macOS 10.14 Mojave on Unsupported Macs Thread

[0403979]

P

@0403979
Tried your patcher today on a 10.14.4 b5 machine, using the 14.3.3 install image.
Same error here as already reported earlier, logging:

Patched graphics driver.
Patching installer package...
sed: 1: "s/nonSupportedModels.in ...": unterminated substitute pattern
Patched installer package.
Patching input drivers...
Patched input drivers.
Disabling System Integrity Protection...
Disabled System Integrity Protection.
Patching kernel exstension cache...
Patched kernel exstension cache.
Removing platform support check...
Removed platform support check.
Copying patcher utlities...
Copied patcher utlities.
Removing temporary files...
Removed temporary files.

I´ve tried the resulting install volume on three MacBooks:
- MacBook Air 4,1 -> boots perfectly
- MacBook 5,2 -> boots, but at install GUI you cannot move mouse (only up/down, not sideways)
- MacBook 4,1 -> fails to boot, USB gets detached after initial sequence leading to the already known garbled screen

I’m not sure what to do about the 5,2 issue. I’m using the same kexts as dosdude1. Anyway, the 4,1 prelinked would be have to be a separate file to prevent conflicts and would have to be invoked with an argument or something to the lack of model check when making a drive. I also can’t make one for every version so the 4,1 would only be able to support Mojave.

 

[jackluke]

P

I’m not sure what to do about the 5,2 issue. I’m using the same kexts as dosdude1. Anyway, the 4,1 prelinked would be have to be a separate file to prevent conflicts and would have to be invoked with an argument or something to the lack of model check when making a drive. I also can’t make one for every version so the 4,1 would only be able to support Mojave.

I already mentioned before, but I will try to be more clear, I don't have a machine MB4,1 as @Larsvonhier but for challenge I have used his dropbox's prelinkedkernel (18,4 MB) built over 10.14.4 b3 or b4, trying on different machines "mid 2010" and "early 2011".

I have replaced the one inside my 10.14.2 Mojave USB Installer (the dosdude1's prelinkedkernel about 23,1 MB), well, during verbose mode, even if I get some refused kexts, they are not relevant, so without them is possible to reach the GUI Mode for Installing OSX, so I'd would say the MB4,1 prelinkedkernel is barely compatible with different machines.

Then of course during an "universalized Post-Install" some patches should be differentiated, for example the USB kexts, since for MB4,1 have been used the OSXHackers "very legacy" Kexts, while the GPU's ones "GMAX3100" (and other possible very legacy GPUs) it's a separated video card and don't affect in any manner the IntelHDs, Nvidias and ATIs ones, even the Wifi and BT kext used for MB4,1 are still good for other machines 2010/2011.

 

[0403979]

I already mentioned before, but I will try to be more clear, I don't have a machine MB4,1 as @Larsvonhier but for challenge I have used his dropbox's prelinkedkernel (18,4 MB) built over 10.14.4 b3 or b4, trying on different machines "mid 2010" and "early 2011".

I have replaced the one inside my 10.14.2 Mojave USB Installer (the dosdude1's prelinkedkernel about 23,1 MB), well, during verbose mode, even if I get some refused kexts, they are not relevant, so without them is possible to reach the GUI Mode for Installing OSX, so I'd would say the MB4,1 prelinkedkernel is barely compatible with different machines.

Then of course during an "universalized Post-Install" some patches should be differentiated, for example the USB kexts, since for MB4,1 have been used the OSXHackers "very legacy" Kexts, while the GPU's ones "GMAX3100" (and other possible very legacy GPUs) it's a separated video card and don't affect in any manner the IntelHDs, Nvidias and ATIs ones, even the Wifi and BT kext used for MB4,1 are still good for other machines 2010/2011.

I wouldn’t want to include a prelinkedkernel with so many replaced kexts on all devices. I could make one for the 4,1 individually but then we have the selection problem. I don’t have a 4,1 rn for testing so I’d have to get @Larsvonhier to test it.

 

[jackluke]

I wouldn’t want to include a prelinkedkernel with so many replaced kexts on all devices. I could make one for the 4,1 individually but then we have the selection problem. I don’t have a 4,1 rn for testing so I’d have to get @Larsvonhier to test it.

