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oscarpetre

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 20, 2023
13
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Hi!

I have a white macbook 2010 that's stuck on High Sierra and I've been using it as a backup computer for a couple of years. I read recently that both Firefox and Chrome has discontinued their browers for High Sierra and I'm wondering what would be the optimal solution for these computers now. Alternative browers like Chromium Legacy or go with OCLP (and in that case, what OS?)?. I would like to continue using iCloud if that's possible.

Thankful for replies :)
 
I would probably recommend at least OCLP Monterey (MacOS 12). Chrome still currently supports Catalina 10.15, but Apple support has already ended which means Chrome/Firefox support for it will likely be ending soon.

No OS is going to run well on that MacBook if you have a rotational hard drive and only 4GB RAM. So I'd recommend upgrading the hard drive to an SSD. Also, the 2010 white MacBook supports 16GB RAM. Both SSD and RAM can be purchased inexpensively (my subjective opinion) on Amazon and will greatly improve the performance of the computer with modern software.

The non-Metal GPU will likely have a minimal impact on your daily use, and the USB 1.1 issue below only affects Ventura 13 (unless it gets fixed down the road).

Supported Models - Open Core Legacy Patcher (OCLP)

1693272515493.png
 
I would probably recommend at least OCLP Monterey (MacOS 12). Chrome still currently supports Catalina 10.15, but Apple support has already ended which means Chrome/Firefox support for it will likely be ending soon.

No OS is going to run well on that MacBook if you have a rotational hard drive and only 4GB RAM. So I'd recommend upgrading the hard drive to an SSD. Also, the 2010 white MacBook supports 16GB RAM. Both SSD and RAM can be purchased inexpensively (my subjective opinion) on Amazon and will greatly improve the performance of the computer with modern software.

The non-Metal GPU will likely have a minimal impact on your daily use, and the USB 1.1 issue below only affects Ventura 13 (unless it gets fixed down the road).

Supported Models - Open Core Legacy Patcher (OCLP)

View attachment 2251924
Thanks! I actually have an SSD, so it's pretty snappy, at least in High Sierra. OCLP seems as the best alternative in the long run but I'm rather hesitant to invest 30 bucks on new ram (it's a little bit more expensive here in Sweden), but is it security wise a bad idea to use iCloud on an old macOS? Firefox ESR seems to be updated on High Sierra for at least a year forward.
 
When you ask about software for a particular OS, and the respondents suggest you change your OS and hardware so they can smash a square peg through a round hole in pretense that they actually answered the question. Yoy, he can run the latest Firefox now...and absolutely none of the rest of his massive collection of 32bit Mac software curated through the years.

(Trying to envision that long-suffering MB2009 with DDR2 ram trying to launch that bloated sow Monterey in OCL. They were great Snow Leopard machines....)
 
Thanks! I actually have an SSD, so it's pretty snappy, at least in High Sierra. OCLP seems as the best alternative in the long run but I'm rather hesitant to invest 30 bucks on new ram (it's a little bit more expensive here in Sweden), but is it security wise a bad idea to use iCloud on an old macOS? Firefox ESR seems to be updated on High Sierra for at least a year forward.
There is not much to hesitate about regarding RAM if you plan to use this computer for some more time. It is probably the best investment you can make for that machine. You can still buy it new in Sweden: https://www.inet.se/produkt/5315306/corsair-16gb-2x8gb-ddr3-1600mhz-apple-qualified I did exactly that for my Mac mini 2011 pretty much exactly two years two years ago, and it was marvelous. I wrote the big review there ;) If you can get it for the equivalent of 30 USD, then it's a no brainer. When I boot up High Sierra, the OS alone consumes almost 2 GB RAM, and that's after a clean install but with all updates. Web sites easily consume up to 1 GB RAM each. Script riddled sites are real memory hogs that continue to eat memory if they stay open for hours and days, and/or if you browse them a lot, which include YouTube, Hitta, Prisjakt, SVT Play, and occasionally even MacRumors, at least on Safari 13.

I do acknowledge though that a pre-Sandy Bridge CPU is falling a bit short. There's a significant difference between my Mac mini 2011 top CPU model and my MacBook Pro 2010 15 inch at 2,67 GHz.

