macOS 14 Sonoma on Unsupported Macs Thread

[philippemarques]

BTW - I believe that Open Core is safe. It is only OCLP that I have a problem with for the following reasons:

1. OCLP breaks the macOS seal. With the broken seal, macOS loses much of its ability to protect from other threats that are not OCLP
2. OCLP injects 3rd-party, uncertified software into the network layer. Without attestation to chain of custody and without a FIPS-certified lab test, allowing this on your Mac is insane
3. OCLP must partially disable SIP (the way SIP is partially disabled, I'm not especially concerned about this, but the combination of the broken seal and injected 3rd-party software with SIP expands the threat/attack surface)

Also, I have formulated an attack scenario that I would use to hack an OCLP-patched Mac. It is a multi-step process that I have shared with one person in this thread, but I will not share publicly.

Thank you for your explanation. I think that each one trying to use OCLP knows that their machine is not more supported to be updated by Apple. They don't have another solution. It's the own choice of everyone. Your point of view is not the point of view of each one.
Those who are here, to have some support, on their own, are aware of this. Those who don't know anything about this, ask someone else to provide them a solution, or buy another machine.
What you discuss, is not really o problem. You have the choice, not using OCLP or use it at your own risk.
You may become paranoid working on security, you should know that, to work on those subjects, you have to be mentally very strong.
You may tell us to ask that OCLP become certified, certified by who ? Apple ?
We don't need a response about that, we know the Apple point of view, a rotation of the machines with their updates working operating system.
You share your expectations or worries, working on security is not for every one. Take care of you, before becoming paranoid.

 

[houser]

I for one FWIW appreciate that some layer of the security issues are discussed here. It seems relevant to say the least
but whoever moderates this thread can perhaps say something about whether it is allowed or even welcome?
As far as I can tell there is no conspiracy theory or paranoia in what deeveedee writes and it would seem unfair to state that with no evidence. It is simply a security angle and you may certainly find it "boring".
Some form of statement on this from the devs some time down the road when it is feasible would certainly be appreciated also but perhaps that is too much work, money and too much to ask for. The internet is not a safe place and I could never have imagined how much of the singularity would look so much like stupidity
Will not comment on this again though.

 

[deeveedee]

Thing is what deeveedee is doing is basically just spreading paranoia and FUD.

His claim is correct in a way that the security will be lowered somewhat, this is simply because it is absolutely impossible to put back the proper drivers into the system or downgrade needed frameworks etc without breaking the seal. Access to the root volume is required for the internal system folders and frameworks to do patching.

A sizeable chunk of the patching is basically adding back drivers from previous OS's that Apple removed and downgrading things, then figuring out how to make them work with the changes on new OS's.

The same goes for SIP but OCLP is actually more intelligent about it and disables it only for the parts that are needed and not entirely, to maintain the best security that is possible while allowing patching.

Also if going by the logic he uses in the claims, OpenCore itself would be equally as bad if not worse since it injects many things directly into memory during boot, like BlueToolFixup for Bluetooth as an example. Root patching only came to be because there was no other way, as some things cannot be injected directly via the bootloader and have to be on disk.

EDIT: Also forgot to mention, the app is entirely open source and the code is readable in Github. As for attestations go, pretty unfeasible for such a small scale open source project especially if they cost money.

Remember when there were newbies who came on the scene early in this thread telling us that they had developed their own version of OCLP? Remember when the Devs jumped all over them for having "newbie" accounts to make their claims. Just thought I'd mention that.

How interesting that a new account was created to post this.

EDIT: TheDebunker, how nice of you to create your account 24 minutes ago (at the time I'm posting this). Who are you really?

 

[Painkiller]

😁
deeveedee didn't tell in any of he's previous post what everyone has to do. He only shared his insights and not more and not less. This forum is open to anyone and anyones opinion about the matter. And MacOS is more than you can see on the surface. It has nothing to do with *paranoia* .

