macOS 10.12 Sierra Unsupported Macs Thread

[haroldjohnson]

I'm not a great fan of unsupported systems an a mac. I tried it once on a powerbook g4 titanium forcing leopard onto it via an open firmware hack. But it was crawling on that and so finally changed my mind and downgraded back to tiger.

I've tried it a few times over the years with mixed results. I remember forcing Tiger or Leopard or Snow Leopard on unsupported PowerBook G4s only to find myself disappointed with the results; they were just as you described: crawling. It was a frustrating experience.

But times have changed! Or at least, in the case of my aging MacBook, I'm finding no noticeable performance decrease after getting Sierra running on it. I've had it installed for several months and regularly use it. (It's pretty much my "daily driver", though I also use a mobile PC workstation for tasks such as Photoshop due to its much larger display and improved graphics. That said, I've run Photoshop on the MacBook without performance issues.)

Now keep in mind that my MacBook has an SSD rather than its original HDD; I strongly believe that makes a world of difference when it comes to the performance of these older Macs. I've also upgraded its RAM from its original 2GBs to 6GBs. (Apple originally supported up to 4GBs but 6GBs runs just fine on this Mac.) If I'd been able to install an SSD in my PowerBook G4 back in the aughts (2000s) then maybe -- probably -- I would've have a better experience running unsupported versions of the Mac OS. Nowadays, with SSDs, even if there is a performance hit I haven't noticed it yet. (For anyone's reference, I'm using MacBook Model No. A1181 (13-inch, Mid 2009) maxed out with 6GB 800 MHz DDR2 and upgraded with the aforementioned SSD. It's also known as the "'Core 2 Duo' 2.13 13".)

 

[Jack Neill]

I've tried it a few times over the years with mixed results. I remember forcing Tiger or Leopard or Snow Leopard on unsupported PowerBook G4s only to find myself disappointed with the results; they were just as you described: crawling. It was a frustrating experience.

But times have changed! Or at least, in the case of my aging MacBook, I'm finding no noticeable performance decrease after getting Sierra running on it. I've had it installed for several months and regularly use it. (It's pretty much my "daily driver", though I also use a mobile PC workstation for tasks such as Photoshop due to its much larger display and improved graphics. That said, I've run Photoshop on the MacBook without performance issues.)

Now keep in mind that my MacBook has an SSD rather than its original HDD; I strongly believe that makes a world of difference when it comes to the performance of these older Macs. I've also upgraded its RAM from its original 2GBs to 6GBs. (Apple originally supported up to 4GBs but 6GBs runs just fine on this Mac.) If I'd been able to install an SSD in my PowerBook G4 back in the aughts (2000s) then maybe -- probably -- I would've have a better experience running unsupported versions of the Mac OS. Nowadays, with SSDs, even if there is a performance hit I haven't noticed it yet. (For anyone's reference, I'm using MacBook Model No. A1181 (13-inch, Mid 2009) maxed out with 6GB 800 MHz DDR2 and upgraded with the aforementioned SSD. It's also known as the "'Core 2 Duo' 2.13 13".)

That Mac should take 8GB. My 5,2 has 8Gb running fine.

 

[MacSoftware3]

I installed leopard on it not snow leopard. Then downgraded back to tiger because leopard was too slow. I'm sure that's what I said before.
[doublepost=1525878787][/doublepost]

Have you tried downloading Sierra within a virtual machine of El Capitan? As I said before that will allow the download to occur despite it being an unsupported machine.

I will try that in the coming days when I've got some time, thanks for the suggestion!

I've a few ideas I think might help you but for some reason you cannot receive personal messages.

I think I can now

 

[haroldjohnson]

That Mac should take 8GB. My 5,2 has 8Gb running fine.

Is yours a MacBook? (I don't know if all 5,2s are laptops.)

 

[Jack Neill]

Is yours a MacBook? (I don't know if all 5,2s are laptops.)

Sorry, Yes I have a Early 2009 MacBook 5,2. I have 8Gb of ram and a PNY 240 SSD working great with 10.13.4.

 

[broadbean]

(In fact, Apple SUPPORTS Sierra and High Sierra on machines that have the SAME CPU AND Chipset as some unsupported machines... Makes no sense.)

Could be due to other bits they could be bothered to support, like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPU etc.

 

[EugW]

Could be due to other bits they could be bothered to support, like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPU etc.

Same GPU, and I believe same Bluetooth and WiFi too for some of those machines. In any case, all three work fine.

Ironically, one of the GPUs in a supported machine causes problems with some specific h.264 files, and the unsupported machines get the same bug with the exact same behaviour.

