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Best OS for a Macbook 12 2017?
- Thread starter aespana
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Not that I notice. I mean the entire computer is a bit sluggish compared to my M2 MacBook Air, but overall, it's completely usable. I don't notice any issues in day to day usage, but if I compare it side by side with my M2, then it does seem slower.
Honestly, I run Sonoma using OCLP on my 2016/M3/8GB rMB and find that it runs well enough for most uses.
For these older 12 inch 2017 models, the only thing you should really be using at this point in time is going to be Ventura as a shorter term option since its still supported until end of this year, or Sonoma/Sequoia via OpenCore legacy Patcher, since those still have 1.5 and 1.5 years of security and bugfix support respectively.. Older model 2015/2016 12" go straight to OCLP all the time, or Win11/Linux as alternatives discussed below.
Anything older than that at this point is not only considered a security hazard since it's by definition an unmaintained operating system connected to the Internet, but you're also gonna gain basically no favors running older operating systems on it. Even if you put your head in the sand and pretend security problems don't exist/will never be discovered/can be mitigated while remaining online, app support becomes a problem at some point, as well as just general support for more modern technologies like passkeys and such as a quick example, which are an incredibly good thing to have in 2025+. As far as performance stuff goes, majority of the performance stuff with these older models is basically just gonna come down to the fact that you're running a 7 year old platform that is not only very thermally constrained but also very power constrained, coupled with the fact that a lot of these units only shipped with eight gigs of system memory which wasn't amazing back in 2017 but anemic by 2025+ standards. Basically it's the machine that's gonna slow down the OS, not the other way around, and there's not too much you can do about that because of the fact that they are almost 10-year-old computers at the end of the day.
With that said, OCLP with Sonoma/Sequoia works pretty well with these units with no real major hiccups on them, plus assuming that the upcoming macOS version doesn't drop all Intel machines for good, OCLP will probably become available with that version as well. Alternatively, you can also get a patched version of Windows 11 to replace macOS altogether if you want longer support for something and there are a bunch of scripts available to basically completely remove all the stupid things like ads and stuff from windows, or as a really long-term solution and probably the best thing you can do for a lot of these older units, Linux. Linux will run on the rocks on the side of the road if there is a nerd with enough dedication to make that happen, and it's basically explicitly made to perform as best as it could on old hardware. You would be shocked how much life you can revitalize out of older units by just switching to Linux. There's even distros (variants) of it that are themed to look and feel a lot like MacOS, and since most people have work clothes that revolve around a web browser, Linux will basically support modern versions of chrome and Firefox until the end of time as well as receive a very consistent stream of updates and bug fixes and improvements and critically, security support.
All of these will definitely need some amount of work and time and patience and learning to get them working, such is the nature of the beast when you're trying to support computers that are nearly end of life. If you still have one of these 12 inch units and by the grace of God it hasn't encountered any of the numerous reliability things these units are known for, any of the above will absolutely keep one of these machines going and keep it in a state that is fit for usage in 2025+, or in the case of Linux, breathe a crazy amount of extra life into it barring hardware failures.
Anything older than that at this point is not only considered a security hazard since it's by definition an unmaintained operating system connected to the Internet, but you're also gonna gain basically no favors running older operating systems on it. Even if you put your head in the sand and pretend security problems don't exist/will never be discovered/can be mitigated while remaining online, app support becomes a problem at some point, as well as just general support for more modern technologies like passkeys and such as a quick example, which are an incredibly good thing to have in 2025+. As far as performance stuff goes, majority of the performance stuff with these older models is basically just gonna come down to the fact that you're running a 7 year old platform that is not only very thermally constrained but also very power constrained, coupled with the fact that a lot of these units only shipped with eight gigs of system memory which wasn't amazing back in 2017 but anemic by 2025+ standards. Basically it's the machine that's gonna slow down the OS, not the other way around, and there's not too much you can do about that because of the fact that they are almost 10-year-old computers at the end of the day.
