macOS Sierra on MacBook Pro (Early 2011)

[Brammy]

Yep.

I would double check the backup. *Should* is not a word you want to use before you reformat the drive.

I'd also backup the crucial files to a second drive. I *think* you can also just mount the time machine backup as a second drive and copy files from there.

The only reason I recommend this is to keep the various bits of the OS as pristine as possible. If you've got some old driver or something causing the slow down, you can copy the problem back inadvertently.

 

[Mr. 123]

Yep.

I would double check the backup. *Should* is not a word you want to use before you reformat the drive.

I'd also backup the crucial files to a second drive. I *think* you can also just mount the time machine backup as a second drive and copy files from there.

The only reason I recommend this is to keep the various bits of the OS as pristine as possible. If you've got some old driver or something causing the slow down, you can copy the problem back inadvertently.

Yeah that makes sense! I'll do that!

I'm going to let the computer be overnight so that it can finish indexing and then see if it makes any difference. I already reset PARM and SMC but it changed nothing.

 

[mikecwest]

This sounds awesome! Continuity is feature I really want! So it's totally safe to do this?

I have been using it for years, and have not had an issue. You have to use the CAT tool everytime you update, for each increment such as 10.11.1, 10.11.2, etc... as well as each beta update, if you use the DEV or PB releases. So far, it does not seem like Apple is doing much to stop it, but with each release the drivers are updated, and obviously no longer patched.

As far as using a dongle goes, I have not used that method, and would not do so on a laptop, as they would be a hassle. For a fixed desktop machine, it would not be so bad.

I

Isn't there a replacement card that has a newer BroadCom chipset, that'll support 802.11AC for those systems?
(seems silly to be replacing the airport card, but not getting all of the features).

I am confused by your question, because I believe that you quoted the answer to your own question, in your post.

As far as I can tell, all continuity features work with the newer card. There you have to make sure that the part number is the one that ends with X (BCM94331PCIEBT4CAX)

You have to keep in mind also, that your other devices must also be compatible...If your iPhone is too old, it might not be compatible. If your carrier does not have HotSpot enabled on your iPhone, then Instant Hotspot probably will not work. If you do no have Pages on your Mac and iPhone, then you obviously can not "handoff" with that app.

As far as buying the right part, it has nothing to do with luck. If you have an MBP early 2011, its as easy as copying and pasting BCM94331PCIEBT4CAX into eBay or even google. Just double check the auction details to make sure that it is BCM94331PCIEBT4CAX and NOT BCM94331PCIEBT4CA.

I don't know about the universal copy and paste, as I have not tried it, and not even sure how it is supposed to work.

 

[Mr. 123]

I just spoke to apple support and they helped me downgrade via time machine! It's restoring now for a few hours!

 

[Brammy]

Good luck!

 

[fheusel]

I am confused by your question, because I believe that you quoted the answer to your own question, in your post.

As far as I can tell, all continuity features work with the newer card. There you have to make sure that the part number is the one that ends with X (BCM94331PCIEBT4CAX)

The BCM94331PCIEBT4CAX supports Bluetooth Low Energy used by continuity features, but not AC-Wifi, so you won't get Apple Watch Auto-Unlock. @fischersd is asking for a card which supports the AC-Wifi standard, but I'm unaware of anything besides the unavailable/vaporware (?) "QuickerTek uCard 4" with the hefty price-tag of 150$.

 

[dashwin]

After much thought and research online, I decided to upgrade to Sierra. I had backups for everything just in case.

I must say overall I am very happy with the result and I would recommend an upgrade if and only if you have the exact same configuration/setup as mine. System is faster to boot, apps open quicker, UI is snappier.

My setup: MacBook Pro 15" Early 2011 2.0Ghz, 1TB EVO SSD, 16GB 1333Mhz RAM. Everything else are Apple components. Here are some of my observations (these have been pointed out many times already)...