But if they are only the *USB* kexts, then you could make two separates packages for them, from my test (I don't have MB4,1 too) it seems that even with some refused kext, the 18,4 MB prelinkedkernel allows different machines to reach the GUI Mode to Install OSX, and from there Wifi, Terminal, DiskUtility are working good, I've tested.

 

[0403979]

But if they are only the *USB* kexts, then you could make two separates packages for them, from my test (I don't have MB4,1 too) it seems that even with some refused kext, the 18,4 MB prelinkedkernel allows different machines to reach the GUI Mode to Install OSX, and from there Wifi, Terminal, DiskUtility are working good, I've tested.

If I have to replace those kexts in the prelinkedkernel then I might cause issue with newer devices. Either way, I can’t make one for older macOS versions.

 

[NeonBlack]

Hey guys

Been lurking this thread for many months now, but haven't had a reason to comment yet since I've only just finished repairing my old iMac 27" Late 2009 (iMac 11,1 - 2.8GHz core i7 - ATI HD 4850 - 8GB RAM - SSD).

I've been running Mojave 10.4.3 for about a week now and everything has been mostly buttery smooth (even managed to fix the light theme rendering with MiraMira's UI tweaks on Github). However, recently one, small, yet annoying over time, issue has been plaguing my machine: a few hours after booting the graphics/animations seem to take a serious hit. In short: it seems like the overall system refresh rate drops from 60hz to something around or below 30hz. I don't know how to trigger it manually, as it just seems to happen over time, but the only 'workaround' I've found so far is simply rebooting the computer.

Does anyone have a clue on what could be causing this? I know the ATI HD 4850 isn't Metal-compatible, but apart from this small issue the legacy graphics acceleration patch has been godsend for me - when everything is working as it should, animations and graphics performance are even smoother than on my 2015 13" rMBP - so for me at least, it seems like this machine could keep going for many years!

I have that same machine, with an SSD as well, and I never experienced such issue.

The only problem I had was the death of the GPU a couple of years ago. I revived it with the oven trick (you can find some tutorial on YouTube).

 

[Sveto]

No Nvidia cards in either my iMac or MacBook Pro - all AMD.

The moral of the story, following the Apple hype we have been paying for overpriced, defective products, which did not even get a pseudo compensation of a prolonged software support by Apple. Good, that I am fully awake from this nightmare dream, and I feel sorry for those, who keep dreaming it with a sheepish devotion.

 

[Navigator98]

I have that same machine, with an SSD as well, and I never experienced such issue.

The only problem I had was the death of the GPU a couple of years ago. I revived it with the oven trick (you can find some tutorial on YouTube).

My GPU can't be the problem - that was one of the parts I just replaced haha. But thank you regardless!

Anyway, it seems like I've discovered the culprit! It appears Night Shift is causing the lag - the minute I disabled it my animations and mouse movements were snappy as ever again!

Thus, in a more general context: is anyone else experiencing lag with Night Shift enabled, especially on a similar iMac 11,1?

Anyway, guess I'll be back to using f.lux for now until we can figure out a fix for Night Shift

UPDATE: seems like kernel_task is using over 50% CPU when Night Shift is activated. I'm starting to fear the reason why Apple didn't release Night Shift for this iMac was indeed based on hardware requirements.

A workaround is to set your Night Shift schedule to 'Custom' instead of Sunset to Sunrise, as it appears that the slow 'dynamic' transitions are the root cause of this high CPU usage (and as a consequence, the UI lag).

 

[Larsvonhier]

@Sveto
Wrong forum. (We don't feed trolls here).

 

[Sveto]

Snow Leopard was a great OSX, capable to run all the core processes and frameworks with less than half 1 Gb Ram, last "PowerPC apps" capable with Rosetta, had a media center FrontRow playable totally with apple IR remote, supporting kernel on both i386 and x64 architectures, a very agile OSX, I still keep a copy where I can on a very small partition (it fits even on 5 GB disk space) on my macs.

edit:
About the hi-res videos, I guess that Mojave in its stock Quicktime libraries has something hybrid related to Metal and residual OpenGL acceleration, so that's why rendering playback results choppy.

