Apple has formally said MacOS Tahoe is the last version of Mac OS that will run on MacIntel machines, and even then only select few. So what does this mean for the future of WoW support on MacIntel?
I’m guessing we might get the next expansion and that will be it. Even that I wouldn’t count on. Thoughts? Time to get Windows 10 up and running via BootCamp while you still can?
it’s hard to say what the future is for Intel Macs & WOW. Right now WOW requires Mac OS 11 or better, and 11 is almost 5 years old. So even if your Intel Mac gets stuck on Tahoe I would expect that OS to be supported for several more years. On the other hand, how much longer will XCode build Universal apps? When Rosetta support goes away in 2 years it might become difficult for Blizz to continue building apps for Intel CPUs which would force their hand. Or maybe at some point Blizz will want to switch to Metal 4 which is Apple Silicon only?
I wonder what percentage of Mac WOW players are still on Intel?
Another shoe dropped yesterday with Apple announcing Rosetta2 going away after Mac OS '27. Means Blizz will need to update Battle.net launcher to Apple Silicon native or it will cease to work. (obvious snide comments aside)
I know money can be an issue for many users but the reality is Apple is dropping Intel. People need to start preparing for that.
I think the silver lining here is that Blizzard can focus their Mac efforts (such that are) entirely on ARM and Apple silicon.
I agree, I just think that part of what will drive Blizzards decision here is how many of their Mac players are still on Intel. If a majority have already switched to Arm then it gets easier for them to pull the plug on Intel, if a majority have not then they’re more likely to wait.
I’m surprised how many apps on my Mac are still Intel only. In addition to some Blizzard Launcher & Agent executables I see stuff from Garmin, Logitech, QNAP, Adobe, Intuit, and Brother that still have not made the jump. I guess I need to see if updates are available, although many of these are fairly recent.
I was playing on a 2012 imac on a hackintosh version of Catalina until a month ago and I finally pulled the trigger on a new M4 mini. and I couldn’t be happier. I was down to 2s on graphics, and now I can run everything on 10s with the base mini. It wasn’t just about wow though, I was hitting the point where a lot of my apps like Spotify and Chrome were quitting being functional. I could have tried to push to newer versions of MacOS, but the price point for the mini is pretty phenominal for what you get if it’s doable for people.
Hell, my iMac is from 2017 and doesn’t even support the latest OS. I really need to make the jump, but I just bought a new car for the family. I’m going to have to figure something out, I guess. I’d hate to drop to the 4.5k monitors in the modern iMacs, but I might just have to.
I don’t think WoW is gonna drop Intel Macs any time soon. One of the hallmarks of WoW is that it runs on old hardware, both on Windows and Mac. And I doubt Blizz will make substantial game engine changes (on either platform) before The Last Titan expansion. The flip side is that Mac WoW also won’t take advantage of Metal 4 anytime soon.
The BattleNet app will need to updated to Apple Silicon, but that really shouldn’t be much trouble. And if Blizz uses the opportunity to update BattleNet for modern platforms, Windows users would benefit as much, or more so, than us.
thank you tim apple
Is this a real question? Intel Macs are dead in the water. It’s time to move on to apple silicon. Or don’t, but you will at best be left with hacky solutions. Be glad we still have Mac support at all given how they have acted with things like diablo
MacIntel survives into Midnight, running Monterey or later. I was quite surprised, but the minimum PC spec covers a few generations that the Mac used so I guess I shouldn’t be. My guess is that’s the end of the line.
However I’ve heard that Macs from 2017 and upwards can still play the game. You now technically need to have an iOS of 12 or better to play WoW. With Midnight coming, I’m sure if you play on a MacBook Air, MacMini or an iMac, the game will work regardless. I’m on a m1 2020, 13 MacBook Air myself.
Possibly even older. The minimum Intel CPU is the i5-4670 which was in one of the 2013 iMacs.
I just hope when Midnight does release, the expansion will run smoothly. Because this will be the last expansion I will ever play on a MacBook. I’m pretty much at my wits end with Apple not saying anything on their end about whatever issue they have going on regarding WoW. I’ve had my MacBook since Shadowlands (2021) so Midnight will/would be my last that can even play retail WoW which makes me sad.
This is a rodeo I’ve been to before (Motorola → Power PC, Power PC → Intel, and now Intel → Apple Silicon. Fortunately, mac OS provides you with System Information → Software → Applications, which lists what “kind” (Universal, Intel, &c.) each executable is, and its location. And oh, yeah, Blizz is going to have to start (finally) updating all the Battle.whatever apps and helpers apps to Apple Silicon.
No rush, though. You have until at least a year from now. Well, aside from the applications that show up as “Other” or “32-bit (unsupported).”
We’ll have at least two years. MacOS 27 is the last version guaranteed to support Rosetta, so the soonest it’ll be dropped is MacOS 28. And even then, Apple has given wiggle room to extend it beyond that.
Oh it’s been end much longer than that. the last stable macOS for intel macs was actually i think macOS 13 for ones with iris gpus and 14 for amd gpus. macOS 14 and 15 were plagued with bugs in iris gpu driver to point wow was unplayable unless rolling back to macOS 13 and amd gpus started having issues on macOS15 if they weren’t at least metal 2 compliant (they’d memory leak like no tomorrow if they were metal 2 amd gpus on macOS14 or higher).
point is, even though apple “supports” intel macs on macOS 13-26, support is iffy at best. at end of day they only really refine and bugfix apple silicon. any issues with out of date hardware are often left unresolved and abandoned by apple.
I would not worry about rosetta too much. people misunderstood apple discontinuing support for it. they didn’t say they are removing it or stopping it from functioning. merely redefined policies to state any new or currently supported applications will no longer be notorized or allowed in mac app store if they aren’t built native. basically they are dictating developers can’t be lazy with their ports and rely on rosetta 2 to fix it.
so for example if blizzard doesn’t make battle.net a native app sooner rather than later apple might put foot down on that. but say for example crossover, game porting toolkit, or old apps that no longer get updates will not be denied access to rosetta 2 and suddenly be left in a broken state similar to 32 bit or PPC was and that comes down to 3 reasons.
so the long short of it is rosetta 2 has no issues. it’s just intel drivers (both cpu and integrated gpu) and amd drivers that are being dropped officially. but unofficially they’ve been dropped since macOS 13 and that’s been clear on these and other forums for a while. if anything apple would have done those users a huge favor and kept them off macOS 14 and 15 too, well minus the metal 3 compliant amd users got benefit from macos 14 and 15 at least.
Base M4 CPU/GPU? What FPS are you getting?