Latest OS for MacBook Pro Late 2011?

[jave808]

Hi everyone

Recently I purchased an old MacBook Pro Late 2011 model. It has a i5 CPU, 8GB RAM and a 500GB HDD. I'm planning to upgrade the memory to 16GB and add a SSD to speed things up.

Initially the laptop had Win10 installed (interesting!) so I then did an Internet Recovery on it and OSX Lion was the version that Apple decided for me to use.

Can I upgrade to a later OS? Do I need physical media like a dmg written to a USB stick or can it all be done over the 'net?

 

[rovostrov]

Officially the 2011 will only support up to High Sierra (macOS 10.13) There are ways to install later versions but they are not supported by Apple and your system might run slower, or have other issues.

 

[aj_niner]

Hi everyone

Recently I purchased an old MacBook Pro Late 2011 model. It has a i5 CPU, 8GB RAM and a 500GB HDD. I'm planning to upgrade the memory to 16GB and add a SSD to speed things up.

Initially the laptop had Win10 installed (interesting!) so I then did an Internet Recovery on it and OSX Lion was the version that Apple decided for me to use.

Can I upgrade to a later OS? Do I need physical media like a dmg written to a USB stick or can it all be done over the 'net?

macOS High Sierra

 

[jave808]

Thank you for the replies. I will update to High Sierra.

 

[jave808]

Me again

I have installed OS X Sierra successfully. But when I try to update to High Sierra through the App Store, it works through the install, then at the end it says that the install has failed, due to some firmware error. What can I do now?

 

[rovostrov]

Me again

I have installed OS X Sierra successfully. But when I try to update to High Sierra through the App Store, it works through the install, then at the end it says that the install has failed, due to some firmware error. What can I do now?

Here is a link to a thread that might be helpful. https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/firmware-error-with-high-sierra.2072535/

 

[jave808]

I've decided to go back to Mac OS after playing around with Win10.

So, I first started off with an Internet Recovery. The default install is OS X Lion. About this Mac shows version 10.7.5 installed.

I then found this - https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8165459?sortBy=best

which states that one can upgrade from 10.7 to 10.8, then from 10.8 to 10.12

So I then downloaded dmg packages from here - https://support.apple.com/en-us/102662

I copied them across from my USB stick (I downloaded the dmg files on my main Linux PC) and then proceeded to install.

10.8 first, but when it comes time to install, the installer says only 22MB will be installed!! But the dmg package itself is over 4GB in size!

So I went ahead with it anyway. Rebooted and About this Mac still shows version 10.7.5

Can someone please explain what is happening here? What am I doing wrong with my upgrades?

 

[jave808]

Don't worry I worked it out (thanks to a reddit thread)

I needed to go into the Applications folder and find the "Install OS Sierra" icon. All good from there.

 

[jave808]

Ok, so I managed to update to High Sierra.

I then started reading about OpenCore Legacy Patcher. I felt confident in giving it a go.

So I eventually managed to update to Big Sur. I could have gone up to another OS, but I read that my old MB Pro would struggle with these newer OSes, so I've left it at Big Sur.

Now I'm mucking around with Ableton 12 Live Lite.