Also throughout the years Apple was dedicated to adding junk features and pseudo optimizations to the system, instead of actually upgrading the drivers and their rendering/encoding-decoding capabilities. Be it the drivers for MacOS, or those provided for Windows, they received only initial version 1.0, which made things work more or less presentable and that was it. The hardware was forgotten in the dust! Intel, for their integrated graphics, same as Nvidia and ATi release new updates pretty much every single month. Now make a wild guess how many of those optimizations have found their way into the hardware Apple was supposed to maintain? Zippo! If it wouldn't have been for the constantly increased horsepower of the hardware, we would have been stuck in 2019 with a choppy 1080p on a brand new mac.
[doublepost=1552512794][/doublepost]

@Sveto
Wrong forum. (We don't feed trolls here).

Don't confuse truth with trolling. If you lift your thumb in the sky and hide the sun, that wouldn't mean the sun has suddenly disappeared. Fake news and trolling are just 2 of the instruments used for mass manipulation. That is how breaksit was made possible and how Trump was elected. Apple has been doing precisely the same with the help of other instruments. For example they sold yesterday's trash in an expensive, flashy package by applying advertising techniques aimed at projecting into the minds of the potential buyers, a feeling of exclusivity, perfection, youthfulness and sexiness. A classic case of manipulation.

 

[iLoveiTunes]

Upgraded my MacMini 5,2 (mid-2011) using latest patcher but have been experiencing poor performance ... Initially, I thought it was the Slower HD and RAM problem so upgraded to 500GB EVO 960 SSD and 16GB RAM. Still the slowness is unbearable. I am thinking of downgrading back to High Sierra but wanted to check with the experts here if there was a easier fix for this. I know the Radeon HD 6630M is not Metal supported but reading some comments here I feel there are folks who are not experiencing the same performance bottlenecks as I am (slow boot, slow opening of apps). Fan is working fine, TRIM was enabled using terminal command and it was a fresh install followed by Data copy using migration assistant. No 32 bit Apps and AntiVirus either

@dosdude1 Help please

thank you

 

[dosdude1]

Upgraded my MacMini 5,2 (mid-2011) using latest patcher but have been experiencing poor performance ... Initially, I thought it was the Slower HD and RAM problem so upgraded to 500GB EVO 960 SSD and 16GB RAM. Still the slowness is unbearable. I am thinking of downgrading back to High Sierra but wanted to check with the experts here if there was a easier fix for this. I know the Radeon HD 6630M is not Metal supported but reading some comments here I feel there are folks who are not experiencing the same performance bottlenecks as I am (slow boot, slow opening of apps). Fan is working fine, TRIM was enabled using terminal command and it was a fresh install followed by Data copy using migration assistant. No 32 bit Apps and AntiVirus either

@dosdude1 Help please

thank you

It's the GPU causing your performance issues, unfortunately, and there is no way to get acceleration working under Mojave with that card. My best recommendation would be to just install High Sierra.

 

[iLoveiTunes]

It's the GPU causing your performance issues, unfortunately, and there is no way to get acceleration working under Mojave with that card. My best recommendation would be to just install High Sierra.

Thank you for the prompt response. Back to High Sierra I go.

btw, I upgraded my wife's 11-inch Air last weekend to Mojave recently all thanks to your great work.

 

[ASentientBot]

I wonder what happened to our friend @iphone2g&3gfan? He was a core member of this thread at first but hasn't been online for over 6 months.

 

[ford.tonthat]

I applied @pkouame's vibrancy patch, on other apps the menubars have no anomalies at all but on the News app menubar, it is ugly, grey and dark on light mode. Any workaround for this?

 

[Larsvonhier]

I applied @pkouame's vibrancy patch, on other apps the menubars have no anomalies at all but on the News app menubar, it is ugly, grey and dark on light mode. Any workaround for this? View attachment 826271

Do the other "iOS" framework Apps behave the same? Pls. check Stocks and Home to see if they display that ugly dark grey as well... might be framework-related then.

 

[olad]

I wonder what happened to our friend @iphone2g&3gfan? He was a core member of this thread at first but hasn't been online for over 6 months.

It's nice when someone looks out for another. Sure this forum is for unsupported Macs, but... Many thanks to @ASentientBot. I hope @iphone2g&3gfan is doing OK wherever the person is.

