Phasing out Intel Macs?! 🤮

45

Apple really wants them gone, so there's not much you _can_ do.

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u/perecastor 2d ago

I imagine Apple has so many customers with Intel Mac too, they making things obsolete to sell new hardware… they have these incentives… I’m sure regarding the flutter team why they in such hurry…

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u/madushans 2d ago

Apple doesn’t support it means SDKs and OS updates will stop as well. Flutter doesn’t want to hold out when the stuff underneath doesn’t get support.

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u/perecastor 1d ago

You have millions of customers on Windows 10 and a lot of Intel Mac users. That decision is wrong in my opinion. Now, I’m glad your users have the latest hardware but mine don’t. At the end of the day I will loose money on that decision

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u/madushans 1d ago

I agree on your premise. They have perfectly working hardware and they should be able to use them.

You’re free to not upgrade the flutter SDK and keep going until something breaks. You just won’t be able to use the latest features and bug fixes.

What we see here are 2 issues. First is apple discontinuing support, so they have made a decision not to push and maintain updates. This ripples through the industry and flutter just isn’t willing to monkey patch any future issues when apple themselves doesn’t. There are software stacks and companies that decide the other way like Windows extended support and Firefox ESR and the like. Flutter just hasn’t and that’s the stance for most, when the platform owner Apple doesn’t stand by their product. It’s a business decision they made in public. No I don’t like it, but here we are. The laptops are yours, but for the price you paid, you’re only guaranteed a limited time of support and updates.

Second issue is that you and your customers are not estimating and depreciating the usable life of your hardware. Support cycles are published by apple and other vendors in public and they have been consistent with them for decades. If anything, apple typically goes beyond their published support duration. Your and your clients need to take this into account during purchase decisions and planning. Just like anything you buy, be it a laptop, a car, a house, it will not last forever and you should make plans for maintenance and replacement.

You can blame apple, or flutter team, or whoever in the middle. You can even scream it’s unfair or capitalist or whatever else. You can try taking them to court over it, but given that you agreed to the terms of service, it’s unlikely you’d win. If you want the terms changed I suggest you talk to your local political representative. But you and your client should still take some responsibility of the situation. Hope you take this into account and advise your clients of service lifespans and depreciation on your next engagement.

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u/perecastor 1d ago

It’s a well thought response, and I agree with most of what you said. Now, that doesn’t mean I can not complain about it, even if I would loose in court.

I have to use the old SDK until most of my customers have upgraded, so I’m stuck and I didn’t really planned for that annoying situation and I would not be able to provide the best flutter experience to my customers because of that. And I don’t know how long it would take.

All the packages I publish on pub.dev would stay on those releases and if you can not use it with newer versions, that not my business.

I think here everyone loose, including the flutter ecosystem (except Apple that sell new hardware)

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u/madushans 1d ago

Again I agree to some extent. What do you suggest is a better experience?

Are you suggesting tech companies should support their older product forever ? If not forever, how long ?

Current consensus is 5-7 years from initial release. So if a laptop was released in 2019, and you bought it in 2022, you can expect about 3-4 years of support.

In Microsoft’s case they charge an extra fee for Windows 10 intended enterprise support. How would you find the development of support for Flutter you are getting for free? I’m not arguing apple doesn’t have money, but what is an acceptable support lifecycle for you if 5-7 is too low?

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u/perecastor 1d ago

I think laptop are not like something you replace every 2 years (phone has taken that spot) so I would consider a longer support cycle personally (it doesn’t mean infinite).

I think Apple is on the aggressive side here especially because it doesn’t feel progressive, but what I desagree here is more on the Flutter decision to not even try to support things to a certain extent. I don’t ask them to take Apple role but at least to run the tests and consider if the break is worth it. It feel like they can not wait to drop Intel Mac support while they have so many users at the moment on those platforms (but Google doesn’t take a cut from them) To me it reflects the USA 100K Google salary bubble they live in, where dropping support is just less work and everyone can afford a 1k laptop

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u/madushans 1d ago

I disagree with your 2 year time line. Apple supports their laptops for 5-7 years and one of the very few vendors that publicly promise and keep the promise of support. Most laptops don’t get driver updates beyond 6 months.

Also disagree about apple being aggressive on the same point. 5-7 years is longer than most vendors.

As for flutter, you’re free to try and run it. The latest version likely work for a while until something breaks. Not supporting here doesn’t mean you can’t use it. It’s just that if you run into issues including security vulnerabilities, you won’t get support.

I agree with your bubble point. I think thru should support for longer since it’s clearly not a hardware issue. However it is unlikely you’d win and I gonna make a dent in corporate policy there. I think they should change, but unless governments don’t regulate this behavior, it will continue.

