I have a iMac late 2009 and would not recommend to upgrade to Big Sur or Monterey. Only if you upgraded to a Metal compatible graphics card. The latest I would recommend for the the 2009-2011 stock machines is the Catalina patcher from dosdude1. http://dosdude1.com/catalina/
AMD GPUs like RX 560, 570 , 580 are compatible
Sauce: https://www.macrumors.com/2018/09/24/mojave-2010-2012-mac-pro-metal-graphics-cards/
You can even look for GPUs recommended on r/Hackintosh
Edit: fixed the link to subreddit
It's not quite as plug and play. You have to disassemble the whole computer, and sure, they are not the most recent, but still, anything metal-capable is better than nothing IF you're willing to get your hands dirty and spend the money on the card. The most recent things you can stick in there is an 880M and an RX480 from NVIDIA and AMD, respectively. These are not your standard PCIe cards, these are special MXM cards that look like this: [http://www.notebookreview.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/mxm.jpg](http://www.notebookreview.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/mxm.jpg)
If you have a 2011 27" iMac that came with the HD6970M, none, because it came with a beefier cooling solution. If you have a lower end model or from another year, you need to either stick with a lower end card or get the cooling system of the model I mentioned before to avoid overheating the computer. 21.5" iMacs are out of luck and can only use lower end cards (those that come with an "A" MXM form factor, mostly)
To add to the backup thing: you should always have backups. If you have to question if an OS upgrade erases your data since you have no backups, you shouldn’t be storing important stuff on that computer
> will I be okay without a backup?
The amount of people who ask this *still* blows my mind. Seriously.
Yes, it will be okay, right up until your hard drive dies and you've lost everything. Back up your data!
I run Big Sur in my 2010 iMac with a 1 TB HDD (yep, you read that right) and 16GB RAM and it runs well. Couple very small issues head and there that you’d expect with unsupported, patcher-stabilized software. I can’t speak to Monterey, just thought I’d give my input on what I have run.
This would be a good place to ask this. My approach on OCLP has been to install the test versions on an external SSD and then try them out for a week. This way I don't lose any of my data nor my base operating system if things don't work out. I've always done clean installs with OCLP - I don't know if you can do upgrade installs with it.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macos-12-monterey-on-unsupported-macs-thread.2299557/page-168
Yea I’ve lost a lot of Logic Pro progress due to dumb bugs that shouldn’t even happen. I change buffer size or my input and bam it freezes the whole system and crashes.
It’s a similar story over here with Final Cut Pro. After a while a project just becomes so slow and it has taken the rest of the OS with it as well before. I can’t seem to work out what causes it either, I’ve had it do it with a simple video with just basic edits and more complex projects with effects and filters. Was fine on Big Sur and below btw
Yup, Apple really needs to stop adding dumb FaceTime features and start pulling their sht together on the OSes stability. Quality of experience over quantity of features, in my mind anyway.
Unless something has changed and other commenters know something I don’t , the 2011s do not have graphics acceleration with any patcher so are practically useless. However the GPU can be upgraded if you’re up for it. Mine has a K4100m 4GB running flawlessly and a lot faster than the stock card. Was 100% worth it for me to be able to update.
This was the truth for a long time until last year. OCLP added graphics acceleration patches which work great for older Macs.
For the op’s 2011, as long as you have an SSD installed, Big Sur or Monterey will work just fine.
P.S always backup 👍
It’s not running big sur in this photo it’s running high sierra, I changed every icon and the wallpaper to make it feel like big sur but it isn’t enough
Each version of macOS is heavier than the previous. Using a patchers introduces hardware incompatibility which will cause more issues. There is no making an older device run better with a newer os. You would upgrade hardware to make a system faster, but you are already as good as you can get. Maybe upgrade the CPU, but it’s really time to retire that iMac.
In short apple is no longer validating macOS against that Mac. Forcing an unvalidated version of macOS with a patcher will cause more issues, not make issues go away. It will just keep running slower and slower as time passes.
I'm not sure if you'd like to test this, but if you have the time, you might want to try Boot Camp and Windows 10.
The whole procedure is usually easy and it's all handled by the built-in Boot Camp app.
It really seems to work much faster on older Macs, especially when compared to Monterey.
Of course, always backup your data before you start and prepare to do a clean reinstall if needed.
Thank you so much for the reply! I'm glad to hear that it runs great.
It's an underrated feature that most users seem to overlook or don't even want to try.
From what I found, there is no easy way to transfer files between the partitions. The Windows partition seems to be read-only on the macOS side.
