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Updating an Outdated Macbook Pro

I have a mid-2012 MacBook Pro that I use in my basement studio setup; it's where I store my music, record podcasts, and...I thought there was something else but I think that's about it. Because it's was stuck on MacOS Catalina, several applications are no longer supported and could no longer be updated. Most notoriously, my Microsoft app suite1 kept prompting me to update my apps and then scold me because my OS was out of date. Helpful!

Overall these were minor annoyances. I don't use the Microsoft apps often enough to really care (and, really, do I need the co-pilot integrations that are probably part of these updates?), and I moved my Calibre library to my Surface laptop. But then I learned about OpenCore Legacy Patcher (heretofore referred to as "OCLP") - I can't remember where, but I came across it in passing. It represented the potential to bring my Macbook up-to-date.

And, since I went through the process of setting up a server, I needed a new tech project. I had no notion of how long this upgrade was going to take; one of the YouTube videos I used (you can view my resources below) had a comment indicating you should set aside ~5 hours for this. Cue my hubris - I figured, "it can't possibly take that long. I can do it in an afternoon."

I won't spoil how long it took - I'll have the grand total at the end of the post - but suffice it to say that having an uninterrupted 5 hours at minimum is a good idea for this.

The Setup & Initial Steps

For starters, as mentioned above I was working with a Mid-2012 13-inch MacBook Pro. These are thick laptops - very heavy. But they are great because they have a DVD drive, and USB-A ports - which is great because all the peripherals I have attached to it are USB-A. Important note though - I upgraded the RAM to 2 x 8GB sticks and I changed the HD to a 1TB SSD; it was already slow as molasses well before it got to Catalina with an HDD several years ago, and the upgrade to an SSD made a world of difference. I do not recommend this update if you don't at least have an SSD inside. Probably the minimum 8GB RAM installed might give you a hard time, too, but I can't say for sure. All of the opinions I read about this venture were from people who had 16GB RAM installed.

Edit to add: my processor is the Intel Core i5 variant.

The very first thing I did was make sure I had an up-to-date Time Machine backup; worst case scenario this wouldn't work, and I could just boot everything back up again and restore from a backup. Also, the first video I watched - while helpful - included wiping your Mac during the process. I read through the comments and saw that this wasn't necessary, but just in case I wanted to have back-ups on the ready.

After doing this, and downloading OCLP, I gathered my tools (iPad to play the video to follow along with, spare power cable, and a USB key to create a bootable launcher) and made a sandwich. This step took a long time; the most recent version of OCLP is different from the one in the video, and takes care of a few of the steps done in the video on its own so I got slightly confused. I had to pause the video and sync up with it later. But on top of that the process to create an installer on the USB key took a long time to install, and then validate.

For context: I started the process at 1:53pm (verifying the Time Machine backup), and the USB key installer was still validating at 3:50PM. I watched an episode of Deep Space Nine and finished an X-Files episode in this time. Taking into account breaks to pick up our car from the mechanic, and dinner, the entire process took about 3 hours and 5 minutes. It's possible it might have taken less time had I not stepped away while the USB key was validating, but I'll never know!

Stage 2 - booting from USB

At this point (now 8:33PM on Tuesday, after dinner, and taking tires back to the storage unit) I was able to match back up with the video as the steps more or less synced. I booted from the USB key, but before proceeding I did a quick, worried search on Google to confirm that no, choosing "install macOS Monterey" would not delete all my data.

This process also took a long time. The computer went through several cycles of progress bars until 10:05PM when I finally got the familiar start-up chime! Of course it wasn't quite done and proceeded to show more progress bars. But, finally, nearly two hours later, I landed on the macOS desktop and verified that Monterey was installed in the "About This Mac" info screen. I installed OCLP on the MacBook to proceed with the next steps, but by this point it was time for bed so I just let it run while I went upstairs.

Elapsed time in this stage: 1 hour, 51 minutes; total time: 4 hours, 56 minutes.

Stage 3 - Patching (next day)

I went back to work, so I wasn't able to get to this until I got home2. I had shut down the computer in the morning before leaving, thinking that I had everything set up so that I didn't need to boot from USB. Apparently I was wrong - when I attempted to boot, I got a very unclear folder with a question mark on it flashing on the screen before me. Umm...woops? I didn't do any searching here, I was pretty confident that it was because I needed to boot from USB still. I was right, it booted fine using the USB key.

There was an update for OCLP, so I did that; and then - unlike the first video - OCLP seemed to do some steps on its own without my intervention. At this point I opted to restart again, without the USB key, to see if it could boot on its own. Success! It worked.

This is where you install the patches in order to get the old hardware to work with the new OS. I got an error here, though - ... failed sanity checks. I'd say failing sanity checks is never good, especially for a machine. Off to Google.

I found a Reddit thread (see resources below) that pointed me toward a very helpful video that both explained the problem, and identified how to fix it. In short: because automatic updates was enabled, the Mac started staging the computer for the update, which created some file mismatches with OCLP when it tries to patch things. You need to "unstage" these update files after turning off automatic updates.

Success again! I followed the instructions and successfully patched the MacBook. We are happily running Monterey, and I'm pleased to report it's fairly smooth so far. System Preferences is telling me that I can update to macOS 15, but I'm going to hold off a while and see how this runs. Some quick searches suggest that it's possible with this macbook but I'm skeptical.

Oh, time for this stage was a scant 35 minutes. Discovering the patching problem and solution was about 22 minutes, followed by a break for dinner (and another nap!); following the video and fixing the patch issue was just 13 minutes.

Estimated total elapsed time: 5 hours, 31 minutes.

What would I have done differently?

I don't think there's much that I could have done differently. OCLP was vastly different from the initial video I watched (which was still helpful - it just made it difficult to follow along exactly), but I don't think that influenced how much time the process took. Maybe a faster USB key? I don't even know how fast the one I used is.

For sure I would have started it earlier in the day; had I done that, maybe I would have finished it in one shot instead of split across dinners and nights.

So there you have it. If you have an older MacBook, check out OCLP and see if it can be supported by any newer macOS versions. You never know!

Oh - if you're curious, read my notes with timestamps as I went through the process.

Resources I used for this project:

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  1. Don't @ me about Microsoft products↩

  2. Yes, I was thinking about this project almost all day.↩

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