When Apple decides to end update support for your Mac, you can either try to install another OS or you can trick macOS into installing on your hardware anyway. That’s the entire point of the OpenCore Legacy Patcher, a community-driven project that supports old Macs by combining some repurposed Hackintosh projects with older system files extracted from past macOS versions.

Yesterday, the OCLP team announced version 1.0.0 of the software, the first to formally support the recently released macOS 14 Sonoma. Although Sonoma officially supports Macs released mostly in 2018 or later, the OCLP project will allow Sonoma to install on Macs that go back to models released in 2007 and 2008, enabling them to keep up with at least some of the new features and security patches baked into the latest release.

But OCLP supports some Macs better than others, and generally, the older your Mac is, the more problems you will have.

A key dividing line is between Macs that support the Metal graphics API and Macs that don’t—Macs made in 2012 or later generally have it, but those made before 2012 generally don’t. Some graphics features are broken pretty much across the board on older Macs, even ones that do have Metal GPUs—playing DRM-protected video in Safari, using Live Text OCR, and enabling Continuity Camera are all listed as non- or semi-functional on the project’s support page. However, non-Metal GPUs can have even more significant problems rendering basic macOS UI elements or running certain apps.

OCLP has only had limited success supporting Apple’s T1 chip, a proto-Apple Silicon coprocessor included in Touch Bar MacBook Pros in 2016 and 2017. The T1 is less capable than the later Apple T2, which handles media encoding and decoding, adds an SSD controller, and handles storage encryption. But the T1 still does plenty, including display output for the Touch Bar, Touch ID fingerprint storage and authentication, and Apple Pay support.

Last year’s macOS Ventura still supported some T1 Macs, so support for it remained baked into the OS. But Sonoma no longer natively supports any T1 Macs, so Apple removed the system files used to make it work. The OCLP team has had limited success using older system files to get it working again, but doing this also breaks Apple ID login on those Macs, affecting an even longer list of features.

Problems supporting proprietary chips in late-model Intel Macs have also hampered Linux support on those machines, as detailed in our macOS Sonoma review. Components like webcams and trackpads are often partially functional or non-functional in Linux on these systems, either because of a lack of drivers or because those components connect to the rest of the Mac using non-standard interfaces.

Still, compatibility issues or not, the OCLP project is an impressive undertaking that can allow more technically savvy users to squeeze a few more years out of an aging but otherwise functional Mac that Apple no longer supports. Even installing a somewhat older macOS version like 2022’s Ventura or 2021’s Monterey will get you security patches and Safari updates rather than leaving your system unprotected.

When purchasing a luxury watch, you might consider it more of an heirloom than a simple timekeeper. You can pass a well-maintained Submariner down to your progeny. You can generally sell a Nomos or an Omega long after you purchase it, often at a profit. Or you can simply keep it on your wrist as a reminder of the inexorable march of time, the importance of punctuality, and the genius of so many tiny mechanical pieces working together toward one simple but crucial function.

This will not happen with the first Apple Watch Edition models, despite Jony Ive’s strong desire to enter that realm. As of September 30, Apple moved the original Apple Watch models to its “obsolete” list, at least internally. That includes the “Edition” models that ranged from $10,000 to $17,000 at their April 2015 launch. When a product is “obsolete,” Apple no longer offers parts, repairs, or other replacement services for it.

The solid-gold Edition watches were no longer for sale as of September 2016, when a sensible-by-comparison ceramic Edition debuted for $9,000 less. Software updates for those watches ended in July 2018, a bit over three years after their release, with watchOS 5.

Any golden Edition watch will almost certainly not be working these days. The battery on a nearly eight-year-old, first-generation smartwatch isn’t likely to hold a charge, at the least. You could replace it yourself if you’re the type of person who is both extravagantly wealthy and also keen on cutting open a watch face with a scalpel. It might still be a good idea to remove that battery, though, given that its swelling could eventually put out the display.

It’s a very quiet, nearly invisible end for a watch that went out of its way to be seen. Apple seeded one-of-a-kind Edition watches to Beyoncé and design icon Karl Lagerfeld, with all-gold link bracelets that likely pushed the Edition into even more ludicrous pricing. Buying an Edition watch meant setting up a private one-on-one session in a select Apple Store in a major metropolitan area or having an Edition couriered to a store near you. After that, you’d have “an exclusive, dedicated Apple Watch Edition phone line for two years of 24/7 technical support,” according to a report by Mark Gurman at 9to5Mac.

Ars’ Andrew Cunningham made appointments to try on both the regular and Edition models at New York City Apple Stores shortly before their launch. At the 14th Street store, Watch and Watch Sport editions were kept in a slide-out drawer that had to be unlocked by store employees, and you got about 15 minutes to try everything on and ask questions.

