iPhone 15 Pro Sporadic Apple user with old Mac considering iPhone 15 Pro, any stumbling blocks to expect?

[Grey Area]

I am considering an iPhone 15 Pro. My last iPhone was an original SE, though to be fair the past three years I have been mostly on Android. I like both operating systems, and I am not particularly entrenched in either ecosystem. However, I do like to keep a foot in each so to say, for tinkering and redundancy, and I feel I have been losing touch with iOS, plus there is my irrational love for titanium. ;-)

A potential issue though is that I strongly favor Linux on my computers, as I like neither Windows nor MacOS. I prefer to have some computer connectivity as a "base station" for the phone, for example to upload music and download pictures, but iPhones traditionally don't go well with Linux. I do still have a dusty old Mac Mini (2012, top of the line in its day, runs Catalina), my only Mac and it still seems to work alright, but that OS... Nevertheless, would that Mac still be able to work with a new iPhone, or is it too old? Or have by any chance iPhones become a bit more independent and I can e.g. connect the iPhone to my NAS directly and load music files into its Music app?

 

[ZebraDude]

MY Man, I would suggest checking out Open Core Legacy Patcher......you can get Ventura on that mini. I am typing this on my mid2010 iMac that is patched to Ventura!

OpenCore Legacy Patcher

Experience macOS just like before

dortania.github.io

 

[ZebraDude]

They are currently working on patching this years version.

 

[Nermal]

I do still have a dusty old Mac Mini (2012, top of the line in its day, runs Catalina), my only Mac and it still seems to work alright, but that OS... Nevertheless, would that Mac still be able to work with a new iPhone, or is it too old?

That's fine. Even OS 10.13 is still supported for use with a modern iPhone (see the System Requirements section on the Tech Specs page).

 

[ZebraDude]

That's fine. Even OS 10.13 is still supported for use with a modern iPhone (see the System Requirements section on the Tech Specs page).

Good point....

 

[ctjack]

I don’t know. Bu standard, my 2012 mbp refused to connect to iphone 12 or 13 without mac os update to the latest. But latest macos would make my old laptop freeze and lag.
Of course there are workarounds, but you are then even losing out on all the synergies like handoff and etc.

 

[ZebraDude]

I am still running the original HDD in my iMac mid 2010 but fortunately I had placed 16GB of RAM in it when I bought it. and yes the loading of Ventura is slow (APFS is not optimized for a HDD) loading but once its in memory it becomes snappy!

 

[nathansz]

I am still running the original HDD in my iMac mid 2010 but fortunately I had placed 16GB of RAM in it when I bought it. and yes the loading of Ventura is slow (APFS is not optimized for a HDD) loading but once its in memory it becomes snappy!

putting an ssd in there would make a massive difference

 

[eyoungren]

That's fine. Even OS 10.13 is still supported for use with a modern iPhone (see the System Requirements section on the Tech Specs page).

Hilarious! For once, Apple supports me! SMH.

(Above message typed in on a 2009 MacPro running Mojave).

 

[boredandlonely]

I don’t know. Bu standard, my 2012 mbp refused to connect to iphone 12 or 13 without mac os update to the latest.

TLDR: Check the iPhone compatibility specs. If it says it works, it does. Worst case scenario, do a clean install of your current OS onto another drive, and boot into it. You can even do it on a thumb drive. Update the clean install OS and manually download/install latest iTunes it will allow. Restart same clean OS. Now try your phones.


TL: I had been struggling for a few weeks trying to get my iPhone 15 Pro Max to be 'seen' by iTunes on my mid-2010 Macbook Pro running High Sierra. Every time I attached it, I DID get the prompt to accept a small software update to support the new iPhone, I agreed, but the download failed 100% of the time and blamed "a network problem". iPhone 15 compatibility specs said it IS compatible. I posted a few places and most people thought it was NOT compatible "YET", and Apple was still working on that.

I'm stubborn and "no" and "not yet" didn't sound right. As a test, I clean installed another copy of High Sierra on a different drive and updated it. You also have to MANUALLY download and install the latest compatible iTunes to the clean High Sierra as well. Software update won't do it. I plugged in my iPhone 15 Pro Max, got the 'update to support hardware' prompt, accepted, and IT DOWNLOADED finally, installed, and everything was great,

So, in my case, my current High Sierra had something seriously wrong, and its screwing up getting the update file downloaded. I've been looking for weeks and can't find the issue. I even reinstalled High Sierra on top of itself to no avail. I posted, and nobody else could locate the problem either. If I don't find it soon, I'll have to migrate my entire setup into that clean installed High Sierra that actually works.

I am considering an iPhone 15 Pro.

I do still have a dusty old Mac Mini (2012, top of the line in its day, runs Catalina),...would that Mac still be able to work with a new iPhone, or is it too old?

You're probably totally fine, but just pull up Apple's compatibility specs and see what system it requires.

 

[rodjam]

I am considering an iPhone 15 Pro. My last iPhone was an original SE, though to be fair the past three years I have been mostly on Android. I like both operating systems, and I am not particularly entrenched in either ecosystem. However, I do like to keep a foot in each so to say, for tinkering and redundancy, and I feel I have been losing touch with iOS, plus there is my irrational love for titanium. ;-)

A potential issue though is that I strongly favor Linux on my computers, as I like neither Windows nor MacOS. I prefer to have some computer connectivity as a "base station" for the phone, for example to upload music and download pictures, but iPhones traditionally don't go well with Linux. I do still have a dusty old Mac Mini (2012, top of the line in its day, runs Catalina), my only Mac and it still seems to work alright, but that OS... Nevertheless, would that Mac still be able to work with a new iPhone, or is it too old? Or have by any chance iPhones become a bit more independent and I can e.g. connect the iPhone to my NAS directly and load music files into its Music app?

I have a 2011 MacBook Air that is running 10.13 (High Sierra) that I recently reinstalled. I just plugged my iPhone running iOS 17.1 into the Mac and it prompted to download an update, which it did, after which I could connect via iTunes. If I were you I would go back to 10.13 on your Mac mini so that you can use iTunes, which allows you to drag and drop better than the support in the Finder on later versions of the OS.

Regarding Linux, you can use macOS much like Linux by sticking to the Terminal and using the command line for most everything. There are even a couple of different package managers that allow you to install packages much like a Linux distro (I'm old school though, and just download source code and build everything I need from scratch). macOS is just BSD unix with a fancy GUI on top of it, with 1st party hardware driver support.