Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

OpenCore Legacy Patcher – Use new macOS versions on old hardware

dortania.github.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 86 posts

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

#51

Post by vlovich123 »

1over137 wrote: post #44
ChildOfChaos wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a computer I paid over £3,000 for, that got cut off 7 years after release for no valid reason as a customer. Yes I understand what you are saying, but there is no need for it, Operating systems didn't require suddenly more powerful computers, years ago it made sense because the machine just couldn't handle it, but today my machine handles everything just fine and is higher spec than machines Apple has determined…

>It's a computer I paid over £3,000 for, that got cut off 7 years after release "after release" isn't even the metric we should be using. Rather we should measure starting from when the machine is _no longer sold_. Take the "Mac Pro 2013" (aka Trash Can Mac). It was introduced in 2013 but for sale by Apple until December 2019. macOS 13 Ventura, released October 2022, dropped support for it. That's only 3 years of sup…

What do competitors offer?

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

#52

Post by gigel82 »

I have 3 high-specced trashcans (Mac Pro 2013 with 12/24 cores and 32Gb RAM) that we were using as build agents at work and they were decommissioned after Ventura dropped support.

Frankly, they struggle in desktop use with Monterey so I was considering just installing Linux on them and using them as servers (but they're not great as always-on machines for home since the power usage never drops below 130W even when completely idle).

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

#53

Post by andyjohnson0 »

alexott wrote: post #26
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #4

Datapoint: I upgraded a min-2012 MacBook Pro to Monterey using this approach and it performs reasonably well for basic use. I also swapped the hdd for an ssd and maxed the memory to 16gb.

Did you reinstall OS, or it works as upgrade?

> Did you reinstall OS, or it works as upgrade?

I reinstalled thr os from clean when I swapped-out the storage, so unfortunately I can't comment on the upgrade path.

The machine periodically prompts me to upgrade to Ventura - which I keep declining as Monterrey is fine for my purposes[1] at the moment - so it's obviously happy to do an upgrade.

[1] Running Visual Studio for Mac to build .net apps for MacOS

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

#54

Post by roywashere »

jeroenhd wrote: post #19
j1elo wrote: post #12

The fact that simply patching the O.S. can be enough to make it work on older hardware is a testament on how Apple could make it work on it too, if they wanted, and without much effort. Which in my book reads as an artificial way to cut support for otherwise perfectly working machines. Forcing people to upgrade, buy more hardware, and discard the older one, even when they wouldn't otherwise have needed to do it (like…

Supporting old hardware costs money because you need to write more tests. Of course there aren't technical limitations for any but the lowest specced Macs. Things have changed the past few years but for a while upgrades to CPU performance weren't that meaningful between generations. A CPU that's over ten years old will still perform fine for light desktop use, because that's honestly all you need in most cases. All y…

> Supporting old hardware costs money because you need to write more tests.

If there is anything Apple has enough resources of, it is money

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

#55

Post by mynameisvlad »

ChildOfChaos wrote: post #48
mynameisvlad wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You make it sound like it's some crazy high cost for Apple to do this, yet this small open source project seems to be able to do it and for them it would be much more difficult. Hacks are in no way shape or form equivalent to official support. Both in functionality (this thread is full of people talking about small issues popping up more and more frequently, especially in the latest OS versions which actually have…

I disagree. It's six years after they stopped selling it. Apple do this on purpose to make people buy new machines, it wouldn't be expensive for them too provide a small amount of support, if they are not willing to do that they shouldn't be making such machines. 6 years is not a long time.

Windows 11 dropped support for 7th generation and earlier. Your 2015 iMac, having a Broadwell/5th or Skylake/6th generation processor, would have also not been compatible. To have hardware compatibility, you'd have to have gone all the way up to a 2019 iMac with Coffee Lake.

That shows that this is hardly an Apple problem, and hardly a problem of "Apple forcing you to buy new hardware". Entire companies come and go in those 8 years. Do you expect every company you ever buy products from to support them forever? That's an absurd ask.

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

#56

Post by sarojmoh1 »

My 2012 Air is still my main computer. Started regressing around 2018. Was slow for a while until I patched it with Monterey. Ventura is running even better. Still tough for dev (especially iOS dev)..but it's certainly salvageable. Hoping to buy a new pro within next year

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

#57

Post by sbuk »

ChildOfChaos wrote: post #48
mynameisvlad wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You make it sound like it's some crazy high cost for Apple to do this, yet this small open source project seems to be able to do it and for them it would be much more difficult. Hacks are in no way shape or form equivalent to official support. Both in functionality (this thread is full of people talking about small issues popping up more and more frequently, especially in the latest OS versions which actually have…

I disagree. It's six years after they stopped selling it. Apple do this on purpose to make people buy new machines, it wouldn't be expensive for them too provide a small amount of support, if they are not willing to do that they shouldn't be making such machines. 6 years is not a long time.

