Upgrading Mid 2009 Core2duo 13 MBP to Yosemite

[turbocamel]

Hey all,

My 2009 MBP is still chuggin along on 10.6.8 and I personally had no intention to upgrade to yosemite. I really still love Spaces with expose, that has been my reason for not upgrading. Hot corner for spaces, then another hot corner for expose, I can drag and move around every iteration of each program to whatever space i want. Since Lion, I wasnt a fan of the "new" inline spaces with clumping of each programs windows.

Alas I think safari has bit the dust, Today amazon.com told me that they wont support it anymore, Its v5.1.10. About to bite the bullet and upgrade to yosemite.
Granted I do have firefox and Chrome already installed, but with no more updates coming to 10.6.8 anymore, who knows what other vulnerabilities are left.

Has anyone had issues running yosemite on an older machine like this? Its gonna be really annoying if It makes it ridiculously slow.

Model Identifier: MacBookPro5,5
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.26 GHz
Memory: 8 GB
Harddive: 500gb + 500gb

 

[cjmillsnun]

Your RAM is good, however you'd benefit from an SSD. Otherwise it should run reasonably well. Not as quick as Snow, but it should be fine.

 

[Icehawk]

Same model as you but with only 4 gigs of ram. I've had no issues. I use it for mostly office tasks such as email, web browsing, and similar stuff. I do play Hearthstone on it and it runs fine without any noticeable lag.

 

[turbocamel]

I've held off on putting any more money into this comp as it's now 5 years old. It's maxed out with ram and 2 500gb 7200rpm hard drives and a dead battery. Although a 512gb ssd for $210 isn't bad but it'll be a sunk cost once I move to a new rmbp which has no use replaceable parts.

You mentioned it's a little bit slower than sl. Was that an update or a fresh install?

 

[saudor]

get something like 256 gb ssd.
Im on a 120 GB + 1 TB config. Works like a champ. About 60 gigs free on the SSD and 700 GB on the spinner.

if you do upgrade, throw the SSD into an enclosure and you got yourself a super fast USB lol

 

[KUguardgrl13]

Yosemite is fine on my mid-2009. I upgraded to Mavericks from SL last year because of a recurring sleep/wake issue, and my friend wanted to borrow it for Xcode. It's not my daily driver anymore (got a late-2013 rMBP), but it does fine for light web browsing and iTunes downloads. No SSD for me since it's basically a desktop replacement at this point.

Keep in mind you can always downgrade if it's totally sluggish and unusable as long as you have the SL disk.

 

[subaiku]

Hi, sorry to revive an old thread, but I have a similar 17" MacBook Pro 5,2. Currently on Mavericks and considering installing Yosemite. Is there any feedback on wether it's slow on mid 2009 models? I still currently use it as my workhorse, using Photshop, Illustrator etc.

Any feedback would be appreciated, thanks!

 

[EugW]

Hi, sorry to revive an old thread, but I have a similar 17" MacBook Pro 5,2. Currently on Mavericks and considering installing Yosemite. Is there any feedback on wether it's slow on mid 2009 models? I still currently use it as my workhorse, using Photshop, Illustrator etc.

Any feedback would be appreciated, thanks!

10.10 Yosemite works fine. You need bare minimum 4GB though, and much preferably with SSD. You can officially run El Capitan which is good too but it introduces the sometimes annoying System Integrity Protection (SIP).

However l, I’m running 10.13 High Sierra on a 8 GB + SSD 2009 MacBookPro5,5. Runs decently in terms of speed and the everything works perfectly. Unfortunately, I think there are some issues with MacBookPro5,2 with High Sierra so I wouldn’t recommend it.

Edit:

Nope, please ignore that last statement. MacBookPro5,2 isn't listed as a problem machine for High Sierra. The problem one is a MacBook5,2 non-Pro.

 

[subaiku]

10.10 Yosemite works fine. You need bare minimum 4GB though, and much preferably with SSD. You can officially run El Capitan which is good too but it introduces the sometimes annoying System Integrity Protection (SIP).

However l, I’m running 10.13 High Sierra on a 8 GB + SSD 2009 MacBookPro5,5. Runs decently in terms of speed and the everything works perfectly. Unfortunately, I think there are some issues with MacBookPro5,2 with High Sierra so I wouldn’t recommend it.

Ah cool, I've got 8GB ram and I've switched to SSD awhile ago. Yosemite is the most I'll update to methinks, (mostly because I need to sync stuff to iOS10)... even Mavericks currently already feels slow to me.

 

[EugW]

Ah cool, I've got 8GB ram and I've switched to SSD awhile ago. Yosemite is the most I'll update to methinks, (mostly because I need to sync stuff to iOS10)... even Mavericks currently already feels slow to me.

I don’t recall a significant difference in speed between Mavericks and Yosemite. iTunes 12.7 does require 10.10 Yosemite though. iTunes 12.7 is required for iOS 11.

No, High Sierra isn’t fast on my old machine but with enough memory it is decent enough to be more than usable. However, my main driver is a 2017 MacBook Core m3, and that one is noticeably faster.

