the next 2 years that would make this thing feel slow where an M3 would feel sufficient, so I'm curious to see if Apple really does just go hardcore on forced obsolescence going forward. I have a few M series devies now, from M1 to M3, and I honestly cannot tell the difference other than export times for video.

I can imagine some kind of architecture change that might come with an M6 or something that would force an upgrade path, but I can't see any reason other than just forcing upgrades to drop support between M1-M5. Maybe if there is a really hard push next year into 8K video? Never even tried to edit 8K, so I don't know. I'm guessing an M1 might feel sluggish?

[fumufumufumu]

Trying to use Wan2.1 to generate AI video or other various LLM or StableDiffusion style stuff is slow compared to other other platforms. I don't know how much of that is because the code is not optimized for M1+ Max (Activity Monitor shows lots of GPU usage) or how much of it is it's just not up to the competition. Friends on 4070 Windows PC are getting results many X faster and 4070 perf iss not even close to 4090

[rcarmo]

You need to run it under MLX, and AFAICT ComfyUI and the like are not really optimized for it (or at least not as optimized as LLM inference).

[basisword]

I don't feel like they ever used forced obsolescence with Mac's. When they dropped support for the latest OS on your machine it was usually because it couldn't run it. I recently updated some older Mac's and even a couple of OS's before support was dropped things got really sluggish. I imagine with the Apple Silicon machines the OS support will stretch longer than it has on the Intel ones. Maybe the higher prices are a hint they expect people to keep the machines in use for longer than before.

[dontblink]

Opencore legacy patcher would be to differ.

[nicoburns]

> I think what would be better is an LTS release. Historically, you get a new Mac and you usually only get 5-6 years before they drop your model from the latest release

In fairness, Apple to do tend to continue to release critical security patches for older versions.

I suspect that it will be AI features that push Apple into deprecating older hardware. But I also hope that the M series hardware will be supported a bit longer than the intel hardware was. Time will tell.

[ryandrake]

I don't have any Macs or iPhones that can even run the latest software anymore. My absolute newest Mac is stuck on Ventura 13.7. On the other hand, I can get the bleeding edge version of any Linux distribution out there and run it on decades-old hardware.

[scarface_74]

Unfortunately, “decades old hardware” doesn’t give me the combination of speed, quietness, battery life and the ability to use my laptop on my lap without so much heat that it puts me at risk for never having any little Scarfaces.

Using an x86 laptop in 2025 is like using a flip phone.

[Rohansi]

You can at least get 90% of the same experience with modern x86 laptops. Just exclude anything that has a dedicated GPU.

[bluescrn]

> I bought an M1 Max that is now almost 4 years old and it still feels new to me.

How are the keycaps doing? Mine looked awful after about 2 years of relatively light use, developing really obvious ugly shiny patches (particularly bad on the space bar), quite a letdown on an otherwise great machine.

(Realised that you can actually buy replacements and swap them yourself, via the self-service repair store, so have replaced them once, but am starting to notice shiny patches again on the new set)

[AlexandrB]

Still better than the butterfly debacle of 2016-2019. I have one for work that spends 99.9% of its life docked to a real keyboard and it still has keys that only work sporadically. Some of these keys probably have < 10,000 actuations on them.

[jedberg]

Not OP but have the same Mac. Every key is shiny. Doesn't really bother me though because I touch type. Also clearly I favor hitting space with my right hand because only the right side is shiny.

[dmix]

If you have AppleCare they will basically rebuild your MacBook for ~$200. I got MBP M1 Max usb ports and top case replaced and a bunch of other stuff I didn’t even ask for but they replaced with new stuff. Felt like a new machine when I got it back.

[yakz]

They need to somehow start marketing effectively to gamers, because the GPU in your M1 Max is shit. Sure, it’s fine for mostly-2D UIs and the occasional WebGL widget, but for AAA gaming it’s just dogshit.

[bluescrn]

'Gaming laptops' with more powerful GPUs are generally awful, though. Even ignoring the state of Win11.

Yes, they can theoretically perform better, but only when plugged into mains power, and creating so much heat and fan noise that the experience really isn't good.

Don't think there's anything out there that will outperform the GPU of an M-series Mac without consuming way more power and producing problematic levels of heat+noise.

[yakz]

Sure, but this is another avenue to onboard people to the upgrade train. Sure your display is great, your CPU is great, the speakers are great. But the AAA graphics scale up every year and there are often big performance cliffs for new features on old hardware.

[dlivingston]

M1 Max @ 32 GB. I can run Shadow of the Tomb Raider with max settings at native resolution (3024x1964 px) and get ~60 FPS.

[nullpoint420]

What about M3 Max?