I still have a love-hate relationship with Apple equipment.

Sure, I’ve gone from a Hater (based on Hardware Value for money) to a Lover (based on Experience Value for money).

Late to the game, I acquired my first Mac equipment as recently as 2019. This equipment includes a 27″ i5 iMac from 2011, two 13″ Polycarbonate Macbooks from 2010, and, shortly afterwards, an iPhone 8 Plus (256GB).

Soon after, having gotten into the ecosystem but needing something more powerful, I acquired a 27″ i7 iMac from 2015 and a 13″  i7 MacBook Pro in 2015.

I tinkered with Dosdude’s macOS patcher to keep my Polycarbonate’s OSes up to date before migrating to the OpenCore Legacy Patcher.

Also, I tinkered with Hackintosh’s in VMware.

Finally, my 2015 equipment ended its official life with Monterey, so I acquired my current equipment.

(2021 M1-Max 16″ 64GB Macbook Pro with 1TB Storage, 2020 16GB Mac-Mini with 512GB Storage & M1 12.9″ 8G iPad Pro with 256GB Storage)

My i7 iMac runs Ventura perfectly, whilst my i7 Macbook Pro runs Sonoma perfectly.

My old Polymer UniBodies from 2010 are quite capable of running Monterey, with 16G RAM and a 1TB SSD drive.

The fun and challenge of keeping the old Intel Machines up to date and having the odd Hackintosh has been good, but Apple seems determined to leave the Intel generation behind.

What’s clear is that if you purchased one of the last Intel Macs in 2019/2020, then you will have seen the most depreciation ever seen in Apple equipment since the MacOS X era began, and you will also see the shortest Apple support lifespan.

I’m glad that I didn’t rush in.

I can see that Apple will want to halt support for Intel as soon as possible. Currently, all of the binaries are made to work with both Intel and ARM processors, which adds between 4 and 5 gigabytes to an OS Install and even more weight to the binaries for programs.

Once all of the Intel machines are out of support, this dual binary support can be dropped, ensuring that macOS becomes a much leaner and more efficient operating system.

I will miss my two iMacs as I will eventually be forced to part with them.

We are definitely in the “2nd Going” of “Going, Going, Gone” for Intel.

I wonder whether Apple will return to its long support cycles now that it is on its hardware or whether the shorter supported life is how the world works.