Some Macs are getting fewer updates than they used to. Here’s why it’s a problem

(credit: Aurich Lawson)

When macOS Ventura was announced earlier this month, its system requirements were considerably stricter than those for macOS Monterey, which was released just eight months ago as of this writing. Ventura requires a Mac made in 2017 or later, dropping support for a wide range of Monterey-supported Mac models released between 2013 and 2016.

This certainly seems more aggressive than new macOS releases from just a few years ago, where system requirements would tighten roughly every other year or so. But how bad is it, really? Is a Mac purchased in 2016 getting fewer updates than one bought in 2012 or 2008 or 1999? And if so, is there an explanation beyond Apple's desire for more users to move to shiny new Apple Silicon Macs?

Using data from Apple's website and EveryMac.com, we pulled together information on more than two decades of Mac releases—almost everything Apple has released between the original iMac in late 1998 and the last Intel Macs in 2020. We recorded when each model was released, when Apple stopped selling each model, the last officially supported macOS release for each system, and the dates when those versions of macOS received their last point updates (i.e. 10.4.11, 11.6) and their last regular security patches. (I've made some notes on how I chose to streamline and organize the data, which I've put at the end of this article).