dosdude1

I think https://dosdude1.com/ provides such services? And his YouTube channel is a great place to start if you’re looking to DIY this: https://www.youtube.com/user/dosdude1

Apple doesn't want to give you a choice but you can still do it: 1. Use some mac to download an older OS installer. The links are hidden but you can find them in some forums etc. 2. Create a bootstick - either manually or with software like dosdude's really nice patchers (find them here: http://dosdude1.com/) 3. Backup your stuff (not only time machine as it would reinstall the new version of macos again) and install the old macOS to get your apps and files back on it This is something I really hate about Apple - why can't they just provide some official download links that keep working? With Apple I have a love-hate-relationship because some products (MBP until 2016/17, iPhone 5s/SE) and software (keynote, pages, lot of parts of the OS) are awesome while their software policy and planned obsolescence screws you hard if you just follow their lead as a simple user. You always have to take care not to update too early, use workarounds to integrate devices with different Apple software (like with airdrop) and if you brick devices there is few ways getting back to business (no helpful error messages like the icons they show on boot when something goes wrong or messages from their system diagnostic like "HDD is damaged" while it's just the cable).

See reply below about Open Core Legacy Patcher[1] which enables to use older Intel Models to use modern OS Versions. And for even older hardware, check out the patchers from Dosdude[2]. Most likely this will not be possible with the M-Class Processors from Apple, which is a shame. [1]https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/MODELS.html [2]http://dosdude1.com/

That's strange. Chrome says it requires MacOS 10.11, Firefox says it requires MacOS 10.12. Based on that it would appear that Chrome is supporting older versions of MacOS than Firefox. MacOS 10.11 supports every 2008 and newer Apple computer. There are also patches to get newer versions of MacOS on old hardware. I'm using one patch to get 10.13 running on a 2008 MacBook Pro and it runs great. http://dosdude1.com/software.html

Super, super easy. Linux-distro-install level easy. Since Catalina randomly decided to destroy access to about 1/3rd of my software (I rely on old-school music plugins that won’t be updated) - I’m gonna link you here to the Mojave tool: http://dosdude1.com/mojave/ This is not my tool, it does require a Mac to use, in order to create the USB boot key you put in your PC. I have successfully patched about a dozen ThinkPads and Dell computers with this. Due to the ThinkPad’s popularity - support for virtually every unit that can support it hardware-wise exists. If you have any issues, there’s a great community around it, and personally, after patching, I don’t even worry about .x upgrades anymore and leave auto-update on - that’s how far it’s come. I literally prefer the Lenovo to the Apple hardware.

There are ways around the official support drop as well, I run macOS mojave fine with a Mac Pro 3,1. These original cheese grater macs are truly still the best desktop tower they'll ever make at this point. It'd be fun to trick one out with a 3rd gen threadripper, which is probably faster than the 28-core rumored $35,000 mac pro. Here's the patcher: http://dosdude1.com/mojave/ There are caveats, but I've found it to work well. Of course it's totally unsupported so here be dragons, etc.

If you don't mind stranding from the 100% stable roads, you can install Mojave on your macbook using this patcher: http://dosdude1.com/mojave/ Personally I am running Mojave on a late 2009 macbook pro and it still works amazingly well. Transition from Mojave and especially the new XCode are also way faster than previous iterations. There are caveats though, as the processor in my computer is too old, I had to hack homebrew to compile everything from source. (Also, using the patcher does not hinder my ability to push updates to the App Store or use iMessage, if that is a concern)

Only problems have been after the occasional update, when the patches haven't been updated. A few times it's taken 5-6 reboots to start OSX properly. The best way is to delay updates as long as possible! Apart from that, no problems at all. http://dosdude1.com/highsierra/ and the related forum posts were excellent.

It’s unfortunate that Apple hasn’t made special dmg downloads to allow you to download Mavericks. My understanding of the App Store link to buy Mavericks is that it only loads of your computer is “old enough” or running 10.7 or 10.8 already. It was the first “free” update, if I recall correctly, and like the updates that followed (10.10, 10.11, 10.12) there were restrictions so only specific computers could download it running specific versions of macOS. That’s why they needed special download links, I think? I’ve had the most success installing older copies of macOS by using the Recovery Mode to install the copy of the OS that originally shipped, then updating from there to whatever specific version I needed. Remember: you can’t install a version of macOS that is older than the hardware - meaning every Mac sold has a version that it shipped with and that’s the minimum version required. From there you can choose which updates to install… it’s a long, slow process. Also note, just as hardware has a minimum OS version it generally has a max version too: I once tried to install a newer copy of macOS on unsupported hardware and was frustrated that the Next button was greyed out or the installer wouldn’t boot. So I used a different Mac to install it, then copied the hard drive. Still didn’t boot. Very frustrating. Turns out I needed a patch to get it to work: http://dosdude1.com/software.html For Big Sur there a set of patches too, but I imagine as time goes by it’s harder and…

> 2007 17" MacBook Pro >I have Mac OS 10.13 How? Apple officially supports macOS High Sierra (10.13) on Mid 2010 or newer MacBook Pros. Even this patcher [0] to install it on older machines only supports 2008 and newer Macs. [0] http://dosdude1.com/highsierra/

Anyone tried this before to patch older OSX? PCs are more open so I assumed (correctly) this would exist. http://dosdude1.com/mojave/

I have had luck running newer MacOSes on my 2008 Macbook Pro with http://dosdude1.com/software.html The machine isn't really usable with the current OSes, being dog slow at everything. But you do bring up an interesting point. I have had the same issues with Windows on older hardware. Which makes me wonder why hardware with 2.5-3GhZ CPUs and SSDs is not enough to run a current version of an OS even with 4-6 GB of RAM.

