macOS 10.14 Mojave on Unsupported Macs Thread

[Starplayr]

I also have an original NVIDiA graphics card. Came with my eightcore. Will see if it boots up to GUI. It’s not a PC Card. No metal but should work with Apple’s Drivers.

I tried it too on MP3,1 with both AMD HD6870 and nVidia GTX680—same result as you. Preboot goes fine and then second progress bar stalls at 2/3rds, goes to gray screen with cursor for 1 second and then black screen for 10 or 15 seconds and then gray KP screen before going into same endless cycle. However, it can boot to recovery disk with no problem and displays regular DU, Install MacOS, etc., functions of recovery boot. What is the key difference between recovery boot and normal boot? My gut says the the recovery boot has only minimum graphics drivers loaded.

Correct. the Recovery and Install partitions are minimal. They boot fine, USB is fine (on Mac Pro 3,1), I am starting to wonder if its can EFI thing for those boxes because Apple added a bunch of EFI stuff to the supported Macs. Could be a private framework or some other Kext that we haven't been able to find yet. Will see if the GM is more open than the betas.

 

[firelighter487]

I agree. It makes no sense that Apple is so focused on supporting the same older devices on the iOS side, yet on the MacOS side the attitude is screw them all. Even quad-core Macs from 2011 didn't make the cut, which I'm sure surprised a lot of people who did expect Apple to drop some older Mac models.

i bought a Late 2011 15" a few days ago, and i just learned it's about to lose support.. so i completely agree.
[doublepost=1530275304][/doublepost]

iOS: We care about your older devices.

MacOS: Please throw away your MacBook Pro (Late 2011).

What a great company...

i don't want to throw it away. i just bought it a few days ago... thanks apple.

 

[kinetos]

Nope, no risks, i had to do it myself to get Mojave running on the second partition of the iMac...

Thanks dude ! It work !!!

 

[tn-xyz]

i bought a Late 2011 15" a few days ago, and i just learned it's about to lose support.. so i completely agree.
[doublepost=1530275304][/doublepost]
i don't want to throw it away. i just bought it a few days ago... thanks apple.

again?

iOS 12: supports 5-year-old models
macOS 10.14: supports 6-year-old models

why would you have to throw it away?
does it stop working after mojave's release in fall?

besides that: totally off-topic and doesn't contribute to this discussion.

 

[c0c0p0ps]

Start the machine from the USB stick, Open terminal en type:

csrutil disable (only needed if you did not allready disable SIP)
nvram boot-args="kext-dev-mode=1 -no_compat_check"

Reboot machine

Thank you so much for this tip. Worked exactly as you said.

 

[redheeler]

again?

iOS 12: supports 5-year-old models
macOS 10.14: supports 6-year-old models

why would you have to throw it away?
does it stop working after mojave's release in fall?

besides that: totally off-topic and doesn't contribute to this discussion.

iOS 12: Older device support is well above the industry average.
MacOS 10.14: Older device support is well below the industry average.

The reason for this is clear; laptops and desktops have evolved incrementally, while smartphones and tablets were a completely new product category and made huge leaps as a result. The difference is stark: I simply can't imagine how badly an iPad 1 or iPhone 4 would run iOS 12 on 256 / 512 MB RAM and a 32-bit Apple A4 at 800 MHz, while a 2010 iMac with an SSD should be perfectly capable of running MacOS 10.14 at an acceptable pace.

The quad-core Sandy Bridge i7 in my 2011 MacBook Pro can outperform brand new $1,200 MacBooks from Apple, and it cost me a fraction of the price. No other platform that supported this computer originally would be calling it obsolete. To further prove my point, I've already had it running Mojave solidly thanks to the discoveries made by those in this thread.
[doublepost=1530281628][/doublepost]

i bought a Late 2011 15" a few days ago, and i just learned it's about to lose support.. so i completely agree.

I have been running Mojave on my 17" Early 2011 MacBook Pro unsupported. The catch was I had to disable the (somewhat failure-prone) dedicated GPU and only run it on the integrated graphics, which breaks any external displays. But the OS is stable, fully functional (including the dark mode and UIKit apps), and acceleration is working.

 

[tn-xyz]

iOS 12: Older device support is well above the industry average.
MacOS 10.14: Older device support is well below the industry average.

The reason for this is clear; laptops and desktops have evolved incrementally, while smartphones and tablets were a completely new product category and made huge leaps as a result. The difference is stark: I simply can't imagine how badly an iPad 1 or iPhone 4 would run iOS 12 on 256 / 512 MB RAM and a 32-bit Apple A4 at 800 MHz, while a 2010 iMac with an SSD should be perfectly capable of running MacOS 10.14 at an acceptable pace.