At the glass-cube-topped flagship Fifth Avenue store, appointments were half an hour, in a private room, and attended to by “an almost ridiculously helpful, pleasant Apple Store employee.” The watches were brought in two at a time, in custom boxes that also served as charging cradles. The Edition employee was quite knowledgeable, but as Cunningham noted:

The only questions she couldn’t answer were the ones that Apple itself isn’t providing answers to—most importantly, how long can one expect one of these $10,000-and-up watches to be supported?

Ars commenters on that post and others related to the Apple Watch and its beyond-luxurious Edition model went back and forth trying to figure out the reason the latter existed. On one side, there was its nature as a “Rev.1” Apple product, the regular churn of any Apple hardware line, and the Watch’s complete dependence on a specific phone that likely wouldn’t support it in a few years—all of which bore out, for the most part. Others noted that, at its high price, the function was never the point. The $10,000 Edition was the same exact hardware as a $350 Space Gray model, just with precious metals and global wealth concentration attached.

The gold Editions sold only in the “low tens of thousands,” mostly in the two weeks after launch. After its strong push to market the Watch as a luxury timepiece—or, strangely, a watch that was somehow very precise at keeping time (while likely no more so than any other net-connected device)—Apple moved toward a more broad sense of the Watch as a notification and reminder triage screen, as well as a fitness helper. Jony Ive left the company a few years later, with inside reports suggesting that the Watch’s underperforming launch created distance between the acclaimed designer and the company whose fortunes he helped shape.

It makes sense that newer Watches would be better at tracking runs and measuring your vital signs than prior editions. Luxury goods are meant to stay timeless, which is hard to achieve when a gold watch needs a specific version of Bluetooth to connect to a certain range of iPhones, with parts that are offered for seven years and are unlikely to be in demand much after. The real value of an Edition was always going to be owning and showing it, not using it. Now it’s just a piece of gold, albeit one that’s a bit trickier to melt down for raw value.

Listing image by Getty Images

The Framework Laptop 13 is back again.

My third review of this laptop is probably the one that I (and many Framework-curious PC buyers) have been the most interested to test, as the company has finally added an AMD Ryzen option to the repair-friendly portable. Updates to the Intel version of the Framework Laptop have boosted CPU performance, but its graphics performance has been at a standstill since the Framework Laptop originally hit the scene in mid-2021.

Even AMD’s latest integrated graphics won’t make a thin-and-light laptop a replacement for a gaming PC with dedicated graphics, but a bit more GPU power makes the Framework Laptop that much more versatile, making it easier to play games at reasonable resolutions and settings than it is on Intel’s aging Iris Xe graphics hardware.

Whether you hopped on the Framework train early and have been waiting for a motherboard that felt like a true all-around upgrade or you’ve been on the fence about buying your first Framework Laptop, the new Ryzen version makes a good case for itself. If you want to order one, there’s currently a backlog—all versions are shipping at an unspecified date in “Q4.”

Meet the Ryzen-powered Framework 13

I won’t spend a lot of time talking about the design of the Framework Laptop 13 again, except to say that it remains a competent ultraportable, and there’s nothing that feels dated or clunky about its design now that didn’t already feel a little dated and clunky two years ago (the relatively thick display bezel is the main culprit here). Another laptop in this category we generally like, Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 Carbon, has been using the same basic design for years, so it’s not like Framework is in danger of falling behind in a chaotic and fast-paced industry.

The Ryzen version of the mainboard looks mostly identical to the Intel version, given that it needs to fit in all the same cases with all the same connectors. It dropped directly into the same case I’ve also used for the Intel versions of the Framework Laptop, and moving from Intel to AMD is as easy as it is in a desktop tower with standard parts.

But it wouldn’t be a Ryzen system if there weren’t a couple of weird, fiddly things about it! All the Intel Framework Laptops have supported the same specifications for all four ports (USB 4 for the 11th-gen, Thunderbolt 4 for the newer ones), allowing you to install the expansion card modules wherever you want them without worrying about the particulars.

The Ryzen laptop supports USB 4 in the rear-left and rear-right ports, USB 3.2 and DisplayPort for the front-right slot, and only USB 3.2 on the front-left slot (all four ports do support USB-PD for charging, though). Framework also says the rear ports enter a “high-power mode” when USB-A modules are connected to them, which can reduce battery life.

So yes, the Framework Laptop’s ports are still customizable, and you can still have a lot of flexibility when installing expansion modules. But some modules are better fits for some specific ports, and you’ll have to be a bit more careful about where you put things if you want the best performance and battery life.