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I have a Macbook Air, early 2014, running Yosemite. I went to the App Store, looked for Monterey, didn't find it, got a link somewhere else and finally found it. Yet, when I try to install it, it says my machine is incompatible with Monterey. Yosemite is unusable due to outdated apps, lack of TLS certificates etc. What could I do?

brandizzi
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1 Answers1

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Indeed, Monterey is not compatible with my Macbook Air, but Big Sur is and should be enough for our needs.

Here is how I installed it:

  • I found this page in Apple support. It has links to hidden versions of macOS and shows the compatibility between the versions. Very helpful!
  • By clicking on a link, I opened it in the App Store.
  • The App Store, however, required authenticating with Apple ID. I tried, but I have two-factor authentication, and apparently, this version of the App Store does not support it.
    • Here you can try to disable two-factor authentication through an iPhone, but I couldn't, for unknown reasons.
    • So I created another Apple ID account, only to install the new OS version.
    • Later I learned this workaround from @grg's comment below. I didn't try it but seems even better than creating another account.

In the end, it worked. If you find you need a different version based on your needs or hardware, this other guide can help.

brandizzi
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    Older operating systems that existed before two-factor still support it as a suffix: https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/283047/37797 – grg Dec 03 '21 at 19:34
  • @grg oh, that's useful! Thank you so much for sharing! – brandizzi Dec 06 '21 at 21:56