What really irritates me though is that the Pro machine is not supported, but the non-Pro machine that came out a few months later with the same innards is supported. But it's OK, because since it has the same innards, the Pro machine works fine once Sierra/High Sierra is installed.

 

[MacBeast]

Anyone running macOS Server on a machine with this Sierra patch?

I'm thinking that there shouldn't be any issues as Server.app is just another application, or are there some concerns I'm not aware of? This would be on a MacPro3,1.

 

[dosdude1]

Anyone running macOS Server on a machine with this Sierra patch?

I'm thinking that there shouldn't be any issues as Server.app is just another application, or are there some concerns I'm not aware of? This would be on a MacPro3,1.

Yeah, a friend of mine used his 3,1 on High Sierra with macOS Server, and had no issues.

 

[MacBeast]

Yeah, a friend of mine used his 3,1 on High Sierra with macOS Server, and had no issues.

Good to hear.
Thanks for creating the patching tool and giving my machine an extended life!

 

[haroldjohnson]

Could be due to other bits they could be bothered to support, like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPU etc.

Plus all the money Apple, Inc. probably thinks it's going to lose from people like us not buying a more recent Mac due to being able to run the latest software on ~10 year old Macs. (In my case, they would be flat-out wrong in believing this since I haven't been able to afford a new Mac in quite some time and keeping my aging MacBook running enables me to keep from abandoning the platform for something cheaper. Plus they're still getting money from me -- I have purchased iPhones for my girlfriend and myself, iPads for my dad and myself, and am still invested in the Apple ecocystem enough to be subscribed to services including iCloud and Apple Music. Plus my intent is to learn programming for Apple devices, and though I'm currently still able to do so thanks to being able to run Xcode on an unsupported Mac, I will be upgrading my system sooner or later in order to be able to continue doing so.)

 

[sgtaylor5]

I /had/ cold feet about this. Long story short, I did install Sierra using DosDude1’s Patch Installer, and it worked great - including the 10.12.6 Update and the latest Security Update. No intervention needed; SIP looks like it’s still installed, even.

Geniuses and Wizards did this! I can’t thank all of you enough for all of your hard work and dedication!

 

[haroldjohnson]

Geniuses and Wizards did this! I can’t thank all of you enough for all of your hard work and dedication!

I agree! Glad to hear about your success!

 

[sgtaylor5]

It's running well enough that I did away with the separate Time Machine partition I made just for Sierra and let TM rebackup on the original partition, with my extended history on it.

 

[thinkingman]

I don't understand why the patcher isn't working for me. It always hangs on "Patching Files" with a rainbow wheel or refusing to focus the window forward into enabled state. Once I was able to scroll the verbose output to the end and saw a bunch of "No such file or directory" errors.

 

[markscar1]

Hey all, Im new to this forum but i have a Early 2011 MacBook Pro currently running High Sierra 10.13.4. I had the notorious GPU issue again and though of giving the https://realmacmods.com/macbook-2011-radeon-gpu-disable/ a go. All was successful except for one thing, backlight control and Ambient light Sensor don't seem to work. Any ideas on how i can rectify this as Apple calls it "Vintage" Mac ? dosdude1

Cheers

 

[L Caputo]

Hey all, Im new to this forum but i have a Early 2011 MacBook Pro currently running High Sierra 10.13.4. I had the notorious GPU issue again and though of giving the https://realmacmods.com/macbook-2011-radeon-gpu-disable/ a go. All was successful except for one thing, backlight control and Ambient light Sensor don't seem to work. Any ideas on how i can rectify this as Apple calls it "Vintage" Mac ? dosdude1

Cheers

[doublepost=1527858023][/doublepost]this is a forum for Macs not supported in Sierra, your Mac is supported in Sierra, and as you have stated it is running high sierra so you might be better represented by posting in the official apple support discussions

 

[deadwing99]

I recently turned my MBP mid-2009 back on after having patched Sierra last year. I'm running plain 10.12 (16A323) and am looking to upgrade to 10.12.6 to get up to date and play around with Night Shift. I have AUSEnabler installed and am set up with the correct update catalog, but whenever I run "softwareupdate --list", I'm told "No new software available." If I switch back to the default catalog from Apple, I see 10.12.6 as an option. The App Store turns up nothing.

What are my options? Is there an option to patch the 10.12.6 update if I download it from Apple?