 

[amaze1499]

Ha! I did the same—and this is my second time doing this…

I have a Mac mini (Late 2012), i.e. 6,1. I applied the PB of 14.1 and like you it was fine till the post-install patch, at which point it would restart to an Apple logo. (I have verbose logging disabled.)

My route back is slow, but a kind of fun exercise in OS archaeology. My main Mac is an M1 and I have been unsuccessful in creating external installers for the mini: ideally I would go straight to Catalina but it's tough as the App Store won't allow me to download it. I tried a few hacks (e.g. macOS Catalina Patcher) which successfully appear to create an installer that would launch on my Mac mini, but then fail with the circle with a diagonal line. I also couldn't get Restore within Disk Utility to work.

So, it's bootstrapping time.

The last time I did this I erased the whole internal drive in the process but by coincidence my Time Capsule died recently and I was going to be using an external drive connected to this Mini as a Time Machine server and in the meantime have fewer backups than I would like so my process is:

• Starting in Recovery mode. On my Mac that takes me to Mountain Lion 10.8. I erase an external drive and install to that. It's a blast-from-the-past but it won't connect to the App Store, and Safari is also functionally pretty useless.
• Once that is up and running, shut down and connect to another Mac. Use Apple's own downloads to El Capitan 10.11, reason being a more modern macOS won't run on Mountain Lion. Copy that to the Downloads folder (or wherever) of the User folder on the external drive.
• Launch the old Mac (using the external drive, as before), and upgrade that external drive to El Capitan. (Almost everyone sensible will be using a somewhat modern USB SSD etc. FWIW I have an old WD Passport I'm using that has FireWire 800 as well as USB and I found using FireWire would also always fail. It's possible this is an issue with my drive, but I just accepted the ~50% slower USB 2.0; I don't use it for anything else now than these installers so speed isn't really an issue.) This will now allow you to use the App Store, and you can get to Catalina 10.15. Again, you're installing this on the external startup drive.
• Catalina supports APFS so start with the boot picker (holding option) and you want Disk Utility to partition the drive in your Mac. I say partition but you want to create a new Volume. (Disk Utility will suggest this.) That will be the least destructive option.
• I found I then needed to do all the patches to Catalina—a straight download of the installer kept failing till I did.
• Once you have the installer, you can install it to the new Volume you've just created. Now you will have a working bootable Catalina on your internal drive.
• At some point—and sorry I forgot exactly where—Disk Utility can prompt you for a password of the other Volume(s) you have, that are the hard drive (SSD, etc.) you had before installing Sonoma 14.1. That Volume, at least for me, is visible in the sidebar of Disk Utility, but under File you need to select "View in Finder." You should now be able to see all your data, which is the main point of the exercise. (Hopefully this was not your daily driver Mac, but just in case…).
• Because you have two Volumes the size will accommodate whatever is in them so you can copy everything you want over to the new Volume.
• Your 14.1 is, I believe, not recoverable right now because OCLP will create another 14.0 installer, and the Mac won't let you "downgrade." So, you may have some settings to reset but once all that is done, using Disk Utility from a boot picker (option key) startup, you can delete the bad Volume once everything is copied over.

Personally I am using OCLP in part to mirror (loosely, manually—and by design after a very bad iCloud data loss issue with syncing in a PB a few years ago) an M1 Mac mini—both are media servers connected to TVs as their "day job" and I like them to be as identical as possible to each other—but also just to play with it so as a "hobbyist" I find the small challenge of bootstrapping from, say, Mountain Lion to be interesting. Pales next to the OCLP guys' efforts of course.

Thanks for the detailed help. In the meanwhile, I fixed it along those lines. I had an old backup system 10.13.6, booted from that one, created a USB installer 14.1 ( cheers to Mr.Macintosh ), patched the installer with oclp 1.0.0 (thanks to the developers) as well as the internal hard drive. Ran the standalone installer over the existing (bricked 14.1) install and voila, this 9,2 is backup and running.

