how many years is a mac good for? (as far as getting support updates and etc)

I love how apple retail employees always are ready to educate me on macs, and one of the first things they say, "if you buy a mac, it will be the only computer you ever need - and will last you years to come!" (because PCs all fall apart within a year or two.../sarcasm)

but yeah, obviously you can get long life out of anything if you take care of it, but I wonder if what the sales specialists argue is valid - because from what I have been seeing, apple stops giving OSX updates after a few years - and granted every couple years technology advances so fast - it just doesn't seem like a good basis to sells macs on, that it will "last you years to come!" because PCs can last years to come just as well, I've owned many and i still have laptops that are like 8 years old and running fine.

But yeah dont get offended, I'm a mac and i love macs! hoorah! I'm so hipster i etc...starbucks, PBR...because xyz is too mainstream.....kk.

The MBP I got in early 2006 is unable to run the latest Mac OS (Mountain Lion). It's still a good computer, but is limited in what it can run because of it's age.

Realistically, 5 years is about the most you can expect to get out of any computer - at least, at the current pace of innovation. That is for a system that is for general purpose. If it was obtained for a specific task, then the lifetime can be as long as the hardware lasts. I have an old P1 from the mid '90s that is still running a piece of hobby gear. With DOS no less. It has never failed.

As far as the salesperson hype goes, Mac owners have the advantage that their hardware is at the high end of the quality spectrum. PC purchasers have the problem of kicking the tires on anything they buy, since hardware quality can't be assumed and runs from really high to plastic tinkertoy junk and everything in between. Unless things have changed in the years since I converted to OSX, the best way to get a high quality non-Mac system is to build it.

Of course, that isn't an option on a laptop. Caveat emptor.

I had a 2007 iMac 20 inch and it ran all of the new things fine, I ran all the newest things on it but i traded it for an ipad. I still use my 2010 macbook pro as a main computer. I take care of my machine and it needs a new battery but it is covered by the extended apple care warranty.

Your question appears to be concerned less with hardware and more with "system support" -- ie updates and general availability of applications or support of external hardware. From that perspective, and looking at Apple's history, you should expect:

a. Apple update support: active for three to four years, degrading to just security updates for another couple of years. For example: Snow Leopard came out in mid-2009, and still gets major Apple-app updates (for example, iTunes 11). This will probably end with the release of 10.9, except for security updates which I expect would continue for a year or so longer.

b. General apps -- this varies depending on any major changes Apple has introduced into app structures, such as when we went to Intel from PPC-based software. But (continuing the example) Snow Leopard was an all-Intel release, and thus it is still supported on nearly every major and minor third-party software package. Without knowing what surprises Apple has in store for us with 10.9 its hard to say when that might change, but I would expect to get at least another year or two out of Snow Leopard before you started seeing enough ML-only things that it became an issue.

c. Peripheral support -- this obviously varies depending on manufacturer, but again I would expect Snow Leopard baseline support to go on for a while. Apple itself sees its iOS devices as being on a 2-3 year replacement cycle rather than 5+, so it is entirely possible that Lion will become the minimum requirement with the next major revision of the iPhone (not the "iPhone 5S" if they go that route again, I'm speaking of the iPhone 6) but I personally think that unlikely.

Snow Leopard turned out to be a major "reference" release as opposed to, say, Lion or Leopard. OS X 10.9 and iOS 7 may well turn out to be the same way, at least that's my hunch since both will mark the full transition into what I'll call the "Cook team" era.

I just sold my 2010 pro and am getting a new retina pro... It still runs most things fine but I am using iMovie and photoshop quite often and it is lagging pretty bad so I want a machine that can fluidly run what I need.

Here in the Netherlands, tax law dictates a write-off period of 5 years for computers. If you buy high-quality hardware, like workstations (windows) or Macs, then in my experience that coincides well with the period you start wanting a new system anyway. I still have a few workstations that are over 10 years old, and they do work.... but at a frustrating slow pace.

One workstation is 5 years old now, and still sees daily use. But for Internet, email and word processing only. For more demanding applications, I added a new iMac last year.

Thymen