Is Big Sur 11.5 the last 'minor' update?

[HenryV]

Excerpted from:

https://eclecticlight.co/2021/07/25/last-week-on-my-mac-is-that-a-thunderstorm-coming-macos-11-6-12-and-apple-silicon-macs/

 

I suspect that Big Sur 11.5 is the last ‘minor’ update of its cycle, and that we’re unlikely to see 11.6.

 

Sticking my neck out and being more specific, this is what I expect to happen:

 

• by mid-September, an Apple Event releasing Monterey and announcing new Apple Silicon Macs, including higher-end MacBook Pro and iMac models;
• between then and the end of October, shipping of those new models and discontinuation of all Intel models apart from the Mac Pro;
• in December or January 2022, announcement of the Apple Silicon replacement for the Mac Pro, shipping early in 2022.

 

Where would that leave those who purchased Intel models? In the Intel transition, Apple maintained PowerPC support in its current release of macOS from early 2006 to the end of August 2009, well over three years. I’d be shocked if Apple were to stop building Universal versions of the current release of macOS before September 2023, and hope that they’ll exceed that by a year.

Edited August 5, 2021 by HenryV

[etorix]

Does the number of minor releases actually matters for anything?

Otherwise, the first two bullet points look like reasonable expectations—but Apple could do otherwise as well.

 

The last point is more speculative. That would be a very fast release for the "Jade" high-performance AppleSilicon chips right after the M1X/M2 of the high-end MacBook Pro and iMac.

Let's hope that the AppleSilicon MacPro takes a bit longer than that, and that Apple releases a model with IceLake Xeons in between.

https://9to5mac.com/2021/07/26/leaker-intel-ice-lake-xeon-w-3300-cpus-next-gen-mac-pro/

No guarantee, of course…