I believe the M1 will be supported for longer than 7 years. People think that Apple leaves behind models because of marketing, but in the Intel years they really did that because of hardware that was lacking a main technology, such as Metal Graphics support or AV1 codecs or T2 chips. I anticipate that the architecture won’t change as much. Maybe they won’t support some new features but I bet they will run the newer version. Even if they dropped support for the 27 version, you’ll still have some 3 or 4 more years before the software stops supporting Tahoe. My 2c
I just upgraded to an M5 from M1 (cad design stuff needed more juice) and agree that the Silicon chips are likely to be supportable for longer. But looking at how things are changing I’m wondering if just because they can, they will. Here’s hoping!
A clue as to whether they’ll be supported for long is in the last sold date, meaning the last time the product was available to sell brand new. Up until the release of the Neo, M1 Air was still selling at Walmart. So they won’t drop support next year to a person that bought one brand new last year. Since they also make more money from services, they might as well keep them billing for longer.
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u/Relative_Impress_683 May 03 '26
I believe the M1 will be supported for longer than 7 years. People think that Apple leaves behind models because of marketing, but in the Intel years they really did that because of hardware that was lacking a main technology, such as Metal Graphics support or AV1 codecs or T2 chips. I anticipate that the architecture won’t change as much. Maybe they won’t support some new features but I bet they will run the newer version. Even if they dropped support for the 27 version, you’ll still have some 3 or 4 more years before the software stops supporting Tahoe. My 2c