iATKOS | United Kingdom

Hi all

I'm resurrecting my old 2011 13" MacBook Air i7 with 4gb ram and 256gb SSD to give to my brother for light business admin use.

I've read so many threads re this, especially the low ram limitation but wondering whether with the benefit of added elapsed time since those older posts were made whether there's any further experience or advice to offer.

Of course this machine ram cant be upgraded and little point upgrading the existing SSD, so I'm sticking with the spec and wondering, all things considered, which OCLP macOS to go for.

I'm trying to balance security and up to dateness seeing as it's entirely for light business use, for which I'd guess Ventura would probably be the absolute limit as a workable OS on this ram limited machine, versus having a Mac that can actually cope a bit better under mostly light pressure work (email, web, prob some video watching, running iCloud data syncs etc, but no encoding or heavy stuff) without throwing a wobbly, for which I'm considering maybe Big Sur with it's lower ram use or if pushing a bit further, Monterey, which like Ventura may push ram too far.

I'd really appreciate any insightful recommendations, especially from anyone who has done this on this specific machine and knows the limitations of MacBook airs in general, this fixed 4gb ram limit, but also understands whether the i7 processor may mitigate some situations. I know the graphics are also super low spec , and maybe that directs it better to Big Sur which I think was the last to support these graphics without root patching etc. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Many thanks