Positives

• Upgrade itself took about ~40-50 minutes.
• There is a very small amount of jitter with Mission Control or side swiping to switch to full screen apps when you invoke it the first time after doing something else. But its very hard to notice and/or it's not intrusive. Since I use gestures the BIG difference is Mission Control opens as fast or as slow as you complete the gesture, it appeared to 'lag' a bit when I move my fingers slowly. But if I move them quick it looks snappy.
• Geekbench 64-bit Multicore speeds improved significantly! Hitting 9300 on my MacBook whereas I used to get 8700 and the likes before the upgrade.
• Boot times are much snappier.
• Some apps appear to open quicker (many stock apps and some third party apps) and some do appear slower (like Sublime or IntelliJ).
• Picture in Picture is awesome, I use it to watch snippets on youtube while I am doing other work. To invoke it is very awkward -- you need to right click twice on the video and then select PIP menu option. And to think the Mac users never had to deal with "right click" about a decade or more back, in todays Apple we have 3D touch menus and double right clicks. The atrocities...!!
• Safari 10 seems to be the same (although I didn't test Safari 10 on El Capitan).
• Siri works well -- haven't used it much. But it was great pressing and holding Cmd+Space (not holding invokes Spotlight as normal) to invoke Siri saying "Show me the latest email from Sharon" rather than having to click on Mail and type in Sharon. For searches I think this will come in handy provided you don't have an accent and have had luck with Siri in the past. The problem with Siri or any voice assistant is that in the times it gets you wrong, you've already wasted time trying it and it would have been much faster just typing. But they're getting there...
• Storage management: It's "okay". I have set it to empty my trash automatically. I don't pay for Cloud storage with Apple and never will entrust the data there. Google cloud I am much more comfortable with. It was most useful in getting me to delete some older files (as it provides a historical overview of files you haven't accessed or used). I like the Disk Inventory X app UI better though for larger files than Storage Management UI.
• I have more space on my hard drive now as the OS occupies less space.
• Parallels 11 works flawlessly. Had to upgrade Little Snitch.

Negatives

• MacBook PRO runs hotter when plugged in. But mostly due to Photos (see below). This will take days to settle if you have a large photo collection (mine's not too bad around 100GB but its been going at it for about 12 or more hours and still hasn't settled).
• Photos app -- DUH, they are now running some heavy hitting AI algorithms on your Mac. Processes eating my CPU: photoanalysisd, diskkimages-helper, Photos app in general. Note: these only kick up if I connect to power, on battery the CPU is almost same as what I remember seeing in El Capitan. I wish there was a way to turn this off. I use Google Photos anyway for my automatic albums and don't plan on using Apple's photo products.
• Battery life: Haven't tested it yet but plan to.
• If you are a developer and you've upgraded to El Capitan, you know the drill of re-installing command line apps.

Hope this helps. If you are adventurous and have back ups, I'd recommend the upgrade from El Capitan on a similar configuration as mine.

 

[satinsilverem2]

After much thought and research online, I decided to upgrade to Sierra. I had backups for everything just in case.

I must say overall I am very happy with the result and I would recommend an upgrade if and only if you have the exact same configuration/setup as mine. System is faster to boot, apps open quicker, UI is snappier.

My setup: MacBook Pro Early 2011, 1TB EVO SSD, 16GB 1333Mhz RAM. Everything else are Apple components. Here are some of my observations (these have been pointed out many times already)...

Positives

• Upgrade itself took about ~40-50 minutes.
• There is a very small amount of jitter with Mission Control or side swiping to switch to full screen apps when you invoke it the first time after doing something else. But its very hard to notice and/or it's not intrusive. Since I use gestures the BIG difference is Mission Control opens as fast or as slow as you complete the gesture, it appeared to 'lag' a bit when I move my fingers slowly. But if I move them quick it looks snappy.
• Geekbench 64-bit Multicore speeds improved significantly! Hitting 9300 on my MacBook whereas I used to get 8700 and the likes before the upgrade.
• Boot times are much snappier.
• Some apps appear to open quicker (many stock apps and some third party apps) and some do appear slower (like Sublime or IntelliJ).
• Picture in Picture is awesome, I use it to watch re-runs of late night talk shows or other snippets on youtube. To invoke it is very awkward -- you need to right click twice on the video and the select PIP menu option. And to think the Mac users never had to deal with "right click" about a decade or more back, in todays Apple we have Force touch menus and double right clicks. The atrocities...!!
• Safari 10 seems to be the same (although I didn't test Safari 10 on El Capitan).
• Siri works well -- haven't used it much. But it was great pressing and holding Cmd+Space (not holding invokes Spotlight as normal) to invoke Siri saying "Show me the latest email from Sharon" rather than having to click on Mail and type in Sharon. For searches I think this will come in handy provided you don't have an accent and have had luck with Siri in the past. The problem with Siri or any voice assistant is that in the times it gets you wrong, you've already wasted time trying it and it would have been much faster just typing. But they're getting there...
• Storage management: It's "okay". I have set it to empty my trash automatically. I don't pay for Cloud storage with Apple and never will entrust the data there. Google cloud I am much more comfortable with. It was most useful in getting me to delete some older files (as it provides a historical overview of files you haven't accessed or used). I like the Disk Inventory X app UI better though for larger files than Storage Management UI.
• I have more space on my hard drive now as the OS occupies less space.
• Parallels 11 works flawlessly. Had to upgrade Little Snitch.