Here's a thought. Your iMac from 2015 employs an Intel processor. The writing has been on the wall for any Intel based Mac since the introduction of the M series. I was frankly amazed that they supported Monterey on as many models (yours included) as they did. I can foresee only the Mac Pro being supported in macOS 14, with support for Intel disappearing in macOS 15.

Edit: PowerPC support was droped after 3 releases - Tiger (10.4) being the first to support Intel, Lion (10.7) dropped support. Granted, that was over a 6 year period. 68K to PowerPC felt quicker...

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

#58

Post by oaw-bct-ar-bamf »

mynameisvlad wrote: post #39
ChildOfChaos wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a computer I paid over £3,000 for, that got cut off 7 years after release for no valid reason as a customer. Yes I understand what you are saying, but there is no need for it, Operating systems didn't require suddenly more powerful computers, years ago it made sense because the machine just couldn't handle it, but today my machine handles everything just fine and is higher spec than machines Apple has determined…

> You make it sound like it's some crazy high cost for Apple to do this, yet this small open source project seems to be able to do it and for them it would be much more difficult. Hacks are in no way shape or form equivalent to official support. Both in functionality (this thread is full of people talking about small issues popping up more and more frequently, especially in the latest OS versions which actually have…

To add to this point, there are also less developers available who are willing and passionate about developing the next balcony, band aid and workaround for the half dead horse. That’s a career dead-end. Each and every developer wants to work on the new stuff.

At some point in time it is just not profitable anymore to provide further FEATURE updates for free anymore.

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

#59

Post by skemper911 »

mynameisvlad wrote: post #24
ChildOfChaos wrote: post #13

I have a 2015 iMac, that I spec'ed up as a custom build from Apple, so annoying they don't reconize the power of these machines still and cut support. I have an 4ghz i7, 32gb ram and a Radeon 395x graphics card, but support is cut. The machine still runs beautifully on Monterey, so I am hesitant to use the OpenCore legacy patcher, but may have to one day if apps i use drop support. I love my iMac, but in future, I th…

I mean, you have an 8-year old computer. What did you realistically expect would happen here? For Apple to support your computer until the end of time even if you’re the only person using that model? In the tech world, 8 years is already practically a lifetime. At a certain point, it’s no longer profitable for a company to continue supporting old systems. And that rarely has to do with power and almost entirely due t…

Seems like apple themselves had a good solution to this with one model of the iMac that supported use as an secondary monitor. Imagine if every laptop / iMac supported use as a secondary monitor.

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

#60

Post by ChildOfChaos »

mynameisvlad wrote: post #55
ChildOfChaos wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. It's six years after they stopped selling it. Apple do this on purpose to make people buy new machines, it wouldn't be expensive for them too provide a small amount of support, if they are not willing to do that they shouldn't be making such machines. 6 years is not a long time.

Windows 11 dropped support for 7th generation and earlier. Your 2015 iMac, having a Broadwell/5th or Skylake/6th generation processor, would have also not been compatible. To have hardware compatibility, you'd have to have gone all the way up to a 2019 iMac with Coffee Lake. That shows that this is hardly an Apple problem, and hardly a problem of "Apple forcing you to buy new hardware". Entire companies come and go i…

Yeah, I understand, it's just annoying to me that most of the things we have now in our culture that we rely on are so replaceable and need to be replaced fairly regularly, it feels like it's no longer the case as you get older, you can be more settled in life as you have bought and have all you need, that's not the case because you have to replace it fairly regularly.

Also I suppose, i'm sit here using my iMac now and it runs everything without a glitch, as good as when it was new, likely better because of the updates to the software, so it's just disappointing to see that it could go to waste. I usually like to wait until things break before replacing them, so already debating replacing a perfectly functional machine hurts a little. Hopefully I will get a few more years out of it.

I guess a big shame is not being able to plug a Mac Mini into the display, but that is on me, I knew that was the case when I bought it.

p.s Windows 11 support was the TPM chip? I believe that is relatively easy to get around? Could be wrong here, but I think it was mostly a move from MS to make people update to a highly level of security, but again it's not really needed.

Post reply on HN