Mac OS X Mountain Lion (10.8) and older no longer receiving security updates from Apple as of December 2015. Apple never officially announces the retirement of an operating system, they just stop sending security updates. Furthermore, as of April 2016 Chrome is only supporting 10.9 and newer moving forward. Although Chrome may still work past this month it will no longer receive updates and security fixes. Lastly, as you may be aware, QAS support is coming to an end, and we’re replacing it with Centrify to make the connection between Macs and Active Directory. Centrify 2016, which provides support for Two-Factor Authentication, requires OS X 10.9 or higher.
If you are still on 10.8.5 or lower, we encourage you to move to a newer operating system to ensure that you remain compliant. In the case that you have business needs to keep a system running an OS X version older than 10.9, please contact BUTST to discuss temporary options for keeping you up and running while you replace hardware or update a system. Remember if your Mac’s hardware supports a higher OS, all Mac operating systems are free of charge to upgrade. If you need help determining if your hardware supports a higher OS X here is the requirements.
Any Mac purchased during these times are supported for El Capitan (10.11):
- MacBook (Early 2015)
- MacBook (Late 2008 Aluminum, or Early 2009 or newer)
- MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007 or newer)
- MacBook Air (Late 2008 or newer)
- Mac mini (Early 2009 or newer)
- iMac (Mid 2007 or newer)
- Mac Pro (Early 2008 or newer)
If you need further help determining Mac OS X requirements, contact us at gs_butst@usgs.gov.
