Dead mid 2011 iMac

g_wolfman wrote:

Web surfing and YouTube relies on the browser being up to date for modern web security standards and there is almost nothing that would work properly with any browser that works on High Sierra - esp post-Jan 25 when many root certificates were updated again in modern browsers.

Not so. For one thing, Firefox 115 ESR works just fine in High Sierra though it's not being supported by Mozilla after March.

HOWEVER.. there's a GitHub project creating versions of the latest Firefox that will work on older Mac OS's. Currently it's Firefox Dynasty 136, and can be got here:

https://github.com/i3roly/firefox-dynasty

The link to Firefox Dynasty download is under Releases, lower right.

LindaVozRecords wrote:

Is a paper weight?

It sounds like it. A 2011 is considered obsolete and is long overdue to be replaced.

Sorry. To be honest, many sites and browsers would not work very well on an iMac running High Sierra. Even if running.

I still have dead 2011 & 2012 iMacs collecting dust until I get around to taking them to an Apple Store for recycling. The same thing happened to them, they worked great, until one day, they didn't. 😎

Stand alone for something like music production might have been fine since that is self-contained on the computer.

Web surfing and YouTube relies on the browser being up to date for modern web security standards and there is almost nothing that would work properly with any browser that works on High Sierra - esp post-Jan 25 when many root certificates were updated again in modern browsers.

Well, something stopped working in January when some Root CAs were updated - maybe I was thinking of Firefox 78 or 91 ESR, whichever was working on El Capitan.

Regardless, between support from Mozilla, fragility to things like CA updates and evolving web standards - High Sierra is on it's very last legs for Firefox.

Firefox Dynasty looks interesting - maybe - although other similar projects like Chromium Legacy have been hit-or-miss in my opinion. But it seems quite pre-release (no tagged release versions), so until they start providing full releases, its still not prime-time ready.

g_wolfman wrote:

Regardless, between support from Mozilla, fragility to things like CA updates and evolving web standards - High Sierra is on it's very last legs for Firefox.

Firefox Dynasty looks interesting - maybe - although other similar projects like Chromium Legacy have been hit-or-miss in my opinion. But it seems quite pre-release (no tagged release versions), so until they start providing full releases, its still not prime-time ready.

I agree that Chromium Legacy has become rather hit-and-miss, though do be aware that its developer hasn't worked on it for nearly a year - the latest version is 124 (i.e. from Chrome 124). However, Firefox Dynasty is much more stable, I've found both in Mavericks and High Sierra, and is being constantly updated to reflect Firefox changes.

I imagine (though I don't know for sure) that the lack of tagged releases is down to Dynasty being numbered the same as its progenitor - i.e. the latest Dynasty is v136 to reflect Firefox 136. As for full releases per se, it's constantly being developed as Firefox itself changes, so the choice is between the 'latest' or 'stable' releases. For noobs who are not familiar with GitHub, there's a MacRumors user (@wowfunhappy) who's not only a beta tester of each release, he's also built a preference pane which can be used to select a build of Dynasty without having to go to Git.

KWHK216 wrote:

What’s that “time machine”?

Back up your Mac with Time Machine - Apple Support

What’s that “time machine”?