Hello everyone,
I just wanted to let you all know about this, as it might not be widely known in the Applevis community that this is possible, but I have managed to install Mac OS Ventura on the MacBook Air that I was just given a few days ago. It's a 2012 MacBook Air, so very old and not fast in the least bit. It only has 4 gb of ram, so pretty sad that that can't be upgraded, but I did have a friend help me out in replacing the 128 gb ssd with one that is 512 gb, and we put a new battery in it. I literally finished doing this about an hour ago or less, and I can confirm it works, the process is mostly Voiceover friendly, but in the first little bit, some sighted assistance may come in handy depending on your skill level.
How is this done? You use an app called Open Core Legacy Patcher. That app works great with Voiceover. I was pleasantly surprised to find this out.
After you go through and build your installer, and then patch the efi partition of that installer, comes the part where you may need sighted assistance. When you restart, you hold down the option key like you would to choose between Mac or Windows, if you've ever ran Bootcamp. You have to press enter on EFI Boot, then very quickly right arrow once over to your usb installer, and enter again. I didn't do it fast enough a few times, so it ended up booting me right back in to the OS, not the installer.
Once you actually get in to the installer, VO works, and it's just like installing any other version of Mac OS from a flash drive.
Why do this? Two reasons really. First is security, because the last officially supported OS by Apple for my Mac was Catalina, so that's pretty far back, and a lot of security exploits have been patched since then. Secondly? I'm a geek, and upon hearing it was possible, I just wanted to see if it would actually work.
Next step, get Windows up and running via Bootcamp.
Observations so Far? Well, with only 4 gb of ram, and a dual core processor, it's slow. Really, incredibly slow. Not so bad once you actually get in to the app you want to work with, but between the press to launch that app, and the time it actually launches, it can be 10-15 seconds. I mean, at times you would think you were back to spinning hard drive days.
Still, I think it was worth doing. I'll report back with any further developments. If you have an older Mac, but perhaps a little newer than this one I have, and Apple has stopped supporting it, you just might want to consider this as an option. You must understand, there is risk in anything like this you decide to do, and some features may not work 100% correctly, and you do this, knowing that is a possibility. Each person has to decide whether or not they want to take that risk. I did, since I just got the thing, and had nothing important on it, so it wasn't going to be a huge issue if something went wrong, but in my case, nothing did. I still had all my settings, the few files I downloaded, etc.
Happy hacking folks. :)
Comments
Wait, hold up
Just to let you know it’s not recommended. You can do it but it’s not recommended at all.
yes, that’s what he said,…
yes, that’s what he said, though. I probably wouldn’t do so, though… I don’t know.
Sounds interesting though!
But seriously though, why not put 16 gigs of ram in that computer? You can. That is one of the computers that you can do that with. only up until 2017 or later you cannot. if you’re going to go, then why not go all the way?
Ah man, I would have went…
Ah man, I would have went all the way when upgrading with that computer. Still, nice find!
Y'all, trust me, if the ram…
Y'all, trust me, if the ram could have been upgraded in this, I would have done so. With 16 gb, this thing would be a beast! But, sadly, you all are thinking of the Macbook pros. I'm pretty sure the Airs never had upgradable ram. I researched this like crazy for several days to see what was possible, and even had my friend who put in the new ssd confirm that ram was not upgradable. So, I've done as much as can be done to the thing.
Bootcamp is up and running. Only major issue with it, is that because of Opencore Patcher, every time the computer would restart, it would go back in to Mac OS if I didn't catch it in time and hit option, and manually select Windows. That happened a few times, but thankfully, when I would restart, and select Windows, the installation would resume as normal. In a normal bootcamp installation, when the computer restarts, it automatically goes back to Windows to finish the installer.
So, now, I have both Ventura and Windows 10 up and running.
Another finding, while Safari, just like any app with only 4 gb ram, takes a while to open, I haven't had it get and stay busy, busy, busy for long periods of time. This is still quite useable.
