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It used to be when your old iMac kicked the can, you turned it into an aquarium or a desk lamp
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These days, Macs last so long that you can get years of loyal service out of it
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I don't even know what you'd turn it into anyways, an ant farm
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So today I'm going to run through the six things you can do with an old Mac that you have sitting around
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Starting with number one, running old apps and software. Microsoft keeps backwards compatibility for features in Windows, almost to its detriment
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but Apple isn't afraid to kill old features in order to keep the operating system modern
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This last happened with macOS 10.15 Catalina, which dropped all support for old 32-bit applications
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But if you keep around an old Intel Mac running macOS 10.14 Mojave, the release from a year before
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you can still use all the apps that you might want to use for work or play all the old games you might want to play
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If you've already updated it to Catalina, don't worry, there's still something you can do
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If you follow these instructions here, this will let you install macOS Mojave on a separate disk that you can reboot your Mac into
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I plan on doing this on my old 2015 MacBook Pro so that I can go back to playing American Truck Simulator
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You partition the hard drive, you download the macOS Mojave installer from the Mac App Store
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you install it on the empty disk, and then when you want to reboot, you hold down the Option key
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This will let you pick which operating system you boot into. Number two, Plex lets you roll your own streaming service for movies and shows that you have definitely legally downloaded onto your computer
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This is a great cause for bringing an old Mac out of retirement because you don't want to install it on your main computer if you have a laptop that you carry with you
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If you want Plex running all the time so you can access it no matter what, you'll want to install it on a secondary Mac
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ideally one that's plugged in over Ethernet to your router for the best stable connection
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So you install Plex Media Server on your old Mac, you let it scan in all of your shows and movies
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and then using the regular Plex app, you can watch them from anywhere
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From your iPhone and iPad, Apple TV, Vision Pro, Xbox, PlayStation, Roku, Google TV, Fire TV, anywhere
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A lifetime Plex Pass is $119.99, which does sound expensive at first
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but consider that it's less than the cost of a single year of a single streaming service
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and it can replace several other streaming services in your life. So it's kind of worth it when you put it that way
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And another side benefit is that running Plex on a secondary Mac that isn't your main machine
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hopefully you've, you know, wiped all of your personal data off of it, you're not putting any of your personal data at risk if you hit up some dodgy BitTorrent sites
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Number three, if you have an old iMac, the big, beautiful display very often outlasts the computer inside
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but you don't have to put the whole thing to waste. Using Luna Display by AstroPad, you buy their adapter and you download their app
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and suddenly you've converted your old iMac into a 27-inch display for your regular day-to-day computer
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You might even consider buying an iMac for this express purpose. It's the same exact display panel that goes in Apple's $1,600 Studio Display
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but you can buy a second-hand 5K iMac for much cheaper on eBay
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Apple actually used to support this out-of-the-box with a feature called Target Display Mode
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If your main Mac is from before 2020, running macOS Catalina or earlier
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and your donor iMac is between 2009 and 2014, running macOS High Sierra or earlier
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then you can do this for free. All you need is a Thunderbolt cable
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It only works with those specific combinations, but if it can work, go for it
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Number four, there are some other basic features your old Mac might be able to do as a home server
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You can use it to host Time Machine backups or to share a printer over your local network
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With Time Machine, you can set up all of the Macs in your house to backup automatically
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silently, and wirelessly every day. You don't have to remember to do it yourself. You don't have to pester your kids into doing it too
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And using an old Mac as the destination, none of the Macs that people use every day will be bogged down by collecting all of these backups
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You can follow Apple's instructions here to turn it on in System Preferences, Sharing
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If you have an old and reliable, trusty yet dusty printer in your home
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hold on to it for dear life. Modern printers are an absolute sh** show
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But you can use your Mac server to enable it as a wireless printer
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so you have all of the same modern conveniences. You set it up from the same System Preferences panel in the Sharing menu
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While you're at it, you'll also want to enable Screen Sharing. This way you can check in on the Mac to make sure everything is running smoothly
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without physically digging it out and plugging in a monitor. Number 5. If you still depend on an old Mac
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but you're frustrated that you can't update it to the latest version of macOS
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you actually might be able to. OpenCore Legacy Patcher will let you update an old Mac beyond the prescribed limit
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If you have the right hardware, in the most extreme case, you can update a 2007 iMac to the current version of macOS Sonoma
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This can significantly extend the useful life of your Mac if you still need the current features
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Granted, this comes at a cost. Your Mac will slow down significantly the more you try to stretch the limits
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But if you don't depend on things like modern web browsing, maybe you just need to use a few desktop apps, it might work out for you
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Number 6. You can go the opposite direction. If maybe your use cases are reversed
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you still want to use your old Mac to browse the modern web, but you don't care so much about Apple's built-in features
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like iCloud, FaceTime, iMessage, you can install a lighter-weight modern operating system like Linux
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Ubuntu is one of the more popular distributions of Linux, and it's pretty easy to get running
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You partition your hard drive in Disk Utility, you download the Ubuntu installer, put it on the empty disk
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and then you reboot your Mac while holding the Option key. You pick Ubuntu, and then you're ready to go
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It'll boot into that from now on. Keep in mind though that this only really works on an Intel Mac
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There's an open-source project that's trying to convert the entirety of Linux over to Apple Silicon
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but that's still a long ways out from being completed. And you can install Linux on a PowerPC Mac that's even older
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but there are some snags to look out for there as well. But I suspect that most of the Macs being replaced these days are Intel models
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so if you have one sitting around, it's a great way to keep it modern. And that's my list of six things you can do with your old Mac
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I'm Dekerford Jones with Cult of Mac
