Related tutorial: How to use Disk Utility to format drives on your Macģ) Download a copy of macOS Sierra 10.12.

Instructions to install macOS Sierra on older Macsġ) Find yourself an 8GB or larger USB drive or external hard drive partition.Ģ) Format it as GUID Partition Map, Mac OS Extended (Journaled) using the Disk Utility application.

If you have one of the models listed above and want to give Sierra a try, follow our instructions below to make a modified Sierra installer with Sierra Patcher. Some machines, such as the MacBook Pro (2008/9), work perfectly with no modifications, leaving you to wonder why Apple thought it necessary to drop them at all. The most common is a lack of Wi-Fi due to the unsupported BCM4321 card in some machines, but this can often be replaced. Please note, some machines have issues, as the table reports. In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to use the tool to install macOS 10.12 Sierra on older Mac hardware, which claims not to support it.Īpple’s hardware requirements for macOS 10.12 Sierra are now as follows:Ĭontrast this with the table below, which shows the additional machines on which Sierra can be installed with the help of macOS Sierra Patcher: In many cases this turned out to be true, and with a few tweaks and amendments many of the “unsupported” machines have been brought back into the fold by a tool by dosdude1, called macOS Sierra Patcher. This led some to conclude that Apple is simply raising the bar to encourage hardware upgrades, and that there is often no incontrovertible hardware reason which dictates the unsupported machines. However, many Mac owners have questioned their motives, observing that some machines have made the cut whilst their more powerful contemporaries (such as the MacBook Pro) have mysteriously been left behind. Citing various incompatibilities and hardware deficiencies, they cut out a large swathe of machines from running Sierra. With macOS Sierra, Apple dropped support for some of its hardware models for the first time in several years.

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