I have my iPad Pro for Heavier work, so I don't need this thing to be a beast. But for some stuff related to my online radio station, this thing will work just fine. For just checking the latest on sites like this one, it's fine. I haven't done email on this yet, curious to see how it handles my insanely large inboxes, but in all reality, it should be... fine. I get to do audio editing again in Amadeus Pro, which is absolutely fantastic! Will I use it for huge jobs? No. But to make the occasional sweeper or station id, it will be great! And then for broadcasting when I am traveling, I can just boot in to Windows.
My question, for anyone who might happen to know, is whether there are settings in Mac OS that I can change, to make the most of those 4 gb of ram and the processor this thing has. What would you leave as is, what would you change that would increase performance? Here today, I plan to debloat the Windows install, and while Mac OS is great about not putting in a bunch of bloatware, perhaps there are at least some settings that can be optimized. Any tips would be appreciated.
Windows
I tried doing this on my 2013 Air with 4 GB RAM, and it was painful. I ended up using Windows 11 and erasing the entire drive, turning the Mac into a very nice Windows laptop. It boots and runs significantly faster than any modern macOS version.
@Chris, No doubt there, but…
@Chris,
No doubt there, but with the Win 11 requirements, I wasn't sure how to get it to work via Bootcamp. I prefer Win 11, but to get stuff set up, I wanted the easiest path. If you know of a way to do an in place upgrade, rather than starting from 0, that would be something I would be interested in. Feel free to contact me off list for this.
Still, while Mac OS is slow on this machine, I like the OS enough to keep it and at a bare minimum play around once in a while. Probably lots more than that.
Good Luck
As I said, I had lots of issues. Safari wouldn't work properly and it was constantly not responding, and as you said, it was very slow. Still, it's sad an officially unsupported OS from a major competitor runs faster than officially supported Apple systems. How embarrassing! Enjoy this while you can, as I'm pretty sure the version of macOS that comes out in 2025 won't be Intel compatible. It'll be very fun to find out if this continues to work on unsupported Apple Silicon machines.
PS: I sent you an email as requested.
Be careful of future updates
Just some advice for anyone wanting to try this. Once you have successfully booted your Mac into Ventura, or even an earlier yet unsupported version of macOS based on your Mac, be wary of your Software Update being set to auto download Mac updates.
For example, I am right there with the OP, running Ventura 13.6 currently on a MBP that does not "technically" support it. My system settings (formerly known as system prefs) tells me I have one update available.
That update just happens to be Sonoma. And as we all are aware by now, Sonoma has. . . issues.
Honestly I am not sure if it would even download and install, but since OCLP has not, to my knowledge, been updated passed version 0.68, updating would be bad juju for me.
/end 2¢
OCLP 1.0 is out
@Brian and anyone else interested,
OCLP 1.0 came out yesterday, meaning that Sonoma should work. While on a supported Mac, I would be eager to download the new update and try out the new features, on this old thing, I'm more than fine with letting others test the waters first. While adding widgets to the desktop seems kinda cool, there's nothing that makes me feel like I need to update urgently. I'm on a secure os that will probably still get security updates for a bit, so all is good. Plus, Ventura is slow on this machine. Does it run? Yes. Does it run decently? Yes. Could another update be just enough to push it over the line where it is no longer going to work for meeting my needs? Sadly, that answer is a possible maybe, so for now, I'm gunna chill. If anyone else does take the plunge and it works okay, please let me know, as well as what your specs are like.
Funny you should mention the update...
I just received a notification from OCLP asking if I want to upgrade. 😃
Brian, Like I said, I'm…
Brian,
Like I said, I'm absolutely loving Ventura. Auto updates are turned off, so I won't wake up one day and find my system tried to update over night.