Regarding web browsers, Pale Moon might be your best option. It is still supported on High Sierra, even as far back as Lion (but not Snow Leopard, sniff). However, it will require an AVX capable CPU in the near future.
I recently made a thread about browsers on 10.13 https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/web-browsers-for-high-sierra-beyond-2024.2431524/
 
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Retire it with honors.
It has had a very long life, but Core2Duo chips have been woefully obsolete for quite some time even as newer OS versions have only gotten more "intelligent" (read: performs more background make-work tasks).

My second suggestion is to keep it for running nostalgic 32-bit apps offline. If you do need an alternative web browser see "Web Browsers for Early Intel" thread Basilisk maybe? https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/web-browsers-for-early-intel-macs.2280783/
 
No OS is going to run well on that MacBook if you have a rotational hard drive and only 4GB RAM.
I have a 15yo ratty, SMART-failing USB2 external rotational shirt-pocket drive with Snow Leopard that will external-boot a CRT iMac with 1gb of ram in about twenty-five seconds. El Capitan will boot to desktop off a silverback's 7200rpm drive about as fast as Ventura boots from an SSD in a machine ten years newer.

-- Apple goes out of its way to make its newer OSes run like crap on its prior hardware. (And it was caught crippling its own iPhone batteries via software updates quite some time ago now, so this isn't some elaborate conspiracy-theory. They're just an evil company that commits vandalism on their own customers now.)
Retire it with honors. It has had a very long life, but Core2Duo chips have been woefully obsolete
At large render projects. They can handle pretty much anything else. (The primary impediments for C2D Macs tend to lie in the machine's other components: weak videocards, USB2, dim screens, etc. That said, an old 2008 24" blackback iMac makes a good table machine, and the 4x3 aspect-ratio is actually welcome when it comes to web-browsing. Its metal rim also protects the glass, so it'll survive better in a house full of kids.
for quite some time even as newer OS versions have only gotten more "intelligent" (read: performs more background make-work tasks).
C2D-rated OSes weren't quite up to snuff at logging your every move to the NSA.
My second suggestion is to keep it for running nostalgic 32-bit apps offline. If you do need an alternative web browser see "Web Browsers for Early Intel" thread Basilisk maybe? https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/web-browsers-for-early-intel-macs.2280783/
Basilisk is actually my favorite browser on any Mac, albeit with the caveat that its not a "modern" browser:
* smaller memory footprint than Waterfox Classic, Pale Moon, etc.
* only one I've tried for which ThinTabs doesn't look like ass (and that is indispensable when combined with TabMixPlus's multirow tab feature.

After that, Chromium-legacy will let you install the latest versions of uBlock Origin, Adblocker Ultimate, FB Purity, and Sponsorblock (in other words, an ideal Facebook and Youtube platform).
 
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The big problem with updating any browsers, is that Apple has made it near-impossible to update an older Macbook Pro (2011) to anything newer than High Sierra! It should be easy, but there's supposedly one tiny bit of code their programmers left out, so that the usual way to upgrade won't work. Some people have figured out a long, complicated work around, but I hate that Apple won't just correct this, so thousands of users can easily upgrade our OS. But we know they hate seeing their loyal users getting a long life from any of their products. I do have newer devices, but I'd sure as hell like to be able to still use my older ones, as well....
 
The big problem with updating any browsers, is that Apple has made it near-impossible to update an older Macbook Pro (2011) to anything newer than High Sierra! It should be easy, but there's supposedly one tiny bit of code their programmers left out, so that the usual way to upgrade won't work. Some people have figured out a long, complicated work around, but I hate that Apple won't just correct this, so thousands of users can easily upgrade our OS. But we know they hate seeing their loyal users getting a long life from any of their products. I do have newer devices, but I'd sure as hell like to be able to still use my older ones, as well....

You just need OpenCore aka OCLP. I have Monterey running on a 2012 MacBook Pro (I'm not a fan of the interface and settings changes in Ventura). OCLP bypasses the hardware check when installing the OS and has a bunch of other updates to make all the hardware work.
 
