Today's Pointers is sort of a two-fer on the broad topic of using new gear with older Macs (and by "older," we mean four years or older). We'll talk specifically about the inspiration for this column, the new
Magic Keyboard, Magic Mouse 2, and Magic Trackpad 2 -- but we'll also talk about other types of things you may want to connect to an older Mac, such as new iPhones or iPads, printers, scanners, and other gadgets. Broadly, our advice is "approach with caution," but it can often be done -- with a little bit of important prep work.
Former
Macworld Editor and all-around good guy Jason Snell was kind enough to do some of the footwork for us in a recent
Six Colors blog entry, testing the brand-new Magic Trackpad 2 with some older Macs, going as far back as 2009. His findings were that the new device
can work on older Macs -- it doesn't
require the Bluetooth 4.0 the package says it does, though that could have an impact on battery life -- but the machine must be running (and thus be
capable of running) El Capitan. It functions in Mavericks (10.9), but only as a basic mouse -- no other functions. That's no good.
Before we go much further, let me rain on some people's parade here: if your Mac is coming up on -- or past -- its ninth anniversary, congratulations, you beat the average and got more than your money's worth. Now bury it or hand it down with dignity, and go buy something made this decade -- this entire column, and everything mentioned in it, won't help you much, and you'll likely have noticed an ever-increasing number of things you can't do anymore encroaching on your daily use. That's a hint to change the above advice from "approach with caution" to "forget it."
Oh ho ho, it's Magic, you know (never believe it's not so)
The Magic Trackpad 2 has a Lightning plug in a spot where you can use the device while plugged in, and comes with a Lightning-to-USB cord. This means the device works even if Bluetooth is off, but again that system requirement for El Capitan seems mandatory. The good news is that El Capitan runs on many older Macs, going back as far as 2008 for most models. The bad news is that, while El Capitan is easier on RAM and space requirements than some recent OS X versions, it does best with 4GB of RAM or more, and a decent amount of graphics processing power, which may exclude older MacBooks and some other older models.
From this we can extrapolate on the other devices. It's logical to presume that the Magic Keyboard will also work either wired or via Bluetooth with older Macs, and may not even require El Capitan. Again, using it with a device that doesn't support Bluetooth 4.0 may result in shorter battery life, but you can keep it plugged in if that's concern, and you just really want that new more stable feel Apple has put into the new keyboard (some people hate it, but as someone who works on a variety of keyboards, I think it's great).
The Magic Mouse 2 -- well now, that's a different story. Due to where the Lightning port is located, the new Magic Mouse simply can't be used when its wired for charging. Some have criticized the placement of the Lightning port on the bottom, but there's not really much of anywhere else it could go without a complete redesign -- and the unit needs only (seriously) a couple of minute's charge to run for up to nine more hours, so we don't see this as a big issue (take a short standing break if you run out of power). The Magic Mouse's support for new gestures and other "tricks" Apple has made optionally available may not work on anything earlier than Yosemite, if even that, so -- not worth buying if you're not running El Capitan, most likely.
It seems clear that the Magic Trackpad won't work properly on any OS version other than El Capitan, particularly because it uses the new Force Touch technology that requires OS X 10.11 or later. It may be that you can still use it as a basic trackpad on earlier OS X versions, but this again largely defeats the point of buying the new one. Stick with your current Magic Whatever if you're not
up-to-date on your OS X version seems to be the broad rule of thumb here.
General guidelines for other devices
Speaking of rules of thumb, here's one for connecting new accessories (iPhones, iPads, printers, scanners, and other gadgets) to older Macs: read the system requirements on the new device, take them seriously, and
keep your OS version as up-to-date as possible. While there are exceptions, most of Apple's new stuff needs very recent (though usually not
the latest version) of OS X or iOS software, and for iOS devices, you also generally need to be running a recent version of iTunes as well.
We've seen endless reports from people with five-year-old-plus Macs that have never been upgraded from Snow Leopard, and "mysteriously" the new iPhone 6s they just got doesn't work with it. The message they get is that it requires a newer version of iTunes, but attempting to upgrade leads to a message that they need a newer OS version in order to do that, and the newer OS X upgrade (El Capitan is the only downloadable OS upgrade available if you didn't previously "purchase" one of the recent ones) is going to break a lot of old software or run poorly because you still only have 2GB of RAM, or in some cases your machine flat-out can't run it. What to do?
To be fair, this generally only happens to people who's OS X version is older than four years, and the users are at least partially at fault for falling so far behind. It's okay not to be Johnny First Day of Release with OS X upgrade -- sensible, even -- but falling more than two major versions behind the latest is generally
a bad idea, and not just because of the "new toys don't play well with old Macs" thing. The disruption to software and other headaches caused by big leaps (say from Snow Leopard or Lion to El Capitan, we've seen a lot of this lately) wouldn't be an issue if users kept their software updated as well.
Third party accessories and peripherals manufacturers take their cues from Apple, so as to be certified compatible, and so they too will generally require some OS X version from the last three years or so, and if there are hardware requirements involved, generally a machine from the last six years or so -- the average useful lifespan of a typical Mac. Just to keep things interesting, every decade or so the technology advances so that new connectors are required.
She's pulling out the pins
We just went through this a couple of years ago with the Lightning connector, which rendered all the 30-pin stuff for iOS devices instantly useless when you bought an iPhone 5 or later. When this happens there is some upheaval -- and this is not limited to Apple customers by any means -- but the chaos is generally short-lived, and only happens quite rarely. As an example, the USB connector we all think of and have on the side of our computers -- USB-A -- is coming up on its 20th anniversary (it was the "radical new" connector in the first iMac -- feeling old yet?).
There's mounting evidence that USB-C is going to replace it, and guess what -- the functionality is backwards-compatible, but not the connector. What's more, the connector USB-C uses is also going to
become the connector for Thunderbolt 3. One port to rule them all, so to speak, may be upon us in a few years, but if you thought replacing all the 30-pin iOS stuff was a pain ... well, let's just say we're soon to be living in the Age of Adapters for a while. Again.
Here's the bottom line: most of the time, trying to mix brand new peripherals/gadgets with four-year-plus old Macs -- particularly if you are running an obsolete version of OS X -- is asking for trouble. The more complex/powerful the accessory is, the more likely it will require a recent OS X version or a recent version of iTunes or other supporting software. Broadly speaking, the age of the Mac is less important than its ability to stay current (though this is a factor at some point) -- and whether the owner (you) has avoided the hassle of big software updates by handling them incrementally as you go.
I'm writing this on a 2012 MacBook Pro -- it has USB 3.0, it has Bluetooth 4.0 support, and it can run the latest OS X and iTunes versions, and I don't expect that to change for another few years. This means that my next iPhone, the 6s, and my Apple Watch all work fine, and that also isn't going to change before its time to get the iPhone after this next one (the iPhone 7s, I presume).
I may not keep this machine until early 2018: I'm a tech journalist by trade, so I need to trade up a bit (okay, a lot) more often than the average user. I kind of doubt I'll still be using this particular machine come 2018 -- the graphics abilities could be beefier, it's not Retina, it's "merely" Thunderbolt 1 and no USB-C, and for my job I will likely need a machine with those features in due course. Thanks to
keeping my software up-to-date and knowing what the specs of the machine are (easily found under the Apple Menu, "About This Mac" and, if needed, the "System Report" option), however, I can work this machine until it really ages out or becomes too expensive to fix/upgrade -- and that means I'll have much more control over when I decide to move on, rather than feeling "forced" into upgrading because my new toy doesn't work with it.
-- Charles Martin (
@Editor_MacNN)
Top