Negatives

• MacBook PRO runs hotter when plugged in. But mostly due to Photos (see below). This will take days to settle if you have a large photo collection (mine's not too bad around 100GB but its been going at it for about 12 or more hours and still hasn't settled).
• Photos app -- DUH, they are now running some heavy hitting AI algorithms on your Mac. Processes eating my CPU: photoanalysisd, diskkimages-helper, Photos app in general. Note: these only kick up if I connect to power, on battery the CPU is almost same as what I remember seeing in El Capitan. I wish there was a way to turn this off. I use Google Photos anyway for my automatic albums and don't plan on using Apple's photo products.
• Battery life: Haven't tested it yet but plan to.
• If you are a developer and you've upgraded to El Capitan, you know the drill of re-installing command line apps.

Hope this helps. If you are adventurous and have back ups, I'd recommend the upgrade from El Capitan on a similar configuration as mine.

are you running a 13 inch or a 15 inch MacBook pro?

 

[dashwin]

are you running a 13 inch or a 15 inch MacBook pro?

15 inch. Just updated the post. I am thinking the AMD video card on the 15 inch is helping.

 

[satinsilverem2]

15 inch. Just updated the post. I am thinking the AMD video card on the 15 inch is helping to keep things smooth.

ah I was going to call BS on the Geekbench scores if it was a 13 inch. Have you run into the graphics issues yet? I think the nail in the coffin for the 13 inch models is going to be the Intel graphics. They weren't really that great to begin with and they really starting to show their weaknesses over the past couple of years.

 

[dashwin]

ah I was going to call BS on the Geekbench scores if it was a 13 inch. Have you run into the graphics issues yet? I think the nail in the coffin for the 13 inch models is going to be the Intel graphics. They weren't really that great to begin with and they really starting to show their weaknesses over the past couple of years.

Nope - no glitches so far, I also connect to an external 27" 1920x1200 monitor that works well. Haven't noticed any degradation in graphics performance although I haven't run a graphics perf test yet.

 

[satinsilverem2]

Nope - no glitches so far, I also connect to an external 27" 1920x1200 monitor that works well. Haven't noticed any degradation in graphics performance although I haven't run a graphics perf test yet.

glad to hear that some of the 2011 15 inches are still rocking their factory logic boards.

 

[dashwin]

glad to hear that some of the 2011 15 inches are still rocking their factory logic boards.

I doubt theres any of them still around . I was referring to Sierra graphics glitches that some had before Sierra was released. Haven't seen those.

I've replaced the LB's twice already through Apple. They're saying that it won't happen again, am not that optimistic. Except for that issue, this five year old system is still very much usable after the upgrades. Waiting for the latest release of the MBP to do an upgrade.

 

[Mr. 123]

I am back on El Capitan now! Just updated Safari! The computer is super fast again and reverting was really simple. As I had a time machine backup from 2 days ago, all I had to do was restart the computer and go into recovery mode (by holding down cmd+R and fro there just chose the option "restore from time machine backup". Took a few hours but now everything is back to normal!

I might try to upgrade to Sierra sometime in the very distant future, but I'm happy with El Capitan for the moment!

 

[Brammy]

Glad it worked out. Restores from Time Machine can be a little dicey.

 

[monkeybagel]

I rely heavily on VMware Fusion, and have a 2012 MacBook Pro (the last expandable version) and after a clean install Fusion 8.5 crashed while installing a Windows VM. This has never been an issue in the past, so I reinstalled 10.11.6 until I feel this gets sorted. Not sure if it's a VMware or Apple problem.

 

[RnR]

Hi, I've a lovely MBP 15' early 2011.
16GB 1333 MHz DDR3
1TB SSD
WiFi & back up via Time Capsule (2011).

With macOS Sierra.
So doesn't support Bluetooth Low Energy.

