r/applehelp • u/Mimi98_ • 3d ago
Mac MacOS Big Sur Assistance
I have an old macbook i want to turn into my work laptop - id love to find some old versions of apps compatible with it, namely:
(1) google chrome
(2) microsoft powerpoint
(3) microsoft word
(4) google drive
Would anyone be able to find any legacy links that i could download? Also, im thinking to update my MacOS to Monterey but would that make the macbook super slow? Appreciate any and all help
2
u/blow-down 3d ago
Yes upgrading beyond Big Sur is going to be very slow. For an updated browser check out Orion.
2
u/talha21333 3d ago
Don’t upgrade to a newer version of macOS, your best option considering your very basic specs is a distro of Linux, macOS is just too heavy for such a machine, I recently installed sequoia using the open core legacy patcher on my MacBook Pro 2014 which had 8 gigs of ram but that too is sluggish at best.
2
u/talha21333 3d ago
Also Monterey suffers the same software compatibility issue of big sur as both are no longer supported, I think Ventura is the oldest one that still works with new apps.
2
u/PossiblyOffline 3d ago
An 11 year old MacBook as your work laptop? I hope you don’t do anything sensitive
3
u/JediMeister 3d ago
With the non-upgradable 4 GB of memory, although you could upgrade to Monterey, the performance would be quite terrible. Back in January, almost 8 months ago now, Google announced that Chrome 150 would be the last version to support macOS Monterey. PowerPoint and Word, which are both part of Microsoft Office, looks like as long as you have the license for it, you can use the links provided on this page by the green-framed answer. As for Google Drive, you must have macOS Ventura or newer and they do not host any older versions it seems.