Intel Mac not supported as of R2026a :(
As of R2026a, only the Apple Silicon series is supported.
My Intel Mac dates to June 2020; the M1 series was released in November 2020.
So we got only 5 years of use before MATLAB gave up on us. 2 years (R2023b) since the native M1 version was introduced.
I don't exactly have a spare $2500 to spend on a new iMac -- especially not for one that has a maximum of 32 gigabytes of memory when my current system has 128 gigabytes of memory.
I remain disappointed that Mathworks did not continue Intel support for longer.
6 Comments
Time Descending
Let's look back to the last Mac processor change (from PowerPC to Intel).
The first Intel Macs came out in January 2006. From that page "The final version of Mac OS X that ran on PowerPC processors was Leopard, released in October 2007". The last release of MATLAB for Mac that supported PowerPC was release R2007b.
The last release of MATLAB that supported PowerPC was the one that was out when the last Mac OS release that supported PowerPC was released.
According to the transcript for the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference 2025, streamed on June 9th, 2025: "And so, macOS Tahoe will be the final release for Intel Macs. So if you've not done so already, now is a great time to help your users migrate to the Apple silicon versions of your apps. Wikipedia states "It [Tahoe] was released on September 15, 2025."
The last release of MATLAB that supported Intel Macs is the one that was out when the last Mac OS release that supported Intel Macs was released.
I share some of the disappointment that Walter is voicing, but I think the actual blame lies with Apple.
The comparison to 20 years ago is not very fair, since hardware improvements were very substantial then. As you can readily see by the memory situation Walter is outlining. Hardware today has a much longer useful life expectancy than hardware 20 years ago.
My current machine has 128 gigabytes of memory. The largest available iMac has 32 gigabytes. The base model of Mac Studio has 36 gigabytes. To go for more memory, it is necessary to switch out the CPU of the Mac Studio (M3 Ultra instead of M4 Max), which allows increasing memory to 96 gigabytes... at a cost of over $US4000.
Which leads me to ask whether the benefits of using newer releases of MATLAB are worth the necessary hardware expense.
My older (2018) iMac is actively giving problems, but my 2020 iMac is running fine. Why should I have to throw away a piece of hardware that is running fine, and pay a fair amount of money, just to use upgraded MATLAB ?
While I agree that this is frustrating, my experience with R2025a and R2025b on an Intel Mac has been quite difficult. My knee-jerk reaction would be that the New Desktop (R2025a+) should not have been released for Intel Macs, as R2024b is the last robust/stable release of MATLAB for Intel Macs. I have continually been running code and apps in all three of these releases on my Mac Pro and R2025a/b have each crashed more times than I ever recall R2024b crashing. They also experience significant lag in certain aspects (e.g., entering/exiting debug mode, opening the variables editor, etc.). As much as I love the New Desktop and its many new features, I have not been able to rely on R2025a/b on my Intel Mac, despite its 16 cores and 416 GB RAM. (See this thread for recent related gripes.)
On the other hand, I am disheartened that my workhorse computer will not be able to run the new Optimization Explorer App (or anything else new in R2026a).
For what it is worth, I also have an M-series Mac. Running R2025b on that computer is much more reliable than on my Intel Mac Pro, and often faster. The new Mac hardware is impressive.
My personal experience is that releases up to R2025a are very stable on (my) Intel iMac, if they run at all (sufficiently old versions no longer run on newer MacOS versions.)
I have observed a glitch with R2025b: from time to time it tells me that it has lost connection with (something to do with the license) and offers a button to reconnect; the button works fine but the previous work in the session is no longer available. This problem mostly happens when I have let the desktop be idle for a couple of days, but at least once it happened when the desktop had been idle for about half an hour. I personally have not observed any crashes with R2025b.
I am seeing the "lost connection with MATLAB" messages and the reconnect button with R2026a on a recent (Apple Silicon) Mac mini.
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