Apples are well-built machines. Both it and my original iPad are in perfect working order but are increasingly useless because of poor support. I've got older PCs that still work perfectly with the latest software.

Apple equipment is expensive and built to last. I don't think it unreasonable to want them to be supported for at least 10 years or more. What is the point of buying expensive equipment if it is obsolete a few years later?

Trying to do that would leave them as sclerotic as MS has become. Apple has always made tools available for people to manage an orderly transition: "Classic OS", "Rosetta" - in both cases I took the decision to use neither, forcing myself to consider what I really needed and what is cruft (apart from briefly to run my PPC-only accounts package until I found a new one I liked).

My rev A mini is still doing a splendid turn as a media server/ XBMC host (not powered-down for 4 years or so, other than the odd power cut), but XBMC has now dropped PPC support. Either way, as a workhorse it is useless. My mid-2007 MBP lasted 7 years as a main machine. It will be the next media box, but most software is written with the most recent technology in mind.

"OS X Mavericks is compatible with all Macs made since 2006*"

I wish this was true - I have an iMac5.1 with 3 GB of RAM and it will not allow Mavericks to installed. Mactracker indicates the the iMac was built between September 2006 and August 2007.

Any suggestions apart from buying a younger one.

Yes, I think Core2Duo from mid-2007 is the oldest supported by Mavericks.

Apologies, as ian_c has said, 2007 and newer are supported by Mavericks.

But if you try hard enough you can force an install but it's not really worth it. Important security and stability updates are still produced by Apple for OS X Lion and newer IIRC.

No worries

How do you force an install - connect it to a USB drive which is a backup from a more uptodate machine and boot from it.?

Force installing is quite complicated. Luckily, there's plenty of documentation about it, mainly due to Apple's decision not to include the first generation Mac Pro in the Mavericks-compatible club. I think this is something to do with the EFI of earlier Macs being 32-bit and Mavericks only supports 64-bit.

Basically, it's not worth it. But if you're desperate, the Macrumors forums are a good place to go.

In reply to a post by DRW:

I have an iMac5.1 with 3 GB of RAM and it will not allow Mavericks to installed. Mactracker indicates the the iMac was built between September 2006 and August 2007.

Any suggestions apart from buying a younger one.

I assume it's running Snow Leopard?

In which case, why not just leave it as it is? SL is a perfectly good OS and, according to this site, doesn't suffer from the security flaw that prompted the OP.

Alternatively, put Linux on it. Or even Windows, apparently it'll take the 32-bit version of Windows 8.1.

Thanks I will have a look

Re the following post - why would I like to update to a more recent OSX.
I have 4 other Macs all on Mavericks and I use Yojimbo to ensure that certain key data is available on each machine. Sadly Yojimbo does not sync to the down level machine so the key data is no longer available on the old machine.

As for replacing the oldest machine with a more recent and compatible machine - well I am not the main user, I am tech support for the machine and the main user does not see a need for getting a newer (and bigger machine)

Perhaps one day there will be a hardware failure.............. after I have secreted a newer machine into the house. <g>

Perhaps one day there will be a hardware failure

Sounds like a job for the Birmingham Screwdriver!