Change Amazon settings for older Intel-based iMac

bluesatan55 wrote:

hi, thank you for the reply. The reason i asked the question was that when i logged into amazon , a pop up appeared telling me that i needed to change my imac from intel based ,in order to keep using Amazon.

I have not tried accessing the Amazon site from an Intel-based Mac recently, but I am extremely skeptical that the Amazon site would display such a message. If your browser was really old, a site might complain about that - but rarely does a site care which type of processor (Intel, AMD, Apple Silicon, etc.) you are using.

Are you sure that you logged into the real Amazon site, and did not accidentally log into a "lookalike" scam site set up to harvest your Amazon login credentials? Like a site that had two "m"s in the name or two "z"s in the name or something like that? If you did log into a scam site, you might want to change your Amazon password, and check your Amazon purchase history and account details, now. Otherwise you might find yourself "purchasing" a large amount of expensive stuff to be delivered to the scammers.

Standalone apps might be a different story, but even that would require further investigation.

For instance, Amazon once had a standalone Amazon Music application for Macs. They stopped supporting it, telling Mac users to switch to accessing Amazon Music via a Web browser interface. If you still have a copy of the old Amazon Music application, and it still works (despite being unsupported), and you are using it on an Apple-Silicon-based Mac, you might see messages from Tahoe saying that the application was an Intel-only application that would stop working in a future version of macOS. (macOS 28 and later won't support Rosetta 2.). So you'd be forced to switch to the Web interface when Amazon broke the legacy app or when macOS 28 broke the legacy app (whichever came first).

Amazon is generally accessed via a web browser.

Are you using Safari ?

What specific issues are you encountering and with what MacOS?

Your tag line says that you have a 24" iMac running macOS 26.5 (Tahoe).

If that is the Mac you are talking about, it is not an "older Intel-based iMac". None of the 24" or 21.5" Intel-based iMacs which Apple released between 2006 and 2019 can run Tahoe. The only 24" iMacs that can run Tahoe are Apple Silicon iMacs based on plain M1, M3, or M4 chips.

So what specific Mac are we talking about?

Sounds like you are using an out-dated version of Safari in an older macOS version.

If you are, give FireFox a try. https://www.firefox.com/en-US/download/mac/?redirect_source=mozilla-org

Amazon is a website. You access it via web browser.

What is happening when you try to access Amazon exactly?

If your Mac's browser is too old, it may have issues accessing the Amazon.com website.

There's not much that can be done in that case other seeing if there's an update for your web browser.

If your Mac is running macOS 26.5 as claimed by your tag line, then Safari should be up to date, in which case there should be no issue accessing Amazon.

You would need to explain exactly what happens when you try to access Amazon.com and what macOS version(if not macOS 26.5), web browser and version of the web browser you are using to try to access Amazon.

Amazon works fine with a 2010 MacBook Air we still have around here running High Sierra.

Macs do not have any sort of "Amazon setting."

My guess is that you have some issue with your Amazon account or you have some sort tool you have installed that interferes with your web browsing.

Amazon (the website) has no knowledge of nor does it have any ability to determine the CPU on which the browser is running. It runs on Linux PCs, silicon Macs, Intel Macs, iPhones, iPads, a Raspberry Pi... anything that is capable of running any modern web browser.

More information would help...

How old is "older"?

Amazon works fine even with extremely old Macs and commensurately old versions of Safari.

More information would help: Writing an effective Apple Support Communities question - Apple Community

bluesatan55 wrote:

Seems like i am running Tahoe on a silicon based imac. I think servant of cats has got it spot on, i was almost certainly logging into amazon music when the pop up appeared.

Well there you go. If using the old Amazon Music app it is an Intel coded App that uses Rosetta 2 to translate and will not be supported in future versions of macOS. That's why you are getting that error. It's not Amazon, it's the Mac that issues the error when you run Intel coded apps.

Try going to the App Store and downloading the Safari Technology Preview app and see if it will run on your system. It if does it should allow you to access all of the new websites.

I believe MacOS 10.12 (Sierra) is the oldest macOS that can reliably access the html code of Amazon.com.

Servant of Cats is right: Safari Technology Preview is not on the App Store any more. It's not in the Developer section (not Developer account required) as SoC said: ⁠Safari Technology Preview Page on Apple Developer

If you're running a later system than Sierra, 10.12, you should be go to go with the browser version that came with the system.

OT 

bluesatan55 wrote:

hi, thank you for the reply. The reason i asked the question was that when i logged into amazon , a pop up appeared telling me that i needed to change my imac from intel based ,in order to keep using Amazon.

That sounds like you are using an Intel based App to access Amazon and what it’s actually saying is your Intel Based Apps will not be supported in future of versions of MacOS.

Are you seeing something like the following message?

If so, are you sure you are using Safari?

Are you maybe using an extension that accesses Amazon?

bluesatan55 wrote:

hi, thank you for the reply. The reason i asked the question was that when i logged into amazon , a pop up appeared telling me that i needed to change my imac from intel based ,in order to keep using Amazon.

That was not the real Amazon site, or perhaps you are not remembering the pop up message accurately.

I use mostly Intel Macs to use Amazon, including an iMac (2015) and a MacBook Pro (2019). I have never seen such a pop up from Amazon. Amazon is happy to sell you stuff from their web site on whatever Mac you use or an iPhone or an Android or anything.

if you are speaking of some app then it likely mean that amazon informs you that they will stop supporting their app on the platform you use to access their services.

if you are speaking about accessing some amazon website from the web browser you use then well pretty much the same thing really

To add another data point:

No “Amazon issues” noted for this member’s 2017 Intel Mac running MacOS 13 (Ventura) and Safari 18.

However, I did notice that Amazon is pretty aggressively “encouraging” enrollment in their passkey implementation — and using pop-ups for this “encouragement” — during a routine “username + password” authentication.

If you’re running MacOS 12 (Monterey) or earlier, perhaps you’re getting some sort of message that your MacOS isn’t capable of signing-in with passkeys … ???