Apple Plans to Phase Out Intel Mac Support by 2028

Apple decided to part ways with Intel CPUs at least as far back as 2018, but the road to actually jettisoning systems with the processors has been a long one. The end is now in sight, though: Apple made clear during its WWDC event this week that it will finally purge Intel Macs from its ecosystem in 2028, as Engadget reports. If you have an Intel Mac, your macOS security updates will stop then. And that’s if your Intel Mac is even new enough to still get updates.
The demise of security updates for Intel Macs means more to software developers than it does to most Mac users. After all, Apple has built Macs around its own Arm processors for years. App developers have Tahoe and the following version of macOS to transition away from x86 support.
Apple previewed macOS Tahoe 26 this week at WWDC; Tahoe will be available in the fall and includes a large design refresh and new AI features—the most intriguing of which is Live Translation, which “instantly” translates texts to your preferred language. That’s a nice touch, but Live Translation for FaceTime is even more exciting: It will provide captions in your language when your FT partner speaks in a different language. Apple says you’ll see the captions while you still hear the user’s voice, suggesting that it, too, will be nearly instantaneous. It can work similar magic for calls with the Phone app. That’s the stuff of sci-fi movies.
Back to Intel Macs: Only Macs built in 2019 (specifically, the Mac Pro and the 16-inch MacBook Pro) and 2020 (the 27-inch iMac and the 13-inch MacBook Pro) will support macOS Tahoe, according to the report.
Apple announced its partnership with Intel to use x86 processors in 2005. The move was a relief for Apple, which was using PowerPC chips to run its Macs. The new laptops with Intel CPUs were much faster than their Power Mac G5 predecessors, and Apple stuck with Intel for more than 15 years. Since then, Apple has designed its own ARM-based SoCs, known as Apple Silicon. The newest Macs have the M4 SoC.
According to Laptop, Apple will likely release devices with the M5 chip in the fall (which, as we already mentioned, is when macOS Tahoe 26 is set to arrive). That should include the MacBook Pro, though iPad Pros sporting the M5 are likely to show up sometime in the first half of 2026.
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