Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Put some life in my iMac early 2008
- Thread starter zntxrr
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I've installed High Sierra with tolerable success on my 20" iMac Early 2008, with the help of High Sierra Patcher. Never tried Mojave, but there's a patcher for that machine too, maybe the same that you have?
I've found that El Capitan works best, all in all, not surprisingly. I use the chromium-legacy browser.
GitHub - blueboxd/chromium-legacy: Latest Chromium (≒Chrome Canary/Stable) for Mac OS X 10.7+
Latest Chromium (≒Chrome Canary/Stable) for Mac OS X 10.7+ - blueboxd/chromium-legacy
github.com
You can actually go up to Ventura if you use OCLP instead of dosdude1's patchers. Mojave in my opinion is faster than High Sierra, and as a plus has dark mode!I've installed High Sierra with tolerable success on my 20" iMac Early 2008, with the help of High Sierra Patcher. Never tried Mojave, but there's a patcher for that machine too, maybe the same that you have?
I've found that El Capitan works best, all in all, not surprisingly. I use the chromium-legacy browser.
GitHub - blueboxd/chromium-legacy: Latest Chromium (≒Chrome Canary/Stable) for Mac OS X 10.7+
Latest Chromium (≒Chrome Canary/Stable) for Mac OS X 10.7+ - blueboxd/chromium-legacy
Both Big Sur and Monterey ran alright on my A1342 with 4GB of RAM. Though if you are wanting speed above all, that's when you drag out a copy of Snow Leopard
With any these OS's, you can run the latest browsers natively (Firefox, Chrome...).
I've tried OCLP with my old iMac and I've never succeeded with it. Something is amiss. I'm using OCLP and Monterey with my mini Late 2012, it works fine. Ventura isn't supported graphically enough for my taste.You can actually go up to Ventura if you use OCLP instead of dosdude1's patchers. Mojave in my opinion is faster than High Sierra, and as a plus has dark mode!
Both Big Sur and Monterey ran alright on my A1342 with 4GB of RAM. Though if you are wanting speed above all, that's when you drag out a copy of Snow Leopard
With any these OS's, you can run the latest browsers natively (Firefox, Chrome...).
Yes I have read that Mojave is faster than High Sierra, that seems promising. Interesting option with Snow Leopard however speed is alright in El Capitan, the main issue is the browser certificate.You can actually go up to Ventura if you use OCLP instead of dosdude1's patchers. Mojave in my opinion is faster than High Sierra, and as a plus has dark mode!
Both Big Sur and Monterey ran alright on my A1342 with 4GB of RAM. Though if you are wanting speed above all, that's when you drag out a copy of Snow Leopard
With any these OS's, you can run the latest browsers natively (Firefox, Chrome...).
Yes I have been looking at the dosdude1 patcher. Didn't know about the OCLP.
This is a tempting solution however as I understand you can not sync chromium with chrome any longer? It would be a pain to not be able to sync passwords.
Patch to Mojave or El Capitan+Chromium seems like the two best routes imo.
Chromium-legacy syncs perfectly, just like Chrome. If it's going to last, I don't know. There has been talk about shutting this down from anything not Chrome for a long time now, it has yet to appear. Just like Manifest V3...
Personally, since you only have 4gb of ram, i'd stick Snow Leopard on it. You still get decent Intel app support, Macports support, and the ability to run most any PowerPC app. The available web browsers for 10.6 are decent and will get you "most" of the modern web, and if that isn't enough, installing Surf and/or Epiphany browsers through Macports will give you 2 current webkit based browsers for most of the other "chrome only" sites. Anything above 10.11 really needs 8gb of ram or more to run decently without grinding to halt when using current chrome/chromium/firefox.
Try this fix for the older OS browser certificates: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/9-30-21-expired-ssl-certs-fix.2326609/
Using that plus the Interweb browser on any of the available OSes for a 2008 iMac will help give it new life. The SSD will help greatly too!
I'd say an SSD is more crucial. I've run Big Sur on a A1342 with 4GB, ran alright enough to browse the web. If you had 8GB and a mech drive, it would be pure unusable.
I downloaded the stable build
Release 124.0.6367.207.1 · blueboxd/chromium-legacy
Chromium: 124.0.6367.207.1 (Official Build) (x86_64) Revision: a9001a6-refs/branch-heads/6367_201@{#3}
github.com
the osx verification of the app took so long I had to leave it on over the night (!). Anyway, writing this logged in on google on Chromium. All good to go, thanks!! I will save Snow Leopard for later if I run into trouble.
