Stephen Hackett, writing on 512 Pixels about when Apple will drop support for Intel Macs:

By the time Snow Leopard shipped in September 2009, the very last PowerPC Macs ever sold were just over three years old. If Apple holds to that precedent, the earliest the company would drop support for Intel Macs would be in next year’s macOS release.

I’ve been thinking about this as well, and next year seems very plausible. The redesigned MacBook Pro models are expected next year, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the OS version that comes preinstalled on them no longer supports Intel-based Macs.

There’s no direct correlation between the redesigned MacBook hardware and dropping support for Intel Macs, but I bet the software engineers at Apple are eager to do so—and timing it around the hardware redesign gives them a bit of an excuse.

I am on the lookout for a really cheap M1 MacBook Air on Facebook Marketplace—a laptop that I can use solely as a writing computer. There are new items added to the marketplace and they are very cheap, but they are all Intel-based MacBooks.

Intel-based MacBook owners are trying to get rid of them, and rightfully so. When I got my M1 MacBook Pro around 2022, it felt like a whole new world. I recall the fan kicking in every time I loaded a YouTube video on my old computer, and on the M1 model I am having trouble getting the fan to start spinning at all no matter what I throw at it—a testament to how far Apple’s processor technology has advanced.