Take away: Have a ccc backup at hand but also a TimeMachine backup. It comes in handy when restoring the system using the usb installer. Have a good known spare system at hand you can boot from. Ethernet cable and a proper Wifi/Internet connection as well. 14.1 installation could not be downgraded to 14.0. At least in my case. The old snapshots were deleted during restore, so I lost 1 days work. ish. No tears cried. Most of it was stored on iCloud.

Thanks to everybody for your support! Much appreciated!

 

[TheDebunker]

Remember when there were newbies who came on the scene early in this thread telling us that they had developed their own version of OCLP? Remember when the Devs jumped all over them for having "newbie" accounts to make their claims. Just thought I'd mention that.

How interesting that a new account was created to post this.

EDIT: TheDebunker, how nice of you to create your account 24 minutes ago (at the time I'm posting this). Who are you really?

It is a throwaway account since I don't really use this site except for browsing this thread at times. You're entitled to your opinion to not use OCLP but don't try to make it sound like something it is not. I thought to write some parts of the process and how things work in the patcher, which you can also see from Github for yourself.

Like I said, you're technically correct about lowering the security but it is not a security nightmare you make it seem. There are countless of Mac customization apps that demand the user to entirely disable SIP, as an example.

Also about the "set it and forget it" well it's really not, for example you have to reinstall root patches after every update. The dosdude1 patchers have also worked the same way, however sealed volume didn't exist in Catalina and prior where patching was easier.

It's also discouraged to sell OCLP'd Macs just for the reason it might end up on someone's hands who doesn't know how to deal with it. Users should only use the app for their own use.

 

[deeveedee]

It is a throwaway account since I don't really use this site except for browsing this thread at times, you're entitled to your opinion to not use OCLP but don't try to make it sound like something it is not. I thought to write some parts of the process and how things work in the patcher, which you can also see from Github for yourself.

Like I said, you're technically correct about lowering the security but it is not a security nightmare you make it seem. There are countless of Mac customization apps that demand the user to entirely disable SIP, as an example.

It's just that the Devs were so quick to challenge the credibility of someone who hides behind a brand new account. We certainly wouldn't do the same to you.

But while you're opining, I agree about SIP. Why don't you expound about all the apps that require us to break the macOS seal and inject uncertified 3rd-party software in order for them to operate. And while you're at it, why don't you share a little about how macOS is now less able to defend against threats that are not OCLP because macOS is crippled with a broken seal?

BTW - in case you're wondering - we're doing exactly what I had hoped for when I made my posts. It's also why I used a hackintosh in Discord. Prompting the emotional response from the Devs was the only way I could force them to engage in a technical conversation with me. Now we're talking.

 

[TheDebunker]

It's just that the Devs were so quick to challenge the credibility of someone who hides behind a brand new account. We certainly wouldn't do the same to you.

But while you're opining, I agree about SIP. Why don't you expound about all the apps that require us to break the macOS seal and inject uncertified 3rd-party software in order for them to operate. And while you're at it, why don't you share a little about how macOS is now less able to defend against threats that are not OCLP because macOS is crippled with a broken seal?

It's a trade off.

Yes, most apps don't require broken seals but they also don't do system level patching, right?
The seal simply cannot stay intact with the patches and if disabling the seal wasn't an option in the first place, patching new OS's for older Macs simply wouldn't exist. OCLP uses mostly the same ways as dosdude1 patchers did, however due to Apple's introduction of SSV it has been made more difficult to do so.

Of course if you're really security conscious, the only real option is to buy an officially supported system.

I also don't know what 3rd party software you're talking about, most of the drivers and such injected are Apple first party ones from older OS versions that they simply removed. However, sometimes they need some more work for them to work with the newer macOS, as in it isn't just a "drag and drop the driver in" solution because for example some newer framework could be incompatible with the older driver, so the framework has to be downgraded as well.

