Interesting that they’re mentioned as only being exploited on Intel. Has anyone seen whether that’s because the attacker only targeted that platform or is it actually stopped by something like pointer protection?
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Unless they're assuming it's exploitable on Apple Silicon as well, or are being extra careful just in case.
Things like OpenCore Legacy Patcher prove it's possible; they just don't want to.
I don't think anyone feels entitled to new features in perpetuity. Security updates only would be fine thank you.
Don't tell me the richest company in the world can't pay for a couple of developers who just want to rest and vest to take care of and test the legacy platforms. A cushy job and you keep the customers happy.
Ironically the best way to stay safe on these computers is to install Windows or Linux.
1. All hardware and software should come with a highly visible end of support date.
2. All hardware and software should notify people when it is no longer receiving security patches. It should also explain to users why running unpatched software or hardware is dangerous.
https://github.com/dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher
macOS Big Sur and newer on machines as old as 2007
macOS Big Sur, Monterey, Ventura, Sonoma and Sequoia
MacBook Airs from 2020 support Sequoia - so just the very upper limit of your range is relevant.
My expectation is a table of OS versions and EOL dates published in advance. Like nearly every other responsible OS vendor in existence. Apple continuing to get a pass on this in 2024 is abhorrent.
If you read some of the text above the product list, you'll see that Apple does publish guidelines about when products can be expected to be added to the list:
> Products are considered vintage when Apple stopped distributing them for sale more than 5 and less than 7 years ago.
> Products are considered obsolete when Apple stopped distributing them for sale more than 7 years ago. Monster-branded Beats products are considered obsolete regardless of when they were purchased.
> Apple discontinues all hardware service for obsolete products, and service providers cannot order parts for obsolete products. Mac laptops may be eligible for an extended battery-only repair period for up to 10 years from when the product was last distributed for sale, subject to parts availability.
So as you can see, it's not arbitrary or unpredictable when a product is going to show up on the vintage product list. The only unpredictable or obscure part of this process is finding out how long an outdated product was still being sold after its successor launched.
At my old job we supported only two versions of our software product, Tanzu Operations Manager versions 2.10.x and 3.0.y), and we cut new patch releases every few weeks (similar to Apple's cadence). Bumping dependencies was a pain. Well, usually it went fine, but sometimes you'd hit a gnarly incompatibility and you'd either pin a Ruby package to a known version or try to modify the code just enough to make it work without making a major change.
If I had to put a number to it, I'd say it cost us 2 developers to keep our older product line consistently patched, and our product was a modest Ruby app, much less complicated than an entire OS.
We are talking about software support here.
The vintage products list is specifically targeting hardware support; e.g. how long Apple will keep spare parts in stock. After a set number of years they purge stock and you are SOL going to Chinese third party vendors and places like iFixit for batteries etc.
https://security.samsungmobile.com/workScope.smsb
My qualm with them is though that not all devices are updated at the same time (like iOS/iPadOS/macOS). One phone may get an update the 10th of the month, while another only gets it the 30th. As a result, there is often quite a large window where vulnerabilities are known, but not yet patched (it's even worse with the cheap models that only get quarterly updates).
Is Apply really releasing new patched OS updates every few weeks?
For example, I have 2015 macbook pro. The last macos release for it is Monterey. Even brew has problems with that, erroring out when installing packages like libpng and complaining, that I should upgrade xcode cli tools. Which I can't.
Why would they shoot themselves in the foot ? If the new MacOS does not run on older HW and they don't release patches (no development team) it is a win-win situation: user must buy a new Mac and no money is wasted supporting old HW.