I reinstalled MacOS on a 2011 MacBook Air and it was actually shockingly hard. Thankfully, my machine booted and worked fine, so I didn't need to create a bootable USB stick. From memory:

  - Network recovery boot cannot connect to your wifi because reasons. It'll see the SSID, but won't even prompt for password. It's totally unclear why nothing is working.
  - Fall back to old IOT SSID with ancient protocols
  - You cannot directly download or install High Sierra (the latest supported OS) for reasons I don't remember. 
  - I can't remember how, but somehow you can install Lion
  - Launch beautiful Mac desktop. App store won't work because the certs are too old, or something. Safari won't work, because the supported SSL protocols are too old. 
  - Use a modern Mac to download a DMG installer for a slightly newer OS
  - Copy it to a USB stick
  - Find a USB stick big enough to hold it, try again
  - Plug USB stick into target Mac, copy installer to desktop, run it
  - Now you have a more modern OS that can actually connect to websites
  - Also teh app store works, so you can upgrade to High Sierra using the app store.

>You cannot directly download or install High Sierra (the latest supported OS) for reasons I don't remember.

This one’s a doozy because i hit it last month.

The updates are over https. The default certificates are 10year expiry.

I had an elderly relative (who disabled updates because they were scared of the computer changing) really upset everything was broken. Gmail app gave obscure can’t connect messages, almost all websites failed to load. When i went there of course the os wouldn’t update as well. We use https for everything now.

The keychain system is so hidden from users it was hard to even get to for myself. Took a usb key of a set of certificate updates. Harder than you think because when you look in keychain you’re not sure of which certificate is used for which and it’s a pain to find what you need. In the end a transfer from a healthy mac worked enough to get a manually downloaded os update running and from there it was fine.

What a doozy though! If you know of people with old macs that stopped working at the start of this year this is why

> Man, the desktop was so beautiful and refreshing.

I get the same feeling when doing a fresh install+boot of both OS X 10.9 Mavericks and Windows 7. They're just so much more pleasant than what we have now.

It'd be nice if modern desktop operating systems took a lesson or two from their past selves.

OpenCore and MIST are two great tools for fans of obsolete Macs. https://github.com/ninxsoft/Mist

I did this and considered it the easy way of installing an OS on a Mac circa 2011 vs. DVD then messing around updating that ...

> Plug USB stick into target Mac, copy installer to desktop, run it

Apple has a whole page on making a bootable USB, it can save you a step: https://support.apple.com/en-us/101578

I bought one of those old Apple brand USB Ethernet adapters for pennies on eBay which can help to have on hand in situations like this.

Apple’s EFI embeds an older version of wpa supplicant, possibly you are trying to connect to a network with a newer encryption standard like WPA3. I don’t that’s too unreasonable for a 15 year old computer

My best guess is the macbook is freaking out over the combined 2.4 + 5ghz network. It used to be standard to have these with two different SSIDs. Or you have WPA3 required, though I'd think you'd experience issues with many devices doing that.

Or you can do things the easy way and install a Kubuntu 25.10 and have all good modern amenities without a fight.

Yeah LOTS of devices are iced out of wifi because wifi devices started combining the 2.4ghz and 5ghz SSIDs to the same name

and for whatever reason 2.4ghz only devices cant find the SSID unless you if there is a name conflict on the 5ghz frequency

its also less likely that you have access to the router now to change the SSID

LOL, yes.

I just tried to put Monterey on a 2021 MBP and holy hell.

USB installer. "Not supported OS, you can quit, or install in reduced security mode". Reduced security is fine for me.

"Installation of Reduced Security failed." Cool.

"Get the IPSW and do a DFU install". Nah, you can't do that. "Drag the IPSW onto the target Mac where it says DFU in Apple Configurator". Nope. No error, just nope.

Dig dig dig. "You might need to do this from an older computer. Even an Intel MBP running Ventura". Hey look, I have one!

Alright, install Apple Configurator.

"Nope. You need Sequoia to install Configurator."

Jesus wept. This is an OS that is 4 years old, on a 5 year old laptop. Apple, "It just works".

Find an old version of Configurator from some guy on Reddit that zipped one up.

Now we can do an IPSW install.

Good luck, mortals.