When a Mac reaches that last year of support, the two choices are to not upgrade, so you can continue to operate current versions indefinitely or work a new Mac into the budget for purchase within 12 to 24 months, or whenever you’ll start to require the latest software. Next fall we can reliably guess they will be macOS 15, 14, and 13.
For example, if macOS 11 was the last macOS that a Mac could run last fall, then it was already known that in 1 year that Mac would no longer be supported because this year, both Apple and Adobe would ratchet their supported versions up to macOS 14, 13, and 12. Once a Mac gets to the point where it can only run the oldest of the three currently supported versions of macOS, the clock is ticking: In one year it will lose support. macOS 11 fell off when macOS 14 was released. So, every year at about this time, they add the new one and drop the oldest one. They both started this policy a few years ago. The fact is, both Adobe and Apple provide update support for only the last three versions of macOS, which are currently macOS 14, 13, and 12. Unfortunately, support is a rolling target that can’t be stopped, so it has to be part of the budget to keep hardware up to date with the latest software.