The big problem with updating any browsers, is that Apple has made it near-impossible to update an older Macbook Pro (2011) to anything newer than High Sierra!
If your machine is 2011 or older, and you haven't upgraded the video-card or done any other under-hood tinkering, my advice is do NOT attempt to upgrade beyond High Sierra (via OCLP, etc). This will only leave you frustrated as the APFS filesystem grinds the drive, and a sluggish Catalina or higher kill off half or more of all the old, useful, free software you're currently enjoying.

INSTALL CHROMIUM-LEGACY ...and install uBlock Origin, Adblocker Ultimate, FB Purity, and Sponsorblock browser extensions. Remove Safari from the dock. You'll also want to disable SIP ("csrutil disable" typed into Terminal run from a Recovery Partition) and reenable running apps downloaded from anywhere ("sudo spctl --master-disable" in Terminal).

It's really that easy. You don't need a new operating-system, and you don't need a new computer.
 
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Thanks! I actually have an SSD, so it's pretty snappy, at least in High Sierra. OCLP seems as the best alternative in the long run but I'm rather hesitant to invest 30 bucks on new ram (it's a little bit more expensive here in Sweden), but is it security wise a bad idea to use iCloud on an old macOS? Firefox ESR seems to be updated on High Sierra for at least a year forward.

There is not much to hesitate about regarding RAM if you plan to use this computer for some more time. It is probably the best investment you can make for that machine. You can still buy it new in Sweden: https://www.inet.se/produkt/5315306/corsair-16gb-2x8gb-ddr3-1600mhz-apple-qualified I did exactly that for my Mac mini 2011 pretty much exactly two years two years ago, and it was marvelous. I wrote the big review there ;) If you can get it for the equivalent of 30 USD, then it's a no brainer. When I boot up High Sierra, the OS alone consumes almost 2 GB RAM, and that's after a clean install but with all updates. Web sites easily consume up to 1 GB RAM each. Script riddled sites are real memory hogs that continue to eat memory if they stay open for hours and days, and/or if you browse them a lot, which include YouTube, Hitta, Prisjakt, SVT Play, and occasionally even MacRumors, at least on Safari 13.

I do acknowledge though that a pre-Sandy Bridge CPU is falling a bit short. There's a significant difference between my Mac mini 2011 top CPU model and my MacBook Pro 2010 15 inch at 2,67 GHz.

Regarding web browsers, Pale Moon might be your best option. It is still supported on High Sierra, even as far back as Lion (but not Snow Leopard, sniff). However, it will require an AVX capable CPU in the near future.
I recently made a thread about browsers on 10.13 https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/web-browsers-for-high-sierra-beyond-2024.2431524/
Actually I had missed one update, security pack 2020-006. I installed it yesterday, and after logging in, well over 2 GB RAM was consumed – 2.67 to be precise. Then I installed and opened Basilisk browser with the welcome page and surfed into MacRumors in two more tabs, opened Firefox 104 with two web pages, one DuckDuckGo search and one Mozilla support page, Screenshotsaver or whatever it's called in English, Textedit with 50 documents, Activity monitor, and finally system settings. I don't think it's that much really, but memory usage swung up significantly, more than doubling, to top at a quite hefty 5.6 GB. So yeah, definitely upgrade your RAM.

To clarify about the processors, my point is that the architectural improvement is quite significant. The CPUs in my computers are largely the same in other aspects. They are both dual cores running at pretty much the same clock speed, 2.7 and 2.66 GHz respectively. The former is a Sandy Bridge and the latter is the preceding Arrandale (Westmere (Nehalem)) architecture. Going back another step, to Core 2 will be constraining, but I think it's still capable.
 
I loved that white MacBook, purchased mine used in 2014 and upgraded it to SSD and 16GB RAM. Sadly it fell down outside while my brother had it for a while and he just throw it away. :(

If I still had it now, I think High Sierra would still be enough for my needs.

Otherwise I would try some Linux distributions like I did on a 2008 one that got stuck on Lion very early.
 
I loved that white MacBook, purchased mine used in 2014 and upgraded it to SSD and 16GB RAM. Sadly it fell down outside while my brother had it for a while and he just throw it away. :(
I loved those things; you could pop out the battery by twisting a coin in the slot, and everything was right there. Knock-off nickel-MH batteries were like fifteen bucks.
 
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