 

[jbarley]

Here's what I would do,
make a safe copy of your"platformsupport.plist" found here---System/Library/CoreServices
Download and run the 10.12.6 combo update, found here--"https://support.apple.com/kb/dl1931?locale=en_US"
That should work, but if on the off chance your system will not boot then find a way to copy the Platformsupport.plist file back to it's original location.
some suggestions that come to mind are,
boot from another mac using target-disk-mode
boot from another drive or partition
boot from the Recovery partition and open a Terminal window and use Terminal commands.
Also there is info on updating on DosDudes site about a new update script, down near the bottom of the page.
Might be worth checking this out before taking any drastic action.
http://dosdude1.com/sierrapatch.html

 

[deadwing99]

Here's what I would do,
make a safe copy of your"platformsupport.plist" found here---System/Library/CoreServices
Download and run the 10.12.6 combo update, found here--"https://support.apple.com/kb/dl1931?locale=en_US"

When I try to run the updater I get an alert box: "This software is not supported on your system."

Also there is info on updating on DosDudes site about a new update script, down near the bottom of the page.
Might be worth checking this out before taking any drastic action.
http://dosdude1.com/sierrapatch.html

I ran this script initially and it gives me the same error about "No new software available."

What I ended up doing, which somehow worked, was to run AUSEnabler and reset the catalog, then run dosdude's script. This finally allowed me to download the combo update through softwareupdate in Terminal, and I'm typing at you from mac OS 10.12.6. Thanks for the help!

 

[jbarley]

Glad things worked out for you.
Sometimes is just perseverance that get the job done...

 

[desperaterightaboutnow]

Hi everyone, I have the following problem and hope someone has a solution: I've got a MacBook 5.1 and did a clean install last night using dosdude's Patch 4.2.7 and a copy of MacOS 10.12.6. Everything went smooth and I applied the post install patch afterwards. But both bluetooth and the camera don't work and are not listed in the systems profile.
I've done it before, but with 10.12.3 and everything worked fine, just want to downgrade from High Sierra because of the fan running at max constantly and bluetooth stopped working after updating to 10.13.4. Would love to hear from anyone with suggestions

 

[EugW]

Hi everyone, I have the following problem and hope someone has a solution: I've got a MacBook 5.1 and did a clean install last night using dosdude's Patch 4.2.7 and a copy of MacOS 10.12.6. Everything went smooth and I applied the post install patch afterwards. But both bluetooth and the camera don't work and are not listed in the systems profile.
I've done it before, but with 10.12.3 and everything worked fine, just want to downgrade from High Sierra because of the fan running at max constantly and bluetooth stopped working after updating to 10.13.4. Would love to hear from anyone with suggestions

MacBook5,1 fan and Bluetooth work fine for me with High Sierra 10.13.5. Worked fine with 10.13.4 too.

 

[jbarley]

Got this idea of "Dynamic Wallpaper" from reading another forum.
Downloaded the new Mojave Dynamic wallpaper images from here...
https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/8oz5h5/all_16_full_resolution_macos_mojave_dynamic/

Then put together an Apple-script to automate the changing process throughout the day.
I saved the script as an Application with the stay loaded flag set and run it each time I startup from my login items.
Now I have this constantly changing Mojave desert wallpaper, works like a charm.
Credit for the original script goes to "Slix" with thanks.

The times and image numbers can be modified to suit the user.
--------------------------------------
on idle

(*Get current time in hours.*)

set h to hours of (current date)

(*Set the wallpaper number based on the hour of day.*)


set wallpaper to "14"
if (h ≥ 7 and h < 10) then
set wallpaper to "3"
else if (h ≥ 10 and h < 12) then
set wallpaper to "4"
else if (h ≥ 12 and h < 15) then
set wallpaper to "8"
else if (h ≥ 15 and h < 18) then
set wallpaper to "9"
else if (h ≥ 18 and h < 21) then
set wallpaper to "11"
else if (h ≥ 21 and h < 23) then
set wallpaper to "13"
end if


(* Change the wallpaper here. Change the file path to another directory if you have different folders. *)

tell application "System Events"
tell every desktop
set picture to "~/Pictures/mojave_dynamic/mojave_dynamic_" & wallpaper & ".jpeg"
end tell
return 900
end tell
end idle
-----------------------------------------

 

[ThunderSkunk]

I put Sierra back on my MBP 5,2. It's humming along smoothly on 10.12.6, & staying there due to 10.13's prohibitive issues with the 5,2's.

I see Pikes NightShift patch is MIA, and after doing some digging around his site, I see the extremely sad tragic reason why. Wow... a truly terrible sequence of events.

Does anyone else who dl'd the Nightshift fix have it hosted somewhere? Not the end of the world, but if it's out there, would be good to post a new location now that it's the final possible update for the worlds 5,2s.