MB 1,1-7,1 2008 Unibody Macbook Still Usable

[amgff84]

Hello, So I have a few macs now including my latest macbook air m2, but I dusted off my old 2008 unibody with DosDudes Mojave patcher installation, and man do I miss the old macOS. I actually just installed Orion browser and it surfs the web just fine. Orion browser with Kagi search has become my only browser between all my devices. Orion still supports this browser on Mojave, not that it's super secure, but it works nicely. I prefer macOS over Windows and Linux distros like Ubuntu, but I really hate the direction macOS is going. I wish we could theme our macs to look and feel like the older versions, much how you can theme most linux distros, especially Zorin OS.I cant be the only one that thinks this way, can I?

 

[B S Magnet]

Hello, So I have a few macs now including my latest macbook air m2, but I dusted off my old 2008 unibody with DosDudes Mojave patcher installation, and man do I miss the old macOS. I actually just installed Orion browser and it surfs the web just fine. Orion browser with Kagi search has become my only browser between all my devices. Orion still supports this browser on Mojave, not that it's super secure, but it works nicely. I prefer macOS over Windows and Linux distros like Ubuntu, but I really hate the direction macOS is going. I wish we could theme our macs to look and feel like the older versions, much how you can theme most linux distros, especially Zorin OS.I cant be the only one that thinks this way, can I?

It’s awesome always to read accounts of folks who realize their vintage Macs can still pull their weight all these years later, including the MacBook5,1. A great many here still use Mojave as their daily OS!

For the moment, Mojave is still supported by Mozilla with Firefox 115 ESR, but that ends next month. Here, from 10.14.6:

There are also other Mozilla browsers being maintained with security updates for older OSes like Mojave, High Sierra, and even Lion and Snow Leopard, including by regulars on this forum. Have a look through browsers on this WikiPost. (It needs to be updated slightly, but SeaLion, BrassMokney, and the new Interweb (an evolution of Nightly 55+ and the maintainer of Interweb) are all possibilities to explore with Mojave.

As well, there is a Chromium Legacy project, also linked from that WikiPost, for folks who are more at home with the Chrome UI/UX.

 

[davigarma]

Here you have one like yours work perfectly for many years

Great work of Kagui, pity that he begins in Mojave, but he still lacks things to be perfect

 

[Wowfunhappy]

For the moment, Mojave is still supported by Mozilla with Firefox 115 ESR, but that ends next month. Here, from 10.14.6:

View attachment 2410648

You're aware of https://github.com/i3roly/firefox-dynasty/releases right? Like Chromium Legacy it's based on modern Firefox, not an older varient.

It's still pretty buggy on OS X 10.9, which I use, but because the developer personally runs Mojave it should be quite reliable there.

 

[B S Magnet]

You're aware of https://github.com/i3roly/firefox-dynasty/releases right? Like Chromium Legacy it's based on modern Firefox, not an older varient.

It's still pretty buggy on OS X 10.9, which I use, but because the developer personally runs Mojave it should be quite reliable there.

Unless it was mentioned on a discrete thread on here — or, specifically, on the Early Intel Macs browsers wiki thread — then no, I wouldn’t have been aware of it.

 

[MultiFinder17]

It’s always heartwarming to hear of machines like this finding new leases on life as people realize how useful they can be still. Glad you’re enjoying your trusty rusty machine in its 16th year of service!

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

This was a great season of MacBook. I use a couple a1078 5,1 & 5,5 (2008 & 2009) unibodys everyday. Collectively, they still get more DD use than my m2 mbp which is a fantastic, beastly portable. The a1078s despite being C2D CPUs still have no issues with retro console emus, word processing, surfing, pulling email and watching YT or even uploading video content albeit they do it a bit slower, will definitely get hot on the lap and their battery isn’t the greatest - makes great sense to open it up and blowout and clean/repaste the cpu if you plan to daily it. I enjoy mine and have zero plans retiring them and will continue to use them until they break or the internet sits on them. One hangs out upstairs running El Cap and one runs downstairs with El Cap but I typically daily ElementaryOS there.

Truthfully I never tried Mojave on one of these machines. I did briefly run Catalina but it ran noticeably hot, would freeze up completely upon indexing maxing cores to 100% for minutes at a time and I had issues with WiFi upon wake that I was unable to resolve. It was neat but Cat ime seemed to be a little too much for the 5,1. I’ll pop in a spare ssd and play around with Mojave this weekend.

My opinion on macos is that it hit its peak in design & function around this season/era as well which is another reason I use it heavily still - Leopard, Snow Leopard, Lion, El Cap etc. There are i-device synced innovations over later iterations that are neat and nice to have like messages (hence ElCap), airdrop etc but with those came changes to lay out that mimicked iOS menus for example that negatively impacted MacOS spaces like sys pref etc. and functionality was neutered from apps like DU. Anyways iOS and Macos are not the same thus should have & retain unique design imo and it is pretty obvious that Apple does not align with this exactly.

Having the flexibility to return a modern AS MacOS installation to the layout of something older would be awesome. I dont see Apple wasting any energy on this at all but for a dev to accomplish this (like what leopard rebirth or Sorbet's theme package was to PowerPC) would be pretty cool.