for example, let's say the new os depends on m5's exclusive thumbnail generator accelerator, and let's say it improves speed by a 20%.
now, your M1 notebook than on previous OSes uses standard gpu acceleration for thumbnails will not have this specialized hardware acceleration, it will have software fallback that will be 90% slower.
you won't notice it a first thought because it's stuff, fast, but it eats a bit of the processor.
multiply this by 1000 features and you have a slow machine.
I don't know how else to explain how an ipad pro cannot even scroll a menu without stuttering, it's insane how fast these things were on release
The general case is hardly a "tinfoil hat theory". They openly do that, and the major reason is to tie to new hardware adoption.
That said, it doesn't usually work like you call it. It's not adding new features depending on HW optimization to slow older machines down (after all one could just not use those features in an older machine, or toggle them off).
It's rather: you want to get these shiny new features, which is all we advertise for iOS/macOS N+1, and the main new changes? The big ones will only work if you have a newer machine, even though we could trivially enable them on older machines (and some don't even need special hardware, as there are third-party hacks that unlock them and they work fine).
the Liquid Glass for example probably is not so great when it comes to resources. Probably works better with latest metal and hardware blocks on the GPU in M5 as opposed to using GPU cores and unified memory on 8gb M1 making latest macOS work not so great. I have the M1 8gb air and it is really slow on Tahoe. It was snappy just a couple of years ago on a fresh install.
Liquid Glass is really killing my love for Apple products. I'll probably get a Framework and an Android phone for my next device purchases.
They really need to just admit it was a bad move and make like Sonic.
Not upgrading any of my Macs ever again. I was a fanboy looking for every new update like a present, for 13 years, not anymore. It took one Tahoe burn all that trust. Never upgrading major OS versions on hardware from Apple again.
That G4 was a dog in Mac OS X 10.1. I installed Yellow Dog, and it lit a rocket under its ass.
i wish the new mbp had 256GB of ram :(
(Can at least replace them via the self-service repair store. Fiddly job but worth it)
I don't see why I need a new computer at the moment. In the past, I always got to a stage where the machine felt sluggish.
My next MBP will have 128GB memory, but these prices just wanna make me wait longer.
