Oh, absolutely, I didn't mean to imply otherwise! The OP was just asking about running 32bit apps like Picasa via virtualization Mojave, and I wanted to let them know they'd be much better served with virtualized Windows.
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Anyone else staying on Mojave and on the path to completely skipping Catalina?
- Thread starter zorinlynx
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In the process of updating my 2014 MBP 15 to Mojave because of instabilities with High Sierra and I hope that Mojave fixes them. I may need to do a reinstall if it doesn't. My 2015 MBP is running High Sierra and I haven't decided on whether or not I will upgrade that in the near future. I need at least one to run one particular 32-bit app as I have a ton of data on that App and I can't convert it to a new one. If Mojave fixes the old MBP, then I might just be lazy and leave the other two MBPs at HS. Of course I will have to move up at some point as support goes away.
Because of the 32-bit condition, I may stay with Mojave and go to later MacOS only when buying a new Mac.
I remember what Mavericks did to my early 2008 MBP, it destroyed my motherboard. I had to pay Apple to replace it when it was working perfectly fine with SnowLeopard. I had my MBP reinstalled with SL and It was not until El Capitan that I felt safe upgrading my OSX. I definitely do not feel safe with Catalina (period.)
macOS in a VM has poor graphics performance. Basic stuff (like the 2D graphics in Lightroom) lags badly.
Due to the lack of 32 bit, Mojave is end of the line for my primary Macs. I had it running for a while on one of my test bench Mac Minis, and there is just too much that doesn't work and never will. It's far more fatal than the loss of Rosetta in 10.7.
I do not see any advantage to going with Catalina as they would render my Macs almost as useless as my iPad was.
I do not see any advantage to going with Catalina as they would render my Macs almost as useless as my iPad was.
Mavericks did not destroy your motherboard. Your motherboard may have died under Mavericks, but Mavericks did not kill it. OS upgrades do not kill hardware.
Correlation is not causation.
If mavericks killed motherboards on upgrade, it would have resulted in a massive number of people reporting the same problem and there just wasn't.
No intention to upgrade to Catalina whatsoever. Tried it on both my "Mac" and MacBook Pro, could not stand the bugs, slowness and instability. Reverted both back to Mojave.
2008 MacBook Pros had the 8600M GT GPU that failed in every single one of them. Mavericks came out just about when the problem started to become serious, so it's pure coincidence that your Mac died with Mavericks. It would have broken if you stayed on SL, too.
I keep archives of [almost] all the Mac OS releases going back to the 10.4 days.
There are a few I purposely DO NOT keep, because they were so bad (or at least I never got them to work right).
One of these was 10.9 "Mavericks". Just never could get it to run to my liking. Mountain Lion (10.8) was much better.
Having said that, Catalina has earned its place as another OS release I won't bother keeping a copy of, because I know I'll NEVER have use for it.
For my 2018 Mini, I'll just keep using Mojave until it won't run any more. I have too much 32 bit software that I have no intention of abandoning right now.
I may create a second, external bootable drive with a newer OS, just "to keep up with things", but it's not going to be Catalina. Perhaps OS 10.16 when it gets released toward the end of this coming summer...
There are a few I purposely DO NOT keep, because they were so bad (or at least I never got them to work right).
One of these was 10.9 "Mavericks". Just never could get it to run to my liking. Mountain Lion (10.8) was much better.
Having said that, Catalina has earned its place as another OS release I won't bother keeping a copy of, because I know I'll NEVER have use for it.
For my 2018 Mini, I'll just keep using Mojave until it won't run any more. I have too much 32 bit software that I have no intention of abandoning right now.
I may create a second, external bootable drive with a newer OS, just "to keep up with things", but it's not going to be Catalina. Perhaps OS 10.16 when it gets released toward the end of this coming summer...
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I used the macOS Mojave Patcher Tool from dosdude1 to install Mojave on my Late 2008 MacBook (not a typo). I'm not going to tempt fate by ever going above that even though his newest patch for Catalina supports my 12 year old laptop. Plus I need the 32 bit app support. I upgraded well beyond what's supported for my laptop to get the updated features, especially the newest iWork applications.
