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Wowfunhappy

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Mar 12, 2019
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I'm currently working on a large writing project about Mavericks: why it's special, recommended apps to use, stuff like that. It's actually something I've been meaning to do for years, but it's finally going to happen this time, darn it! I've set a deadline and explicitly marked off time in my Calendar...

Anyway, one blind spot I have is hardware. I'm actually mostly a Hackintosh user myself; my affection is for Apple's software, not really their hardware. However, I also want to say something about hardware.

If you to make a list of the best Macs for running Mavericks, what would they be? Would it just be "the most recent models in each category as of September 2014, or is there more nuance than that?

I'm definitely going to talk about the 2014 Macbook Air, it's the one real Mac I own and I love how small and light it is. I also imagine the trash can Mac Pro bears a mention as (I assume?) the most powerful Mavericks-compatible Mac.

What else is there?

Tagging @Project Alice and @Amethyst1 here, I really hope you two don't mind, but I feel like both of you will have really great insight.
 
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I'm currently working on a large writing project about Mavericks: why it's special, recommended apps to use, stuff like that. It's actually something I've been meaning to do for years, but it's finally going to happen this time, darn it! I've set a deadline and explicitly marked off time in my Calendar...

Anyway, one blind spot I have is hardware. I'm actually mostly a Hackintosh user myself; my affection is for Apple's software, not really their hardware. However, I also want to say something about hardware.

If you to make a list of the best Macs for running Mavericks, what would they be? Would it just be "the most recent models in each category as of September 2014, or is there more nuance than that?

I'm definitely going to talk about the 2014 Macbook Air, it's the one real Mac I own and I love how small and light it is. I also imagine the trash can Mac Pro bears a mention as (I assume?) the most powerful Mavericks-compatible Mac.

What else is there?

Tagging @Project Alice and @Amethyst1 here, I really hope you two don't mind, but I feel like both of you will have really great insight.
I’d say it depends on what you want to use it for. If all you have currently is the 2014 MacBook Air there’s no reason it won’t run it (I believe it shipped with Mavericks).

The 2009 MacBooks would run it pretty well too. As for the most powerful? That depends. I’d say the MacPro 5,1 is capable of being more powerful than a trash can, give the GPU options and other expansions you can do with PCIe slots. But, what OS you run also happens to determine what GPUs you can use. I’m not sure what GPUs mavericks supports or doesn’t support.

My 5,1 for example has an RX590 which is miles ahead of the GPU(s) in a 6,1 trash can. But I doubt it’ll work in mavericks. The oldest OS I have on it is Mojave, and it usually stays booted into Sequoia.
 
I’d say the MacPro 5,1 is capable of being more powerful than a trash can, give the GPU options and other expansions you can do with PCIe slots. But, what OS you run also happens to determine what GPUs you can use. I’m not sure what GPUs mavericks supports or doesn’t support.
Mavericks is limited to Kepler on the nVidia side and GCN 1.0 on the AMD side. I guess if you were really prioritizing graphics, that still probably gives you more options with the Mac Pro 5,1 than the trash can...
 
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While 2012-2013s are generally the fastest macs with Mavericks compatibility it is also almost a shame to not use that hardware power to run something newer.

If we flip the question to "For which model years is Mavericks one of the best OS choices" I would say the 2007-2009s. Mavericks is a strong alternative to El Capitan since it has aged with similar long term software support limitations but is less resource demanding.
 
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While 2012-2013s are generally the fastest macs with Mavericks compatibility it is also almost a shame to not use that hardware power to run something newer.
I mean, I would say it's a shame to use something newer when you could be running Mavericks, so we'll have to agree to disagree on that point. :)
 
The 2012-2014 Retina MacBook Pros make Mavericks look incredible - Apple redid every single GUI asset in 10.7 for the Retina display and this carries over to 10.9. If you've never used a Retina MacBook, you're missing out on a lot.

Take the Game Center for example:

1752850374003.png

On a non-retina display, you really need to zoom in in order to appreciate the detail and density.
 
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2014 rMBP I guess. It's basically the same as the 2015 everyone loves, except runs mavericks. Hardware wise I don't think it suffers from the issues that plagued the older MBPs.

(I actually do think it should be possible to run mavericks on some of the 2015 models without discrete gpu, if you write a driver for force touch trackpad.)
 
If we flip the question to "For which model years is Mavericks one of the best OS choices" I would say the 2007-2009s. Mavericks is a strong alternative to El Capitan since it has aged with similar long term software support limitations but is less resource demanding.
Will second this. I have been messing around with just about every version of Mac OS X that my MacBook Pro Early 2008 officially supports, and as long as you throw an SSD on it there's really no bad choice but my battery is a tad weak so I'm sticking around 10.7-10.9.

10.7 - Usable in 2025 believe it or not, and I would say it is the earliest Mac OS X that can still be used to comfortably browse the web at a decent speed. If you have a machine that will not go beyond Lion, you're honestly in pretty good shape (unless it's a Mac Pro 1,1. Update the firmware and go to 10.8-10.11). I used this OS for like a week and MacPorts is fine, you can still find plenty of basic compatible software, but its big Achilles Heel IMO is that Firefox Dynasty doesn't work at all. This is a much superior browsing experience to Chromium Legacy. However, work is being done to bring this browser to 10.7 (and you can get some builds working but it is a huge PITA compared to installing 10.8 if you can).

IDK why people avoid 10.9 but I'm getting there eventually. Currently running 10.8 on a FireWire 800 drive and it is trucking along just fine!

In terms of sheer power the Mac Pro 2013 is the best model that can run Mavericks thanks to its proto-NVME drive, dual GPUs, 4-12 core processor, and Thunderbolt expansion up to your eyeballs. It was a disappointment then but it was the first step towards getting the now very lauded Mac Studio. If only we had a tower to go along with it.
 
Haven't tried lots of Macs to pick the best one for the OS X Mavericks. I have 2012 MBP which I'm happy to run Mavericks on. 2012 MBP is showing its age although upgraded hardware-wise here and there. Its battery degraded the most. I wish there was a patch that would let one run Mavericks on any given Mac. Sort of like there is a patch from DosDude but the other way around. I also have 2017 MBA on HS, MBA M1 on Monterey and MBP M3 on Sonoma. Wish all of them had run Mavericks. I mostly use MBP M3 these days and I really miss the great era of Apple.
 
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