What do I need to do to be able to use Apple Watch auto unlock?
Thanks.

 

[Brammy]

Hi, I've a lovely MBP 15' early 2011.
16GB 1333 MHz DDR3
1TB SSD
WiFi & back up via Time Capsule (2011).

With macOS Sierra.
So doesn't support Bluetooth Low Energy.

What do I need to do to be able to use Apple Watch auto unlock?
Thanks.

You can't.

There was a rumored vapor ware card that might allow for this, but it never materialized. Even the bluetooth replacement card won't allow for auto unlock. We need a different wireless card also that doesn't exist.

 

[TomH TX]

I also have an early 2011 MBP 15". I replaced the bluetooth a while back with the CAX card, and have been running CAT, so I have all of the handoff and continuity features EXCEPT auto unlock. Some on the CAT threads seem to claim getting auto unlock to work, but I have not been able to do so yet.

 

[flEmb]

glad to hear that some of the 2011 15 inches are still rocking their factory logic boards.

I am running a 15" late 2011 MBP with upgrade hard drive 16GB and 1TB RAM. I run windows 7 via parallels 11 currently. Some of my embroidery programs may not work with anything beyond windows 7. If I upgrade from yosemite to sierra will my PC side still work?

 

[TomH TX]

I am running a 15" late 2011 MBP with upgrade hard drive 16GB and 1TB RAM. I run windows 7 via parallels 11 currently. Some of my embroidery programs may not work with anything beyond windows 7. If I upgrade from yosemite to sierra will my PC side still work?

I have an early 2011 MBP 15", upgraded by me to the CAX BT card, with a 1TB SSD and 16gb of ram. I am running Sierra, and Parallels 11, with Windows 7 Pro. No problems.

 

[fischersd]

Hi, I've a lovely MBP 15' early 2011.
16GB 1333 MHz DDR3
1TB SSD
WiFi & back up via Time Capsule (2011).

With macOS Sierra.
So doesn't support Bluetooth Low Energy.

What do I need to do to be able to use Apple Watch auto unlock?
Thanks.

You can't.

There was a rumored vapor ware card that might allow for this, but it never materialized. Even the bluetooth replacement card won't allow for auto unlock. We need a different wireless card also that doesn't exist.

That's not entirely true.
Your original card here: https://www.ifixit.com/Store/Mac/Ma...-Mid-2012-Airport-Bluetooth-Board/IF161-083-1
If they were still available, the Ucard from QuickerTEK would have filled the bill: http://www.quickertek.com/products/Ucard.html

They're actually working on a new revision (if you send their support an e-mail, you can get on the notification list when it comes out). Hoping the price drops as well. I'm running their Mcard2 in my 2008MBP 17" and the auto unlock feature works great.
(now, you have to use CAT to enable the continuity/handoff bits after you install the card).
[doublepost=1475562642][/doublepost]

I also have an early 2011 MBP 15". I replaced the bluetooth a while back with the CAX card, and have been running CAT, so I have all of the handoff and continuity features EXCEPT auto unlock. Some on the CAT threads seem to claim getting auto unlock to work, but I have not been able to do so yet.

The CAX card isn't using a new enough Broadcom chipset to support the Auto Unlock feature. Only the newer cards (that also support 802.11AC) support the 802.11v feature "time of flight" which Apple is using for Auto Unlock to determine distance between the Apple Watch and your Mac.
(see note above about an upcoming card that you could swap to, if you want that feature working...well....and 802.11AC speeds)

 

[flEmb]

I have an early 2011 MBP 15", upgraded by me to the CAX BT card, with a 1TB SSD and 16gb of ram. I am running Sierra, and Parallels 11, with Windows 7 Pro. No problems.

Great! Do you know if I can go directly from yosemite to sierra?

 

[mikecwest]

Great! Do you know if I can go directly from yosemite to sierra?

You should able to, just go to the App Store and download macOS Sierra, then run the CAT software if needed.

 

[TomH TX]

Great! Do you know if I can go directly from yosemite to sierra?

Sorry, I am in Court today. I agree with "should" be able to. I transitioned through El Cap, but only briefly. It is my understanding that El Cap and Sierra handle things like mail differently from Yosemite. If you are using CAT to get continuity an handoff, both El Cap and Sierra require that you disable SIP to be able to run CAT. I had serious probs w El Cap, so only used it for a couple of weeks, but have not had any probs in Sierra.