Have you tried http://dosdude1.com/software.html? It allows to upgrade old macs to newer releases, macOS Catalina can be installed on macs as old as Early-2008 MacBook Pro without particular issues IIRC.

I have a late 2008 MacBook Pro running Catalina that I still use daily. As far as I can tell it still receives security updates. There's a simple patcher you can use for these old macbooks: http://dosdude1.com/catalina/

If you held on to that machine for a few more years it would have been dropped by OS X Yosemite, but then hilariously still supported by essentially making the machine a Hackintosh! https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2006-2007-mac-pro-1-1-2-1-and-os-… https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2006-2007-mac-pro-1-1-2-1-and-os-… A similar situation played out when macOS Sierra dropped support for 2008–2009 models that can be re-enabled in a patch: http://dosdude1.com/sierrapatch.html http://netkas.org/forum/index.php?topic=852.0

Surprisingly, you can get the current macOS Catalina running on 2008 Mac(Book)s with the tools published by dosdude1 and other contributors [1]. macOS Catalina will actually still get security updates for two years after Big Sur is released (they support macOS releases three years after release). So that's until ~late 2022, a pretty long run for that 2008 hardware until you have to go to Linux or Windows for your patches. It looks like Big Sur has a hard requirement on Metal (at the moment at least), which kills all pre 2012 Macs [2] that were still running Mojave/Catalina using OpenGL. [1]: http://dosdude1.com/catalina/ with various important caveats of course, depending on your model. [2]: Metal is supported on GPUs since Intel Ivy Bridge and Vulkan compatible AMD/Nvidia hardware. The Mac Pro 2010 is the exception since you can upgrade its GPU to a Metal compatible one.

I'm on an early 2011 MBP. I've been stuck on High Sierra. There's a patch for Mojave (http://dosdude1.com/mojave/), but honestly I have no reason to really upgrade to it. The only blocker I've run across so far is that I can't compile Flutter apps for iOS unless I downgrade Flutter. Since I mostly use it to learn and not really leverage, it's not really an issue yet. I was planning on upgrading to a new MBP next month, but now I'll just wait and see what the ARM machines look like before pulling the trigger on anything.

FWIW, I just upgraded my late 2011 macbook pro to Catalina using http://dosdude1.com/catalina/ because I needed the latest XCode. It's working fine, though you need to live with the fact that it's now a "compromised" system.

You might want to give "macOS Patcher" a try. http://dosdude1.com/software.html It's main purpose is to allow for running macOS on unsupported Macs, but it also can download the original unmodified version. I've only used the unpatched Mojave version myself and I have no idea how well it supports slow/unstable connections.

Do you know about dosdude's Catalina patcher? And for previous versions? It's unofficial, so it might not suit you at all. It allows older hardware to run (with some caveats) newer macOS versions. http://dosdude1.com/catalina/ Currently I have a 2009 MacBook Pro 5.1 running High Sierra.

As to your last point regarding incompatible hardware, you can use tools like this to patch the installer. http://dosdude1.com/catalina/

You can hackintosh some old Macs to run Mojave using http://dosdude1.com/mojave/

There’s a guy that has built a patching tool to “Hackintosh” an older, unsupported Mac with the newest OS: http://dosdude1.com/mojave/

You can fairly easily install the latest macOS on such older iMacs [1]. It works well and gives them a new life. If you do it, consider increasing the memory to the max (8 GB?), and replace the HD with SSD. Still plenty of power to use for email, web browsing, DJ station (Spotify and/or Sonos), and even to run Xcode. [1] http://dosdude1.com/mojave/

You can definitely install a newer MacOS, they run fine. It's a 5 minute patch to the installer, and away you go. My 2008 has been running High Sierra without any issues. http://dosdude1.com/software.html

macOS Mojave Patcher Tool for Unsupported Macs http://dosdude1.com/mojave/

If you don't mind disabling SIP, you can still run Mojave on a lot of older hardware: http://dosdude1.com/mojave

This will get you onto High Sierra: http://dosdude1.com/highsierra/

I'm not sure if you are seriously interested in iOS development, but most Macs in circulation that aren't Sierra compatible can be upgraded with this tool: http://dosdude1.com/sierrapatch.html If you don't have the budget to buy a Sierra-compatible Mac (a few hundred dollars) You can also buy a used iPhone very cheaply, especially if you look for ones with damaged screens, and keep it on a version that's supported by pre-Sierra XCode.