A new SSD will make your MacBook pro A1278 feel modern again and will assure it will work for many years to come.
We highly recommend this upgrade path even if your mechanical hard-drive still works.
Tell the mac to install on the external disk Apple Intel: macOS 10.13 High Sierra only. Your Mac must be running Yosemite, El Capitan, Sierra, High Sierra, Mojave.
If you do not know how to do this simply follow one of these guilds Yosemite and earlier or El-Capitan and later Make sure the disk is initialized and visible.Connect the new SSD using the sata to usb cable to the MacBook.Once you got all the tools the process is very straightforward. A working internet connection (to download the OS).So without any more chatter, here is how you can have it done: It's true that the performance is clearly slower than a brand new MacBook pro but we still think that paired with a good SSD your old laptop can be used for many more years with the latest OS version released by Apple. How do we know? simple really, we found a way to install high-sierra on older MacBook pro's (A1278 variants from 2008-2011) and we could see clearly that the OS runs very nicely on the computers. Apple has done this officially because it claims the hardware on these older computers is not compatible with the new OS but this does not seem to be true. It won me over instantly when using it after a long break.As you may or may not know, and you probably know if you have a MacBook pro from 2008-2011, it is not possible to install the latest and greatest version of mac os-x on your precious MacBook pro. Sierra is even more lean, but cannot install itself on apfs (even though it can read and write to it).ĮDIT: Also after a few years of split music and tv, using itunes as one program is so much better. Its also the last macos to not have offensive levels of bloat (the stuff in launchagents and launchdaemons isn't throwing the baby out with too much stuff you obviously don't need). and even on an imac retina display the fonts look so expensive. How To Install macOS High Sierra on Unsupported Macs Early-2008 or newer Mac Pro, iMac, or MacBook Pro (MacPro 3,1 and 4,1, iMac 8,1 and 9,1, MacBook Pro 4,1. Go to Section 4 and click on Get macOS High Sierra. How to upgrade to macOS High Sierra - Apple Support. Open your Safari browser, do not use Firefox and click on the link below. I recently fell in love with high sierra again. Yes High Sierra is still available for download and can be installed on your 2011 MBP. Having said, the app store is very stale on it. If you have the discipline to keep yourself only going to safe websites and are somewhat fixed in your app ecosystem (or are happy to live off the app store) then high sierra is fine. If you're always downloading pirated software, going to websites you shouldn't, clicking on every file attachment you receive, and probably importantly often download random apps from strange places, then you need it. Depends on what you need the security for.