macOS 14 Sonoma on Unsupported Macs Thread

[xboxbml]

I just loaded Sonoma 14.7.5 on the 2015MBA again.. Haven't done this in a while. Went back to Monterey and don't remember why... I do remember I had to use Firefox to get xfinity stream to work. Won't work with Safari after Monterey... I guess I'll use it for a bit again and see if I can remember why I went back...lol...I do see a Safari update for 18.4. Should I stay away from that?

 

[makra]

I just loaded Sonoma 14.7.5 on the 2015MBA again.. Haven't done this in a while. Went back to Monterey and don't remember why... I do remember I had to use Firefox to get xfinity stream to work. Won't work with Safari after Monterey... I guess I'll use it for a bit again and see if I can remember why I went back...lol...I do see a Safari update for 18.4. Should I stay away from that?

I'm testing again - right after I updated Safari to 18.4, it was terrible. But after some restarts (or maybe even after I updated to OCLP 2.3.2???), everything seems ok again. I'll let you know if I'll have further issues.

 

[xboxbml]

I'm testing again - right after I updated Safari to 18.4, it was terrible. But after some restarts (or maybe even after I updated to OCLP 2.3.2???), everything seems ok again. I'll let you know if I'll have further issues.

Cool thanks. Last time I tested on my 2015 MBP, I went to Sonoma first a couple times, and it would not play any of my Apple purchased Movies with an external monitor attached in any way. Any HDCP content really...I got to thinking it was something to do with the AMD Radeon R9 M370X GPU driver in some fashion. Then when Sequoia 15.0 came out I tried that and OCLP 2.x at that point. Still didn't work. I gave up and went back to Monterey on it. At least it works.. No one on YouTube out there doing videos on OCLP test anything.. They just get it installed and say it works.. It may load and operate as an OS, but not everything works as it should... Yeah, it's great the devs are doing all this monumental work to be able to do this, but it's not for the average user. I don't like having Firefox on this machine now due to the recent Mozilla issues, but Safari doesn't work well anymore in this OCLP environment for whatever reason for streaming services. It also likes to launch with a blank screen for some reason. I have to close it and open again to get all my favorites etc to show up... Didn't do that last time I did this... hmm..

 

[Kevo]

If you load Sonoma from scratch try safari out for your use case immediately after loading Sonoma. If it works for you, don't run any of the Safari updates.

Alternatively you can try running the Safari Tech Preview version 201. That one works well for me on Sequoia, anything after that has issues for me.

 

[Riot Nrrrd]

@xboxbml Isn’t the HDCP thing - or DRM in general - kind of a “known issue”? I could swear I’ve seen it mentioned in passing somewhere. (“Safari failing to reproduce DRM content on Sonoma+”)

Other than that, I completely agree with you 100%. I look at OCLP as a “pig with wings” kind of thing - it’s amazing that it even exists at all (hats off to all the devs working on it), but in practice if things don’t work at least 99% of the time, it becomes difficult to justify continued use of the system (as opposed to rolling it back to the last supported version of macOS).

I have OCLP and Sonoma installed on three systems - two 2013 Mac Pro trash cans and a 2012 Mac mini.

On the 2 trash cans, quite a few apps have the “red block” Electron graphics issue where the system nearly locks up and the app displays large red blocks in the UI. A Python script has mitigated it on some apps, but not all. Unfortunately some of the apps the script doesn’t work to fix are ones I use regularly (e.g., Microsoft Teams). I’m getting by with the Web app version of Teams but I don’t know if I’m supposed to update it every time there’s a new Teams release or not.

On the Mac mini, Teams reliably crashes WindowServer and logs me out. Again, have to use the Web app. Also, BetterDisplay/SwitchResX say my DisplayPort connection can display higher res than 1920x1080 (1080p) but when I try it, it doesn’t work. Very frustrating that my 5K2K monitor can’t display higher than 1080p with this particular computer. (It also can’t display anything higher than 4K with the Mac Pro trash can, but that’s not OCLP’s fault. I’m the dummy who bought the computer not realizing it couldn’t drive my LG 34” Ultrawide at full resolution.)

 

[xboxbml]

@xboxbml Isn’t the HDCP thing - or DRM in general - kind of a “known issue”? I could swear I’ve seen it mentioned in passing somewhere. (“Safari failing to reproduce DRM content on Sonoma+”)

Other than that, I completely agree with you 100%. I look at OCLP as a “pig with wings” kind of thing - it’s amazing that it even exists at all (hats off to all the devs working on it), but in practice if things don’t work at least 99% of the time, it becomes difficult to justify continued use of the system (as opposed to rolling it back to the last supported version of macOS).

I have OCLP and Sonoma installed on three systems - two 2013 Mac Pro trash cans and a 2012 Mac mini.

On the 2 trash cans, quite a few apps have the “red block” Electron graphics issue where the system nearly locks up and the app displays large red blocks in the UI. A Python script has mitigated it on some apps, but not all. Unfortunately some of the apps the script doesn’t work to fix are ones I use regularly (e.g., Microsoft Teams). I’m getting by with the Web app version of Teams but I don’t know if I’m supposed to update it every time there’s a new Teams release or not.

On the Mac mini, Teams reliably crashes WindowServer and logs me out. Again, have to use the Web app. Also, BetterDisplay/SwitchResX say my DisplayPort connection can display higher res than 1920x1080 (1080p) but when I try it, it doesn’t work. Very frustrating that my 5K2K monitor can’t display higher than 1080p with this particular computer. (It also can’t display anything higher than 4K with the Mac Pro trash can, but that’s not OCLP’s fault. I’m the dummy who bought the computer not realizing it couldn’t drive my LG 34” Ultrawide at full resolution.)

Yeah, the DRM thing is known. I didn't know it was a thing at the time I first came across OCLP. I did this when OCLP 1.2 was out. I didn't do too much reading on it at the time. I guess I just kept hoping by some miracle that it would work with each update. I finally just gave up and went back to Monterey. I saw there were 2 OCLP updates in quick succession the other day so I figured I'd give it a try on the Air cuz it doesn't have the AMD GPU obviously. I really never wanted to mess with the Air as that was my first Mac and it worked fine. That's why I bought the MBP, to play. I installed Brave on the Air yesterday and that works for Netflix and Xfinity as well. I'll uninstall Firefox later today. Yeah, one of these days I'll get a new Mac and be done with all this. They're just so bloody expensive. I need 2TB storage minimum and I'd like 24gb RAM. With Apple making everything non-serviceable you pay thru the nose to upgrade things. I just can't spend the money on stuff like this now. Have to get windows this year for the house..