 

[EugW]

Ah cool, I've got 8GB ram and I've switched to SSD awhile ago. Yosemite is the most I'll update to methinks, (mostly because I need to sync stuff to iOS10)... even Mavericks currently already feels slow to me.

It turns out you likely CAN upgrade to High Sierra without problem. I was confused about the 5,2 models.

10.10 Yosemite works fine. You need bare minimum 4GB though, and much preferably with SSD. You can officially run El Capitan which is good too but it introduces the sometimes annoying System Integrity Protection (SIP).

However l, I’m running 10.13 High Sierra on a 8 GB + SSD 2009 MacBookPro5,5. Runs decently in terms of speed and the everything works perfectly. Unfortunately, I think there are some issues with MacBookPro5,2 with High Sierra so I wouldn’t recommend it.

Nope, please ignore that last statement. MacBookPro5,2 isn't listed as a problem machine for High Sierra. The problem one is a MacBook5,2 non-Pro.

Any reason you won't go past Yosemite?

 

[subaiku]

It turns out you likely CAN upgrade to High Sierra without problem. I was confused about the 5,2 models.


Nope, please ignore that last statement. MacBookPro5,2 isn't listed as a problem machine for High Sierra. The problem one is a MacBook5,2 non-Pro.

Any reason you won't go past Yosemite?

Hey thanks for all the notes! When you say High Sierra, is it the same as Sierra? From what I've read online the MacBook Pro 5,2 isn't supported by Sierra?

Anyways, the reason I probably won't go past Yosemite is because I think that's the last OSX my model can go and also the last OSX my MacBook can handle until things really slow down. Right now on Mavericks if I have Chrome on and let's say another graphic application, things just really slows down after awhile.

 

[EugW]

Hey thanks for all the notes! When you say High Sierra, is it the same as Sierra? From what I've read online the MacBook Pro 5,2 isn't supported by Sierra?

Anyways, the reason I probably won't go past Yosemite is because I think that's the last OSX my model can go and also the last OSX my MacBook can handle until things really slow down. Right now on Mavericks if I have Chrome on and let's say another graphic application, things just really slows down after awhile.

Sierra is 10.12. High Sierra is 10.13 and it comes out 10 days from today.

2009 MacBook Pros are not officially supported by either Sierra or High Sierra but with a patched installer you can install both of those OS versions and if you have the right model like MBP5,2 and MBP5,5 then they will function perfectly.

High Sierra brings some welcome new features over Yosemite and El Capitan. I don’t know if El Capitan is significantly slower than Yosemite if you have 8 GB RAM and SSD, but while neither is fast, with 8 GB RAM and SSD I don’t find High Sierra noticeably slower than El Capitan

 

[brianxhopkins]

Upgrading killed my Mid-2009. It still worked, but it made it slow as hell. And that's with maxed 8 GB RAM. 10.6.8 was the perfect setup for the computer. But if it's your main computer, I can see why you want to upgrade.

 

[EugW]

I have been comparing my C2D 2.0 GHz High Sierra machine against my C2D 2.4 GHz Lion 10.7.5 machine for Safari surfing. The 2.0 feels way faster than the 2.4. It turns out it's partially because the latest version of Safari is up to twice as fast in JavaScript as the old version of Safari.

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...s-high-sierra-decently.2068596/#post-25067629

So, upgrading to High Sierra actually results in a noticeable speed boost, not a slowdown, at least for web surfing.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP:
My suggestions:

First one:
Isn't it time for something new?

Second one:
If you disagree with the above, I'd suggest you put a 256gb SSD into the 2009, and install El Capitan (assuming it can run El Cap without problems).

That will give you an OS that will "outlive the machine", and a drive capable of running it.

IF you try to install Yosemite, El Cap or Mavericks onto a platter based hard drive, it will run, but the running will feel more like "walking" from the user's perspective. As in... slow.

When you do get something new, you can always take the SSD back out of the 2009, and put it into a USB3 (or USB-c) 2.5" external enclosure. They're dirt cheap.

 

[EugW]

OP:
My suggestions:

First one:
Isn't it time for something new?

Second one:
If you disagree with the above, I'd suggest you put a 256gb SSD into the 2009, and install El Capitan (assuming it can run El Cap without problems).

That will give you an OS that will "outlive the machine", and a drive capable of running it.

IF you try to install Yosemite, El Cap or Mavericks onto a platter based hard drive, it will run, but the running will feel more like "walking" from the user's perspective. As in... slow.

When you do get something new, you can always take the SSD back out of the 2009, and put it into a USB3 (or USB-c) 2.5" external enclosure. They're dirt cheap.

El Capitan is fine and fully supported on that MacBookPro5,2, but I really recommend High Sierra with the patched installer. With that 256 GB SSD and 4-8 GB RAM, it will run like a champ.

I've updated both my MacBookPro5,5 and my MacBook5,1 to High Sierra, and overall it's excellent, and brings file format compatibility that isn't available in El Capitan or Sierra.