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Gigabyte's Z490 Motherboard Lineup Shows Up Early

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I doubt it Asus would change VID/PID just to circumvent macOS checks. Also, why doesn't Apple block the VID/PIDs of the other cards?

Plus, Asus hasn't released any firmware updates for older revisions.

Well something had to have changed on the hardware side to suddenly be recognized in newer versions. That doesn't just happen willy-nilly on its own or else the originals would work OOB too. And there's still no way to tell whether you're getting a revised model or an original model until you've opened the package and put it in to test. Still looking for something a bit cheaper than the Synology one. $140 on top of having to buy a new router and the upcoming MB8611 cable modem (it's got a 2.5G port on it instead of using LAG/LACP) isn't in the cards.
 
Max. 5 years. The technical revolution is so fast.
The 2013 Mac Pro still has full Catalina support nearly 7 years later. 2012 iMacs are still supported 8 years later. So the answer is somewhere between 6 to 8 years for the majority of Macs that Apple sells.
 
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The 2013 Mac Pro still has full Catalina support 7 years later. 2012 iMacs are still supported 8 years later. So the answer is somewhere between 7 to 8 years.

The MacBook3,1, MacBook4,1, and MacBook4,2s only had less than 4 years of official OS support. They shipped with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and last officially supported OS was Mac OS X 10.7.5 Lion.

Screen Shot 2020-04-25 at 10.07.08 PM.png

Source:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacBook_(2006–2012)

Screen Shot 2020-04-25 at 10.11.18 PM.png Screen Shot 2020-04-25 at 10.11.32 PM.png
 
Well something had to have changed on the hardware side to suddenly be recognized in newer versions. That doesn't just happen willy-nilly on its own or else the originals would work OOB too. And there's still no way to tell whether you're getting a revised model or an original model until you've opened the package and put it in to test. Still looking for something a bit cheaper than the Synology one. $140 on top of having to buy a new router and the upcoming MB8611 cable modem (it's got a 2.5G port on it instead of using LAG/LACP) isn't in the cards.

I got my Sybe AQC107 card for $99+tax.

If you want to go cheap, you can always look for an Intel X540 card on eBay and do the VID/PID mods in Linux then use the SmallTree drivers. These cards can be found for well under $100.
 
Those were cut short due to 32 bit EFI and post Lion required a 64 bit EFI. I don't see a 128 bit EFI any time soon so it's the exception that happened back then.

It shows that there's always the possibility that Apple can cut support short. In the above example, it was due to a switch to 64 bit EFI... The next time might be due to a switch to ARM...
 
The next time might be due to a switch to ARM
Very true. Here's a possible scenario. Say an individual, 1 person business buys the 2019 MP. They spend $10,000 to get a decently specced machine, planning to keep it for 9-10 years. The room for upgrades of ram, CPU, graphics and storage make that very possible. Now Apple switches to ARM based MPs in 2021. After that they drop support for the '19 MP in 2023, about 4 years after this individual bought one. The value (resale) of that MP drops precipitously. No one wants them anymore so he can't get much back from his initial investment. He can't upgrade to the most current Logic Pro, FCP X or XCode anymore. Isn't that one Professional Apple customer that will be lost forever. Wouldn't you be if you bought a MP right now and this happens 3 years later ? This is why I think they'll keep supporting Intel Mac Pros for much longer than 4-5 years past late 2019. Even big video production houses that spend hundreds of thousands of dollars will not be very happy to have to upgrade all their MPs that quickly. They could certainly switch to Premiere Pro or Davinci Resolve and use a PC workstation instead.

After Apple put so much time and research into reviving the MP tower, now upgradable again, I don't think they will do something like this to make Pros give up on them for the long term. There's no reason they have to. They might keep developing an Intel version of macOS specifically for the 2019 Mac Pro even if all other Macs switch to ARM. macProOS. That would even be great for this community. They've now got a unique OS specifically for iPad Pro. Why not for the Mac Pro too ? The existence of the 2019 MP has shown that Apple now does listen to what their customers want. If Steve Jobs was still CEO they would likely cut off MP support in 4 years and say "tough luck." "Buy your new ARM based MP and be happy with it." "If not, we'll get along fine if we lose you as a customer."
 
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Very true. Here's a possible scenario. Say an individual, 1 person business buys the 2019 MP. They spend $10,000 to get a decently specced machine, planning to keep it for 9-10 years. The room for upgrades of ram, CPU, graphics and storage make that very possible. Now Apple switches to ARM based MPs in 2021. After that they drop support for the '19 MP in 2023, about 4 years after this individual bought one. The value (resale) of that MP drops precipitously. No one wants them anymore so he can't get much back from his initial investment. He can't upgrade to the most current Logic Pro, FCP X or XCode anymore. Isn't that one Professional Apple customer that will be lost forever. Wouldn't you be if you bought a MP right now and this happens 3 years later ? This is why I think they'll keep supporting Intel Mac Pros for much longer than 4-5 years past late 2019. Even big video production houses that spend hundreds of thousands of dollars will not be very happy to have to upgrade all their MPs that quickly. They could certainly switch to Premiere Pro or Davinci Resolve and use a PC workstation instead.

After Apple put so much time and research into reviving the MP tower, now upgradable again, I don't think they will do something like this to make Pros give up on them for the long term. There's no reason they have to. They might keep developing an Intel version of macOS specifically for the 2019 Mac Pro even if all other Macs switch to ARM. macProOS. That would even be great for this community. They've now got a unique OS specifically for iPad Pro. Why not for the Mac Pro too ?

Absolutely. I was extremely pissed when my MacBook4,2 couldn't be upgraded anymore. It was the last time I bought a Mac laptop new.

The problem is that this scenario has happened and Apple did set a precedent. This opens the door to the possibility that it may happen again and there are absolutely no guarantees that any Mac you buy will get official macOS update support beyond 4 years.

I'm sure there were a lot more of those MacBooks sold than the new Mac Pros. If burning so many more users didn't bother Apple, I don't see why burning the far fewer Mac Pro owners would.

I'm still hopeful that the switch to a new platform is, in fact, not a switch to ARM, but a switch to AMD... There has been references to AMD CPUs in macOS found. As far as I know, no one has seen any references to ARM CPUs in macOS yet.
 
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