Mid 2012 13” Resurrection - Seeking Best Recommended OS and Boot Drive Steps

[landshark2]

Years ago I resurrected my mid 2012 15” with my Mavericks boot stick, but now the App Store won’t work with the Safari in OS 10.9.5.

I downloaded the Catalina installer to the 15” since that seems to be the only way forward from Mavericks, but now I’m wondering if I’m making a boot stick, maybe I should make it the newest OS that the mid 2012 13” can run?

What is the best OS to clean install on a mid 2012 13” MBP?

What is the easiest way to do this?

 

[rovostrov]

Years ago I resurrected my mid 2012 15” with my Mavericks boot stick, but now the App Store won’t work with the Safari in OS 10.9.5.

I downloaded the Catalina installer to the 15” since that seems to be the only way forward from Mavericks, but now I’m wondering if I’m making a boot stick, maybe I should make it the newest OS that the mid 2012 13” can run?

What is the best OS to clean install on a mid 2012 13” MBP?

What is the easiest way to do this?

Officially Catalina is the latest OS you can install on the 2012. It runs well with a SSD but if you have a HDD, I'd not recommend it

 

[landshark2]

Officially Catalina is the latest OS you can install on the 2012. It runs well with a SSD but if you have a HDD, I'd not recommend it

Amazon has the 500GB Crucial MX500 ssd for less than $40. My 13” has the 2.5 GHz I5 processor and 16GB of 1600 MHz DDR3 RAM.

I’ve noticed that Mojave still has a bunch of fans, but official updates have ended for Mojave. I don’t see that many fans of Catalina.

Even with a new ssd, I’m now kinda leaning towards Mojave.

 

[3166792]

Amazon has the 500GB Crucial MX500 ssd for less than $40. My 13” has the 2.5 GHz I5 processor and 16GB of 1600 MHz DDR3 RAM.

I’ve noticed that Mojave still has a bunch of fans, but official updates have ended for Mojave. I don’t see that many fans of Catalina.

Even with a new ssd, I’m now kinda leaning towards Mojave.

FWIW, both Chrome/Chromium and Firefox are ending support for Mojave in 2023 and 2024 respectively. If you use those browsers you might consider Catalina instead.

 

[Wowfunhappy]

Years ago I resurrected my mid 2012 15” with my Mavericks boot stick, but now the App Store won’t work with the Safari in OS 10.9.5.

Stop using Safari. Use this instead. Web browsing will work fine in Mavericks. I'm currently typing this from Mavericks. https://jonathanalland.com/downloads/chromium-legacy-downloader.dmg

App Store works fine for me on Mavericks, although I'm not 100% sure why you need it anyway.

Let me know if you need help getting anything else working.

 

[landshark2]

Stop using Safari. Use this instead. Web browsing will work fine in Mavericks. I'm currently typing this from Mavericks. https://jonathanalland.com/downloads/chromium-legacy-downloader.dmg

App Store works fine for me on Mavericks, although I'm not 100% sure why you need it anyway.

Let me know if you need help getting anything else working.

Thanks for the legacy Chromium link.

I’ve ordered the ssd, actually 3 because I also have a 27” disk drive iMac (2011?) which had the OS on a 256 ssd that failed. So now I just need to make Mojave and Catalina boot sticks. Do I have to do that in terminal mode? What’s the best website explaining boot stick creation?

And finally, any hints on cracking open a press fit iMac (no screws holding case together).

 

[rovostrov]

Thanks for the legacy Chromium link.

I’ve ordered the ssd, actually 3 because I also have a 27” disk drive iMac (2011?) which had the OS on a 256 ssd that failed. So now I just need to make Mojave and Catalina boot sticks. Do I have to do that in terminal mode? What’s the best website explaining boot stick creation?

And finally, any hints on cracking open a press fit iMac (no screws holding case together).

iMac Intel 27" EMC 2429 Hard Drive Replacement

This guide will help you replace/upgrade the hard drive. This guide also includes steps to upgrade your iMac's hard drive with a SSD. It describes...

www.ifixit.com

 

[padams35]

Mavericks was a good choice for 5400rpm HDD installs. Yosemite is meh while El Capitan and newer really aren't usable with 5400rpm laptop HDDs.

With an SSD Mojave is the best officially supported version. I don't remember Catalina having any killer features and think having marginally better new software support isn't worth the loss of 32-bit legacy app support.

If you are willing to use OpenCore then maybe Monterey. That way you could update to the current version of iWork productivity software.

Honorable mention to Linux. Just use the optical drive to burn/test a couple Live DVDs.