OpenCore Legacy Patcher: Macbook Air 2012
Last summer I gave my Macbook Air 2017 to my mother-in-law in exchange for her now-obsolete Macbook Air 2012. I figured she could get a few more years out of the 2017, and I would have a nice little aluminum-clad toy to experiment with.
I installed Ubuntu 22.04 on it and it was perfectly nice as a Linux laptop. The hardware was all supported, at least as far as I cared to investigate. The most recent macOS supported was Catalina, but I could get quite a few more years out of it with Linux. I find irrational glee in making old hardware continue to be useful (as my dual T500's will attest) in spite of the manufacturer's forced obsolescence.
I've been wanting to try OpenCore Legacy Patcher and this was the perfect, low-stakes machine to give it a go. I started with a relatively fresh Catalina install and took a Time Machine backup (this took longer than expected).
I followed the steps on the OCLP guide and prepared to install Ventura. The OCLP app itself did a decent job of guiding me through the process, but I needed to refer to the documentation a couple of times. There were a couple of hiccups during the Ventura install itself. I think this was because it rebooted and needed manual assistance (hold Option) to select the OCLP efi boot (although I'm not sure that this was the reason). I rebooted a few times, holding Option, and the install completed successfully.
Ventura runs surprisingly well on this old Macbook Air. As a security-conscious user, I'm naturally suspicious of the black magic that makes this all work, but I'm pretty impressed at the fact that it works at all. These patches are low- level enough that all bets are off, but I'm running Little Snitch and things look okay. I'm not sure how far I'll trust it (I haven't signed into anything important yet), but I'll probably get some use out of it until it goes back to Linux in the end.