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I have some legacy 32-bit software that I'd really like to keep running on my brand new MBP (odds and ends, but mainly Keynote 5.3 — i.e., from the iWork 2009 suite). On my (2015) iMac, I have two partitions: one for El Capitan and one for Catalina. I'd like to create the same setup on the MBP, but I believe that the IT folks at my organization have deployed the computer so that I can't create a new partition to give it a whirl. They tell me that it won't work anyway — the computer's too new, but it's not like the chips are that different. (Is Apple really crippling older OSes in this way?!) Anyway, before I ask them to create a second partition to let me try, I thought I'd double-check that it's in fact hopeless. Their view does get some support from the fact that when I attempt to boot from an external carbon-copy-cloner-cloned volume of ElCap, the boot halts with the message: "A software update is required to use this startup disk" (with options of choosing another disk or "updating", which does nothing).

Has anyone been down this road before. Any other ideas? I've tried Parallels and can finagle an installation of ElCap there, but Keynote's graphics are broken in it. It runs most of the other apps I need, though, so maybe I just cut bait and deal with the crappy new version of Keynote.

Thanks much!

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  • I'd say no on El Capitan, will Mojave not work? Usually it's nearly impossible to install a macOS that is a major version older than the one the machine shipped with, at least since Tiger, iirc, and 16" MBP shipped with Catalina from the beginning. Commented Jul 15, 2020 at 3:37
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    You cannot install a version of macOS that’s older than the version it originally came with. If that 2019 came with Mojave, you can install Mojave and newer (Catalina). You cannot install High Sierra or older
    – Allan
    Commented Jul 15, 2020 at 3:49
  • Thanks for your responses! Bummer. I wonder if Keynote will run in Mojave — I bet not, though. I remember that I upgraded to (Sierra) 10.12 when it came out and it broke a bunch of stuff, including Keynote's graphics (no presenting or previewing), so I downgraded to 10.11 and there I've stayed. Maybe Mojave lets it run (or run with modifications, e.g., like Retroactive: github.com/cormiertyshawn895/Retroactive).
    – Matthew
    Commented Jul 15, 2020 at 15:54

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