HACKER Q&A
📣 berkeshire

Please suggest uses for an old Mac


Hi HN,

Long time lurker (2007 or so onwards), first time poster.

I have a Mac Mini, circa 2010, 2.4GHz Intel Core2 Duo processor(s), 2GB RAM, 320 GB storage. OS: Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard, cant be upgraded beyond this). Its from my iOS app development days.

Since the power usage by a Mac Mini is low [1], I am keen to run something good on it. It may not be on the network, more of a standalone.

I am not into mining. I dont want to run shared-computing-for-a-cause type of applications.

What can I run on this, other than dynamic photo frames.

Thanks for your time. Cheers. Stay safe.

[1]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201897


  👤 peterburkimsher Accepted Answer ✓
Multi-boot it and use it for testing or legacy app development! I did that with a MacBook Pro 2007 that I was kindly given.

I've needed to use it to jailbreak & downgrade iPhone 4S to iOS 6.1.3, and more recently, to build an app to use an old iPhone to generate a clean HDMI camera feed.

If your Mac Mini can run 10.4 Tiger, you'll even be able to use some Classic apps (e.g. Age of Empires). There's a couple of sites with some good software collections:

https://macintoshgarden.org/

https://www.macintoshrepository.org


👤 brudgers
Sell it on eBay and donate the money to your local food bank.