Java 25 LTS was released last year. All these LTS versions are still receiving updates. You'll only be in trouble if you need some new feature of Java that will only begin to exist in JDK 27 or later, but want to run on macOS/x64.
Homebrew 30d says 27% Intel
My gut says 20-25% is a reasonable ballpark.
Apple generally provides 6-8 years of OS support for hardware. My 6.5 year old 2019 Macbook Pro works fine with macOS 26; macOS 27 will drop support in September 2026; macOS 28 will drop Rosetta Intel support. macOS 26 get updates thru September 2028 at which point all Intel mac hardware will be >8 years old.
[1]: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/processormfg/
[2]: https://formulae.brew.sh/analytics/homebrew-os-arch-ci/30d/
Neither statistic comes from a sample group that's more representative of the average user, who is mostly browsing the web and using a handful of undemanding applications, and is therefore less motivated to upgrade for performance reasons.
PS: and on my Win11 machine Firefox says that I'm on 'Windows NT 10.0', which AFAIK is the same NT version that was also reported on Win10.
It's macOS 28 that will no longer run x86_64 apps, although games are exempt. Rosetta is basically going game only at that point. They haven't announced how long it will keep working in this capacity.
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/Virtualization/run...
Not saying it is always good, in fact I would say there is rarely a "good" happy outcome in these cases, just trying to give the alternative perspective when you have to make these calls.
In the same way that PowerPC and m68k hardware still works, sure. Apple silicon is so performant that (much like those previous two hardware jumps) it's not worth maintaining support for the old arch at this point.
Apple's really cut off gaming for good. My only hope is that someone ports FEX/Proton to macOS, or finds a way to get it running with proper hardware acceleration.
But Linux has gotten better in that time period, too. I wouldn’t say it’s quite as refined out of the box. But Linux is ahead in the ability to do whatever you want and keep using your old hardware.
For people who care about how computers work, I think Linux is a more stimulating environment than macOS to work in. Even though—or partly because—you may have to dig in a little deeper to get things working the ways you want.
But also the unified memory on macs is compelling for somewhat related reasons.
If it weren’t for the supply chain nightmares on top of nightmares, we’d be experiencing a nice little moment.
Or switch software. Windows will run via Boot Camp and depending on your hardware Linux might work too.
Being a laptop, the power draw is almost negligible and it doesn't take much space.
Hell, last week I was on holidays without my computer, and I have borrowed such a machine. The battery has been replaced so it still has a long battery time. It was as fast as I could hope (and I'm quite sensitive to this stuff!), the only thing slowing me down was the keyboard layout, the window management of the OS, and the touchpad gestures not responding as well as what I have on Linux (notably swipe for back in Firefox, I was quite surprised).
This thing can't be updated anymore though and even Firefox gave up, so I advised switching to Linux to keep things safe.
Aside from the OS, this thing does 100% the job it needs to do. Recent hardware won't do better because that's not the limiting factor.
Even if money is not an issue, replacing hardware has environmental costs, and that's in this spirit that I answered no, not necessarily better.
If it already does the job it needs to, does it really need a bleeding edge version of Java?
The environmental cost is less than ordering a pizza. A product that someone uses for years is not going to be an environmental issue.
People don't like to wait for their computer. The nuance is quite important.
> They don't like when their computer sounds like a jet engine. Especially among other people whose computers don't do that. People like not having to worry too much charging their computer.
But the 2012 Mac I'm talking about does all that for what it's used for: completely silent (and trust me, I'm quite sensitive to that), lasts on battery long enough, as fast as possible (of course a new machine would be faster, but it would not be meaningful for the use case).
> The environmental cost is less than ordering a pizza. A product that someone uses for years is not going to be an environmental issue.
That's completely wrong.
I'm not sure why you are pushing here.
With that said anything M1 or newer is going to be a delightful upgrade for you. An enormous jump in performance, battery life, and thermal performance.
OK, seems reasonable. Next sentence:
> There will be no guarantee that the port will build, much less function.
This... Is something quite different? This isn't what I think "deprecation" means. The message should say "no longer maintained" if that's what they mean. And it should include the "not guaranteed to build, much less function" part.
Well, the Latin word for "left" is "sinister", so that tracks.
[Submitted title was "As of JDK 27, Oracle engineers will thus stop maintaining the macOS/x64 port", which is a quote from the article, but was a bit confusing in the title]
> Apple has transitioned its hardware products to the AArch64 processor architecture and is phasing out support for x64. Oracle engineers will thus stop maintaining the macOS/x64 port as of JDK 27.
However, I believe OP is right, it’s un…grammatical? -parasable? in the headline? There’s no…referent?
More plain spoken :) - there’s nothing indicating what lead to the thus. I.e. “it’s raining thus I brought my umbrella”, we’re missing the “It’s raining” part
Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced at May's Worldwide Developer Conference in San Jose, Calif., Mac OS X will come with a full implementation of Sun Microsystems Inc.'s Java 2, Standard Edition. It will be the only high-volume OS that does so
Oracle screwed themselves lately, the licensing push basically started IT departments with exterminating Java and anything related to it.