Apple kept to past practice yesterday when it said virtually all Macs able to run the current version of macOS will be supported by the upcoming upgrade, dubbed “Catalina,” when it ships this fall.
On Monday, the Cupertino, Calif.. company unveiled mac OS 10.15, or Catalina, at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). The free upgrade, likely to be released in September, includes a host of security enhancements, several revamped first-party apps, support for iPad apps and more.
Odd, even
Apple has relied on an odd-even cycle for its macOS upgrades’ system requirements. The cadence has alternately retained the prior year’s models on the new version’s support list (odd-numbered years, like this one, with odd-numbered editions, as in 10.15) and dropped models from the list (even-numbered years, even-numbered editions).
In 2016, for instance, macOS Sierra (10.12) struck 2007’s, 2008’s and some of 2009’s Macs from support. Meanwhile, in 2017, High Sierra (10.13) stayed with the same models as Sierra. Then in 2018, macOS Mojave dropped a slew of Macs — all those introduced in 2009, 2010 and 2011.
So it was no surprise that macOS Catalina (10.15) retained most Macs that had been able to run last year’s Mojave.
According to Apple, these are the Macs that will run Catalina:
- MacBook 2015 and later
- MacBook Air 2012 and later
- MacBook Pro 2012 and later
- iMac 2012 and later
- iMac Pro 2017 and later
- Mac Mini 2012 and later
- Mac Pro 2013 and later
The only Macs able to run Mojave that were absent from Catalina’s list were the mid-2010 and mid-2012 Mac Pro machines. The now-abandoned Mac Pros will be supported with security-only updates to Mojave through the summer of 2021, however.
Although registered developers were given access to Catalina preview code Monday, the public beta won’t debut until next month, Apple said.
macOS Catalina will be available from the Mac App Store when it debuts.