EDIT: Also the responses were mostly from community in the Discord, not devs. There was only developer in that conversation and the reason why you were muted was because you broke rules by spamming across channels. Your post is still up there in anything-non-help and has not been removed.

EDIT2: And if you truly wanna know, I'm Ball of Neon. And I honestly didn't have an account for this site earlier but I've known of this site for probably a decade and also been lurking these threads. Maybe having this name wasn't the best idea but like I said this is meant to be a throwaway, it's done and I can't change it.

 

[rehkram]

As we have compared performance of the same rMBP that we have, may I ask if you notice more fans than in Ventura?
Sonoma works as well or better than Ventura here and the running of the fans is my only issue-ish.
The new nice screensavers still make the fans run quite a bit. Probably to be expected, as they are notorious CPU/GPU hogs. I did a wipe and reinstall for 14.0. Happy, just curious if others also see/hear more fans.

On first login post-install, fans were working hard. They decreased over time, maybe two hours max. I left it powered on overnight. Logging-in this morning they haven't started up at all yet. I'll keep an eye, or ear, on it today and report back.

I did confirm in Activity Monitor yesterday that when the fans were running hardest it was doing a lot of writes to SSD. That has ceased today. I think indexing-, and/or expanding compressed objects shipped with the install package, were the likely causes but have no way (that I know of) of proving that.

BTW, I had to do a couple of discreet things to get everything stable yesterday:

1) restart bluetooth once using sudo kill -9 $(pgrep bluetoothd)
2) manually reboot twice to get YouTube playback working properly.

All good today so far.

 

[deeveedee]

It's a trade off.

Yes, most apps don't require broken seals but they also don't do system level patching, right?
The seal simply cannot stay intact with the patches and if disabling the seal wasn't an option in the first place, patching new OS's for older Macs simply wouldn't exist. OCLP uses mostly the same ways as dosdude1 patchers did, however due to Apple's introduction of SSV it has been made more difficult to do so.

Of course if you're really security conscious, the only real option is to buy an officially supported system.

I also don't know what 3rd party software you're talking about, most of the drivers and such injected are Apple first party ones from older OS versions that they simply removed. However, sometimes they need some more work for them to work with the newer macOS, as in it isn't just a "drag and drop the driver in" solution because for example some newer framework could be incompatible with the older driver, so the framework has to be downgraded as well.

EDIT: Also the responses were mostly from community in the Discord, not devs. There was only developer in that conversation and the reason why you were muted was because you broke rules by spamming across channels. Your post is still up there in anything-non-help and has not been removed.

Dev - it is very nice to meet you. My point is that you modified the software that you injected via the root patches. Software has bugs. I'm not accusing you of intentionally creating vulnerabilities. It's the accidental ones that worry me.

EDIT: I would have preferred this conversation without my Discord and MacRumors posts to elicit the emotional response. It was a last resort to force this conversation.

 

[TheDebunker]

Dev - it is very nice to meet you. My point is that you modified the software that you injected via the root patches. Software has bugs. I'm not accusing you of intentionally creating vulnerabilities. It's the accidental ones that worry me.

If you read the second edit, I came forward and wrote who I am. But yes, like I said it's a trade off, some people want to keep running their old hardware despite the slightly lowered security and that's what OCLP is there to offer. It's on the user's discretion to decide if they want to use it or not. I am personally using it on 5 Macs because they're all unsupported.

 

[houser]

On first login post-install, fans were working hard. They decreased over time, maybe two hours max. I left it powered on overnight. Logging-in this morning they haven't started up at all yet. I'll keep an eye, or ear, on it today and report back.

I did confirm in Activity Monitor yesterday that when the fans were running hardest it was doing a lot of writes to SSD. That has ceased today. I think indexing-, and/or expanding compressed objects shipped with the install package, were the likely causes but have no way (that I know of) of proving that.

BTW, I had to do a couple of discreet things to get everything stable yesterday:

1) restart bluetooth once using sudo kill -9 $(pgrep bluetoothd)
2) manually reboot twice to get YouTube playback working properly.

