MacBook Air Mid-2013

[bwicklund]

My wife just upgrade to a new MacBook Air M1, and now I have her old MacBook Air Mid-2013 i7 1.7GHZ, 8GB of RAM, Intel HD Graphics 5000 1.5GB.

I noticed that Apple has capped it to BigSur. Has anyone successfully upgrading one (or equivalent) to macOS Monterey?
If so how is it running, and how did you do the upgrade?

Interested to hear people's experiences.

 

[rikerjoe]

I upgraded an early 2014 MacBook Air (MacBookAir6,2) to Monterey using OpenCore Legacy Patcher. It was straight- forward, and the MacBook Air runs just fine under Monterey.

Here is a link to supported models: https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/MODELS.html#macbook-air
instruction links are in the pane to the left in the above link.
You can also search YouTube for walk-thrus on the installation, such as this:

 

[KingDingus]

What is the benefit to Monterey working on this machine?

 

[bwicklund]

Just want to keep it as current as I possibly can. Plus when I am on a Mac I use Safari and want the latest version.

 

[AdeptRapier]

"Just want to keep it as current as I possibly can. Plus when I am on a Mac I use Safari and want the latest version."


You might consider switching to open source supported programs instead of only upgrading your OS because of Safari being outdated. I've been switching over to Firefox and Thunderbird for my browsing and e-mail client so I don't have to worry about forced obsolescence from Apple on my older Macs.

Just my 2 cents...

 

[BPearce]

Knowing full well what I could be getting into (and maintaining a backup and having most of my working files originate on Dropbox) I installed macOS 12 with OpenCore on my MacBook Air Mid-2013 (1.7 i7, 8GB RAM), which sees consistent daily use. The process was surprisingly easy, and I've had almost no trouble.

I did see a well-known error (“Volume Hash Mismatch”), and a brief incident of instability that led me to try to erase and reinstall, and then restore my data. “Volume Hash Mismatch” still pops up every so often, but usually only after I restart (and I rarely do that). Apart from that, it's been without issue.

I wouldn't recommend this to everyone (I think my having upgraded at time of purchase to the better processor and additional RAM has paid off through the years), but if you know what you're doing and are willing to accept the risk? Sure, why not.

 

[rikerjoe]

I’ve seen the same “Volume Hash Mismatch” on my MacBook Air 2014 running OCLP and the various releases of Monterey, under the same conditions you cited (after a reboot). So far, I’ve just ignored it. I haven’t seen any references elsewhere that talk about this message. What do you think @The House of Moth ?

 

[BPearce]

Research suggested that this was an error message that was turning up on some supported Macs, as well, when macOS 12 has been installed.