You can install CloudReady on virtually any Intel Mac from 2007 on. The Mac mini that I used can run Big Sur, but it’s severely underpowered, being seven years old and not physically upgradeable. The MacBook Pro model that I used for this experiment only runs macOS up to Catalina, so it’s already out-of-date. Neither run recent versions of macOS particularly well, and they certainly aren’t good for power-hungry tasks. Each of these Macs had 4GB of RAM and much older Intel processors.
Both of these machines have run-of-the-mill specs for their time. I was able to get CloudReady running on a 2014 Mac mini and a 2012 13″ MacBook Pro.
Here’s how to get CloudReady up and running on an old Mac. This means that Google offers an officially sanctioned way of reviving old computers with Chrome OS. Just last year, Google acquired Neverware, the company behind CloudReady. CloudReady isn’t a new product by any stretch, but I had always been itching to try it out.
Internally, it also has a faster processor, architecture, RAM and graphics as well as improved wireless capabilities.Is there an old out-of-date Mac that you desperately miss using? Well, you’re in luck because it’s incredibly easy to install a modern version of Chrome OS on old Intel Macs for free. Thunderbolt also supports other peripherals that use the Thunderbolt standard which provides up to 10 Gbps of bandwidth in both directions.Ĭompared to its non-server predecessor, the most obvious external difference is that this model lacks an optical drive, but it also has the aforementioned Thunderbolt port and is a bit lighter. It does not have an internal optical drive.Ĭonnectivity includes a Firewire "800" port, four USB 2.0 ports, combined "audio line in (digital/analog)" and combined "audio line out/headphone (digital/analog)" minijacks, a 10/100/1000Base-T Gigabit Ethernet port, 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, an SDXC card slot and an HDMI port as well as a new "Thunderbolt" port that is backwards compatible with Mini DisplayPort and likewise supports an external display at 2560x1600 and passes an audio signal as well. The Apple Mac mini "Core i5" 2.3 (Mid-2011/Aluminum Unibody) features a 32-nm "Sandy Bridge" 2.3 GHz Intel "Core i5" (2415M) processor with two independent processor "cores" on a single chip, a 3 MB shared level 3 cache, and Intel HD Graphics 3000 with 288 MB of memory shared with the system.