Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
macOS 11 Big Sur on Unsupported Macs Thread
- Thread starter dosdude1
- WikiPost WikiPost
- Start date
-
- Tags
- 10.16 macos unsupported
- Sort by reaction score
- Status
check out Barry's patcher info for pre-2010 models.
GitHub - barrykn/big-sur-micropatcher: A primitive USB patcher for installing macOS Big Sur on unsupported Macs
A primitive USB patcher for installing macOS Big Sur on unsupported Macs - barrykn/big-sur-micropatcher
github.com
I've had reports of boot loops with those MacBooks. I'm not sure how supported they would be if they could boot though. No graphics acceleration though, so it's not going to be fast.
It's probably easiest to boot into Recovery mode using a USB installer stick, if getting to the BS one doesn't work with Cmd+R (mine never works because I've got 5 OS's installed, so maybe the mac boot screen firmware has a meltdown knowing which one to select!).
I still get the 'Error: -69863: Insufficient privileges' message while trying to delete snapshots. I can delete all but the most recent one - which always gives the error message on my cMP 2010.
I've ended up living with snapshot booting and with not being able to mount the BS System volume in BS. If I need to swap over or add a file to any BS system folders, I do it in Mojave, then boot into Recovery, mount the BS System volume as read-write and run (NB. change 11.0 to whatever your BS is called):
kmutil install --volume-root /Volumes/11.0 --update-all --force
/Volumes/11.0/usr/sbin/kcditto
bless --folder /Volumes/11.0/System/Library/CoreServices --bootefi --create-snapshot
reboot
The above commands seem to update the BS PreBoot volume and kext collections with the chances made in Mojave and start BS off from a fresh snapshot including the changes. The '--force' is recognised as a more-or-less deprecated command but I've found that my Mojave changes don't stick unless I keep typing this in.
You continue to use your laptop; but you've been served notice that the battery doesn't hold as much charge as it used to. So, sometime in the future (when it holds very little charge), you may want to replace it. If you really want the notice to go away, put in a new battery.
My imac display crashed suddenly after going though all the good things . Suddenly the screen flickered, then starting black and white, then got horizontal lines and then no movement nothing.Edited.
After few hours same issue. I think my display card or the display itself is causing issue. damn.
Attachments
Last edited:
Hi All,
Many thanks for all the useful posts and work done for the unsupported macs.
Apologies if its a stupid question
I have managed to install big sur on my late 2012 MBP pro but i am unable to find the "post install" app on my machine or the hard drive i used to install the OS. where can i find it?
Many thanks for all the useful posts and work done for the unsupported macs.
Apologies if its a stupid question
I have managed to install big sur on my late 2012 MBP pro but i am unable to find the "post install" app on my machine or the hard drive i used to install the OS. where can i find it?
I would start to read the docs came with the particular patcher you used to get there. And take a look at post #1 of this thread. There is no post install app as you know it from the past....
off topic
Have you checked the title of this thread? Your machine seems to be supported, it is your decision.
Thanks you!off topic
Your machine seems to be supported, it is your decision.
Same issue with the 27gb of space during the installation. I actually have over 100GB after moving my Parallels image to an external disk, just to be sure. How did you manage the TM snapshots? Did you just turn TM off and wait a bit?
Try https://www.mariogt.com/space-saver.html to delete your TM snapshots
Had the same issue with BS betas 9 and 10, I wrote to Apple Support to ensure that this warning didn't involve any safety issues, they confirmed that the battery capacity and performance were decreased, but it was ok to continue to use it. They suggested to run Apple Diagnostic (in my case Apple Hardware Test) but is not working anymore on my mac since installing BS (i didn't keep a partition with Catalina).
Coconut battery was not showing any issues (battery status: good) but as you can see the my battery had the 81.2% of its original capacity (alt+click on battery icon on status bar doesn't show the cycle count anymore).
Anyway, now the warning has disappeared!
@RITAMA do you get the warning also in Catalina? How many charge cycles has your mac?
Well, i hope manufacture date of my battery is wrong
Catalina status batery is normal, maybe bugs system OSX Big SurHad the same issue with BS betas 9 and 10, I wrote to Apple Support to ensure that this warning didn't involve any safety issues, they confirmed that the battery capacity and performance were decreased, but it was ok to continue to use it. They suggested to run Apple Diagnostic (in my case Apple Hardware Test) but is not working anymore on my mac since installing BS (i didn't keep a partition with Catalina).
Coconut battery was not showing any issues (battery status: good) but as you can see the my battery had the 81.2% of its original capacity (alt+click on battery icon on status bar doesn't show the cycle count anymore).
Anyway, now the warning has disappeared!
@RITAMA do you get the warning also in Catalina? How many charge cycles has your mac?
View attachment 1671960
Well, i hope manufacture date of my battery is wrong
Attachments
Last edited:
Has anyone tried getting it to work on a Mid 2011 13 inch MacBook Air?