Having said that, while Ventura is great, I am wondering if there are any settings you would change to optimize performance on this old hardware. Like, I know there are debloat scripts for Windows, but not sure if anything like that exists or is even needed for Mac OS, but surely there are some settings you would want to turn on or off that might help speed things up? Just a thought. If there are, I would really appreciate you pointing me in the right direction.
As for Sonoma, if anyone takes the plunge before I do, I am curious to know what your performance is like. Pretty much same as before or worse? I can't exactly imagine it getting better on a newer os not officially supported. Also, in Sonoma, what works, and what doesn't?
On another plus, I was able to get tools to do an in place upgrade of Windows 10 to latest available Windows 11. That is running pretty well, though I do plan on using one of those debloat scripts there, as I've seen how they have helped in previous Windows installs.
My recommendations.
The following settings are just my recommendations. You do not have to use them, or use all of them, but they are what I would use on your machine.
• General > Login Items (Make sure there are not a ton of apps loading at login)
• General > Storage (Enable "Store in iCloud" and "Optimize Storage")
• General > Sharing (Disable EVERYTHING)
• Appearance (Use Dark theme. Enable Wallpaper Tinting.)
• Accessibility > Display (Reduce Motion, on. Reduce Transparency, on.)
• Display (Disable Automatic adjust brightness)
• Wallpaper (Choose anything that is NOT dynamic)
• Screensaver (Choose any of the "simple" ones. Personally, I use the new "Hello" screensaver)
Oh! one more, I would disable the auto keyboard backlight if you have a backlit keyboard, and turn the KB brightness to "0".
Regarding Windows, I have my Bootcamp running Windows 10 Student Edition. Yes it's old, but I really enjoy using it with the latest NVDA and my various adding.
I don't have a whole lot of experience with Windows 11. Is it worth upgrading?
Some day I'm going to get off my lazy a$$ and just purchase an actual PC, but in the meantime I am blown away at how efficient Windows 10 runs on my old MBP.
Thanks!
Hey Brian,
Thanks for that info.. I've gone ahead and implemented these. So far so good.
Well, I went ahead and decided to take one for the team and did the update. At first, everything was running a lot slower, but now seems to have gotten a bit better. Running Sonoma, and everything looks good. I didn't have to go the USB installer route, though I made one just in case something went wrong. I wanted to see how well it would work updating straight from settings, and it did, just fine. I made sure OCLP was updated first, and then did the update. It was slow as ever, though I can't say for sure how long it took, since I fell asleep waiting for it to finish.
Regarding Windows 11, I don't seem to find much difference, but I do like the start menu a ton better, as it lets me reorder things, kinda. You can pin, then it gives you the option to move to top, so you might have to move a lot of things to top or first item before you can finally get things exactly where you want them, but it's better than no reordering ability at all. First time since Win 7 that I haven't used Classic Shell or similar. Otherwise, it feels pretty much the same to me.
Re: Windows
That's interesting about the Start menu. Perhaps is just how I use the Win10 start menu, but it has never really bothered me. Being able to TAB, or maybe it's control + TAB, makes things a little easier to find as well. 🤷🏻♂️
I have a blind lady friend who has a sweet Dell laptop running Win11, maybe next time I visit with her I will humbly ask her if I could play around with it.
I absolutely despise Windows 11 gave me a Windows 11 Device I’ll
I hate Windows 11 so badly that if you want to give me a Windows 11 Device even with the highest specifications possible I’ll give it right back to you
And WindowsXP. Oh yes remember those good days before? Dan,
Could open core package less I’ll be able to downgrade macOS? I want to see about installing Mac OS Sierra on my 2017 MacBook Air but it runs macOS Monterey
You can get Sierra back, but...
It will take some work. If you have not learned patience, you will for this. I guarantee it.
There is a link att he bottom of my post. Follow the instructions in it, but make sure you have some sighted assistance. You will need it for the step where you choose your wi-fi. I am not sure why VO does not activate for this, it just does not. The rest of the steps are doable with VO.
