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Updating Mac OS

I am wanting to update my operating system past 2012. I have a mid 2009 Macbook Pro - 13". Based on what I have seen Mid 2009 Macbook Pro's cannot be updated past El Capitan (10.11.6), which is what I am running. My MacBook Pro does not have the original hard drive - I have updated it. It now has a 480 GB SSD Sata hard drive. Since I don't have the original hard drive can update past El Capitan or are the other reasons I cannot upgrade past it (I am ignorant of such things). In case it helps here is a little more info. Processor is: 2.53 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo. Memory is: GB 1067 MHz DDR3 Graphics are: NVIDIA GeForce 9400M 256 MB Thank you for whatever you can tell me. Brad


MacBook Pro 13″, OS X 10.11

Posted on Jul 21, 2022 11:50 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jul 21, 2022 12:02 PM

The 2009 MacBook Graphic cards lack the ability to support the "Metal(1)" graphics Engine which was introduced for 2012 hardware for OS X El Capitan or later. This graphics engine was integrated in macOS Sierra for Operating System rendering etc.


Metal Release Date: June 8, 2015 for Macs that are 2012 models or later, running OS X El Capitan or later.


That is "why" you can't.

There may be unsupported ways to reverse-engineer future operating systems to run on older hardware, but it has the adverse affect of making it look ugly and or corrupted if it depends upon Metal 1 or Metal 2 Graphics.


4 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jul 21, 2022 12:02 PM in response to brogers22

The 2009 MacBook Graphic cards lack the ability to support the "Metal(1)" graphics Engine which was introduced for 2012 hardware for OS X El Capitan or later. This graphics engine was integrated in macOS Sierra for Operating System rendering etc.


Metal Release Date: June 8, 2015 for Macs that are 2012 models or later, running OS X El Capitan or later.


That is "why" you can't.

There may be unsupported ways to reverse-engineer future operating systems to run on older hardware, but it has the adverse affect of making it look ugly and or corrupted if it depends upon Metal 1 or Metal 2 Graphics.


Updating Mac OS

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