💻 Installed macOS Sonoma on my 2016 MacBook Pro

I have had one Mac device for most of of my life. It's usually a MacBook Pro of some sort. In 2021, I bought the M1 MacBook Pro 16inch, which replaced my 2016 MacBook Pro. 

I guess I never sold it because the battery has severely degraded. A full charge lasts for less than two hours. 

Long story shot, I got it running today and this 2016 MacBook Pro only supports macOS Monterey. I didn't think this would be a big deal, but the friction points were quickly visible. The first being that I couldn't install my browser of choice and that annoyed me. 

In my humble opinion, this machine is still plenty powerful. It has:

• 500gb SSD storage
• 16GB DDR3 RAM
• Intel Core i5 2.9 Ghz

This is an 8-year-old MacBook yet from a storage and RAM perspective, it smokes the baseline MacBook sold today. What I am trying to say is that it annoyed me that Apple cut short its life and for no good reason that I could locate.

Within seconds of "googling", I found OpenCore Legacy Patcher and its sole purpose is:

Our project's main goal is to breathe new life into Macs no longer supported by Apple, allowing for the installation and usage of macOS Big Sur and newer on machines as old as 2007.

The above inspired me, and I felt moved to revive my 2016 MacBook and give it a fresh start. Within 45 minutes, I had macOS Sonoma up and running and it felt good. I then, installed Arc and was off to the races.

The process was pretty straightforward, and the guide provided was super useful. 

There are obvious risks involved in installing software that is not approved by Apple. I was comforted by the fact that OpenCore:

• Is open source and hosted on GitHub
• Appears to be tested well within the community
• Still being maintained with the most recent update on 1 June 2024.

I have only used macOS Sonoma on the Macbook Pro 2016 for an hour, so it's still very early days. But, I am happy and I forgot how good the touch bar is. I know most people didnt like the touch bar but I for one found it very cool and fun. Apple as a company is just not fun anymore. 

The touchbar is so good that I am tempted to buy the MacBook Pro M1 which is the last MacBook that came with the touchbar.

This post has been written entirely on the 2016 MacBook Pro (macOS Sonoma) using the Ghost web editor on the Arc Browser.

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Perhaps, I can use this machine for my writing. I can keep it fairly focused on that and keep it always plugged in. Let's see how this experiment goes. You, as the reader, will know as you will see more blog posts from me if this experiment is any good.