One final note, make "sure" you choose the hotkeys "Shift + Option + Command + R". This will ensure you get Sierra back.
https://osxdaily.com/how-reinstall-macos-internet-recovery/
Consideration
I am seriously considering reverting back to an earlier version of macOS myself. When I had Monterey and earlier, I had a nice work-around for the "Safari Not Responding" bug. Even posted it on AppleVis.
Sadly it does not work with Ventura. 😭
To be honest, earlier versions, at least in my experience, ran far smoother. I'm talking like, pre Catalina here. 🤷🏻♂️
Try Edge!
Brian,
You might want to check out Edge. I have it running now, and it is not perfect, but a lot more responsive. Not busy busy busy.
I'm seriously thinking come new year, about trying to get my hands on an old 2015 macbook pro, that can have 16 gb ram. If I get this kind of performance on an old junker like this, I can only imagine how it would be with 16 gb.
But for now, definitely give Edge a shot. I'm honestly thinking about putting it on my phone and iPad too, just to keep everything the same. The thing that made me never want to use Edge before when I had a better machine was no iCloud passwords in other browsers, which has since been changed in Sonoma.
So, if Safari is your only major gripe with the newer os versions, give Edge a fair shake before you downgrade. Other than a very short, like less than two seconds, bit of unresponsiveness when first loading the page, it hasn't frozen up on me once. Kinda funny, since Chrome, and anything Chromium based, which Edge is, used to be considered huge ram hogs, but now, I must say, at least Edge has been optimized very nicely. :)
If I still have the usb…
If I still have the usb installer I made, could I downgrade back to Ventura, without losing data? I really really really don't like what they've done with quicknav. Who knows how long it could be before it's fixed? If I can't do it without keeping data, then I'll just stick it out, probably do more web stuff in Windows or on the Ipad. I recently discovered table top mode for Braille screen input. I've used BSI in screen away mode for years but that's not quite as intuitive on an ipad, but tabletop mode has made typing Braille on the iPad really nice. That's actually how I'm writing this message now, while the mac charges.
I don't believe you can…
I don't believe you can downgrade macOS without reformatting the disk, unless there's some way to do it that's specific to OCLP.
Well bummer! It was worth…
Well bummer! It was worth asking about I guess. Will just wait then until they fix the mess they've made with quicknav. But the rest of the OS is great.
Possibility
If you have a bootable thumb drive with the version of macOS you want, you can do the following:
1. Reboot your machine.
2. Immediately hold "Option" by it self, until the startup chime goes away.
3.
3a. If you have any sighted assistance -- press left or right arrow key over to the thumb drive icon, and press enter.
3b. Without assistance -- same as above but you get to play whack a mole in choosing which "drive" you want. Since you, like me, have a partition running Windows, you may hit that one, but sooner or later you will land on the thumb drive.
4. Give it a moment, the thumb drive will boot into recovery mode with the macOS (insert version here) screen, and VO should work now.
Note that, for whatever reason, the volume will be super low, and the voice will likely be Fred or Cathy. Your mileage may vary.
HTH. 😅
Unfortunately, installing…
Unfortunately, installing without data loss is a no go. but I finally became frustrated enough with the thing I decided to reinstall anyway. Glad I kept that installer.
In the process of installing now. Fun times. lol
Feeling your pain.
I have spent most of the day doing a fresh install of macOS Big Sur and all its updates (save for Safari 16.6.1). I am testing out a theory so have not yet updated the browser.
Is it sad that the OS from 4 years ago runs smoother and far more efficient than Ventura and above?
Could just be my tired old MBP, but whatever. I gave the OCLP a fair run. 🤷🏻♂️
Well then you know what that means
If I don’t need an Internet connection, I can plug my USB hard drive into another MacBook, go into the terminal and make it a bootable drive, put the macOS Sierra file on it, plug it into my MacBook Air from 2017, Blam! I’ll be on an older version of macOS and no time. Will I need an Internet connection to install an older version of macOS from my USB drive. And does macOS Sierra support apfs or do I need to format my internal Drive. This comment was entirely made using dictation. Good job dictation, I only had to edit a few small things
I don't think you need an…
I don't think you need an Internet connection to install macOS from an external drive. If you're installing Sierra, you'll need to format the internal disk as Mac OS Extended (Journaled,) as APFS is not supported for startup in that version.
