Updating an obsolete version of MacOS - I'm quite pleased with myself :)

[mikeymikec]

Needless to say I don't consider myself to be any kind of Mac expert...

A customer has a MacBook Pro 2017 which hasn't been updated from the original OS (High Sierra). The laptop now can't do https to save its life (certificate errors etc), which means the App Store doesn't work properly as well as any web browser, and the install package for Mojave was had previously been downloaded (automatically I assume) was corrupted.

On my PC I googled for how to download / install Mojave in the hopes of downloading an installer and transferring it via USB but of course Apple is Apple so the best they can do is an App Store link and of course the App Store app isn't showing results properly from a straight search or rendering correctly either (it looks very Internet circa 1995 down to the default-to-Serif font and all the images are broken).

What I ended up doing was to delete the corrupted install package then I opened the obsolete version of Chrome and fed it the macappstores:// URL by hand for the Mojave page, resulting in a prompt to open it in the App Store app, which loaded enough of the 'Install Mojave' page to allow me to choose to download it.

This whole business of the tech sector deciding that everything has to be done in https is just plain dumb and I wonder if it's intentional to help make older tech obsolete quicker, I've seen a good few Android devices stop being useful because of this too.

- edit - the package wasn't corrupted, it was another certificate error and an incorrect error message. An Internet suggestion to change the date back to when Mojave was released did the trick.

 

[manly]

HTTPS isn't the reason older devices have bad support. The actual reason is that the device manufacturers (including Apple, sometimes) suck.

There's no technical reason why a 2017 era MacBook couldn't run a recent macOS; but Apple needs to continue selling hardware to make more profit. (The same applies for Windows 11 official system reqs.)

Personally I'm not a fan of subscription-ware, BUT I could make an exception if the OS vendors charged a small annual fee for security updates. A la Windows extended support, which will cost $30 for just one year (and one year only, for consumers).

Quite frankly I'm well past the point where I care about the "latest and greatest" Android, but if Samsung wanted $10 a year just for security updates, that would be worth it. It's a moot point now that Google and Samsung have instituted 7 years of support for flagship devices, but the point remains that we're creating a lot of e-waste just because the tech giants need to keep everyone on the hamster wheel.

CPU/hardware advances have gotten so incremental that as time goes by, forced obsolescence gets a little worse.

(Looks like 2017 MBP can run Ventura, which will be EOL within a year? There's still OpenCore Legacy Patcher )

 

[mikeymikec]

@manly

https - I didn't say it's the only reason, I suggested that its shortcomings are weaponised for profit.

It took the upgrade to Ventura from Mojave without any shenanigans. I briefly tested Mojave and thought that Chrome might be happier about the OS update, but it still complained that the OS was out-of-date

Judging by the OCLP page, it might be able to wangle another OS update out of this MBP.

The rest of your post - that's capitalism for you, isn't it. Got to sell more junk faster, perpetual growth, etc.