Thinking about upgrading an unsuopported mac to Mojave Any Advice

Any advice from the community on upgrading an unsupported Mac to Mojave.

  • 2009 21.5" iMac
  • Current OS: High Sierra
  • 16 GB Ram (Upgraded after original purchase)
  • 2TB SSD (Upgraded after purchase)

Reason: More and more software including Xcode can’t be used due to the age of the OS. Not having support for Xcode prevented me from installing a Tiling Window Manager.

Can’t help with OS install advice, but 2012 iMacs can still run Mojave. They’re dirt cheap these days too, often under $300 on eBay with free returns. While I wouldn’t want to run an 8yo machine, if given the choice I’d vastly prefer to run it than a 10yo one on an antiquated OS version.

My advice: don’t do it.

I put a bigger SSD in my 2011 11" MBA. However when I upgraded to Mojave, which was an allowed update, it failed due to the SSD overheating. My reseller recommended not going above High Sierra for that machine. I passed this as a temporary measure on to a family member whose own old MBP died due to a logic board fault, with a stern warning not to trust it.
My 2010 iMac still had a fusion drive, and was beachballing all the time. I considered upgrading to an SSD but the machine would still have had primitive USB speeds and primitive Bluetooth which did not support handing over documents between Mac OS and mobile devices. Since I do photo and video editing, I wanted faster I/O. I changed to a 15" MBP a year ago, and am happy to be able to take this Mac with me when I travel. I have to keep the iMac as a firewire interface for now :slight_smile:

I put Mojave on a MacBook Pro from 2010 (unsupported). I don’t run that laptop too often but it’s been working fine for a year that way.