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Post Your Early Intel Mac Setup

Aoligei said:
View attachment 2459932

2009 MacBook Pro.. Installed Ventura today. It is kinda struggling. AirDrop won't work, won't detect iPhone so photo transfer isn't working, fan runs pretty loud and it runs pretty hot.
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You might try Sonoma if the activity causing the heat doesn't settle down. I have that running on a 2008 MBP with about half the ram your picture shows your Mac as having. After a period of intense activity it settled down. I'm not using it much as I tend to us my Mac Pro more, but it seems pretty stable now.
 
eyoungren said:
You might try Sonoma if the activity causing the heat doesn't settle down. I have that running on a 2008 MBP with about half the ram your picture shows your Mac as having. After a period of intense activity it settled down. I'm not using it much as I tend to us my Mac Pro more, but it seems pretty stable now.
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I might give it a shot on a separate SSD. I have Sonoma installed on 2011 MacBook Pro with Core i5 processors and it struggles so much. I thought it might be related with Spotlight Indexing, so I waited for few weeks and it is still struggles. Maybe I am doing things wrong, lol.
 
You can just go to the Spotlight settings and remove most of the stuff you don't need to be included in searches. Makes spotlight so much lighter.

But, I would not install anything newer than Monterey to such old machines.
 
Aoligei said:
Maybe I am doing things wrong, lol.
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I can't say. I'm very new to OCLP, not even six months in yet. But I have Sonoma installed on my 2009 MP and my 2008 MBP. I installed it on a 2015 MBP I bought my wife and she's reported no issues either. With my MP, I've even had a drive failure and recovered back to Sonoma within a day. All I did was follow the instructions on the website.

I do have some peculiarities such as the WindowServer process taking up a large amount of ram on my Mac Pro, but I've mitigated that with a forced shutdown and restart every day (automated). But I'm not experiencing any high activity that would cause fans to ramp up.

Granted, my MP has 56GB ram, but my 2008 MBP only has 4GB and when I use it, it's not 'busy'. I do have to let it sit a few minutes after booting, but that's all the startup stuff.

I have to wonder if systems aren't just different enough to cause problems. I've told others just to follow the OCLP steps and they've had issues where I have not. I just don't know anything about OCLP to be able to help further.
 
ToniCH said:
But, I would not install anything newer than Monterey to such old machines.
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Next year, around the release of Apple's next macOS, I will be installing Sequoia on my MP. :)

I am intentionally putting my MP behind by one version of OS to give OCLP time over the course of the year to fix/mitigate any bugs. But I can tell you that I really haven't had any issues on the three systems I have installed Sonoma on.

And all three of those systems are running a higher version of Sonoma than my work issued 2022 M2 MBP. ;)
 
eyoungren said:
Next year, around the release of Apple's next macOS, I will be installing Sequoia on my MP. :)

I am intentionally putting my MP behind by one version of OS to give OCLP time over the course of the year to fix/mitigate any bugs. But I can tell you that I really haven't had any issues on the three systems I have installed Sonoma on.

And all three of those systems are running a higher version of Sonoma than my work issued 2022 M2 MBP. ;)
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I actually meant the Core2Duo -machines and/or even i5/7 -machines with little RAM. cMP's have much more grunt and RAM to run newer OS.
 
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ToniCH said:
I actually meant the Core2Duo -machines and/or even i5/7 -machines with little RAM. cMP's have much more grunt and RAM to run newer OS.
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When I get to it, both of my Mac Minis that are in the garage (Early and Late 2009) will also be updated to Sonoma. Both are already running Catalina. I just haven't gotten around to getting out there, getting the place cleaned up and redone and then getting them turned back on.

Since I use those two Macs frequently during the fall/winter/spring it should be easy to determine how well Sonoma will run on them. Both have SSDs, but E2009 has only 4GB ram, while the other has 8GB.
 
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My Christmas house/dog sitting rig. Late 2011 MBP 15" and 11" MBA, also 2011. On the end of an Internet connection so slow, it took nearly two minutes to upload that picture. Merry Christmas!
 
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Early 2011 Macbook Pro 15' with a high-res glossy display, re-pasted thermal compound, brand new aftermarket battery, 1 terabyte OWC SSD and 16 gigs of 1333Mhz Ram. I am running Macsfancontrol and keep her up on this aluminum stand to hopefully preserve my functioning gpu. The iMacs the full chip M1 and they share the magic keyboard. I even got a matching stand for my iphone 14.
DSC00195.JPG
 
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Forgot to post a picture of my home setup here so I'm doing it now!
Been building this setup for about two years (including massive Mac Pro upgrades which I wrote a whole blog page about) and I'm really proud of it.

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Specs: 3,1 Mac Pro - Upgraded to dual 2.8 Ghz E5462, 16 GB of RAM, 512 GB Crucial MX500 + 2 TB HDD, Radeon RX 580 8GB Sapphire Nitro+, Mac OS Sonoma 14.1.1, 30" Apple Cinema HD Display which was a free gift, A1243 wired Apple keyboard, Mighty Mouse, Beyerdynamic DT 990 Pro headphones. It's kinda cut off but there's a 20" iMac 2007 on the right as well which I use for video and music playback
 
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One of side tables I was using for holding stuff on the left has been swapped out with a new stand. Technically, it's my daughter's old toy storage stand but I'm using it because it sits lower and doesn't stick out as far.

2025-03-30 07.59.12.jpg
 
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Intel based A1312 Core i5 + Parallels Desktop, WIN10 & Freelancer HD (Open World)

IMG_3384.jpg


What about an open system where you can upgrade CPU / RAM / SSD / GPU and install MacOS
(32Bit / 64Bit with OCLP) + Linux + Windows 10/11 ...you can do nearly everything with this
nearly 15 year old machine !

In 🇩🇪 you can get used items A1312 27" (Core i5/i7 - RAM 8/16GB + SSD) in good condition
often for under 100€ or 100$, if you are using some local marketplaces like Kijiji or ebay... ;)
(...a brand new 1TB SSD costs about 80€ at the moment !)
 
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