Why isn't Mojave supported on 2011 MacBooks?

[Dark()Sun]

These are still great machines, if people have upgraded to SSD hard drives, they are still able to perform well and have i7 processors.

Why isn't Apple supporting Mojave on these ? Thank you.

Mods, sorry please merge with another thread I see it's been brought up before

 

[brdeveloper]

It's because of a magic name called Metal. In truth, Metal is a graphics abstraction layer which only supports an arbitrary subset of GPUs used by Macs and iStuff. I can't imagine why a 9400m couldn't run Mojave GUI, since there isn't anything more complex in Mojave than in High Sierra. A.I. stuff which presumably uses GPU processing could be disabled in some cases. Summary: it's an arbitrary business decision from Apple, that is, the cost of adding Metal support to old Macs is too high and/or they want increasing new hardware sales.

 

[DeltaMac]

Does the graphics chip support metal?
That seems to be the most common item that makes Mojave "not supported"

 

[Dark()Sun]

Thank you for the replies. Well, do you guys recommend trying to run it unsupported? The other issue is my 2011 is one plagued with the faulty GPU, but I'm running only on integrated graphics now.

 

[brdeveloper]

Thank you for the replies. Well, do you guys recommend trying to run it unsupported? The other issue is my 2011 is one plagued with the faulty GPU, but I'm running only on integrated graphics now.

I don't see any reason for upgrading at this moment. Remote unlock seems to be a nice feature, but it's only supported for Late-2013 Macbooks. Continuity camera appears to be a bit buggy... what more? Gimmicks?

 

[haralds]

I was able to get full functionality on my built-to-order MacBook Air 11" mid 2011. It has a 1Tb internal drive and upgraded WiFi BLE card for watch unlock and continuity.
I used DosDude's patch to install.
I additionally patched the plist for the motherboard to make that stick, did not seem to work from DosDude.

Works great. It's not like my Mac Pro or MacBook Pro 2018 with i9/32Gb/4Tb, but nice still for productivity. Even runs Windows 10 in BootCamp.