Mid 2010 and Mid 2012 Mac Pro Won’t Run macOS Catalina

Sad news for owners of Mid 2010 and Mid 2012 Mac Pros, no Catalina for them.

In my previous article, I wrote that all Macs that run macOS 10.14 Mojave will also be able to run macOS 10.15 Catalina. However, this isn’t entirely true.

The Mid 2010 and Mid 2012 Mac Pro are the only two Macs that are capable of running Mojave that won’t be able run Catalina when it is released later this year.

Digging deeper into this, it appears the Mid 2010 and Mid 2012 Mac Pro could only run Mojave providing the graphics card had been upgraded to a Metal-compatible card – see Apple’s list of supported cards. Otherwise they could only run up to macOS 10.13 High Sierra.

However, even if you own a Mid 2010 or Mid 2012 Mac Pro that has a Metal-capable graphics card and is running Mojave, you will not be able to upgrade it to Catalina.

I am unsure of the reason for this, but I am sure there will be many Mid 2010 and Mid 2012 Mac Pro owners who aren’t happy by this news.

I find it a little strange that Apple will continue to support the Mid 2012 11″ MacBook Air, their lowest offering (with the exception of the Late 2012 Mac mini) costing $999 on launch, but fail to support the 2012 Mac Pro, their highest offering costing $2,499, both released in the same year.

We can only hope that some clever developer will release an unofficial patch that will allow Catalina to install and extend the life of these two Mac Pro models.


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