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macOS Sierra on oldest MacBooks supported (2009-2010)

Populus

Populus

macrumors 603
Original poster
Aug 24, 2012
6,101
8,550
Spain, Europe
Hi!

I thought it would be a good idea to start a new thread focusing our reports on the performance of macOS Sierra (beta) on the oldest MacBook Pro supported: 2010 MacBook Pro. Also, we could talk about Sierra on the 2009 MacBook as well.

What initially drove me to open this thread is a very concrete question: Does Universal Clipboard (you know, copy in yout iPhone/iPad and paste it on your mac) work properly on our older 2009-2010 MacBooks? Is there any change on the support of Continuity and Handoff?

EDIT: Universal Clipboard does not work on old machines, mainly because Handoff and Continuity features require Bluetooth LE.

And, overall, does sierra deliver a better speed and performance compared to El Capitan?

EDIT: It seems that, so far, sierra is delivering a pretty good performance in older machines, in some occasions better than El Capitan. This may vary from machine to machine, though.

Other subjects to review could be batterylife and temperatures on our old macs.

I will contribute to this thread as soon as the first public beta is released.
Mine is a 2010 13" MacBook Pro.

Thank you in advance!
 
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I've installed Sierra on my 2010 17" MBP that has only the original 4 gigs of ram. It runs very very well, in fact. With Dropbox, Airmail 3 and Firefox 47 open, along with activity monitor, I'm at a total ram use of 3.0 gigs out of 4. CPU is steady, seems noticeably cooler in my lap. Subjectively faster and smoother than El Cap beta that had been on the drive. Even convinced me to upgrade the ram and continue to use this as a test machine. Haven't used the Univ. Clip yet but will within a day or so.
 
VoiceofSF said:
CPU is steady, seems noticeably cooler in my lap. Subjectively faster and smoother than El Cap beta that had been on the drive. Even convinced me to upgrade the ram and continue to use this as a test machine. Haven't used the Univ. Clip yet but will within a day or so.
Click to expand...

Oh, so far so good! Let us know when you try the Universal Clipboard, I'm afraid our Bluetooth 2.1 machines won't support this feature, but we have to test it first.

Thank you @VoiceofSF and feel welcome to this huge forum!
 
No go between my Macbook Pro and my Mac Mini desktop. I've seen it demoed between Sierra & ios but not between two Sierra devices. Is this feature actually enabled?
 
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Populus said:
Thanks Ultracyclist.

Anyone trying the second beta on an older 2009-2010 MacBook Pro?
Click to expand...
I would like to but so far I have not been able to get my 2009 MBP to see there is an update. I see on the other thread several ideas but nothing has worked for me yet.
 
ac2334 said:
I am - running great on a mid 2009 maxed out MBP
Click to expand...
13 inch? If so, those are great news.

But... your MBP is not supported, right? I opened this thread for those last macbooks supported. Those are 2009 MacBook, and 2010 MacBook pro, although it is interesting to know how does Sierra perform on 2009 MBP as well, so thank you.

I know, I know, Removing support to 2009 MBP but supporting 2009 MacBook is a nonsense.
 
Hello everyone!

As promised, I'm driving a beta test of the last MacBook Pro 13" supported, the 7,1 mbp from 2010.

I wasn't able to perform a clean install, because the pendrive I have currently is pretty much garbage, so for now I'm testing it as an upgrade. So far, PB1 is running hot as hell, but here we have actually high temperatures.
[doublepost=1469559849][/doublepost]Ok, testing Public Beta 2. there are no huge CPU demanding processes on Activity Monitor, but animations on Mission Control are quite choppy. I'm going to report they are not smooth enough (and you should report as well any little problem with this OS, mainly because this will probably the last Operating System we'll get stuck with).
 
Populus said:
Hello everyone!

..., but animations on Mission Control are quite choppy. I'm going to report they are not smooth enough (and you should report as well any little problem with this OS, mainly because this will probably the last Operating System we'll get stuck with).
Click to expand...

They might keep the requirements the same again like they did for a while with the 2007s.

I had beta 1 running on my 2010 15 inch (clean install) and it was OK - maybe a little slower.

Siri performance was sub par though. That internal microphone isn't the greatest. Felt like using Siri on iPad 2 with jail break
 
saudor said:
I had beta 1 running on my 2010 15 inch (clean install) and it was OK - maybe a little slower.
Click to expand...

Ok, I have to clarify something: It is a bit choppy WITH an external display, a 1080p 24" Dell screen. That's why the system goes slow. But without the external display I'm quite satisfied, being a beta.
 
I will run this on my 2009 macbook when official release.

I have upgraded to 8GB ram and an SSD seems hot with latest el cap update.

hope sierra will help with this.

I might try the beta, is it in app store?
I use my machine for work, is beta stable and usable?
 
It does not crash on my 2010 MacBook Pro, so I wouldn't say it is unstable -so far- BUT it is true that the system remains a bit warm even with the second beta update. On average I'm between 55-65º, with Safari open and iTunes playing an mp3 song.

When downloading a torrent through uTorrent @ 7MB/s, I'm arround 70ºC.

You have to decide if you want to risk your workflow, I'm not responsible for that. The machine is quite stable, but obviously you have to keep in mind that his is an early beta.
 
