Apple discarding support of older MacOSX versions ?

[Thierry]

Hi everyone,

Apple released yesterday a security update, fixing a issue which involved the execution of malicious code.
The thing is, this (very important) update is only available for Yosemite (10.10) and El Capitan (10.11) users.

What does that mean ?
It probably means that previous versions of Mac OS X (10.7 Lion, 10.8 Mountain Lion and 10.9 Mavericks) are no longer supported by Apple and thus vulnerable (meaning that you are forced to update to the latest version of MacOS...)
There is also a chance that when macOS Sierra (10.12) releases later in the year, security updates will no longer be applied to Yosemite (10.10).

Here's the thread in the Apple Support website : https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207130" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[schwarzgrau]

Thank you for this information

[D.T. Nethery]

It is the same situation with the recent discovery of the Intel chip security vulnerabilities: Apple issued a statement saying that the Security Update issued recently "mitigates" (note well they don't say that it "fixes" the issue) the security issue for OS 10.13 (High Sierra) , 10.12 (Sierra) , and 10.11 (El Capitan) , but there are apparently no plans to issue Security updates for versions earlier than 10.11. They also said that the recent iOS 11.2 update "mitigates" the threat for iPhone and iPad users. The Meltdown and Spectre security vulnerabilities for any device which has Intel chips is extremely serious from what I'm reading, so this will almost certainly force users who are maintaining older systems to update. I don't know what the situation is with Windows , but I'm guessing Microsoft will patch Windows 10 , but not Windows 8 or Windows 7 for anyone still using those.

Here is Apple's statement:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208394

Again, I'm struck by the language: the issue is not fixed , it's "mitigated" by the recent Security Update , but they will almost certainly be issuing more Security Updates in the coming weeks/months.
I think when it's truly fixed they will use the word "fixed" . Although some things I'm reading say there is no true fix other than to remove the existing chips from the computer and replace them with new chips that Intel guarantees are not afflicted with the current vulnerability.

Anyway, that's a bigger issue. But to get back to the topic at hand , it seems to be true that anything before 10.11 El Capitan is abandoned by Apple , and frankly I don't expect support to last much longer for El Capitan.

[ematecki]

Although some things I'm reading say there is no true fix other than to remove the existing chips from the computer and replace them with new chips that Intel guarantees are not afflicted with the current vulnerability.

That's sadly the truth...
While Apple (or MS, or Linux devs) can use some (slow) workaround in their own code, nothing prevents third party software from using the bugged instructions.