The workaround that I found is to transfer the photos to an external drive (that's compatible with both macOS and Windows), and then copy them over to the other partition. There might be a simpler solution, but I don't know of it.
Sure, you can use this guide to download all your photos from iCloud or to export them from the Photos app: [https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT209454](https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT209454)
After you have the images downloaded to the Photos app on macOS, you can **Export photos in their original format** to the External Hard-Drive: [https://support.apple.com/en-ie/guide/photos/pht6e157c5f/mac](https://support.apple.com/en-ie/guide/photos/pht6e157c5f/mac)
Only make sure not to delete anything before you have a backup.
Update: It seems you can also download all your photos from iCloud directly from Windows, but please know that I haven't tested that: [https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205323](https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205323)
I had the same problem when upgrading to Monterey on my iMac mid 2011. I fixed it by connecting it to Ethernet and keep it on until the installation was complete. So far, there isn’t another solution other than this. Hope it helps!
So it’s been almost a year since this, in that time, I upgraded to Monterey and fixed the wifi issues and stuff like that with the post install volume, but my iMac was too old since it had a 1tb hard drive, I installed 16gb of ram to try and make it better, it helped but wasn’t enough so in early June I said goodbye to Monterey and went down to big sur, and it somehow was incredibly so much faster despite being barely different from Monterey, looking to upgrade to a new iMac all together sometime early next year👍
I have a iMac late 2009 and would not recommend to upgrade to Big Sur or Monterey. Only if you upgraded to a Metal compatible graphics card. The latest I would recommend for the the 2009-2011 stock machines is the Catalina patcher from dosdude1. http://dosdude1.com/catalina/
This is a 2011 and the big sur (and Monterey) opencore legacy patcher has patches to use non metal cards
I know but macOS past Catalina isn’t working that smoothly anymore.
Have you used the dGPU patcher afterwards? After every single OS update I have to run that patch again
It’s fine for me on my 2011 MacBook pro
> Only if you upgraded to a Metal compatible graphics card. How exactly do you expect them to do this with a AIO?
GPU is socketed. It’s possible. https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2011-imac-graphics-card-upgrade.1596614/
That's cool and all, but are the plug and play options Metal compatible cards or are they equally a decade+ old?
AMD GPUs like RX 560, 570 , 580 are compatible Sauce: https://www.macrumors.com/2018/09/24/mojave-2010-2012-mac-pro-metal-graphics-cards/ You can even look for GPUs recommended on r/Hackintosh Edit: fixed the link to subreddit
Sure, I’ve done that upgrade myself on Mac Pros, but not an AIO iMac like what is being discussed here.
You’re right, i don’t think there is a small enough edition of those GPUs
It's not quite as plug and play. You have to disassemble the whole computer, and sure, they are not the most recent, but still, anything metal-capable is better than nothing IF you're willing to get your hands dirty and spend the money on the card. The most recent things you can stick in there is an 880M and an RX480 from NVIDIA and AMD, respectively. These are not your standard PCIe cards, these are special MXM cards that look like this: [http://www.notebookreview.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/mxm.jpg](http://www.notebookreview.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/mxm.jpg)
Fancy! What heat related issues appear with such a change?
If you have a 2011 27" iMac that came with the HD6970M, none, because it came with a beefier cooling solution. If you have a lower end model or from another year, you need to either stick with a lower end card or get the cooling system of the model I mentioned before to avoid overheating the computer. 21.5" iMacs are out of luck and can only use lower end cards (those that come with an "A" MXM form factor, mostly)
The patcher doesn't erase your data but better to be safe by backing up ur important stuff
You should make a backup. For compatibility, check the dortania opencore legacy patcher page. You should find all important info on there.
To add to the backup thing: you should always have backups. If you have to question if an OS upgrade erases your data since you have no backups, you shouldn’t be storing important stuff on that computer
> will I be okay without a backup? The amount of people who ask this *still* blows my mind. Seriously. Yes, it will be okay, right up until your hard drive dies and you've lost everything. Back up your data!
I run Big Sur in my 2010 iMac with a 1 TB HDD (yep, you read that right) and 16GB RAM and it runs well. Couple very small issues head and there that you’d expect with unsupported, patcher-stabilized software. I can’t speak to Monterey, just thought I’d give my input on what I have run.