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Populus said:
Ok, I have to clarify something: It is a bit choppy WITH an external display, a 1080p 24" Dell screen. That's why the system goes slow. But without the external display I'm quite satisfied, being a beta.
Click to expand...
This has been the case for me since yosemite i think. Without the external monitor, it's fast. I reckon the GT 330M card in the 2010 can barely keep up with the transparency/blur effects

reducing transparency makes it all snappy though (I have dark mode enabled so the opaque dock isnt as ugly)
 
Yes @saudor, reduce transparency helps. But still, if all of you are not satisfied with Mission Control animations... Have you tried the new Sierra 'reduce motion' feature? Oh my god, this goes pretty smooth and fast. I'm liking it!
 
Ok, a few words on batterylife with Sierra PB2.

While the first day, both the first and second run with battery were pretty short, today I'm experiencing an astonishing batterylife. And there are some differences on my MacBook pro usage that explain the shorter batterylife on the first day (roughly 4 hours) versus the much better autonomy I'm enjoying now (arround 8 hours). Keep in mind that my battery as recently replaced in an Apple Store.

First: The MacBook Pro was attached to a external screen the first day, during the two first cicles with Sierra beta. Now I have the macbook Pro on its own.

Second: Maybe all the indexing and internal processes have stopped, because all the work of new operating system installed is done.

Third: I disabled Siri. I know it's not very realistic to test sierra disabling Siri but it is more a gimmick to me (for now) and caused to have the process 'coreaudiod' constantly running taking a 9% of my CPU usage. Once disabled, no more coreaudiod drain.

Fourth: I'm doing little things: using Preview with a huge PDF book (500 pages with text and high quality pictures) along with Pages sharing the same screen. At the same time, recording audio from the integrated microphone, and Safari on (but not surfing the web).

Fifth: I don't know if that's helping me to improve the batterylife, but Mission Control has 'reduce motion' feature enabled, also the reduce transparency is enabled as well. My mac runs seamlessly this way :)

But don't be pretty optimistic. I would say batterylife with Sierra will be, at most, same as El Capitan. Would be nice to see an improvement here, but I'm afraid our old C2D are doing its best to keep the pace.
 
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Populus said:
Yes @saudor, reduce transparency helps. But still, if all of you are not satisfied with Mission Control animations... Have you tried the new Sierra 'reduce motion' feature? Oh my god, this goes pretty smooth and fast. I'm liking it!
Click to expand...


I ran a terminal command to speed it up on previous versions


defaults write com.apple.dock expose-animation-duration -float 0.1
killall Dock
 
Installed Sierra last night on my Mid-2010 MBP 2.53 with 8 gigs of ram and an SSD. I have to say that I'm really impressed with how well it runs. El Cap ran fine for me, but it wasn't what I would call quick. I would notice some minor lag opening applications or waiting for web pages to load. I attributed the latter to my internet connection or perhaps even Safari, but whatever it was that lag is completely gone in Sierra.

Everything loads pretty much instantly now and web pages are rendering much faster than before. I was hesitant to install an OS on a computer that just met the minimum requirements, but I'm really glad I did. My experience with iOS 10 on my iPhone 5 has been equally positive. This has been my best OS update experience in quite a while. :)
 
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I just updated my 2009 unibody macbook.

Works great, really snappy but I also have 8GB of ram plus 240GB SSD.

I turned off siri as do not want it.
Need more use to really see any difference compared to el cap.

But this is an upgrade. I am tempted to try a clean install see if it gets any better.

But will play a bit first.

So far all my software works and zero problems.
Took little under 3 hours from start to finish to upgrade, slow internet at work so took longer than I'd expect.
 
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Well, as for me, the thread starter, I'm planning a fresh clean install ASAP, but i'm still backing some things up.

As soon as I have Sierra installed I'll report first impressions, although my impressions from the beta were very similar to the ones of @ravenpen : A very fresh and snappy operating system.
 
Mid2010 mbp 13" stock 4gig of RAM and it's been fine so far. Still getting used to it, upgraded from El Cap, and at this stage it is equal or a bit better. Really don't expect much more on a machine this age. Want to mess around with it this weekend and see how it does.
 
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I am getting a very good performance on my mid-2010 MacBook Pro with Sierra GM installed, especially considering it still has a RPM HDD.
 
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Populus said:
Hi!

I thought it would be a good idea to start a new thread focusing our reports on the performance of macOS Sierra (beta) on the oldest MacBook Pro supported: 2010 MacBook Pro. Also, we could talk about Sierra on the 2009 MacBook as well.

What initially drove me to open this thread is a very concrete question: Does Universal Clipboard (you know, copy in yout iPhone/iPad and paste it on your mac) work properly on our older 2009-2010 MacBooks? Is there any change on the support of Continuity and Handoff?

EDIT: Universal Clipboard does not work on old machines, mainly because Handoff and Continuity features require Bluetooth LE.

And, overall, does sierra deliver a better speed and performance compared to El Capitan?

EDIT: It seems that, so far, sierra is delivering a pretty good performance in older machines, in some occasions better than El Capitan. This may vary from machine to machine, though.

Other subjects to review could be batterylife and temperatures on our old macs.

I will contribute to this thread as soon as the first public beta is released.
Mine is a 2010 13" MacBook Pro.

Thank you in advance!
Click to expand...
Anyone having good luck with putting sierra on older unsupported macs?
 
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