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Best OS for MPB Mid 2009 for daily use?

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Exodiss

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 10, 2021
8
4
Hi!
For little money, I was able to buy MBP Mid 2009 with 8GB RAM and 128GB SSD.
Actually im working on El Capitan, but Chrome/Safari have got problem with compatibility (err_cert_date_invalid).

Can anybody advice me which OS should i install?

I wanted to throw in High Sierra but I'm still thinking about Big Sur / Catalina.
 
Amethyst1

Amethyst1

macrumors G3
Oct 28, 2015
9,783
12,183
Exodiss said:
I wanted to throw in High Sierra but I'm still thinking about Big Sur / Catalina.
Click to expand...
My vote would be for High Sierra at minimum so you can run e.g. the latest Firefox if you want to. I'd probably go the little extra step for an unsupported Mojave or Catalina installation just to have security updates (not sure if Mojave is still covered though), better compatibility with applications and browsers, and of course, Dark Mode.
 
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bobesch

bobesch

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Oct 21, 2015
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Kiel, Germany
Amethyst1 said:
My vote would be for High Sierra at minimum so you can run e.g. the latest Firefox if you want to. I'd probably go the little extra step for an unsupported Mojave or Catalina installation just to have security updates (not sure if Mojave is still covered though), better compatibility with applications and browsers, and of course, Dark Mode.
Click to expand...
Fully agree. I'd vote for MojavePatch to keep HFS+ and 32bit support.
 
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Exodiss

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 10, 2021
8
4
Okay, after few hours using Monterey i want to install High Sierra.. I think Monterey is too hard for that old Macbook.

Just i need only wipe the disk drive during install High Sierra?
 
EugW

EugW

macrumors G5
Jun 18, 2017
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Amethyst1 said:
My vote would be for High Sierra at minimum so you can run e.g. the latest Firefox if you want to. I'd probably go the little extra step for an unsupported Mojave or Catalina installation just to have security updates (not sure if Mojave is still covered though), better compatibility with applications and browsers, and of course, Dark Mode.
Click to expand...
High Sierra isn't supported either. You need the dosdude1 patcher to install High Sierra. Works great, but I personally run Catalina on my mid-2009 MacBook Pro.

However, Catalina feels a like a Hackintosh. High Sierra on that machine feels like a real Mac, but older.

Exodiss said:
For little money, I was able to buy MBP Mid 2009 with 8GB RAM and 128GB SSD.
Actually im working on El Capitan, but Chrome/Safari have got problem with compatibility (err_cert_date_invalid).
Click to expand...
This can be "fixed" on El Capitan by telling Keychain Access to always trust one specific Let's Encrypt certificate. (A certificate expired on Sept. 30, 2021, which is causing all these issues.)

BTW, which model did you get? What is your CPU? I have the 2.26 GHz P8400 which is very slow, but a 2.8 GHz T9600 or 3.06 GHz T9900 would be more pleasant in terms of performance.

Geekbench 5
P8400: 330/600
T9600: 405/735
T9900: 440/800
 
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Exodiss

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 10, 2021
8
4
EugW said:
High Sierra isn't supported either. You need the dosdude1 patcher to install High Sierra. Works great, but I personally run Catalina on my mid-2009 MacBook Pro.

However, Catalina feels a like a Hackintosh. High Sierra on that machine feels like a real Mac, but older.


This can be "fixed" on El Capitan by telling Keychain Access to always trust one specific Let's Encrypt certificate. (A certificate expired on Sept. 30, 2021, which is causing all these issues.)

BTW, which model did you get? What is your CPU? I have the 2.26 GHz P8400 which is very slow, but a 2.8 GHz T9600 or 3.06 GHz T9900 would be more pleasant in terms of performance.

Geekbench 5
P8400: 330/600
T9600: 405/735
T9900: 440/800
Click to expand...
Yeah, High Sierra works great, but with 20 cards in Chrome it gets a problem with performance.
My CPU is 2.26 P8400 :/
.......................................

Im planning to buy Late 2011 with i5/i7 or mid 2012, because they are very cheap
 
Amethyst1

Amethyst1

macrumors G3
Oct 28, 2015
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12,183
TheShortTimer said:
As an owner of a 2011 13" i5 and a mid-2012 MBP, I agree 100%.
Click to expand...
The one thing the 2011 MBP has going for it is its ability to run Snow Leopard natively — and faster than greased lightning if some SSD magic is thrown into the mix. If that is important to you, it’s a no-brainer. But otherwise the 2012 is the “better” machine.
 