 

[0403979]

If I have to replace those kexts in the prelinkedkernel then I might cause issue with newer devices. Either way, I can’t make one for older macOS versions.

@Larsvonhier read this discussion. It concerns you.
[doublepost=1552560329][/doublepost]

Also throughout the years Apple was dedicated to adding junk features and pseudo optimizations to the system, instead of actually upgrading the drivers and their rendering/encoding-decoding capabilities. Be it the drivers for MacOS, or those provided for Windows, they received only initial version 1.0, which made things work more or less presentable and that was it. The hardware was forgotten in the dust! Intel, for their integrated graphics, same as Nvidia and ATi release new updates pretty much every single month. Now make a wild guess how many of those optimizations have found their way into the hardware Apple was supposed to maintain? Zippo! If it wouldn't have been for the constantly increased horsepower of the hardware, we would have been stuck in 2019 with a choppy 1080p on a brand new mac.
[doublepost=1552512794][/doublepost]
Don't confuse truth with trolling. If you lift your thumb in the sky and hide the sun, that wouldn't mean the sun has suddenly disappeared. Fake news and trolling are just 2 of the instruments used for mass manipulation. That is how breaksit was made possible and how Trump was elected. Apple has been doing precisely the same with the help of other instruments. For example they sold yesterday's trash in an expensive, flashy package by applying advertising techniques aimed at projecting into the minds of the potential buyers, a feeling of exclusivity, perfection, youthfulness and sexiness. A classic case of manipulation.

I agree with a lot of your points but as @ASentientBot said, this isn’t the best thread for it.

Spoiler

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brexit

 

[ford.tonthat]

Do the other "iOS" framework Apps behave the same? Pls. check Stocks and Home to see if they display that ugly dark grey as well... might be framework-related then.

Stocks also has that dark ugly grey. Just the 3 ios apps behaves like that.

 

[Larsvonhier]

While claiming that Apple somehow optimised things under the hood and that this shows especially on semi-accelerated non OpenGL-supported systems (like the intel x3100), I understand that you won't believe it without proof. So here we go.
Shown first and last in the clip: Mojave on x3100 (MB4,1) vs. Yosemite on x3100 (MBAir1,1) in the middle part of the clip.
Example here is iTunes (current version on both machines).

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1953101251425553

[doublepost=1552573159][/doublepost]@0403979
I´m aware of your concerns of having multiple prelinked kernels. Just don't see how we could completely avoid it. Imho, it would not be necessary to cover all macOS releases, but to look forward and cover the current and future 10.14.x (let's see how the game changes with 10.15 anyway).
I found that the patched installer works fine on MB4,1 (after injecting the right kernel) and on MB5,2 and on MB Air 4,1.
So it could actually be that if you find the minimum configuration (for MB4,1) it might work on all newer systems as well. I can test on a couple more machines here. The issue remains though that the installation script itself (on the USB installer volume) will have to supply different configurations for the target platforms. That's what represents the main work to be done, I´d guess...

 

[tokiacop]

Hello! I installed Mojave on my Macbook Pro Late 2008 with Mojave Patcher and everything goes perfect! Anyone knows how to " echo off " the commands and patches of the EFI SHELL SCRIPT that's shows up every time i turn on my mac ?

Regards

 

[timidpimpin]

I've had Mojave running on my late 2009 Mac Mini for about a week now. Before Mojave it ran El Capitan, and the performance is just as good, or maybe even slightly better on Mojave. I'm very very pleased all round.

 

[visberry]

Regarding the News app in macOS Mojave (10.14.3) – mine hasn't been working since the initial Mojave release, any suggestions?

 

[DaniloGeekDude]

I have a iMac 9,1 Nvidia 9400 gnu which one should I delete out via the terminal and what is the terminal command to delete the bundle thank you

Sorry, I just saw this.
Not sure what comparative GLDriver file on your model that needs deletion.
Hope you were able to resolve with the suggestions from other folks on this thread.

 

[jhowarth]

Regarding the News app in macOS Mojave (10.14.3) – mine hasn't been working since the initial Mojave release, any suggestions?

Never had a problem here. Have you been upgrading by re-rolling your Mojave patched usb full installer or have you been trying to do software updates? I really wouldn't trust those as the firmware updates cause premature failures.