With that said, OCLP with Sonoma/Sequoia works pretty well with these units with no real major hiccups on them, plus assuming that the upcoming macOS version doesn't drop all Intel machines for good, OCLP will probably become available with that version as well. Alternatively, you can also get a patched version of Windows 11 to replace macOS altogether if you want longer support for something and there are a bunch of scripts available to basically completely remove all the stupid things like ads and stuff from windows, or as a really long-term solution and probably the best thing you can do for a lot of these older units, Linux. Linux will run on the rocks on the side of the road if there is a nerd with enough dedication to make that happen, and it's basically explicitly made to perform as best as it could on old hardware. You would be shocked how much life you can revitalize out of older units by just switching to Linux. There's even distros (variants) of it that are themed to look and feel a lot like MacOS, and since most people have work clothes that revolve around a web browser, Linux will basically support modern versions of chrome and Firefox until the end of time as well as receive a very consistent stream of updates and bug fixes and improvements and critically, security support.
All of these will definitely need some amount of work and time and patience and learning to get them working, such is the nature of the beast when you're trying to support computers that are nearly end of life. If you still have one of these 12 inch units and by the grace of God it hasn't encountered any of the numerous reliability things these units are known for, any of the above will absolutely keep one of these machines going and keep it in a state that is fit for usage in 2025+, or in the case of Linux, breathe a crazy amount of extra life into it barring hardware failures.
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You can prodeed to
Better go for a DualBoot-Machine with an additional Volume for the preferred OCLP/macOS-installation and also add a separate Volume for the vast amount of Your personnal files on that MB in order to keep the system-volumes as small as possible.
OCPL/Ventura runs decent on my 2013 i7/8GB MBA.
Even OCLP/Sequoia would be fine for office-tasks, but currently there's a problem restoring the system through MigrationAssistent.App, which means, there's no Backup/Restore-stragegy by now.
Edit: changed details about OCLP and Ventura, which can be installed without OCLP and therefore "mediaanalysid" is still working and consumes performance and battery-life while running in the background.
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I just installed Monterrey and works really well (2017,8GB,256GB,m3).
I'm using Safari and also works really fine but it is unsupported right now I think? I just can't deal with Ventura and I also think that more afar that Monterrey just don't delivery a good performance for these little laptops. I'll stick with Monterrey since the app support for Big Sur is even bad (you also miss a lot of apps that can't work on Monterrey but well).
The main problem with mine is battery life. It is already tell me about service and since I'm from Costa Rica, my only option is to buy a battery from iFixit and change it myself (don't have any problem with that).
Let's see how this one works with Monterrey. I'm thinking to buy a 16" 2019 laptop with 32GB, 1TB, even with a GPU from eBay since I see them for $300-$350. Or just try to find a base M1, don't know. I'm not in a position to buy a new laptop right now so, I'll just wait
I'm using Safari and also works really fine but it is unsupported right now I think? I just can't deal with Ventura and I also think that more afar that Monterrey just don't delivery a good performance for these little laptops. I'll stick with Monterrey since the app support for Big Sur is even bad (you also miss a lot of apps that can't work on Monterrey but well).
The main problem with mine is battery life. It is already tell me about service and since I'm from Costa Rica, my only option is to buy a battery from iFixit and change it myself (don't have any problem with that).
Let's see how this one works with Monterrey. I'm thinking to buy a 16" 2019 laptop with 32GB, 1TB, even with a GPU from eBay since I see them for $300-$350. Or just try to find a base M1, don't know. I'm not in a position to buy a new laptop right now so, I'll just wait
Time to report!
Been running Big Sur since the weekend and it's been nice. I'm now considering upgrading to Monterey this weekend as it probably won't impact performance much more that BigSur did - I think, or I hope. It should give me more life out of this machine I love dearly. I don't really care about latest security patches, it's more about running apps that can deal ok with the internet. At least, since upgrading to Big Sur, I can run the latest version of Brave Browser. And BigS Safari is still supported with the websites I use most - Catlania's was ruled out recently.
My next move when I have some time to tinker will be to do the thermal mod to my MacBook.