It seems that you are underestimating the positioning of the late 2008 MacBook on the Apple's timeline. Keep in mind that its hardware is officially supported by High Sierra(compare it to the officially supported MacBook6,1), so Mojave is actually the only TRUE push beyond its limits(due to Metal mostly).
This... (plus a few 32 bit apps I still use but will give up or replace whenever I get a newer laptop).
The music thing though has alarmed me since the Catalina beta threads started up. I'm old and getting set in my ways, maybe, but I have a bunch of big, separate and special libraries in iTunes and "they just work" even if iTunes functionality has taken a beating from Apple for a long time now.
I'll migrate one iTunes library at a time along with its music to the MacOS on whatever is my next apple laptop but the mid-2012 MBP is sticking at Mojave for sure. I miss some sync options to iOS but I got iMazing to get me past those okay.
This is so true! I've tried the latest versions of both Fusion and Parallels and almost any 32-bit Mac app that requires 3D graphics is completely toast. And even 2D graphics performance sucks.
I was hoping that given the loss of native 32-bit in MacOS that Parallels would update their MacOS graphics performance to fix all the problems. But not so far, and I don't have much optimism they ever will.
I think that they cut back on the frequency in those things so that they didn't fail as fast. I think that we had a total of six MB replacements on that one though ours were from 2007 and 2008.
Mojave VM is better than Big Sur. I use the Mojave VM for Notes, Calendar, Reminders, Numbers and Growly Notes. It works well for those programs on a fast machine. It works well on Big Sur except for shrinking windows. It takes four seconds to shrink a window (down from seven before I turned off animations). The host machine reports high CPU usage as does the guest machine.
I could just stay on Big Sur and never shrink a window but I just went back to Mojave instead. I prefer the look of Big Sur but don't like performance issues. The whole VM froze when shrinking a window. Bringing it back wasn't a problem.
I could use email and browser but the drawing is a tad slow. For some things, using VNC into a real Mac has better performance but I've found that you lose cut and paste with VNC and macOS Screen Sharing.
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None of those things you mentioned require a good graphics driver. I'm talking about games and/or other programs that rely on some sort of 3D. Neither Parallels or Fusion have any 3D rendering that works when it comes to virtualizing Mac OS.
For what it's worth, both those programs do pretty well rendering 3D games and programs in Windows.
upgrading an os is quite intensive and exposes hardware that's failing.....
I think that you can forget about games with a virtual machine unless you can get PCIe Passthrough to work. I have watched a video where they got it to work and they had macOS running in a VM running graphics at native speed. Getting it to work sounded pretty complex though and I think that you have to use Linux as the host OS.
I don't think that VNC is an option unless you have 2.5G or 10G Ethernet on your LAN.
This is why you see cars broken down when the temperature drops below freezing.
I am sorry, but I disagree. I had an early 2008 MBP and it was a breeze with SL. However, when I upgraded to Mavericks it was destroyed.
how is this disagreeing?..
components have a life expectancy. SL was back in 2009 and Mavericks was in 2013. Of course a more demanding OS plus aging components will have likely a harder time with upgrades...
You are jumping to conclusion way too soon. Macs can be very picky and demanding. Recently I learned that the RAM modules that work perfectly well in a Mid 2012 MBP are as you put it "destroying" the Late 2012 27" iMac by sending it in a constant reboot loop. This is despite the fact that the RAM modules are manufactured by ELPIDA and specs are matching to the letter original RAM specs of the iMac. So with what I know now, RAM soldered to the logic board makes a LOT of sense.
I believe that with Mavericks memory management has changed a lot and if you ever upgraded RAM in your early 2008 MBP this might be your problem right there. Also your 2008 MBP has a well known issue with GPU which already makes it a ticking time bomb.
I tried Catalina a few weeks ago and experienced too many bugs, freeze ups and "glitches" I never had while on Mojave. I'm not running any 32 bit apps, so that isn't in the equation. My 27" late 2013 iMac will be staying on Mojave for the duration. Mojave runs real well on my machine.