Got Ventura up and running…
Got Ventura up and running again. It is handling reasonably better. However, when I do try to get my hands on something slightly newer, though still Intel due to the lower cost and also bootcamp, I will still try Sonoma again, also once they fix the issue with quicknav. That one thing alone made me want to downgrade more than any other. Granted, even finder always being busy was annoying too, but quicknav really did it for me.
The most recent version Apple officially supports on this thing is Catalina, which for me is just two far back. The addition of Eloquence in Ventura makes that the sweet spot and most logical stopping point for me on this old machine.
Booting to OCLP flash drive, how does one know where EFI Boot is
Hi Justin, and others,
I'm currently running a late 2014 Mac mini with 8GB RAM, and a 500GB SSD externally attached, booting into macOS Monterey.
I've created my OCLP flash drive, (Ventura), but as yet haven't done the put in. Before I do, I should do a Time Machine backup, just in case.
The reason I wish to run Ventura on the mini is that I plan to be away for a while, and want to put in Remote Incident Manager on the machine and set it up for unattended access, so I can access it remotely and manipulate the machine as though I'm right there in front of it.
To this end, I have two big questions.
1. When I reboot, I need to hold the Option key to bring up the boot picker. Since I'm only running one OS, will EFI Boot be the first option, or no? If it is, I should just be able to hit enter, quickly right-arrow once, then hit enter again?
2. Once I've got the installer up and running, I can proceed to put in Ventura to the external SSD. Once that's done, as I understand it, I'd then need to run OCLP on the EFI partition of the SSD. At that point, if I reboot the machine, will it automagically go into Ventura, or will I always need to access the boot picker, etc?
I really need this to work as I run web, FTP, Mail and TeamTalk servers on this machine, and I'd really like to be able to remotely access it, as I help a friend co-produce an on-line audio stream, plus I need to be ready, just in case something should go wrong and I need to interact with the server machine.
Any help you folks can provide will be greatly appreciated! If you'd like, feel free to contact me off-site at the following eMail addresses:
rgj@ganahee.com (My personal address with my mail server)
ganahee@gmail.com (Alternate address, in case the personal doesn't work)
Ron
P.S. I also see that OCLP does "Root Patching", and it says it's for internal drives. Even though it's externally connected, does it count, or might I wanna avoid this as it's technically not internal, although if I knew someone who could help me with it, it would be?
If I were you, I would try…
If I were you, I would try to get some help making that drive be internal. I have no experience with OCLP and external drives. The fact that the drive is external could change a lot of things, from finding the right thing in the boot picker, to making OCLP boot the right drive.
When a drive is internal, once the os has been installed, efi patched, all that fun stuff, it should boot automatically. Also, in OCLP settings, there is an option to show boot picker. I always unchecked this, so it would just do what it needed to do.
Also, having some sighted assistance in that first boot, where you have to choose EFI Boot, would be a good idea. It gave me trouble the first few times.
Alternatively..
If you are like Justin or myself, chances are you have multiple operating systems on your hard drive. If this is the case, holding Option during boot is like playing "blind Wack-a-Mole".
Regardless if you have one OS or more, there is an old, and apparently mostly forgotten, boot hotkey that will help you. It is what I did when playing around with Open Core Legacy Patcher.
If you press and hold "c" while powering on your Mac, and you have a thumb drive already plugged in with he necessary files needed for OCLP, it will automatically load the files off of the thumb drive, then boot up as normal with MacOS.
This old hotkey used to be for optical drives, back when Macs had those, but works with thumb drives too.