The quad-core Sandy Bridge i7 in my 2011 MacBook Pro can outperform brand new $1,200 MacBooks from Apple, and it cost me a fraction of the price. No other platform that supported this computer originally would be calling it obsolete. To further prove my point, I've already had it running Mojave solidly thanks to the discoveries made by those in this thread.
[doublepost=1530281628][/doublepost]
I have been running Mojave on my 17" Early 2011 MacBook Pro unsupported. The catch was I had to disable the (somewhat failure-prone) dedicated GPU and only run it on the integrated graphics, which breaks any external displays. But the OS is stable, fully functional (including the dark mode and UIKit apps), and acceleration is working.

my last words on this, because it's a completely different topic and doesn't belong here.

just because something runs doesn't mean it runs as intended or well (see this topic).
same goes for any other OS, mobile or desktop, independent from the company.
and as you implied regarding iOS: they take precautions. because i know very well, how apple literally destroyed the iPhone 4S and iPad Mini 1 with iOS 9. the performance is a mess and there's no going back.

my MBP6,2 runs on mojave too. does it run well? no.
is it because of the beta phase (which it was excluded from intentionally)?
i don't know yet and we will see.

the (business) premise apple has set is modern technology and with mojave, it's the GPU.

 

[Starplayr]

i bought a Late 2011 15" a few days ago, and i just learned it's about to lose support.. so i completely agree.
[doublepost=1530275304][/doublepost]
i don't want to throw it away. i just bought it a few days ago... thanks apple.

I totally agree and feel your pain. Even supported models like the 2012 Mac mini does not have that good a video card.

This is were Windows 10 is winning. MicroSoft now makes 1 version is Windows 10 Pro / Home which ever flavor you desire, and when they update, you get the updates and it does an awesome job installing most drivers or at least getting you 90% there out of the box. And you don't have to worry each year that your box is gonna get cutoff. I don't know how far back MS is going but it is clearly farther than Apple.

Microsoft basically makes 1 version of Windows for nearly all Intel machines for nearly 2 decades.

My Mac Pro 3,1 runs circles around my Mac mini. Great hardware even with the slower bus speed and RAM. I have over 3TB of SSD space. over 8TB of Hard disk space. Not the fastest SATA but you can use RAID0 and double, triple or quadruple your drive speed. Lots of RAM. yes slower, but my machine can do 64GB RAM (supported) and Mac Book Pro from work and my Mac mini can only do 16GB Supported.

I just wish Apple would say if HS is supported then Mojave is supported. I am hoping the final release will indicate this. I really don't want to toss my two 2008 Mac Pros (yet).

And if I have to, I will sell 1 and get a Mac Pro 2009/2010/2012 as 90% of my stuff will fit right in. But I think it can be patched. Still hope.

Another route is digging deep into QEMU with KVM. I've read that it runs great. It does have a learning curve, but it can run Mojave. And you could do it under High Sierra or Linux and get near native speeds under the correct mode and drivers. No idea through if it can emulate missing instructions though. It does have different modes. I really wish there was a decent GUI for it. I know there is a Mac Open Firmware for it.

 

[0403979]

I'm not making any progress on my own anyways, so might as well take the time to give some detailed instructions so more people can hopefully work on this. (To @dosdude1 and others, sorry for the spam. But we might as well get everyone onto the same page in terms of basic patching/installation, right? )

- Inside the InstallESD disk image, there's a Packages folder. Copy that somewhere, like your Desktop.
- In Terminal, cd to the folder and:
pkgutil --expand OSInstall.mpkg Expanded
- Find the file Distribution and open it in a text editor
- Find the function installationCheck() and edit the JS code in it to just return true; at the beginning.
- pkgutil --flatten Expanded Patched.mpkg
- In Disk Utility, make a partition for Mojave
- Open the file Patched.mpkg in Installer.app
- Install it to the Mojave partition
- Once it installs, open up that partition and copy /Volumes/[Mojave Volume]/usr/standalone/i386/boot.efi to /Volumes/[Mojave Volume]/System/Library/CoreServices (still not sure exactly why you have to do this, but it won't show up in startup manager unless you do)
- Edit the file /Volumes/[Mojave Volume]/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist and change Kernel Flags to -v -no_compat_check keepsyms=1
- Copy the IOUSBHostFamily.kext from High Sierra to the partition
- Run these terminal commands to fix permissions:
sudo chmod -R 755 /Volumes/[Mojave Volume]/System/Library/Extensions
sudo chown -R root:wheel /Volumes/[Mojave Volume]/System/Library/Extensions
- Disable rootless
- Boot from the Mojave volume. It'll rebuild the prelinkedkernel automatically and then reboot again.
- Boot from it again. Now you'll be able to move the mouse cursor for 1 second before it panics, yayyy...
[doublepost=1530204604][/doublepost]

There's a 2 week free trial

Followed steps and opened the package but I can't select an install volume. They're all greyed out?