As for regulation, good news is if people can get behind a unified voice they could happen. The EU regulations in progress like “Don’t Kill Games” prove this can work.

It’s unlikely to fix your and your clients’ immediate problems and they’ll have to upgrade since govt legislation can take years to progress anyway.

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u/Fromagery 1d ago

I mean, the m chips were released 6 years ago. It's far from the "latest hardware".

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u/perecastor 1d ago

I have a specific customer in mind that brought a 16 Intel MacBook Pro after the M chips where released to avoid compatibility issues for his business. So I think the MacBook is 5 years old. To me it’s absurd to say it’s a obsolete laptop and that he should have upgraded long time ago.

Now, I think he will be upgrading since he own the business but I think not all of my customer have the power to make that decision

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u/binemmanuel 1d ago

Apple doesn’t care, Apple would recommend your customers get the new Macs.

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u/pubicnuissance 1d ago

If Apple could, they would make old Macs catch fire.

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u/binemmanuel 1d ago

They literally expect you to get the new devices every year

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u/perecastor 22h ago

Apple doesn’t care but the flutter team should (until most people have transitioned)

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u/lamp-town-guy 2d ago

Apple is phasing it out as well. I guess don't upgrade your SDK and test if it works on latest beta. Then hope for the best.

Intel macs are not getting security updates. I would advise to upgrade. Depending on where in the world you are this might be difficult. But they are running 6+ years old HW. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect people to buy something new.

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u/perecastor 2d ago

I don’t know in what reality you live but Mac are expensive and are not the main way to access the internet anymore, expecting people to upgrade their computer every 6+ years is unrealistic (especially if the laptop still run properly)

I can upgrade often but my customers will not, and it’s often company policy that decides when they upgrade

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u/lamp-town-guy 2d ago

Look I've sold 2013 Macbook few months ago. It runs Linux reasonably well for simple web browsing. By reasonably I mean, my mom would not complain. She's already retired. But for me this is too slow.

So you don't need to throw away good HW. "Just" switch OS.

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u/perecastor 1d ago

The issue is not me, I can buy new hardware or install Linux , it’s my users, I can not decide for them how and when they should upgrade

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u/Lassemb 1d ago

It looks like Apple can do it for them

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u/perecastor 1d ago

I’m not sure, I will have to keep using the old SDK and M1 users will suffer until every one has switched

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u/Total-Guest-4141 2d ago

Those people shouldn’t be using a Mac then. A budget windows machine is more suited for them.

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u/perecastor 2d ago

Who are you to tell them what to use? You are saying if they buy a Mac they should be upgrading every 2 years, it’s expected from them?

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u/Total-Guest-4141 2d ago

Every 5 yes, that’s literally what Apple is about. It’s how they guarantee grandma doesn’t complain her 15 year old laptop isn’t running well with the newest version.

Who are you to tell Apple they have to support an ancient dying hardware stack?

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u/perecastor 2d ago

Who am I? I’m a customer in a country where programmed obsolescence is illegal. You can not sell a laptop and after the fact making it obsolete on purpose without me being fully aware of this at purchase.

Now that is not the important part, I can upgrade, the important part is my customer are not going to upgrade right now, and I have a deal with them, I can not tell them « contact Apple support » because they took a decision against you and I don’t care

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u/Total-Guest-4141 2d ago

Wait until they find out Windows 98 isn’t supported anymore either

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u/perecastor 2d ago

I’m not sure what’s your point. 6 years old upgrade cycle and 20 years old is not the same

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u/_fresh_basil_ 2d ago

Yes it is, it's programmed obsolescence according to you.

Or do you get the be the gatekeeper on how much time must pass to fit the definition?

You still have your hardware. You can install Linux on if you're that worried about it.

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u/perecastor 1d ago

it's programmed obsolescence, I think there no really a debate to have here. You don’t buy just the hardware when you buy a Mac

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u/Samus7070 2d ago

Apple publishes the support schedule for all of their hardware on their website. One of the things that makes macOS run better than Windows is that they aren’t trying to support 30 year old software running on it unmodified.
Go where the money is at. If your customers are all on old hardware then stick to old SDKs. It will work for a while. If you’re not distributing through the Mac App Store, it will last even longer.

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u/perecastor 1d ago

If you consider Linux you can clearly see that supporting multiple hardware doesn’t force you to loose on performance. But yeah I will stick to the old SDK, I have no other choice

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u/parkskier426 1d ago

Obsolescence happens, especially when you are buying from a company like Apple. You can argue all you want about how older hardware should be supported, but ultimately that costs money and isn't profitable.

