Mac.com email no longer functional?

[SpatiallyAware]

I have a friend who has an older macbook. They started having some issues with outgoing mail a few weeks ago, and I offered to take a look.

They have an @mac.com email address. From my research, there is some way to upgrade these accounts to icloud - however, this older macbook apparently can't run the latest OS to use icloud.

What gives? Is this thing essentially obsolete due to this forced conversion to icloud accounts?

 

[Dahak]

You can try to look at the following
apple support which has the manual settings. you could try to add the account manually to see if it will work.

I cannot see what it would not work on an older os x

 

[KeithP]

I don't think you have to convert/upgrade the email address to iCloud. I still receive email sent to my mac.com address. I am using the iCloud servers through Apple mail and those should work fine on an older machine.

I believe the only part of iCloud that doesn't work on the older machines are OS specific syncing options.

-KeithP