MACOS - The Latest Changes And How to Run MACOS on old MACs
Runing MACOS on old MACs (2007/2008ish)
In general Apple is support High Sahara(10.13) with relatively recent 2021 security patches. This release is nearly universal and runs on iMAC's in the 2008/2009 range, as well as MacPro's in the 3.1 release cycle. Keeping security patches on MAC's is important simply because Apple identifies all the bugs they found in older OS's and dont patch them so hackers have a roadmap to access your computer. Although we have found El Capitan the FASTEST MACOS by a significant margin, it only has security patches through the fall of 2019, almost 2 years without a fix. Thats still pretty good, but installing El Capitan first, and then upgrading to High Sahara is our recommendation. It usually takes all of your changes without a blip.
Mojave Release (10.14)
Adds a bunch of new features, the most important is native NTFS file support for mixed computers. This allows you to read volumes created from Bootcamp, and other tools which use the NTFS file system. In addition Mojave supports containerized disk types, which is a breathtaking improvement in security, and flexibility. Essentially container disks contain container volumes which can grow on demand up to the total size of the physical disk. This allows you to partition disks, but not specify a specific size. Mojave also includes updated PHP versions for Apache installed natively as usual. Mojave however requires an Apple Metal enabled video driver or speciality patches made by a vendor in California named DosDude(dosdude1.com) who has made Mojave work on older models including Mac Pro 3,1.
Catalina Release (10.15)
This is a major change to MACOS which includes a number of changes the largest is AppleTV on the GUI. This allows you to watch apples new TV channel. It also comes with updated versions of Apple Music which are dramatically different. But Catalina has a much more secure file system. Essentially it now has a core volume, and a data module. the core module is MACOS core, and cant be modified without the root password, nor do apps install on this volume. This makes it much more secure than previous versions. On the Data Volume are mirrored partitions witch changeable config files and user disks. Like Mojave, DosDude1 has built a patching system to get this to run on your machine. However to get security patches you have to reuse this tool nearly every year, or every quarter, which is a five or six hour task, so dont go to this version if you are not a techno nerd.
Big Sur(10.16)
Big Sur departs from 32 bit apps.... so we dont recommend it on old computers(nor will it run). Like Mojave and Catalina this requires a Metal capable video card, and they are very expensive (500-5000 dollars). DosDude has not built a patch set for BigSur so it wont run on older MACS.
Our Recommendations:
1) If you have a fast machine, High Sahara is a great choice. You can upgrade to Mojave at your leisure but it doesnt really add any surface features other than new versions of XCode. If you are a developer, choose Mojave. We are not a big fan of Catalina, its big and slow, so we would wait for a Generation or two before upgrading to the new architecture.
2) If Speed on a Protected Hypervisor is your mission and your computer's not going to be on the Internet we still believe that El Capitan is BY FAR the fastest OS version across all 2005+ hardware.
A Last Note - Working with DosDude1.com Patchers on MACOS
Please note that DosDude does make good patches. They are essentially mashing Apple patches onto the core OS and creating better installers for the OS. They do a nice job but they are not writing new Operating systems, they are building tools to make it better for NON-MACCIES mostly. But Remember for Catalina, and Mojave releases, YOU CANNOT INSTALL SECURITY PATCHES FROM APPLE WITHOUT AN APFS FORMATTED VOLUME. In other words, you cant run Dosdude images in production without APFS. Without Apple patches its very hard to run MACOS successfully, unless you are using 5 year or older software which has fallen out of fashion which would take a bit to explain, but essentially if you are a hacker you are writing exploits for modern tools, not old ones. One of the reasons the US Defense department still runs windows XP predominantly.
Greenville Associates
Perspectives Altered, Progress Achieved.
Comments
Post a Comment