its not the small changes that bother me its the move to iOS on a desktop system
along with the fact that on these mac minis the CPU's (Intel C2D 1.83) are supported but the GPU's (Intel GMA 950) are abandoned
my mac minis have been upgraded to the max but apple have decided to abandon them, all it would take is a firmware update

these are reasons i purchased this shuttle so that i could compare the on board GPU (Intel 3150) which is very similar to the mac minis and is flying along

i have (now) 2 mac minis that are left out in the cold (one has been sold) the iMac is still supported but for how long is unknown
no more apples for me, i will move along to oranges, grapes or pears ...

I do agree about the lack of support for older machines. I have older laptops which cannot be upgraded and are only 5 years old. One is an Intel Dual Core MBP so should be upgradable. I want to link all my machines and keep them up to date. Problem is that Apple end of life them before they are anywhere near dead. You can see the same attitude towards iOS devices such as the inability to use Siri on iPad 2's, and it is only 18 months old.

I kind of see where you and Mr Steven are headed here, but in what way are these machines "dead"?

I'm working - actually using for real work - a 2007 MacBook Pro. It's been bypassed by Mountain Lion, can't have more than 3GB of addressable RAM, and the optical unit is now all but redundant. It still works. It'll still be working in a couple of years, I guess.

Okay, it won't be running the absolutely latest flavour of whatever kind of feline Apple are developing. Okay, it may wheeze a bit if I throw it too much to do all at once. But it still works. Until the hard drive croaks, or some other component collapses, it'll still work and be a productive machine until I can afford to replace it. Not dead, just obsolete - as far as the bleeding edge is concerned.

I still have a working G3 PowerBook. It's a decade old. It still works, and I'm thinking of resurrecting it so it can run some software that's no longer supported on even my five-year-old machine.

I still have a powerbook which I still use for playing games on because it is pre Intel. It still works but is not longer upgradable. Same for my dual core MBP. I do not expect them to support the PPC models with new OSes but the early Intels they should still support with upgrades.

its not the fact that they don't work
its the fact that they are not supported

apple moved to Intel for there CPU's and fully support them yet use many GPU's and don't support them
sorry but apple make the rules.

i just wish that they would live up to them and sadly they have failed ...

The only thing that concerns me there is the lack of security updates.

But thinking about it I don't think I've ever had a PC more than three years because the performance degrades too quickly. For example I had a C2D machine with integrated graphics which just won't play HD video.

So on that basis I don't think Apple's decision to end support for earlier models will necessarily affect that many people, but given the cost of your typical Apple machine I can understand why it stings more.


Sent from my LT26i using Tapatalk 2

A friend of mine recently commented that his Apple hardware can now run the latest version of Windows 8, but not of OSX. It's not really important to him and he's not buying a new one yet, but it is a little curious and made me chuckle quietly to myself.


I was running integrated graphics on my C2D for several years and it used to be able to handle HD video, until the commonly used codecs started getting more difficult. It now has a cheap graphics card in it, and can once again play them...

...except that Flash and iPlayer have been problematic. They keep changing them in ways that break the hardware acceleration, so I never know if I'm going to able to watch in HD using them from one day to the next...

VLC always plays fine even at 1080p, unless the bit-rate is ridiculously high

HD is not something i require

all my monitors are VGA connected

i do not need, require or want HD (DVD's only)
i get given the DVD's from those that buy BR

HD is of no use to me and mine ...