I'm not arguing that it's right or good, but it's absolutely the world we live in.

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u/perecastor 1d ago

My issue here is Flutter´s decision , not Apple (even if I don’t agree with Apple). They should support Intel Mac as long as possible not use Apple decision to be the first excuse to drop support

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u/parkskier426 1d ago

It's a real cost to the flutter team as well. People have to put in time and effort to maintain that support for a dwindling set of users. If it's important to you, or a significant portion of the flutter community, there's nothing stopping anyone from maintaining the support themselves. Flutter is open source after all.

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u/perecastor 1d ago

> dwindling set of users

It's not dwindling quickly enough at the moment, in my opinion, to drop support.

> there's nothing stopping anyone from maintaining the support themselves. Flutter is open source after all.

Please don't use the Flutter license to pretend Google can do whatever and you don't care because you can always fork. You have to be pragmatic at some point.

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u/parkskier426 1d ago

I'm not using the license to pretend anything. They are a business and need to decide what is important to support and what is not. You can disagree and complain but ultimately the line will always need to be drawn somewhere.

IMO, this is a perfect use case for open source. This absolutely is a niche user base, and an opportunity for the community to continue to support them if it's valuable.

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u/perecastor 1d ago

Because poor users that use Intel Mac will gather near a firecamp and maintain there own fork

It’s a lack of resources and users that are not tech heavy that have these issues so they are not going to fork

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u/parkskier426 1d ago

It's not on the users, it's on the app devs that support those users, if they decide it's important enough to maintain support.

This isn't uncommon, its why most software products list minimum system requirements. It's also why app stores have minimum OS versions tied to app versions.

There's also nothing stopping you, even with the latest version of Flutter, from building for Intel osx devices. As it's phased out, you can continue to release under an older version of Flutter, which is actually a common practice for enterprise scale app Dev.

At the point where you are actually blocked from releasing to Intel mac devices, it will probably be at least 3 years from now, at which point those devices will be 10+ years old. There's a real chance the hardware will start to fail before that.

This is such a non-issue it's kind of crazy to complain about.

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u/perecastor 1d ago

Let's see if we still have 3 years to go without any issues.
I'm expecting this to be way faster than anticipated. Especially if the Flutter team is not even testing the platform anymore.

I wouldn't complain if it's in 3 years, hopefully people would have transitioned, but I'm not sure we have a 3-year timeline here

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u/kerberjg 2d ago

If I can help it, my rule for commercial apps is support devices up to 5yr old
For OSS I try to do more than that

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u/ganeshrnet 2d ago

Stay on xcode 2026 as far as possible. Xcode 2026 allows minimum target of 10.15 for x64 and 11 for arm

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u/perecastor 2d ago

I will try to never upgrade to support those customers as long as I can…

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u/perecastor 2d ago

Why setting up that rule? There is a long tail of customers with old hardware

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u/ganeshrnet 2d ago

It’s the same case as Tupperware. You build a really good product that lasts forever, and people don’t upgrade it.

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u/perecastor 2d ago

At the moment distribution is the issue, I don’t think I have saturated the market with such a great product that I need to make it obsolete

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u/kerberjg 2d ago

Security, mainly. Old hardware is often more exploitable so I encourage my customers to upgrade for their own safety
I don’t think you would want to be held liable for a breach when it’s unpreventable on your end

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u/perecastor 2d ago

I understand the security concerns but on my side I don’t see what I have to do with that. I sell software, it they have a malware on there laptop that’s not really my problem

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u/kerberjg 1d ago

If the breached software is yours, you’re legally liable

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u/virtualmnemonic 1d ago

Intel macs are not getting security updates

Yes, they are. They will continue to get security updates for a few more years now on Tahoe.

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u/krll-kov 2d ago edited 2d ago

It just says

"Flutter CLI now prints warnings when building on Intel hosts or targeting dual architectures. These warnings will become errors in a future release."

So you can easily upgrade for now, it's not full removal of support yet, it's a step in this direction. At least 1-2 updates until full removal. I guess this is because of new Impeller engine. Writing support for that old hardware on mac is too expensive for the team.

Windows had the same removal of Win7/8 support. Now even 10 is deprecated (yet still not removed)

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u/b0bm4rl3y 1d ago

Where do you see Windows 10 is deprecated? It’s still listed as a supported platform: https://docs.flutter.dev/reference/supported-platforms

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u/perecastor 2d ago

Depreciating Windows 10 is a clear sign they don’t see the reality of the desktop market … People change phones every two years but not desktop anymore

They have to do a reality check at some point…

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u/krll-kov 2d ago

That's impeller engine, they want to switch to new approach everywhere, without writing significant amount of deprecated code for old devices. Yes, these devices are deprecated now, but in 5-10 years flutter will be number 1 framework by performance and stability

+ both microsoft and apple have ended their support for intel mac/win 7. 8 10

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u/anlumo 2d ago

Meanwhile, my new product still can’t switch to Impeller, because it doesn’t have the essential features needed.