 

[redheeler]

my last words on this, because it's a completely different topic and doesn't belong here.

just because something runs doesn't mean it runs as intended or well (see this topic).
same goes for any other OS, mobile or desktop, independent from the company.
and as you implied regarding iOS: they take precautions. because i know very well, how apple literally destroyed the iPhone 4S and iPad Mini 1 with iOS 9. the performance is a mess and there's no going back.

my MBP6,2 runs on mojave too. does it run well? no.
is it because of the beta phase (which it was excluded from intentionally)?
i don't know yet and we will see.

the (business) premise apple has set is modern technology and with mojave, it's the GPU.

Supporting new technology doesn't have to come at the cost of dropping support for older technology. Mojave is actually a good example of this; although Apple claims the OS requires Metal, it actually still contains the necessary code and frameworks for OpenGL and OpenCL support, even updated from the versions found in High Sierra.

There's a financial incentive for Apple to force users of older hardware to upgrade, and excuses like 32-bit EFI, Metal, or even just a 7 year cutoff work well. In reality, supporting these things would not cripple Apple's ability to also allow MacOS to fully take advantage of newer hardware and technology.

I haven't tried Mojave on a 2010 MacBook Pro 6,2, but my 2011 MacBook Pro 8,3 does run Mojave well, or at least as well as you can expect for a beta.

 

[0403979]

This might be a crazy idea but what if we simply replace KEXT by KEXT in a Mojave installation with ones from High Sierra until we get it to boot a Core 2 Duo Mac?

 

[parrotgeek1]

This might be a crazy idea but what if we simply replace KEXT by KEXT in a Mojave installation with ones from High Sierra until we get it to boot a Core 2 Duo Mac?

There are hundreds of them...

 

[0403979]

There are hundreds of them...

I know. But we could get it done.

 

[ASentientBot]

Followed steps and opened the package but I can't select an install volume. They're all greyed out?

I've noticed that happening sometimes but I was lucky enough that my "Mojave" partition got selected by default and I could still press "Continue". Try unmounting every disk but the one you want to install to (and your boot disk of course) and see if that works? I'm going to look at the Distribution file and see if I can fix this but in the meantime that worked for me

 

[iphone2g&3gfan]

Long time reader of this thread, first time poster...

First of all, @dosdude1 & @parrotgeek1 you guys rock! really big thanks for doing this for the community! (where is the donate button?? )

i tried to install mojave on my 2011 27 inch iMac and it worked quite well, i did not encounter any major grafic problems and the install was smooth... Except for 1 thing i do not have the possibility to use wifi, for some reason the card is not supported i guess? is there an easy fix for that? (iMac specs are in the pic)

Copy AirportAtheros40.kext from High Sierra IO80211Family.kext/Contents/Plugins into the Mojave IO80211Family.kext/Contents/Plugins

 

[parrotgeek1]

Copy AirportAtheros40.kext from High Sierra IO80211Family.kext/Contents/Plugins into the Mojave IO80211Family.kext/Contents/Plugins

You don't actually need to put it inside the kext. Just install it with kext utility. That way updates won't mess with it either

 

[iphone2g&3gfan]

I totally agree and feel your pain. Even supported models like the 2012 Mac mini does not have that good a video card.

This is were Windows 10 is winning. MicroSoft now makes 1 version is Windows 10 Pro / Home which ever flavor you desire, and when they update, you get the updates and it does an awesome job installing most drivers or at least getting you 90% there out of the box. And you don't have to worry each year that your box is gonna get cutoff. I don't know how far back MS is going but it is clearly farther than Apple.

Microsoft basically makes 1 version of Windows for nearly all Intel machines for nearly 2 decades.

My Mac Pro 3,1 runs circles around my Mac mini. Great hardware even with the slower bus speed and RAM. I have over 3TB of SSD space. over 8TB of Hard disk space. Not the fastest SATA but you can use RAID0 and double, triple or quadruple your drive speed. Lots of RAM. yes slower, but my machine can do 64GB RAM (supported) and Mac Book Pro from work and my Mac mini can only do 16GB Supported.

I just wish Apple would say if HS is supported then Mojave is supported. I am hoping the final release will indicate this. I really don't want to toss my two 2008 Mac Pros (yet).

And if I have to, I will sell 1 and get a Mac Pro 2009/2010/2012 as 90% of my stuff will fit right in. But I think it can be patched. Still hope.

