You can’t expect them to support hardware forever. Every iteration of a Mac or iOS device get’s years of support including OS updates. While I can’t update the OS of my older Macs and iOS devices, they still work as they did when I got them, albeit with limitations mostly due to changes in the rest of the world.
While I agree it would be nice if you could keep using those old Apple’s forever, no one does that. That said, I understand if you wanted to switch to Linux, you could milk many more years out of the machines (and your life, messing around with Linux).
Wow, just realized that is one reason why I like Macs; they don’t suck up a bunch of my time troubleshooting. Yeah the premium is $, exchanged for time and longevity. I’m typing this on a late 2014 Mac Mini which still plugs away running Monterey beta, milking all I can out of it, while Waited for the 2nd Gen M1s to entice me to retire this and the MacBook. Looking at the new specs on the M1 MacBook Pros, it seems I’ll be able to easily retire both (well, put them out to pasture, as a server or music and email machine for the den or kitchen.
Back to the topic at hand; we don’t know why if Trimble doesn’t say, but no doubt they are working on it. Most interesting and optimistic from my perspective is Apple will now likely stay with and evolve their own platform, both the chip and the OSs, without any major shifts, as they now control most everything, and aren’t burdened with the limitations of supporting hundreds or thousands of platform from dozens of companies, or another company’s limitations resulting from trying to do so. Even Microsoft has discovered the advantage in going down the Apple path, that is trying to control and sell both the hardware and software (think Surface), no doubt due to Apple’s success.
So yes, Trimble is no doubt working on moving to Apple silicon (see http://sketchup.com/ipad). Not sure why they don’t just come out and say it clearly, but I guess not everything obvious needs to be said. Now if we can just get them to port the whole studio package…for another topic.
Apple supports legacy hardware for many years after it’s discontinued, complete with software updates to a point. Of course they can’t support it forever, but they are actually great at this. As long as you use the correct OS for the hardware, there’s no reason it should lose any functionality, such as internet access.
This is like how SketchUp only works on hardware up to a point, but Trimble can’t be expected to support older versions for new hardware in perpetuity.
Apple didn’t even announce the switch to Intel until 2005, and it was only in 2009 that OSX dropped support for PowerPC architecture. There were almost three solid years of support for the old architecture, and those computers still ran perfectly well for many years after that if one chose to. I have used Apple computers from 1985 to now.
OSX never supported the PowerPC I had. It only worked with the last generation of PowerPC hardware, not the one but last. OS9 was the last for me. My daughter has an Intel Imac from the first generation. You cannot update its OS X , as you cannot do with the much newer Macs with Nvidia graphics either.
One might be of any opinion of Microsoft’s business practices, but they have always had better legacy support.
The PowerMac G3, released in 1999, shipped with OS 8. It was supported by Apple with OS X 10.5 in 2005 and people used them for years after that. This is in line with Apple, who typically supports their hardware with software updates for at least 5-6 years. I would wager that the same is true of anyone who runs a modern Intel Mac, they could expect support for at least 4-5 more years. Certainly nobody was “left high and dry” by Apple the moment new hardware was adopted. Not for any of these transitions.
The existing M1 has a very fast single core performance which is only slightly enhanced in the new chips according to the benchmarks filtering out. As you say SU and Layout are single core programmes. The new chips should see significantly improvement performance in programmes like VRAY however. I’m on the M1 and performance in SU and LO is definitely better. However LO still laggy. That’s obviously with Rosetta 2 emulation.
I have been waiting for that to happen since the first M1 coMputer was released. I bought a M1 MacBook Air and after a M1 max MacBook Pro that I had to gave back since sketchup was slower on it than on my old i7 780gtx from 2012!
Now I imagine that the story will be different
It’s awesome. I got the M1 max with the whole ■■■■ and it’s awesome. I don’t think the extra video cores are doing much for Sketchup BUT enscape is coming to mac in March so I’m looking forward to my investment paying off then!
It feels like the biggest difference is in Layout. Copying viewports and moving objects is actually smooth. Maybe I’ll post a video somewhere? Would that be helpful?
It works very well on my M1 Max Macbook Pro. Hardly any issues. Doesn’t fix EVERY Sketdchup-Problem but the machine is humming along nicely, doesn’t get warm, I can work just fine on multiple monitors. All good.
I find it is unusable on my M1 Max MacBook Pro. I was forced to cancel my subscription until they release an Apple Silicon Native version. This is really best on PC anyway. Time to move on for Mac users I fear.