This got even weirder.. Updating to Big Sur cured a persistent "memory leak" (so I thought) in OBS studio. my iMac would get very hot, and the RAM usage would spiral out of control until OBS crashed after about 30mins.. it'd always activate the horrible vertical lines glitch too. Fans barely even spin up when im using complex overlays and streaming settings, it was unusably loud before.Thankyou everyone who made this happen.. I didn't realise I was having problems with Catalina on my iMac, I thought my iMac was just.. slowly dying. Big Sur seems to run between 10 and 20 degrees cooler in all circumstances, and a horrible screen burn-in/gpu artifacting issue I've had since Mojave doesn't seem to happen anymore. (i'm keeping an eye on it but it's over a day now.. it was pretty much constant before if i used things like youtube)
Things like Wacom drivers, even all my AU plugins.. Nothing broke. Other than the very slow install - it's been the smoothest OS upgrade I think I've had in recent years re: software.
What the heck did Apple do under the hood with Big Sur? This is by far the biggest performance boost I've seen from a single OS upgrade, and my iMac (and MBP) don't even support it! (27" 3.5GHz Quad i7, 16GB RAM, Late 2013, GTX 780M 4GB VRAM) - things like navigating/zooming photos.. Everything is so slick.. Neither of my Macs should be on the unsupported list.
Im seriously think Metal, in regards to the GTX 780M in pre big-sur was horrendously glitchy? I have no idea what was happening but it's days later now and all the issues seem to be cured by using this completely unsupported OS update.
Hello all,
I have a cMP 4,1 flashed to 5,1.
3.46Ghz 6-Core Xeon
32GB RAM
AMD Radeon HD 7950 3GB graphics card
I've managed to install Big Sur, but something about it just seems really odd. Every time I reboot, my Mac is unusable for about five minutes after logging in. Everything seems to just freeze, there's no spinning beach ball icon, nothing in Activity Monitor is really sticking out to explain the cause....nothing.
Here's what I did to get to this exact point in time:
- I installed OpenCore 0.6.3 on a 256GB SSD
- I installed Big Sur, patched, to that SSD. Didn't work.
- I formatted the 256GB SSD, no OpenCore this time.
- I installed Big Sur, patched, to that SSD. Didn't work.
- I formatted the 256GB SSD once again. Installed OpenCore.
- I installed Big Sur, unpatched, to that SSD.
- I migrated my data from a 10.15.7 drive that was installed via dosdude1's Catalina Patcher.
I have plenty of backups of that 10.15.7 drive, so I'm not without a working system. Just really confused as to which combination I need to actually go with to get a working install of 11.0.1.
Are there any other 4,1 > 5,1 owners that can chime in with a workflow that worked for them? I feel like I'm just trying different combinations and hoping something works. Maybe I'll just try a clean format with no OpenCore, then Big Sur patched. Maybe I wasn't patient enough for the installer to finish or something. I'll report back if I get something working.
I have a cMP 4,1 flashed to 5,1.
3.46Ghz 6-Core Xeon
32GB RAM
AMD Radeon HD 7950 3GB graphics card
I've managed to install Big Sur, but something about it just seems really odd. Every time I reboot, my Mac is unusable for about five minutes after logging in. Everything seems to just freeze, there's no spinning beach ball icon, nothing in Activity Monitor is really sticking out to explain the cause....nothing.
Here's what I did to get to this exact point in time:
- I installed OpenCore 0.6.3 on a 256GB SSD
- I installed Big Sur, patched, to that SSD. Didn't work.
- I formatted the 256GB SSD, no OpenCore this time.
- I installed Big Sur, patched, to that SSD. Didn't work.
- I formatted the 256GB SSD once again. Installed OpenCore.
- I installed Big Sur, unpatched, to that SSD.
- I migrated my data from a 10.15.7 drive that was installed via dosdude1's Catalina Patcher.
I have plenty of backups of that 10.15.7 drive, so I'm not without a working system. Just really confused as to which combination I need to actually go with to get a working install of 11.0.1.
Are there any other 4,1 > 5,1 owners that can chime in with a workflow that worked for them? I feel like I'm just trying different combinations and hoping something works. Maybe I'll just try a clean format with no OpenCore, then Big Sur patched. Maybe I wasn't patient enough for the installer to finish or something. I'll report back if I get something working.
Last edited:
I know the Mid 2011 13 inch MacBook Air is exposed to be unspported for Mac OS Big Sur, Just wondering if anyone had luck getting it to work on it, did you use a patcher or something else
I have similar model and yes I did install the Big Sur. But graphics is not smooth as built in Intel 3000 Graphics Card doesnot support Acceleration or Metal. So you will see windows draging rather than opening smoothly. I like Big Sur but its no joy for our type machine. Catalina is the best upgrade for mid 2011 13 inch Macbook Air. Cheers
Last edited:
Is there any link for new InstallPackage 11.1 beta version?