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EugW

EugW

macrumors G5
Jun 18, 2017
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Yeah, my young daughter is using my 2009 MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo 2.26 GHz (Geekbench 5: 330/600) and even at 9 years old, she comments it's too slow for some of her usage. It's OK for her Google Classroom based school work, but not good for web based educational games. However, her 2014 iPad Air 2 (Geekbench 5: 385/1080) is OK for that.

I set up a 2010 27" Core i7-870 iMac (Geekbench 5: 600/2250) on High Sierra for her and performance-wise that thing feels like a modern machine. Very peppy. My iPad Pro 10.5" (Geekbench 5: 850/2300) is around that speed and it's very good. However, while she'll use the iMac for some stuff, she still wants a laptop. I figure in a while I might get her a 2012 non-Retina 13" i5-3210M MacBook Pro (Geekbench 5: 650/1400), since it's reasonably speedy and easily upgradable, yet inexpensive. My wife's iPad 7th generation (Geekbench 5: 770/1425) performs around that speed and feels quite decent.

And for myself, to replace my misbehaving 2007 Mac Pro, I just ordered an old 2014 i5-4278U Mac mini (765/1680) for my daily office work which involves mainly VPN and business applications. My 2017 Core m3 MacBook performs around that level and I find its performance perfectly fine for that type of work.

I know GB5 isn't always the best representation of performance "feel" but overall I think it works decently enough to gauge Mac and iPad peppiness.

300/600 - Too slow for mainstream usage
400/1000 - More tolerable, but still quite slow
600/1400 - Decent, good enough for many budget users for mainstream use. I consider this low end entry level these days.
700/1700 - Good
800/2300 - Very good
1000/3500 - Excellent

Note, this is not for stuff like video editing, etc. There it's harder to compare but in general I find the iPads do better than the Macs.
 
Jack Neill

Jack Neill

macrumors 68020
Sep 13, 2015
2,272
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San Antonio Texas
Amethyst1 said:
Stay away from a 15” or 17” due to defective unfixable dGPUs. The 13” is safe.
I’d recommend going for a mid-2012 in any case as it natively “does”USB 3.0 and Catalina.
Click to expand...
Another vote for the mid 2012, runs Big Sur even better than Catalina. I have 16Gb Ram and a 2TB SSD in mine and its a champ. Non retina display on mine is my only complaint.
 
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aurora72

aurora72

macrumors regular
Jun 7, 2010
188
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Türkiye
I'm planning to install Big Sur either on my MacBook Unibody Late 2009 or on my Mac mini Mid-2010 but I've noticed that there aren't many posts about Big Sur on early Intel Macs. The reason I want to install Big Sur is because I'd like to try the video app called Infuse 7 but on its website, it's reported to run only on macOS 11 i.e. Big Sur. I was wondering if Big Sur (not the Monterey) would run just good enough on my MB so that I can use Infuse 7 on it too. Of course, the best way to find it out is to actually go and install Big Sur on MB but before spending hours doing it, I'd like to have an opinion about it.
 
bobesch

bobesch

macrumors 68020
Oct 21, 2015
2,142
2,220
Kiel, Germany
Jack Neill said:
Another vote for the mid 2012, runs Big Sur even better than Catalina. I have 16Gb Ram and a 2TB SSD in mine and its a champ. Non retina display on mine is my only complaint.
Click to expand...
How did you get that BigSur-Magic working?
All my knowledge about unsupported macOS has come at a standstill while being perfectly happy with dosdude1's patches ...
 
S

seanmccoye

macrumors newbie
Dec 7, 2021
21
15
Just bought a maxout ram transplant for my 2009 MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo 2.26 GHz. (8gb lol) Some day not having java > 1.6 and QT5 will get annoying. I will need options.
 
A

Adv34

macrumors member
Jan 20, 2022
30
1
Friends, imac 2009 21.5 9400m Another 2-3 years can be used to surf the web, text file and bootcamp ? My friends say this is a very old and hot model. Can it be used every day 12-14 hours a day for work? I like the old design and I want to buy this model. (ssd 512 ram 16 os x 10.12) or 2010 (4670). Thank you
 
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