How long will the last Intel Macs be supported? macOS Sonoma gives us some hints

Every day I use my Mac intel 16” I regret not waiting 6more months and get the M1 version.
- Sold my 16 inch a month before the M1 came because I knew what was coming and I could spend that time away from a laptop. I got the full specced air (cause that’s what was release first) and that air was way snappier and equal or faster for my tasks (programming, photo editing) than the almost maxed out 16 inch. Best decision and you should switch asap.
  
  I’d rather wait for the M3 release or whatever if it’s gonna be the same price for more performance.
- I got an Intel mini at work just before the M1s came out and then an M1 MBAir for home use. I have noticed the latter runs circles around the former, even with Rosetta emulating Intel. My main reason for buying the M1 was that I liked the fanless (and therefore noiseless) design and saw it as a good fit for home recordings on my multichannel mixer, but have been quite impressed with its overall performance.
- Ow, that hurts.. But on the other hand, when it came out, it was cutting edge tech if you were in the mac ecosystem! I remember seeing all those benchmarks and they fixed the fan throttling issues compared to the previous 15" macbook pros and had newly improved, studio-level mics/speakers 😄
  I have a M1 air, and while it runs circles around the beefier intel macs, the screen and the speakers are shit. I wish I had waited for the M1 pros to drop.. I guess it's the circle of life, haha!
  
  It was. I had been holding off because of the butterfly keyboard issues of the macs before. When it was released, that was my main reason.
- It's the opposite for me. Every time I use my work M1 mac, I miss my personal Intel one. I have so many issues with the M1. It's by far the worst mac I've used.
  
  Wanna do a swap?
  
  I got an intel right when the M1's came out because I didn't want to be a guinea pig for the M1. I guess I will move up to M2 when those prices start to fall because the fan is a huge drag. Otherwise I love it; it was my first Mac.

I myself only use "unsupported" macs I'm fine till oclp(opencore) stops supporting them. Probably when apple drops the last intel mac.
- This is a cool project. Thanks for this I had not heard of it before.
  
  Really easy to use and set up. Highly recommend when you have an older mac(my 2012 i5 8gb doing perfectly fine for lighter tasks and normal use)
  It's been pretty much the go to option for unsupported macs since dosdude1 pachter was discontinued.

Would really love it if Adobe would become compatible with M1. I have an M1 Max and editing anything other than ProRes 1080 is impossible.
- that's ridiculous they haven't added apple silicon support yet. literally every app on my Mac has native support by now. with the money adobe rakes in there's no excuse for them.
  
  They also dragged their feet switching from PPC to Intel. Something tells me Adobe isn’t using Xcode, where you just flip a switch.

You can always upgrade them to a Linux distro. I run my Mac with fedora.
- Do you use a mouse or trackpad? Last time I used Linux on a Mac my only issues with loss of smooth trackpad.
  
  Linux on m-chip macs are so good that Linus uses one himself.
  Thats the linux linus, not ltt linus
  
  I use my track pad but my Logitech mouse also works
- Is it better to run a linux distro on an old mac or go for an older OSX version?
  
  Well you can just have an up to date Linux system, that can be as bloated or bloatless as you want. It may take away some battery life and cause some thermal issues because of how Apple designs their products though, but you can probably fix that with some fiddling.
  Really if you have the know-how, you can configure Linux any way you want.
  
  In my case, I have a Mac Mini Server 2011 but I use it to listen to music in HiFi. I haven't received my DAC yet, but when it comes, perhaps I will swap to a linux distro. Sound in macOS is soooo well made.
  
  Running a Linux distro. Just for the security on a modern browser will be worth while

They'll be supported by Linux

Not sure they will give you a choice. I just had to give up my intel 16 inch due to it throttling all the cpus down. Even the jet engines couldn't keep it cool enough to not throttle.

I have an MacBook Air intel (2020). I’m really tempted to just sell it or trade it in and get a m1 or m2 air. I have an m2 air for work. The only downside is 1 external monitor but I’ll probably never use it that way. I will miss being able to use virtual box. I know time is running out on the intel variants though.

Intel will get this year’s update, and next year’s update and be canned after that.