Source: https://tidbits.com/2016/09/01/macos-hidden-treasures-15-startup-key-combinations/
HTH. 😃
@Brian, That is actually…
@Brian,
That is actually really good to know. New to me. I don't need to mess with OCLP anymore, but may again as soon as next year if they drop this model from the next OS.
Monterey
I'm considering re-installing OCLP and Monterey. I can only speak for myself here, but I liked Monterey. Hella better than Ventura at least.
Also, the "Not responding" bug is a lot more manageable with Monterey and older revisions of macOS. 🤷🏻♂️
I don't remember ever using…
I don't remember ever using it. I went directly from Catalina to Ventura. I didn't find Ventura on the 2012 air all that bad. Didn't get much "not responding" at all. Now, on my 2018 air, Sonoma is still fully supported, so no need for OCLP. But on the 2012 air, Sonoma was straight up BAD! But even on Ventura, I didn't have a lot of not responding even in Safari. On my 2018, at least for the sites I visit, this is mostly nonexistent. Only on youtube tv, but that's no problem, since that was just for testing, I would never actually try to watch youtube tv on the mb air, as I would much rather do that with my iPad pro. But other than that one site, I haven't had any issues.
Reasons.
Yeah, I hated Ventura. I got the "Not responding" bug a ton. My 'fix' for it didn't work out so well on Ventura either.
Plus, I absolutely hate the new system settings layout. Although, you can open system settings, then VO+m > View to get all the options in a friendly (and alphabetized) list view.
Of course this can be done on earlier builds of macOS, but the fact it is still in Ventura and I'm guessing Sonoma, is saying something.
Here goes nothing..
As of this post I have updated to the latest release of Open Core, and am in the process of downloading the Sonoma 14.1 build. Here's hoping I don't break something!
The good news is I have a means of restoring to Big Sur from a backup, too bad we cannot do this on iOS. Would kill to go back to iOS 14. 😅
Weird issue installing 14.1.1 update
So the macOS 14.1 install was a success, and seemingly ran better than Ventura 13.6. The "not responding" bug was few and far in between, and overall my MBP ran great.
Then Apple went and released the 14.1.1 update.
I am not sure what happened, it downloaded fine from the Software Update panel in System Settings, but part way through the installation, my MBP completely froze. I even had a sighted friend check it out, and she confirmed it was indeed frozen.
So I, albeit foolishly, did a cold reboot, and wouldn't you know it? I ended up having to go into recovery to fix things.
So long story short, I am back on macOS 13.6.1 and Safari 17.1, and surprise, surprise, it is running better than 14.1 did.
I guess that little .1 patch really tweaked some things. And since I never upgraded my iPhone, because f**k iOS 17, my iPhone and MBP are once again speaking the same language, for all intents and purposes.
Oh! One more caveat for you all; Time Machine is all but useless these days. I say this because as part of my recovery attempt, I had a fresh Time Machine on an external drive from macOS 14.1, and when I tried to restore from Time Machine backup, I got a nice error that basically said my Time Machine was corrupt.
Go figure.....
Just revisitting this after updating to Sonoma 14.2
I had nothing better to do today, so while I am running my daily driver, the 2018 mb air, and have no real need to do anything with this 2012 air, I decided to pull it out and update it anyway. Still slow, much slower than I would ever want to use full time, but it is running Sonoma pretty well, less not responding, etc. Might just still make a decent travel laptop if I ever should go out of country again so as to not risk my better machine. Just wanted to let anyone who might be interested know, as I do know there are still those actively using machines like this.
Can it be done without an external disk?
I have a macbook air with 4gb ram in the beginning of 2015. I want to upload this to my sonoma. Can I install the sonoma by creating a virtual disk in the system without using an external disk?
Possibly
I am not 100% on this, but I believe you can do this by partitioning your SSD (temporarily). You will want to consult the documentation for Open Core first, just in case I am wrong. . .