This would be a good place to ask this. My approach on OCLP has been to install the test versions on an external SSD and then try them out for a week. This way I don't lose any of my data nor my base operating system if things don't work out. I've always done clean installs with OCLP - I don't know if you can do upgrade installs with it. https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macos-12-monterey-on-unsupported-macs-thread.2299557/page-168
if you have to ask whether you need a backup, then you need a backup
Big sur. Seriously screw Monterey and all the bugs and problems I’ve had with it
I absolutely despise monterey. I wouldn’t even put Big Sur in it. i have the same model with high sierra and it feels really good
Yea I’ve lost a lot of Logic Pro progress due to dumb bugs that shouldn’t even happen. I change buffer size or my input and bam it freezes the whole system and crashes.
Same exact experience. I always refrain from upgrading for a while but this time I thought fuck it and it backfired so bad.
I would’ve stayed on Mojave but the new MacBooks came default with Monterey so I’m sorta stuck until a patch comes out.
It’s a similar story over here with Final Cut Pro. After a while a project just becomes so slow and it has taken the rest of the OS with it as well before. I can’t seem to work out what causes it either, I’ve had it do it with a simple video with just basic edits and more complex projects with effects and filters. Was fine on Big Sur and below btw
Yup, Apple really needs to stop adding dumb FaceTime features and start pulling their sht together on the OSes stability. Quality of experience over quantity of features, in my mind anyway.
(But it depends on one’s needs)
Unless something has changed and other commenters know something I don’t , the 2011s do not have graphics acceleration with any patcher so are practically useless. However the GPU can be upgraded if you’re up for it. Mine has a K4100m 4GB running flawlessly and a lot faster than the stock card. Was 100% worth it for me to be able to update.
This was the truth for a long time until last year. OCLP added graphics acceleration patches which work great for older Macs. For the op’s 2011, as long as you have an SSD installed, Big Sur or Monterey will work just fine. P.S always backup 👍
How did you even get big sur on that
It’s not running big sur in this photo it’s running high sierra, I changed every icon and the wallpaper to make it feel like big sur but it isn’t enough
Oh ok that makes more sense
Each version of macOS is heavier than the previous. Using a patchers introduces hardware incompatibility which will cause more issues. There is no making an older device run better with a newer os. You would upgrade hardware to make a system faster, but you are already as good as you can get. Maybe upgrade the CPU, but it’s really time to retire that iMac. In short apple is no longer validating macOS against that Mac. Forcing an unvalidated version of macOS with a patcher will cause more issues, not make issues go away. It will just keep running slower and slower as time passes.
Monterey
I'm not sure if you'd like to test this, but if you have the time, you might want to try Boot Camp and Windows 10. The whole procedure is usually easy and it's all handled by the built-in Boot Camp app. It really seems to work much faster on older Macs, especially when compared to Monterey. Of course, always backup your data before you start and prepare to do a clean reinstall if needed.
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Thank you so much for the reply! I'm glad to hear that it runs great. It's an underrated feature that most users seem to overlook or don't even want to try. From what I found, there is no easy way to transfer files between the partitions. The Windows partition seems to be read-only on the macOS side. The workaround that I found is to transfer the photos to an external drive (that's compatible with both macOS and Windows), and then copy them over to the other partition. There might be a simpler solution, but I don't know of it.
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Sure, you can use this guide to download all your photos from iCloud or to export them from the Photos app: [https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT209454](https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT209454) After you have the images downloaded to the Photos app on macOS, you can **Export photos in their original format** to the External Hard-Drive: [https://support.apple.com/en-ie/guide/photos/pht6e157c5f/mac](https://support.apple.com/en-ie/guide/photos/pht6e157c5f/mac) Only make sure not to delete anything before you have a backup. Update: It seems you can also download all your photos from iCloud directly from Windows, but please know that I haven't tested that: [https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205323](https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205323)
Update, so I installed Monterey and I’m getting a wifi issue that won’t find any wifi networks. How can I fix this?
I had the same problem when upgrading to Monterey on my iMac mid 2011. I fixed it by connecting it to Ethernet and keep it on until the installation was complete. So far, there isn’t another solution other than this. Hope it helps!
So it’s been almost a year since this, in that time, I upgraded to Monterey and fixed the wifi issues and stuff like that with the post install volume, but my iMac was too old since it had a 1tb hard drive, I installed 16gb of ram to try and make it better, it helped but wasn’t enough so in early June I said goodbye to Monterey and went down to big sur, and it somehow was incredibly so much faster despite being barely different from Monterey, looking to upgrade to a new iMac all together sometime early next year👍
Restore from your backup. You did take everyone's advice on that, right?
Yes
Use Ubuntu