I have put in and SSD in this machine. 4 GB RAM is max according to Apple, but I think there is a way to install 6 GB. Id like to do that.
Will try to fix the certificates, amazing if it works. Downloading Interweb too.
I have 4 GB also. I searched for a 4 GB RAM module, but they seem to be as rare as hen's teeth. Best of luck! 🤞🏻
Yes, that happened to me also, when I tested a developer version (on behalf of the developer). Didn't think of mentioning that, sorry, but you sorted it out anyway. This behaviour hasn't been the case before, perhaps the developer will fix it.
The early 2008 iMacs are comparable to my early2008 17" MBP:
- minimum 2,4GHz
- max. 6GB RAM (but the 4GB DDR2 are quite expensive)
- Running patched_Mojave should be fine as on my MBP.
- Patched_Catalina struggles on start because of indexing the fotos-library in addition to the spotlight indexing. You can expect more CPU-load and fan-activity during the first hours after installation unless you switch of indexing at all
- I wouldn't spend effort in trying OCLP BigSur/Monterey. Compared to Patched_Mojave on the late2008 2,9GHz MBP with 8GB DDR3-RAM the OCLP_Monterey even if working does perform much worse. (Probably even 6GB RAM won't be enough anyway)
DualBoot Mojave/SnowLeopard is a great option, as others already suggested. I'd go for 3-partition-sceme and keep HFS+ for Patched_Mojave: [P1/200GB]Mojave(HFS+); [P2/30GB]SnowLeopard; [P3/16GB]patched MojaveInstaller (kind of RecoveryPartition - so You don't need a USB-stick)
Some Cloud-Apps, like the GoogleDrive App, start to leave Mojave behind.
Streaming (Netflix, AppleTV+; Amazon) do work fine with Firefox, most also with Safari.
Find more here #7 ; #14 ; #125 ; https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/early-intel-trash-or-treasure-macbook-pro-2008.2122634/
I am using a version of Chrome that is no longer supported with my iMac early 2008 OS X 10.11.6. It works but some sites won't accept it. I can't find any other browser to install (Opera One, Firefox, Brave). Would this Chromium browser do better? Looking at the github page, it looks very complicated. Can you link me to a page that will set up this Chromium without losing the (old unsupported) version of Chrome that I already have -- since if I lose that the whole computer seems worthless as far as internet is concerned.I've installed High Sierra with tolerable success on my 20" iMac Early 2008, with the help of High Sierra Patcher. Never tried Mojave, but there's a patcher for that machine too, maybe the same that you have?
I've found that El Capitan works best, all in all, not surprisingly. I use the chromium-legacy browser.
GitHub - blueboxd/chromium-legacy: Latest Chromium (≒Chrome Canary/Stable) for Mac OS X 10.7+
Latest Chromium (≒Chrome Canary/Stable) for Mac OS X 10.7+ - blueboxd/chromium-legacy
Last edited:
I have used Chrome and Chromium side by side and they use different spaces on the mac, including different Application Support folders, so you should be fine. Just don't mix different versions of Chromium, that won't work. It's not complicated to start using Chromium-legacy, just unzip it, drag the program to the program folder, and open it, using ctrl- or right click > Open. There is also a bespoke Chromium updater, or actually two, one is customised for older versions of macOS.
You can always give pale moon or sealion browsers a try. Both still actively maintained and updated monthly for 10.7 and up.
github.com
GitHub - wicknix/SeaLion: Web browser for MacOS 10.7 - 14.1 and Linux.
Web browser for MacOS 10.7 - 14.1 and Linux. Contribute to wicknix/SeaLion development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com
You should always do the opposite of this; always do your banking on a computer that has an up-to-date web browser + either the latest OS or one that still gets security updates. It may not be a Mac, but it will be most secure, which is crucial when banking.
Actually using an old Mac for 5 min a week just for banking and nothing else makes sense. I was doing my banking this way on my MacBook5,1 with Mac OS X Leopard and outdated browser until May 2018. I have Mojave installed on my MacBook5,1 now and obviously don't have a "5 min a week" approach at this stage.
Using a fully updated Mac or PC for the rest of your internet activity also makes sense.
With ”bespoke Chromium updater” I meant that there are two small programs detecting which Chromium version you have and when there is a new one, so that you can update.