Been running Big Sur since the weekend and it's been nice. I'm now considering upgrading to Monterey this weekend as it probably won't impact performance much more that BigSur did - I think, or I hope. It should give me more life out of this machine I love dearly. I don't really care about latest security patches, it's more about running apps that can deal ok with the internet. At least, since upgrading to Big Sur, I can run the latest version of Brave Browser. And BigS Safari is still supported with the websites I use most - Catlania's was ruled out recently.
My next move when I have some time to tinker will be to do the thermal mod to my MacBook.
Yeah, Big Sur is like the sweet spot for this machine.
If you go for the thermal mod be careful with the trackpad flex
I have the most recent Monterey on my 2017 1.2 and is very fast and stable.
I have a 2017 MacBook i7/16GB/256GB configuration. I have OCLP 2.4.0 installed and have MacOS 15.6 Beta2 installed. I haven't had any issues running this OS on my MacBook as I am typing this post. I like using this MacBook because of its size and lightweight package. Still a great laptop to use.
How is performance compared to Ventura? I have the 2017 m3/16/256.
I'd like to see macOS 26 Tahoe on it in a few months. I'm not sure I want to bother installing Sequoia now and then Tahoe in the fall.
I can't speak for those who are using MacBooks with the M3 processor however with the MacBooks using the i5 and i7 processors, Sequoia 15.6 Beta 2 is running well without any issues but I'm using the recent version of OCLP 2.4.0 with the current OS.
One thing to note, the i5 MacBook I have runs slower than the i7 MacBook so if you're looking for performance using the current MacOS, I would recommend sourcing a 2017 MacBook with i7 and have it spec'd out with 16GB and ideally 512GB storage although the 256GB storage will also work well.
I have no problems playing back YouTube videos with my MacBook while running MacOS 15.6 Beta 2. I am not observing any lagging during video playback.
I have a base 2016 rMB and it has no issues whatsoever running YouTube or other video streaming sites under Sequoia
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TrashBook! 🤪I have a base 2016 rMB and it has no issues whatsoever running YouTube or other video streaming sites under Sequoia
lol yup! I rescued this machine from a recycle heap ages ago and have since replaced:
Upper case / keyboard
Trackpad
USB Port
Keyboard flex cable
Audio board
Left speaker
It's beat to hell, scratched and dinged, the rubber around the edge of the screen melted off ages ago, and the screen itself is all dinged up but it's been desperately clinging to life this whole time. Makes for a great true beater Mac!
I saw this video from Mr Macintosh regarding development of OCLP 3.3.0 beta and am hopeful this update will allow users of 2014-2017 MacBook access to Tahoe, Apple's final OS for Intel support. For the time being with both my i5 and i7 MacBooks, I am content in running the current Sequoia 15.6 Beta 3 MacOS (24G5065c) which have been running fairly well on these platforms.
I have the same as yours and use the latest version of ventura. Very speedy.
I just completed this update using OCLP 2.4.0 (latest version) and so far I have no major issues using this OS after doing all the post patching that OCLP does.
iPhone Mirroring is still not functional on this laptop but it is not anything I use anyway. Everything else seems to be functional, at least for my use case for this laptop.
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I recently updated my 2017 MacBook i7 to MacOS 15.7 using OCLP 2.4.0 without issue.
Installed the root patches after and everything has been operating solidly, no issues running the current Sequoia OS.
Installed the root patches after and everything has been operating solidly, no issues running the current Sequoia OS.
When compared to my 2024 MacBook Pro with M3 Pro processor my 2017 MacBook i7 is slower and does not have iPhone mirroring, which I don't need. For normal web browsing, YouTube video watching and emails, the MacBook does a very good job and works normal from my point of view. It is not slow or laggy but has longer boot up time as expected. Graphics updated great and mouse or cursor tracks as expected. Web pages open relatively quickly so I have no complaints otherwise I would be using my MacBook Pro all the time. I still use my MacBook when lounging around in my living room or patio.
Hope this answers your question.