macOS 27 Drops Intel Support: Why Your Old Mac is Now Obsolete

This is less about legacy Mac users and more about Apple using the OS layer to enforce a hardware refresh cycle. Dropping Intel support narrows the addressable market for security updates and feature parity, which should pull incremental replacement demand forward into the next 12-24 months, but it also raises the bar for the installed base to buy higher-margin newer devices rather than extend life via software. The second-order effect is that Apple can more aggressively optimize around a single architecture stack, which should improve gross margin at the margin while reducing support complexity.

The market may be underestimating the split between consumer hardware and developer ecosystem effects. Intel’s direct exposure is limited, but the symbolic end of Hackintosh support removes an unofficial testing and experimentation channel that has historically amplified macOS mindshare among power users; that’s mildly negative for Intel’s ecosystem relevance and for any PC OEMs that benefited from enthusiasts choosing x86 over Apple Silicon. More important, if Apple continues to tie meaningful AI features to newer Apple Silicon generations, older M1-class devices become a soft obsolescence cohort, creating a staggered upgrade funnel rather than a one-time replacement wave.

The key risk is timing: this is a multi-quarter and likely multi-year monetization story, not a next-week catalyst. Near term, the change could actually be bullish for Apple’s services retention and hardware mix if consumers accelerate upgrades, but it becomes negative only if pricing or AI requirements make the installed base defer purchases or shift to used/refurbished devices. For Intel, the tail risk is not revenue loss from Apple—which is already minimal—but further erosion of engineering prestige and the narrative that x86 remains the default choice for premium computing.