They said your Mac was too old for the latest and greatest Mac OS upgrade. They told you to buy a new Mac instead. Apple can be a harsh companion. But I’m here to tell you there is another way, the way of MacOS Ventura on older Macs.
The team of developers behind the OpenCore Legacy Patcher, a free software tool that allows unsupported Macs to run Big Sur and Monterey, is working on bringing Ventura into the fold. No longer can Big Apple tell you what you do with your Mac.
“After many months of work, we’ve finally gotten macOS Ventura running on legacy Metal GPUs!” Mykola Grymalyuk, one of the engineers behind the OCLP tool, said in a tweet on Monday. “This includes my early 2008 Mac Pro, 2012 Mac Mini, 2014 Mac Mini, and 2014 5K iMac!”
Porting macOS Ventura to OCLP for older Macs hasn’t been easy, the engineers told Ars Technica. Those older machines run Intel processors with x86 architecture, while Apple silicone uses ARM chipsets. Plus, Apple has significantly changed the Metal rendering stack in the intervening years to the point where new macOS releases are practically an alien language to older Macs.
After many months of work, we’ve finally gotten macOS Ventura running on legacy Metal GPUs!
This includes my early 2008 Mac Pro (Nvidia Kepler and AMD GCN 1), 2012 Mac mini, 2014 Mac mini and 2014 5k iMac! pic.twitter.com/cMQ5Qk8uoo
— Mykola Grymalyuk (@khronokernel) August 22, 2022
But what is a software engineer if not an explorer of the possible? The team behind OCLP showed no cowardice in tackling the problem and through some kind of wizardry, they managed to get Ventura running on old x86 Macs. Quite frankly, some of these Macs should be in a museum and not sitting on desks out in public, pretending to still be useful, but that is only my own grumpy opinion.
Still, I can see why people who refuse to part with a 2012 MacBook Air, complete with bezels larger than my hand, would want to run macOS Ventura. The new operating system brings some amazing new features, such as Stage Manager, an actually useful Mail app, some killer Spotlight features, and the wonders of Continuity Camera, to name a few.
Apple said macOS Ventura will not run on iMacs from before 2017, MacBooks from before 2018, and Mac Minis made before 2018. But the OCLP developers said “Hogwash! We shall bring Stage Manager to the masses who insist on still using ancient computers!” And this they have done.
You can download OpenCore Legacy Patcher from GitHub here.
Related Posts
The rise of adaptive displays: How Lenovo is redefining productivity & play
"If you look at the history of displays, they have always been passive surfaces that simply rendered whatever the device sent to them," says George Toh, Vice President and General Manager of Lenovo’s Visual Business Unit. "What is changing now is that screens are becoming adaptive interfaces that react to what the user is doing in real time.”
Here’s what happened to your Gmail inbox over the weekend
Gmail features a sorting system that automatically moves fluff like newsletters, promos, and non-urgent updates into separate tabs, keeping your Primary inbox clean and focused on what matters. On Saturday morning, this system stopped working as expected. Instead of organizing emails, Gmail dumped all incoming emails into the main inbox, and some users even saw warnings that certain emails had not been scanned for spam.
Your iPhone’s Siri upgrade may be tied to iOS 26.4
The upgrade is supposed to move Siri past simple voice commands and generic answers. The assistant should be able to draw on personal data and what’s on your screen to complete tasks, which is the kind of everyday help Apple has promised for years.