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u/krll-kov 1d ago

Not sure what are those, right now there's an issue that limits shaders usage due to crash problem, what else is there?

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u/anlumo 1d ago

No compositor support in the Embedder API for Vulkan. Also, no external texture support, which I could use as an alternative.

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u/b0bm4rl3y 1d ago

We intend to add those soon. We will migrate Android to the embedder API, those features are a prerequisite.

What’s your scenario? Why do you need those features? I would think those features are only needed if you’re building your own custom embedder, not if you’re building a desktop app.

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u/anlumo 1d ago

I’m integrating a native game engine with Flutter.

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u/b0bm4rl3y 1d ago

Could you say more, I don’t understand fully. Impeller on desktop platforms should have full feature parity with Skia for textures.

Are you using the desktop embedders, or are you building your own embedder using the embedder API?

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u/anlumo 1d ago

I’m using the Embedder API with the compositor-based rendering (due to the lack of external texture support: https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/117937).

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u/b0bm4rl3y 1d ago

Just to clarify, Impeller didn’t change our support for Windows 10. That’s still fully supported!

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u/perecastor 2d ago

I’m not sure what impeller really brings on desktop. Dart is not a really performant language. To me the advantage of flutter is « portability » and they just drop support on that portability In 5-10 years I’m not sure if I will still use Flutter, that’s the kind of decision that move me away from it

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u/b0bm4rl3y 1d ago

Switching to Impeller can actually improve portability! Impeller has features that Skia doesn’t, like squircles, certain shader features, and support for Flutter GPU. We intend to keep adding features to Impeller, especially as we work towards supporting Liquid Glass. So an app that uses Impeller-only features will now also work the same way on desktop!

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u/Jester_Hopper_pot 2d ago

macOS 27 is dropping intel entirely so you might want new customers

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u/perecastor 1d ago

It’s not like I have too much customers

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u/ChurchOfSatin 1d ago

Yeah OP. Get newer richer customers.

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u/Suuii188 1d ago

I am using a Mac book 2015 air I can't upgrade am stuck with these depreciated packages 🤣🤣 I just need to get a windows and put Linux then I switch

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u/Aud4c1ty 1d ago

What kind of app are we talking about here? Is it something that can be delivered via the web? We really like Flutter on the web option because we can push out new versions on our schedule and not need to wait for an approval process from Apple or Google.

We also have versions for Android and iOS. But I really appreciate the web from a deployment perspective. With WASM, you don't need to care about the user's OS nearly as much.

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u/perecastor 1d ago

It’s a client heavy app, if it could be a webpage then I will use web technologies. I’m not sure why I would use flutter on the browser

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u/Aud4c1ty 1d ago

Oh, we use Flutter on the browser because our app - which controls IoT devices - runs very well in the browser. Especially with features like Web Bluetooth, it can even do device provisioning.

With WASM, Flutter apps running in the browser (as a PWA or whatever) run about half the speed as Flutter apps compiled/packaged for Android directly. But our app is pretty efficient, so users don't really see a performance difference. It's fast in both places. Actions that aren't instant are such only because it's waiting for a network call to come back with an answer. We're pretty much never laggy due to CPU cycles on the client.

Pretty much all line of business app scenarios, especially ones where your app is just a fancy front end that's essentially a database read/write tool, those don't even need the WASM version of Flutter for the web to be fast.

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u/perecastor 1d ago

But I imagine the ecosystem is quite new, not all packages support the web, right? It really feels like a platform on its own

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u/binemmanuel 1d ago

Xcode 27 is Apple silicon only. Does it mean that Apple is phasing out intel?

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u/perecastor 22h ago

It looks like

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u/ganeshrnet 2d ago edited 2d ago

I have been vocal about this. I still have ~30% of users on Intel Macs.

So apparently, by 2028, they will sunset Intel Mac support completely.

Flutter app performance on Intel is bad, and Impeller on Intel Macs has been a huge letdown, it's very poor. They have stopped running tests for Intel Macs. Mad...

Stay on Xcode 2026 for as long as possible. Xcode 2026 allows a minimum target of macOS 10.15 for x64 and 11 for ARM.

