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OpenCore Legacy Patcher – Use new macOS versions on old hardware

dortania.github.io

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Re: OpenCore Legacy Patcher – Use new macOS versions on old hardware

#2

Post by frereubu »

I know this has been posted before, but I just managed to use this on my daughter's inherited MacBook air from 2014, and was able to get MacOS Ventura working seamlessly on it. This was important for me because the previous version of MacOS she was stuck on didn't allow the use of shared iCloud storage, so I couldn't sync her Photos library with the Optimize Storage option and free up disk space (it "only" has a 120GB hard drive). Once I'd updated I was able to do that and lengthen the life of her laptop by quite a bit - it's getting on for ten years old now.

Re: OpenCore Legacy Patcher – Use new macOS versions on old hardware

#3

Post by flatiron »

frereubu wrote: post #2

I know this has been posted before, but I just managed to use this on my daughter's inherited MacBook air from 2014, and was able to get MacOS Ventura working seamlessly on it. This was important for me because the previous version of MacOS she was stuck on didn't allow the use of shared iCloud storage, so I couldn't sync her Photos library with the Optimize Storage option and free up disk space (it "only" has a 120G…

How well does it perform? I have a MacBook Air 2013 that I run Arch on but I miss all the apple ecosystem stuff. I can’t imagine it runs as well as Linux which runs great.

Re: OpenCore Legacy Patcher – Use new macOS versions on old hardware

#5

Post by maxxam »

flatiron wrote: post #3
frereubu wrote: post #2

I know this has been posted before, but I just managed to use this on my daughter's inherited MacBook air from 2014, and was able to get MacOS Ventura working seamlessly on it. This was important for me because the previous version of MacOS she was stuck on didn't allow the use of shared iCloud storage, so I couldn't sync her Photos library with the Optimize Storage option and free up disk space (it "only" has a 120G…

How well does it perform? I have a MacBook Air 2013 that I run Arch on but I miss all the apple ecosystem stuff. I can’t imagine it runs as well as Linux which runs great.

Works pretty well for me on a 2012 Mac mini. It’s maxed out though with i7 and 16GB. I don’t feel performances are worst than with the latest official macOS version.

Re: OpenCore Legacy Patcher – Use new macOS versions on old hardware

#6

Post by hs86 »

Catalina was the last supported OS for my 2012 MBA, and the following Big Sur upgrade worked well with OCLP because it only had to patch in WiFi support during the boot process.

After that, macOS Monterey also dropped support for my Ivy Bridge GPU, and OCLP had to rely on persistent patches to my system volume to enable 3D acceleration again. These root patches caused some weird issues with 3D acceleration in certain apps, and driver-related regressions introducted by some later Catalina patches took longer to be fixed in OCLP than in the still supported Catalina release.

I think macOS Ventura is the end of the road for macOS on my Mac. The OS now relies on AVX2 binaries, and the OCLP devs made some magic hacks to circumvent that requirement. Still, the OS now feels unreliable, and while I did not see hard crashes or errors, subtile breakage only disappeared, when I rebooted the system every few hours. The macOS 13.3 update also broke my GPU driver again for a few weeks, and I finally gave up on it.

This old Mac now runs Ubuntu LTS without any issues. The battery life is at least equal, it boots faster, and the OS does not immdiately use half of my 8 GiB RAM for itself. There is also less swapping, and while not perfect, it feels more reliable than Ventura or Monterey.

While I was not happy with these issues on macOS, it was still amazing to see how this group of volunteers enabled newer macOS releases on my device. macOS on Intel is dying, but if you have a pre-T2 Mac, you might be surprised by how well Linux might work on it.

Re: OpenCore Legacy Patcher – Use new macOS versions on old hardware

#8

Post by dividedbyzero »

hs86 wrote: post #6

Catalina was the last supported OS for my 2012 MBA, and the following Big Sur upgrade worked well with OCLP because it only had to patch in WiFi support during the boot process. After that, macOS Monterey also dropped support for my Ivy Bridge GPU, and OCLP had to rely on persistent patches to my system volume to enable 3D acceleration again. These root patches caused some weird issues with 3D acceleration in certain…

Does the T2 break Linux somehow?

Re: OpenCore Legacy Patcher – Use new macOS versions on old hardware

#9

Post by frereubu »

flatiron wrote: post #3
frereubu wrote: post #2

I know this has been posted before, but I just managed to use this on my daughter's inherited MacBook air from 2014, and was able to get MacOS Ventura working seamlessly on it. This was important for me because the previous version of MacOS she was stuck on didn't allow the use of shared iCloud storage, so I couldn't sync her Photos library with the Optimize Storage option and free up disk space (it "only" has a 120G…

How well does it perform? I have a MacBook Air 2013 that I run Arch on but I miss all the apple ecosystem stuff. I can’t imagine it runs as well as Linux which runs great.

It's pretty seamless. There are occasional small lags when starting apps, and the fans do spin up when playing Minecraft Java edition and there are lots of creatures nearby (we also had to kill off a bunch to stop it lagging really badly when there were something like 200 creatures of a type that follow you about), but it feels like it's got a good few years in it yet. Apple apps like Photos and Mail etc feel pretty responsive. For reference the Air has a 1.4GHz Dul-Core Intel Core i5, 4GB of 1600 MHz DDR3 RAM and Intel HD Graphics 5000 1536MB. I've got an M1 Max Macbook Pro with 64GB of memory, so it's up against some tough competition!

Re: OpenCore Legacy Patcher – Use new macOS versions on old hardware

#10

Post by frereubu »

hs86 wrote: post #6

Catalina was the last supported OS for my 2012 MBA, and the following Big Sur upgrade worked well with OCLP because it only had to patch in WiFi support during the boot process. After that, macOS Monterey also dropped support for my Ivy Bridge GPU, and OCLP had to rely on persistent patches to my system volume to enable 3D acceleration again. These root patches caused some weird issues with 3D acceleration in certain…

Yeah, it looks like your MBA is on the fringes of reliable support: https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/MODELS.ht...
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