2011 MacBook Pros can support Handoff/Continuity

[mattg03]

I have tried it for serval times, but still no response. And the Terminal reports some issues with bluetooth(see front).

go to: about my mac, system report, then bluetooth, does it indicate (Bluetooth Low Energy Supported:Yes)

 

[gunightess]

go to: about my mac, system report, then bluetooth, does it indicate (Bluetooth Low Energy Supported:Yes)

Yes, it shows the BLE support is YES.

 

[mattg03]

Yes, it shows the BLE support is YES.

Others have had luck reinstalling Yosemite.. In the terminal you posted you didn't restart after the last (sudo kextcache -system-caches) command.I also recommend using the shutdown as the restart from the apple menu for me at least didn't seem to fully restart the machine.

 

[gunightess]

Others have had luck reinstalling Yosemite.. In the terminal you posted you didn't restart after the last (sudo kextcache -system-caches) command.I also recommend using the shutdown as the restart from the apple menu for me at least didn't seem to fully restart the machine.

I think I have restart the mbp ~~
sure I will try it again.

 

[TitsLegendary]

Really happy to say I've had success on my Early 2011 17" MacBook Pro with the modified .kext from Manic Harmonic in post #40 and this card:

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/BroadCom-App...rnal_Network_Cards&hash=item20c990779e&_uhb=1

The install of the card wasn't too bad, though for some reason I thought it'd be much larger than it actually is.

That appears to be the same one that I purchased. Should be here in a week or two.

 

[GlenK]

You guys keep good notes on this. Many of us will need it in the fall for our 2011 MBPs. Not keeping up with all of this now since I have no access to the DP or betas.

I wonder if Apple will provide support since it's obvious you guys have found a way to make this work??

 

[TitsLegendary]

Really happy to say I've had success on my Early 2011 17" MacBook Pro with the modified .kext from Manic Harmonic in post #40 and this card:

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/BroadCom-App...rnal_Network_Cards&hash=item20c990779e&_uhb=1

The install of the card wasn't too bad, though for some reason I thought it'd be much larger than it actually is.

The images of the ebay post and the images that you provided show two different cards. It appears as though the card you actually received is the correct card. Weird.

 

[Cougarcat]

I wonder if Apple will provide support since it's obvious you guys have found a way to make this work??

There is zero chance Apple will provide support for something you have to buy on eBay and requires a hacked kext to work. In an ideal world they would have an official upgrade path, but in their eyes that is a new machine.

 

[Manic Harmonic]

There is zero chance Apple will provide support for something you have to buy on eBay and requires a hacked kext to work. In an ideal world they would have an official upgrade path, but in their eyes that is a new machine.

Not only does it require a hacked kext, but it was clear that what they did with the kext was specifically prevent people from doing this. I'm 99% sure someone at Apple read this thread and then instructed one of the kext developers to make sure that we can't do it, hence why we are left with this workaround.

 

[MkVsTheWorld]

There is zero chance Apple will provide support for something you have to buy on eBay and requires a hacked kext to work. In an ideal world they would have an official upgrade path, but in their eyes that is a new machine.

Agreed.

The situation is no different than using your own SSD in a MBP. While, you have the ability to upgrade the HD to SSD, Apple doesn't officially support it. Therefore, you have to manually enable TRIM. Fortunately, there are free Mac Apps that'll easily enable TRIM.

Same logic goes with secondary monitors, but I won't go there

 

[hattonna928]

Really happy to say I've had success on my Early 2011 17" MacBook Pro with the modified .kext from Manic Harmonic in post #40 and this card:

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/BroadCom-App...rnal_Network_Cards&hash=item20c990779e&_uhb=1

The install of the card wasn't too bad, though for some reason I thought it'd be much larger than it actually is.

You are lucky! I ordered from the exact same page for the first card I bought but they sent me the same one I already had. Glad to see they at least got someone's purchase right.

 

[mikecwest]

I got my 607-5959 card with the CAX on the back....

I got some errors when I ran the terminal commands to used the hacked kext file.

I am able to connect online, it says that BLE and Airdrop are supported. The "Allow Handoff" was checked on its own in "General"

What i am concerned about is this:

Software Versions:
CoreWLAN: 5.0 (500.24)
CoreWLANKit: 4.0 (400.21)
Menu Extra: 10.0 (1000.22)
System Information: 9.0 (900.8)
IO80211 Family: (null) ((null))
Diagnostics: 4.0 (400.60)
AirPort Utility: 6.3.4 (634.4)

Should my IO80211 Family be NULL NULL?