Another route is digging deep into QEMU with KVM. I've read that it runs great. It does have a learning curve, but it can run Mojave. And you could do it under High Sierra or Linux and get near native speeds under the correct mode and drivers. No idea through if it can emulate missing instructions though. It has have different modes. I really wish there was a decent GUI for it. I know there is a Mac Open Firmware for it.

On qemu: I have used it to run High Sierra, and I believe that even WITH KVM ON, it can trap instructions the physical cpu DOESNT have and it can emulate them.

On Windows 10: You can praise it, your opinion, but it does an awful job with telemetry and microsoft has admitted multiple times they will collect data at whatever cost to you. MS developers also reveal MS pressures them into new features, while never cleaning up old ones, a total disaster for reliability.

Someone earlier made a pentium 4 support argument for windows 10, I happen to have a Pentium 4 LGA775 in a Dell Dimension 8400 with the STOCK 512mb of ram, not even remotely possible. Lubuntu is on it and it works perfectly, with an ATI Radeon x1550 and open source drivers (mesa 18.2.0-git, xserver-xorg-video-radeon) that are well supported and up to date + the latest linux kernel. (the official 'catalyst' drivers were discontinued with Windows 7 + those radeon X1000 series drivers also support the 2006 imacs with the X1300 and X1600, fyi)

That pentium 4 came out in 2005, and so it is less than one and a half decades of real support. I absolutely admit I do not like Microsoft, and I don't run a single copy of Windows, even if I could and it would support my hardware better (think wifi cards without drivers on linux, if they don't have drivers for linux or at least non-open source ones, I will replace the wifi card, the proprietary ones aren't as good anyways, a typical tell-tale sign that open source drivers aren't available)

Just my one opinion on this, I have seen many being flown around and this will be my first and only one, I promise. Now let's focus on our shared goal of Mojave...

 

[DaniloGeekDude]

Mojave on a separate partition/volume in an internal SSD drive on an unsupported MBAir 13" mid 2011 (MacbookAir4,2)

View attachment 768056

Thanks to @dosdude1's patcher app, I was able to install Mojave Public Beta 1.
Internal SSD drive has 2 partitions:

1. High Sierra 10.13.5 GM
2. Mojave Beta 10.14

Much better performance when I had Mojave on an external SSD and USB.
So far, no outstanding issues on graphics and sound. Testing on-going.

FYI.

Nice!

When you created a new partition on your internal drive, did you create by "new partition or new volume". I can only do the latter for my formatted APFS drive.

Thanks.
[doublepost=1530296354][/doublepost]I'm ready for the new or updated Developer Beta and/or Public Beta.
Testing so far has been great. You guys have any idea or prediction when either one comes out?

Thanks.

 

[Larsvonhier]

I know. But we could get it done.

I fear that won't work due to the inter-dependencies between kexts, bundles, plugins and the kernel, but hey, who am I to demotivate here? Go on & try... ;-)

 

[ASentientBot]

Followed steps and opened the package but I can't select an install volume. They're all greyed out?

With some further trial-and-error, it seems like removing installsOS="true" from the Distribution file allows for volume selection. I'm not sure if it has any other side effects though. I'm trying an install now.

Edit: It installed with no issues. If you're installing with this method and have the same problem, try this!

 

[0403979]

With some further trial-and-error, it seems like removing installsOS="true" from the Distribution file allows for volume selection. I'm not sure if it has any other side effects though. I'm trying an install now.

Weird.
[doublepost=1530300557][/doublepost]

With some further trial-and-error, it seems like removing installsOS="true" from the Distribution file allows for volume selection. I'm not sure if it has any other side effects though. I'm trying an install now.

Edit: It installed with no issues. If you're installing with this method and have the same problem, try this!

I think it’s a flag that tells the system that it’s on operating system installer volume selection is handled by the installer app and the package installer only needs to get input from the installer app and auto select the volume.

 

[PrimDuckling534]

Can't wait to try this on an unsupported mac!
[doublepost=1530300916][/doublepost]Still rocking a late 2009 white MacBook

 

[ASentientBot]

Can't wait to try this on an unsupported mac!
[doublepost=1530300916][/doublepost]Still rocking a late 2009 white MacBook

In case you missed it, the patcher won't work on Core 2 Duo Macs yet. That includes your 2009 and my 2010 MacBooks. It will panic before it gets to the desktop.

 

[PrimDuckling534]

I was just asking if it would come in the future. The other post was a test.

 

[firelighter487]

i accidentally followed this thread and i think i need to reply something to turn off the notifications, so sorry for wasting your time reading this...