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List of Macs Compatible With macOS Big Sur

BootsWalking said:
It Catalina is any indication, Apple is doing users a favor by precluding them from upgrading to Big Sur.
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I guess you could say that if Apple was selling Macs in record numbers, which they are not!

They still have no product I want, so my Mac Pro 4,1 (5,1 firmware) will continue to live and be upgraded.

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. :D
 
Neodym said:
Good ol' oversimplification from Apple's side again. A 2012 (quad-core i7) mini upgraded to SSD runs rings around most - if not all - of the 2014 minis, yet isn't allowed to run Big Sur without jumping through some hoops to trick the installer about the underlying hardware.

Why can't Apple simply open a window on those legacy machines during installation, alerting the user about "Legacy Mac detected, user experience may be impaired, unless you have upgraded to SSD and 8-16GB Ram. Continue with installation?" and let the user decide in case (s)he knows what (s)he's doing?

I know, I know - legacy drivers not supported any longer, too many SKU's can't be tested etc. etc. Still - it feels completely arbitrary.
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I remember when I was buying my 2012 Mac mini I was trying to figure out which model to buy. My neighbour pointed out to me that it wouldn’t matter how fast or slow it is as Apple will discontinue support based on year rather than power. So I just bought a refurbished base model and I’ve had eight years of use.
 
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Robert.Walter said:
i have a Quad Core FusionDrive 2012 Mac mini and it runs really well on Catalina*. Maybe it’s the 128GB SSD in front of the 1TB HDD? Or the 16GB ram? * had issues until last update with big pic files but now seems fine.
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My wife’s daily driver is almost the same configuration as yours (2012 i7 Mac mini, 2.12TB Fusion drive, 16GB RAM, Catalina), and it works fine for the basic stuff she does (MS Office, Photos, iTunes, web surfing, etc.). I passed it to her after I got a 2019 27” iMac. Her previous computer, a 2012 i5 Mac mini with 8GB of RAM and a 1.2TB Fusion drive, had gotten sluggish, so I put it out to pasture, and it’s enjoying a happy life in retirement as a home theater server. I knew that the 2012 minis wouldn’t support the next iteration of macOS after Catalina, but they’ve been great computers.
 
taxiapple said:
Damn

2013 iMac, i7, 16GB ram, 2GB graphics and it won't run Big Sur but a 2013 Macbook Air will?

Will there be a hack?
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Historically, apple tended to drop the more powerful ones and keep the crappy ones.
Sierra was a great example. The regular MacBook 2009 was supported but they dropped the MacBook Pro 2009. I think it's apples way of subtly giving pro users the middle finger.

It's all about emojis, animojis, memojis, bitmojis, mojiemo these days.
 
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Yebubbleman said:
I'm very surprised that the 2013 iMacs are left out of this list considering that all other Haswell Macs made the cut (including slower Macs introduced around the same time).
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Yes it's due to the WiFi card installed the earlier 12/13 iMacs have the BCM94331 while the 14/15 iMacs all have the BCM94360 I'm sure an unsupported Mac OS installer will fix this issue for you.
 
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highvoltage12v said:
Yes it's due to the WiFi card installed the earlier 12/13 iMacs have the BCM94331 while the 14/15 iMacs all have the BCM94360 I'm sure an unsupported Mac OS installer will fix this issue for you.
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Dude, that's awesome that you just had that info handy. And it makes perfect sense. (Where did you find it, by the way? Not that I doubt you, I'm just curious now! I figured there had to be a good reason for it.)
 
a.coward said:
I'm kind of miffed that they they are not supporting the 2012 Retina MacBook Pro, but are supporting the 2013 version. They are practically the same machine, save a slightly upgraded CPU (but same generation), 802.11ac and Thunderbolt 2. Otherwise, all the internals are basically the same: GPU, display, RAM, cache, etc.
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Not that I am disagreeing with your point, but the 2012 was Ivy Bridge 3rd gen, and the 2013 was Haswell/4th gen. But as an owner of a mid 2012 cMBP, I'm sad that it's finally dropping off the list. I did the SSD upgrade to it myself, and it's still fairly snappy. But I also haven't installed Catalina yet either. I guess I'll finally make that jump later this year.
 
Yebubbleman said:
Dude, that's awesome that you just had that info handy. And it makes perfect sense. (Where did you find it, by the way? Not that I doubt you, I'm just curious now! I figured there had to be a good reason for it.)
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I have taken apart/worked on enough of these iMac's to know the slight differences lol. You can see the different wireless cards for sale on eBay, they are also used alot in the Hackintosh scene.

2012 Macbooks/Minis also used the BCM94331. My larger concern is Ivy-Bridge CPUs dropped and how that can affect enabling Sandy bridge CPUs again. I do alot of theCatalina support on the 2009-2011 iMac's.
 
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Solver said:
Kind of figured this. I wasn’t even able to run my Mac mini late 2012 on Catalina very well until I replaced the hard drive with a solid-state drive.
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Yeah, this means it's pretty much the end of the line for my 2012 quad-core i7 Mac Mini. But anyways later this year once I've gotten a decent I.T. job I will buy a new 13" MacBook Pro to replace my late 2009 MacBook, so I can have a Mac that runs Mac OS 11 Big Sur, and keep using the Mac Mini and Mac OS 10.15 Catalina for another year or two until I'm ready to buy a nice new quad or six-core Mac Mini, preferably once a version with one of the the new Apple Silicon processors comes out. If Apple's transition is going to be gradual, then my transition can also be gradual.
 
YetAnotherAppleFan92 said:
Ah, so anything with 3rd Gen Intel Core processors is out. They had a good run, but the graphics (especially the HD Graphics 4000) is probably the main reason.

EDIT: Just noticed the 2013 iMac does not fall into that category. It’s odd that model isn’t included when everything else with a 4th gen is.
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I think it’s a combination of a non-Retina screen and less NVIDIA GPUs to support. I own one, but I was a little shocked. Time to sell it and start saving for an Apple Silicon iMac.
 
My 2012 MBP i5/16/2TB has been a great machine but even my 2020 MBA i5/8/512 runs circles around it. Probably going to go back to Mojave and let it live it’s days in peace as a music and plex server
 
highvoltage12v said:
Yes it's due to the WiFi card installed the earlier 12/13 iMacs have the BCM94331 while the 14/15 iMacs all have the BCM94360 I'm sure an unsupported Mac OS installer will fix this issue for you.
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Are you sure? The late 2013 iMacs do have 802.11ac Wi-Fi and they support the Apple Watch login feature. It could be the fact the the late 2013 iMacs don't use LPDDR3 ram, whereas the 2013 MacBook Air and late 2013 MacBook Pros do. Or am I missing something?
 
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I just bought a 16" MacBook Pro. This timing is perfect. By the time I'll be replacing this machine we'll already be into revision 2 or 3 of the ARM Macs.
 
CSM said:
No motivation to upgrade from Mohave unless they bring back Support for 32-bit programs.
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I totally agree. If Apple can afford the development of Rosetta 2, then they could implement a safe legacy 32 bit app situation. But the whole point is to get rid of the old software you paid for at your expense sadly and falsely claim that it's in the interest of "security concerns". BS! :(
 
Pour one out for my beloved 2012 Mac mini. Which now that I think about it still running (low) Sierra, so probably not a big deal.
 
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