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ojfl

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 6, 2015
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33
I find it interesting that Apple does not support macOS Sierra on our old Mac Pro 3,1 and yet the virtual machines running El Capitan inside of it in Parallels can be upgraded to Sierra seemingly with no problem. Seems not too intuitive the lack of support.
 

monkeybagel

macrumors 65816
Jul 24, 2011
1,142
61
United States
I find it interesting that Apple does not support macOS Sierra on our old Mac Pro 3,1 and yet the virtual machines running El Capitan inside of it in Parallels can be upgraded to Sierra seemingly with no problem. Seems not too intuitive the lack of support.

Virtual Machines can offer features that the physical hardware does not. For example, boot an EFI operating system on hardware that only supports BIOS booting. It should not be surprising that macOS can run in a VM, as the OS sees the hardware presented by the hypervisor, and not the physical hardware.
 
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ojfl

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 6, 2015
71
33
Virtual Machines can offer features that the physical hardware does not. For example, boot an EFI operating system on hardware that only supports BIOS booting. It should not be surprising that macOS can run in a VM, as the OS sees the hardware presented by the hypervisor, and not the physical hardware.

But that does not apply to Macs as all Intel Macs support EFI. One still has to wonder what features are virtualized by Parallels that are not present on the actual Mac Pro 3,1 hardware.
 

chrfr

macrumors G5
Jul 11, 2009
13,729
7,306
I find it interesting that Apple does not support macOS Sierra on our old Mac Pro 3,1 and yet the virtual machines running El Capitan inside of it in Parallels can be upgraded to Sierra seemingly with no problem. Seems not too intuitive the lack of support.
If you delete one system file– the one which tells the OS which systems it's allowed to boot– a 3,1 runs Sierra just fine, without Wifi support.
 
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ojfl

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 6, 2015
71
33
If you delete one system file– the one which tells the OS which systems it's allowed to boot– a 3,1 runs Sierra just fine, without Wifi support.

I think that with a small upgrade from OSXWIFI it may be even possible to get WiFi working.
 

blindpcguy

macrumors 6502
Mar 4, 2016
422
93
Bald Knob Arkansas
or just use ethernet its a way better interface anyways lol. if you need wifi though defiantly consider a wifi card upgrade. its such a shame apple changed the supported macs list this year.
 
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ojfl

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 6, 2015
71
33
or just use ethernet its a way better interface anyways lol. if you need wifi though defiantly consider a wifi card upgrade. its such a shame apple changed the supported macs list this year.

Ours is connected through ethernet already but we will consider the upgrade to get continuity/handoff working properly.
 

monkeybagel

macrumors 65816
Jul 24, 2011
1,142
61
United States
But that does not apply to Macs as all Intel Macs support EFI. One still has to wonder what features are virtualized by Parallels that are not present on the actual Mac Pro 3,1 hardware.

I think the expectations of performance in OS X when it is virtualized is much lower than OS X running on actual hardware. I haven't really had a need to virtualize OS X, but I do recall when doing so, the more advanced animations perform poorly even on higher-end hardware, such as opening Launchpad.
 
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netkas

macrumors 65816
Oct 2, 2007
1,198
394
Technical side: installer and macos checks for being run inside VM, if it's running inside vm then there is no restrictions about mac model/version.
 
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Ben888

macrumors member
Jul 23, 2017
56
12
Newberg, Oregon
Most likely, or just install a wifi card from a newer Mac Pro.

Or use a Mac compatible USB WiFi stick. I do on my Mac Pro 3,1 and it works well. I would use Ethernet, but my computer is pretty far from my cable modem, and I hate tripping over cables.
 
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