Apple's announcement that macOS Tahoe will be the last version supporting Intel Macs marks the end of support for older hardware, impacting OpenCore and Hackintosh communities. While OpenCore Legacy Patcher can still extend the life of older Macs temporarily, future macOS updates will only support Apple Silicon, leading to the decline of Hackintosh and OpenCore projects. The communities are somewhat resigned but nostalgic, recognizing this as the end of an era for running newer macOS versions on unsupported hardware.
Apple removes support for older Mac hardware in new macOS releases, but the Hackintosh community has found a way to run modern versions of macOS on older Macs using OpenCore. OpenCore is a boot loader that modifies the boot blocks on a PC's storage device to allow the startup of multiple operating systems. The OpenCore Legacy Patcher (OLP) from dortania is a recommended tool for installing and running macOS versions back to Big Sur on Intel-based Macs as old as 2008 and later. However, using OpenCore and modified versions of the macOS installer may violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and can be unstable, so caution is advised.
