New Macs All Have Model Identifier “Mac”
Well this just broke – seems like Apple changed the model identifiers for new M2 Macs. Regardless of model, Macs are now just called Mac14,1, Mac15,2 etc. I wonder if there’s still a way to figure this out without hardcoding all identifiers…
When the Mac Studio was Mac13,1 and Mac13,2, I didn’t think much of it, since no other Mac had been using the Mac prefix. But it turns out that the M2 MacBook Air is Mac14,2, the M2 Mac mini is Mac14,3 and Mac14,12, and the M2 MacBook Pro Mac14,5, Mac14,9, Mac14,6, and Mac14,10. So you can no longer just look at the prefix to get the Mac family for statistical purposes. I have been overestimating the number of customers that have a Mac Studio.
The full list of Mac model identifiers is here.
Previously:
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And of course, they provided a new API in Objective-C or the other language to quickly know the Mac family. Oh wait…
Can’t you just feel the love?
Looking at the full list on Everymac, you can see these model names go all the way back. Breaking them now, after so many decades, seems churlish or downright ignorant. Maybe someone finally retired and the new person couldn’t care less.
It’s not like it’s an anonymity move. They’re still discrete, just non human readable now.
Looking at that list, it seems like there was a lot of ambiguity in the past as well.
iBooks considered PowerBooks. The first few G3 iMacs got their own designator, but then all other PowerPC iMacs listed as PowerPC, along with eMacs.
Then with the Intel era everything got more specifically readable.
The new systems are essentially identical architectures across their various form factors, right? What's the use case for third-party applications needing to know the distinction?
