Last year, the release of MacOS 11 Big Sur introduced amazing new features for Apple devices such as the Mac, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, and more. However, some older devices would end up being unsupported and only can run up to MacOS Catalina.
I was affected personally by this since I have a mid-2012 non-retina MacBook Pro. This thing is a tank, especially after I upgraded the laptop with an SSD and increased RAM. However, utilizing a tool called Patched Sur helped me run the new Big Sur program.
However, Patched Sur went down at some point a few months ago. Though it has returned, many have moved on and are looking to install the new MacOS 12 Monterey software, which I am unsure if the folks from Patched Sur will be providing a patch for.
Luckily, I came across Open Core Legacy Patcher, who has been providing software update patches for unsupported Macs for a while. These guys are great, and I was able to follow the steps to install the new software on my 2012 MacBook Pro.
Thanks to OpenCore and Mr. Macintosh (he is literally THE go-to guy for this kind of stuff), I can still chug along with my almost 10-year-old device. The below screenshot is proof.
So far, it has been working great on my computer. If you have an unsupported MacBook similar to mine and with similar specs (such as SSD storage and at least 8-16 gigabytes of RAM), you can follow the steps I had to get MacOS Monterey.
For folks with an Apple Mac that is before 2012, it could require some extra steps since they do not support metal acceleration, but there are workarounds to still achieve success of installing Monterey.
For me, the following video below was what I did to install Monterey on my device. Follow this video step-by-step, read the description, and you should have no issue installing MacOS Monterey on your unsupported Apple Mac device.
Alternatively, I suggest following this step-by-step article here as well as searching the MacRumors thread here.
Good luck installing! It has been working perfectly on my 2012 MacBook Pro. I hope to continue using this computer until it can no longer run. It is more than capable of running Monterey if you have the proper upgrades and specs.