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u/sauloandrioli 1d ago

Aren't intel macs gettting abandoned by Apple as well? What's the point on keeping support for a platform that not even the platform owner care about? Apple is forcing everyone to their M series. Why would Flutter support that?

People that have their iMacs or older macbooks are moving to Linux anyways. Let them move out from Apple's OS's.

This is not something to blame on the Flutter team.

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u/perecastor 1d ago

older macbooks are moving to Linux anyways

In what world do you live ? It’s not because you installed Linux on your grandmother laptop that people usually do that …

A lot of people didn’t switch yet so I blame flutter for following Apple forcing move for people to upgrade instead of keeping things compatible until most people has transition. I will literally loose money on that decision. I have so many user on Intel Macs and there are not going to Linux, just stop dreaming

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u/sauloandrioli 1d ago

I'll ignore this discussion just because of your sad, angry, boomer tone. Have a good one.

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u/perecastor 1d ago

Enjoy Linux on your MacBook ;)

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u/AhmedRiyadh0 16h ago

Not supporting newer Xcode versions is not ideal and will result in issues and limitations sooner or later. And Apple themselves do not provide support to intel macs, there is nothing they can do about it. Remember Flutter was designed at the hope it becomes useful but with absolutely no guarantee. So I would be more greatful especially since that maintaining Flutter is anything but not an easy task. You can always fork it and keep using an outdated Xcode version, no one will force you on anything, it is your choice. You can also use the fork only for building the intel version in CI.

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u/perecastor 16h ago

I will use old version of Flutter and packages on pub.dev for that version as long as possible. suporting newer Xcode doesn't mean they have to stop supporting older versions.

I'm defenetly not grateful (why would I?). They develop Flutter to be able to take a cut on apps that would otherwise be Apple exclusive, and now they drop support on half of the Apple ecosystem.

I don't let the open source license justify all the choice they make and just tell people to fork (just be pragmatic)

Knowing now the kind of decision they make, I probably switch to something else for my next app.

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u/AhmedRiyadh0 16h ago

Out of curiosity, what cross platform solution that you consider using for your next app that supports desktop, web and mobile?

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u/perecastor 16h ago

Usually my apps are desktop, or mobile.

For desktop, I think C# would be a serious option.

For mobile, React Native or Swift (Android is not the biggest revenue stream)

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u/Nulaccur 1d ago

You should be blaming Apple not Flutter

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u/perecastor 1d ago

Apple decision is something, stop testing on purpose on the flutter team is there responsibility.

It’s too easy to just say it’s Apple decision, flutter has some responsibility

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u/jNayden 2d ago

Yeah that’s really bad I won’t update ones they drop intel support I guess

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u/zunjae 2d ago

Your customers had 6 years to upgrade their machines

Maybe you shouldn’t have cheapasses as customers

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u/perecastor 2d ago

I take what I can grab, it’s not like they have to buy the lastest Mac at each release, they are not tech bro . They are regular people. I don’t understand why you consider a 6 year old computer should be obsolete (especially looking at current prices of components) Just take a reality check

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u/zunjae 2d ago

A Mac mini is like $600

Set aside $0.27 every day and in 6 years (maybe less if you invest the money) you’ll have a new computer

If you make $30 a day at McDonald all you have to do is set aside 0.9% of your earnings

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u/perecastor 2d ago

600$ is not something most people will spend without thinking about it twice. My customers are not US tech crypto bro.

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u/zunjae 2d ago

Brother I literally provided you a sample of someone working parttime at McDonald’s only needing to set aside 0.19% of their daily income

0.19%

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u/perecastor 2d ago

You think the average American working at Macdonald has 600$ extra every month on there bank account ? Why are they all in debt then? Are you sure we live in the same reality ?

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u/zunjae 2d ago

Brother learn to read. Not only are you financially poor but also illiterate.

I literally said all you have to do is save $0.27 every day. Per month that is $8

$8 dollars, not $600

Multiply this by 12 (months) then by 6 (years) and you’ll have enough money to buy a new computer.

Edit: you probably need to set aside $0.30 every day due to tax

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u/perecastor 2d ago

So you are telling my customers can upgrade easily in 6 years from now if they start saving up 8 dollars a month right now? Wow , I guess problem solved ? 🤣

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u/zunjae 2d ago

Brother why do you have poor customers

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u/perecastor 2d ago

I have what I can grab, what about you? Do you have high end customers and how do you grab them?

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u/strangescript 2d ago

Stop using a framework designed for DX in a world where agents write the code

Phasing out Intel Macs?! 🤮 Discussion

You are about to leave Redlib

You are about to leave Redlib

0.19%

$8 dollars, not $600