When I do " kextstat | grep AirPort" - I get

140 0 0xffffff7f82c79000 0x5df000 0x5df000 com.apple.driver.AirPort.Brcm4360 (900.14.2) <139 47 46 12 7 6 5 4 3 1>

I have not installed any IOS 8 on any of my devices yet. I would prefer to wait for a jailbreak...

 

[mattg03]

I got my 607-5959 card with the CAX on the back....

I got some errors when I ran the terminal commands to used the hacked kext file.

I am able to connect online, it says that BLE and Airdrop are supported. The "Allow Handoff" was checked on its own in "General"

What i am concerned about is this:

Software Versions:
CoreWLAN: 5.0 (500.24)
CoreWLANKit: 4.0 (400.21)
Menu Extra: 10.0 (1000.22)
System Information: 9.0 (900.8)
IO80211 Family: (null) ((null))
Diagnostics: 4.0 (400.60)
AirPort Utility: 6.3.4 (634.4)

Should my IO80211 Family be NULL NULL?


When I do " kextstat | grep AirPort" - I get

140 0 0xffffff7f82c79000 0x5df000 0x5df000 com.apple.driver.AirPort.Brcm4360 (900.14.2) <139 47 46 12 7 6 5 4 3 1>

I have not installed any IOS 8 on any of my devices yet. I would prefer to wait for a jailbreak...

Your setup is correct .. i just checked my IO80211 Family and its also set to NULL NULL.


I think you should be fine..

 

[alvindarkness]

Not only does it require a hacked kext, but it was clear that what they did with the kext was specifically prevent people from doing this. I'm 99% sure someone at Apple read this thread and then instructed one of the kext developers to make sure that we can't do it, hence why we are left with this workaround.

I'm getting that same feeling, except how are they doing it? Checking smbios for the model identifier? Either way, its an absolute pricks act on apples behalf.

 

[abcdefg12345]

I received the bluetooth card today but it has the wrong version number
BCM94331PCIEBT4AX
and the website states
BCM94331PCIEBT4CAX
I got it from there
http://www.os-store.com/broadcom-ap...8-a1286-a1297-661-5867-607-7291-607-8792.html

I filed a PayPal dispute Item not as described, anyone knows where i can buy one where the seller knows the difference between
BCM94331PCIEBT4CAX
BCM94331PCIEBT4AX
and would actually send me the correct one

 

[actisys]

As the discussion earlier, only BCM94331PCIEBT4CAX will be working.. please take note.

 

[eiprol]

I received the bluetooth card today but it has the wrong version number
BCM94331PCIEBT4AX
and the website states
BCM94331PCIEBT4CAX
I got it from there
http://www.os-store.com/broadcom-ap...8-a1286-a1297-661-5867-607-7291-607-8792.html

I filed a PayPal dispute Item not as described, anyone knows where i can buy one where the seller knows the difference between
BCM94331PCIEBT4CAX
BCM94331PCIEBT4AX
and would actually send me the correct one

View attachment 480213
View attachment 480214

Mine hasn't arrived yet, but I bought it on the same web, so... isn't it the CAX one? Should I expect the same? In the description it says it's compatible with both models, but doesn't specify which one is... Where can we buy the correct one then?

 

[Manic Harmonic]

I'm getting that same feeling, except how are they doing it? Checking smbios for the model identifier? Either way, its an absolute pricks act on apples behalf.

Yep, and considering they were NOT doing that until people discovered this card worked in the 2011 MBP, it's hard for anyone to argue that Apple is not using the "planned obsolescence" approach... Not supporting this feature on a 2011 MBP I understand. It makes sense because the default hardware doesn't support it. However, purposefully whitelisting only Macs that come with the card is a different story. This would be like if you put a genuine Apple SSD in your Mac, but you didn't get TRIM support because your Mac didn't come with an SSD.

I have now decided to share what I did to the kext, for a few reasons...
1. Apple knows exactly what they changed to make it incompatible with our Macs, so you can be sure already they know what was changed to make it work again.
2. I believe in sharing information like this and I think the community deserves to know what is changed in the kext.

Anyway, I'm not some crazy hacker genius or anything, it's a pretty simple hack. In DP3 Apple added a bunch of Mac board id's to AirPortBrcm4360.kext (It's in the Plugins folder in IO80211Family.kext) so that only Macs that came with the card could load the kext. As you can see in the screenshot, I just took the 3 first board id's and changed them to the ones from the 2011 13, 15, and 17 inch MacBook Pro.

