Apple will end software support for 16 devices across four product lines this fall, with the Apple Watch seeing the most sweeping elimination in the product’s history.
The scale of this year’s software drops became clear with the announcements of macOS 27 Golden Gate, iPadOS 27, tvOS 27, and watchOS 27 at WWDC this week. The only positive is that iOS 27 offers identical device support to iOS 26, with no iPhone models removed from the compatibility list, and the same goes for HomePod.
The Apple Watch experiences the clearest reductions. watchOS 27 drops Series 6, Series 7, Series 8, Apple Watch Ultra (first generation), and Apple Watch SE (second generation) in a single wave, requiring an S9 or S10 chip. watchOS 26 supported the same lineup as watchOS 11 before it, including Series 6 and later, SE (2nd generation) and later, and all Apple Watch Ultra models. The simultaneous elimination of three launch generations is the largest loss of last-gen support for Apple Watch to date.
The iPad line is also seeing a set of unusually aggressive cuts. iPadOS 27 raises the bar from the A14 Bionic chip or M1 chip, dropping five models that still run iPadOS 26: the iPad Air (3rd generation), 12.9-inch iPad Pro (3rd generation), 11-inch iPad Pro (1st generation), iPad (8th generation), and iPad mini (5th generation). In comparison, iPadOS 26 only removed one device from the iPadOS 18 list (the 7th generation iPad).
macOS Golden Gate ends the era of Intel Macs. The four remaining Intel machines supported by macOS Tahoe are not making the cut this year: the MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2019), the MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2020, four Thunderbolt 3 ports), the iMac (2020), and the Mac Pro (2019). Apple said last year that macOS Tahoe would be the final version for pre-Apple silicon Macs, and macOS 27 makes that official.
Apple TV sees two models discontinued with tvOS 27: the Apple TV HD from 2015 and the Apple TV 4K (1st generation) from 2017. Only the 2nd and 3rd generation Apple TV 4K models will receive the update. The full list of devices that will no longer support the latest software this fall is as follows:
watchOS 27
- Apple Watch Series 6 (2020)
- Apple Watch Series 7 (2021)
- Apple Watch Series 8 (2022)
- Apple Watch Ultra (1st generation, 2022)
- Apple Watch SE (2nd generation, 2022)
iPadOS 27
- iPad Air (3rd generation, 2019)
- iPad Pro 12.9-inch (3rd generation, 2018)
- iPad Pro 11-inch (1st generation, 2018)
- iPad (8th generation, 2020)
- iPad mini (5th generation, 2019)
MacOS 27 Golden Gate
- MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2019)
- MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2020, four Thunderbolt 3 ports)
- iMac (2020)
- Mac Pro (2019)
tvOS 27
- Apple TV HD (2015)
- Apple TV 4K (1st generation, 2017)
Owners of affected devices are not entirely without options in the short term; Apple generally continues to release security patches for the previous version of the operating system for at least a year after its replacement. For the latest features, however, newer hardware is the only way to go. Apple’s new operating systems are expected to be released in September after a period of beta testing.