(Yeah, I'm up late/early, don't judge me)

So basically, they just did the same thing they did with boot.efi. This is Apple's traditional approach to things like this, they just whitelist the hardware. For example, The TRIM patch simply replaces "Apple SSD" in the kext binary with a bunch of spaces.

 

[alvindarkness]

Yep, and considering they were NOT doing that until people discovered this card worked in the 2011 MBP, it's hard for anyone to argue that Apple is not using the "planned obsolescence" approach... Not supporting this feature on a 2011 MBP I understand. It makes sense because the default hardware doesn't support it. However, purposefully whitelisting only Macs that come with the card is a different story. This would be like if you put a genuine Apple SSD in your Mac, but you didn't get TRIM support because your Mac didn't come with an SSD.

I have now decided to share what I did to the kext, for a few reasons...
1. Apple knows exactly what they changed to make it incompatible with our Macs, so you can be sure already they know what was changed to make it work again.
2. I believe in sharing information like this and I think the community deserves to know what is changed in the kext.

Anyway, I'm not some crazy hacker genius or anything, it's a pretty simple hack. In DP3 Apple added a bunch of Mac board id's to AirPortBrcm4360.kext (It's in the Plugins folder in IO80211Family.kext) so that only Macs that came with the card could load the kext. As you can see in the screenshot, I just took the 3 first board id's and changed them to the ones from the 2011 13, 15, and 17 inch MacBook Pro.
View attachment 480242
(Yeah, I'm up late/early, don't judge me)

So basically, they just did the same thing they did with boot.efi. This is Apple's traditional approach to things like this, they just whitelist the hardware. For example, The TRIM patch simply replaces "Apple SSD" in the kext binary with a bunch of spaces.

Thanks for the info. Quite disappointed by Apple on this one. I for one will protest with my wallet by not upgrading needlesly like I used too (that includes my phones).

They have literally made it more of a pain to have a real mac than a hackintosh. Once my card is installed I can see kext replacements happening after every point update. On a hack I couldve just modified smbios.plist to include a board-id thats accepted and never think again. Its horrible no matter how you look at it.

 

[mikecwest]

I received the bluetooth card today but it has the wrong version number
BCM94331PCIEBT4AX
and the website states
BCM94331PCIEBT4CAX
I got it from there
http://www.os-store.com/broadcom-ap...8-a1286-a1297-661-5867-607-7291-607-8792.html

I filed a PayPal dispute Item not as described, anyone knows where i can buy one where the seller knows the difference between
BCM94331PCIEBT4CAX
BCM94331PCIEBT4AX
and would actually send me the correct one

View attachment 480213
View attachment 480214

I ordered the correct one here:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/200910020950?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649

It says BCM94331PCIEBT4CAX in the title, and shows it in the picture.

as for the OS-Store listing shown earlier in the thread, I mentioned a while back that the one in the picture is not the correct one, in an attempt to warn other buyers. I did not buy from os-store, but the picture on their listing clearly shows without the CAX, it shows a 607-7291 and does not show CAX in the listing.

The link I posted is even three dollars cheaper. I ordered on July 7th and got it (from China) on the 10th.

 

[Manic Harmonic]

Thanks for the info. Quite disappointed by Apple on this one. I for one will protest with my wallet by not upgrading needlesly like I used too (that includes my phones).

They have literally made it more of a pain to have a real mac than a hackintosh. Once my card is installed I can see kext replacements happening after every point update. On a hack I couldve just modified smbios.plist to include a board-id thats accepted and never think again. Its horrible no matter how you look at it.

Fyi I'm using clover bootloader on my mbp so I can use whatever smbios I want, or I can also patch the next on the fly to avoid having to reinstall it every update. The second option is probably the best one. It also allowed me to undervolt my CPU which is pretty cool.

I'll get to work in this and I'll post my clover folder. The only thing I haven't figured out yet is if the battery dies it doesn't dump the ram to the disk like it's supposed to, it just kernel panics. For all I know that could be from the undervolt though. Other than that though it works perfectly.

Protesting with your wallet is great, except that unfortunately Apple never really seems to give a **** about that. A better way to protest theoretically would be to buy a galaxy s*, the iPhone's arch nemesis. Except that they're a pos and there's much better android phones out there.

 

[abcdefg12345]

I ordered the correct one here:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/200910020950?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649

It says BCM94331PCIEBT4CAX in the title, and shows it in the picture.

as for the OS-Store listing shown earlier in the thread, I mentioned a while back that the one in the picture is not the correct one, in an attempt to warn other buyers. I did not buy from os-store, but the picture on their listing clearly shows without the CAX, it shows a 607-7291 and does not show CAX in the listing.

The link I posted is even three dollars cheaper. I ordered on July 7th and got it (from China) on the 10th.

i found this on ebay and it looks like its the right model
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Macbook-Pro-A1278-A1286-A1297-2011-WiFi-BCM94331PCIEBT4C-Airport-Bluetooth-Card/121366146498?_trksid=p2047675.c100011.m1850&_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIC.MBE%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D23930%26meid%3D8243790733257508950%26pid%3D100011%26prg%3D10200%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D10%26sd%3D200910020950
should i buy it

 

[TitsLegendary]

I ordered the correct one here:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/200910020950?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649

It says BCM94331PCIEBT4CAX in the title, and shows it in the picture.

as for the OS-Store listing shown earlier in the thread, I mentioned a while back that the one in the picture is not the correct one, in an attempt to warn other buyers. I did not buy from os-store, but the picture on their listing clearly shows without the CAX, it shows a 607-7291 and does not show CAX in the listing.

The link I posted is even three dollars cheaper. I ordered on July 7th and got it (from China) on the 10th.

That's the same place I bought mine. I ordered mine on the 8th but it hasn't arrived yet. Don't expect if for another couple weeks. Pretty crazy that yours showed up so fast. Did you pay for expedited shipping or something?

Anyway, hoping it shows up as described and not something different. I'll post back when I receive it.

----------

i found this on ebay and it looks like its the right model
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Macbook-Pro-A1278-A1286-A1297-2011-WiFi-BCM94331PCIEBT4C-Airport-Bluetooth-Card/121366146498?_trksid=p2047675.c100011.m1850&_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIC.MBE%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D23930%26meid%3D8243790733257508950%26pid%3D100011%26prg%3D10200%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D10%26sd%3D200910020950
should i buy it

The picture is correct but it doesn't specify anywhere else in the post what model it is. Hard to say whether you should pull the trigger or not.

 

[CYBERMORPHEUS]

Macbookpro7,1 BT4 Continuity Compliance

Ok so the 2011 mbp series are compatible with the chipset of the 2012 mbp bluetooth 4.0 and are are thus cross compatible, right? So, you can get the 2012 bluetooth 4.0 and put it into the 2011 mbp's, some kext hacking, restart and boom, you have handoff continuity on your 2011 mbp, and you some of you guys have actually pulled it off? I have followed through many threads to get to this point - my problem is that I have the macbookpro7,1 mid-2010 series. I just saw the chart that showed the 2011 and 2012 compatibility and the mid-2010 is in the red. So, does that mean I am sunk in the water? I am a mere undergrad in New Mexico and updating to a new mac is not economically feasible for me at this moment in time. I have upgraded my existing hardware as much I could with 16 gb RAM and SSD and a secondary hybrid drive - but continuity is so cool. I receive texts on my computer screen when my iPhone 5 gets them, but I guess thats just because I signed into iCloud with my phone number on the mac.

I found the following os-store.com link from somebody who thought that maybe the 2010 mbp could be possibly upgraded to a bluetooth 4.0 internally. My mbp7,1 is a A1278 - could I just get the following broadcom A1278 set - install it - kext it with a mid-2010 mbp7,1 custom hack - restart - and get my MBP to be continuity compliant?

BroadCom BCM4331 BlueTooth BT+WLAN wireless Card Module for Apple A1278 A1286 A1297 661-5867 607-7291 BCM94331PCIEBT4CAX BCM94331PCIEBT4AX

This hardware set is posted at http://www.os-store.com/broadcom-ap...8-a1286-a1297-661-5867-607-7291-607-8792.html

Or am I way off track? Please, if any one could give me some feedback on the above situation, I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you on any input, ideas, feedback.

 

[CYBERMORPHEUS]

Or could I just get something like the following BCM4331 + bluetooth 4.0 wireless card and put it in the existing compatible broadcom assembly and then put it back into the mac book pro and then the rest of the procedure?

http://www.aliexpress.com/store/pro...wireless-network-card/1186927_1735033845.html