All good today so far.

Thanks as always @rehkram .
Yes, indexing for spotlight and media is a fact with a new MacOS install for sure.
Pretty sure I am hearing the fans quite bit more than in Ventura.
One unverified suspicion is that the screensaver is doing some prepping in the background occasionally as I seem to be able to get the fans to run less by swapping the wallpaper. Might be classical cause and correlation.
Do let us know what you see/hear.

 

[deeveedee]

If you read the second edit, I came forward and wrote who I am. But yes, like I said it's a trade off, some people want to keep running their old hardware despite the slightly lowered security and that's what OCLP is there to offer. It's on the user's discretion to decide if they want to use it or not. I am personally using it on 5 Macs because they're all unsupported.

Would you consider placing a warning in OCLP that notifies the user of the vulnerabilities that they must accept in order to use the software?

My concern is not with the users in this forum. It's with the countless Intel-Mac owners who will use your software without any knowledge of the vulnerabilities.

@trifero Forgive me if this is still boring for you.

 

[TheDebunker]

Would you consider placing a warning in OCLP that notifies the user of the vulnerabilities that they must accept in order to use the software?

I can talk about that with the others, it isn't really a bad idea imo but I'm also not the lead developer, hell not even a developer pretty much at all as I write mostly docs and such lol.

I also apologize for the reaction of people, however you could've also suggested it like this at first rather than painting the app as an evil hacking tool which it really isn't. It's just an option for people running old systems. However the discussion turned much more civil here, so I'm glad about that.

 

[deeveedee]

I can talk about that with the others, it isn't really a bad idea imo but I'm also not the lead developer, hell not even a developer pretty much at all as I write mostly docs and such lol.

EDIT: I also apologize for the reaction of people, however you could've also suggested it like this at first rather than painting the app as a hacking tool which it really isn't. It's just an option for people running old systems.

Thank you for this conversation. I didn't mean to paint OCLP as a hacking app itself. I meant to explain that the use of OCLP exposed others to vulnerabilities that they did not understand. I think it would be a big boost in credibility for OCLP if it had a warning during installation and then a warning that appeared with each boot of macOS.

For @trifero and others who think I have wasted everyone's time and polluted this forum with this conversation with an OCLP Dev, please accept my apologies. Maybe you can get us back on track with the content that should be discussed in a forum like this.

 

[deeveedee]

All - thank you for letting me participate in this forum. I simply wanted to have a conversation like this with an OCLP Dev. In this case for me, the end justified the means. My apologies to those who did not like or did not appreciate my methods. I don't expect to win the MacRumors popularity contest.

 

[TOM1211]

Would you consider placing a warning in OCLP that notifies the user of the vulnerabilities that they must accept in order to use the software?

My concern is not with the users in this forum. It's with the countless Intel-Mac owners who will use your software without any knowledge of the vulnerabilities.

@trifero Forgive me if this is still boring for you.

Forget in app if your that bothered it should be to accept the download prompt , it’s not that it’s boring it’s that OCLP have a reputation for years they have been doing this since way back when , and you’re banging on about using it on your dell from what I read on discord that you keep repeating the same thing over and over one post about it will do , move on .

 

[Marfan-58]

Which carries more risk? Running an unsupported Mac with an unsupported version of the OS where exploits are known to exist, or, running an unsupported patched Mac with a fully supported version of the OS?
We know from experience that even Ventura and Monterey may not get every security update that Apple releases in the next year.

 

[deeveedee]

Forgot in app if your that bothered it should be to accept the download prompt , it’s not that it’s boring it’s that OCLP have a reputation for years they have been doing this since way back when , and you’re banging on about using it on your dell from what I read on discord that you keep repeating the same thing over and over one post about it will do , move on .

Please read earlier posts. I didn't know another way to prompt the converation with a Dev. I tried.

 

[deeveedee]

I'm going to sign off now. To those who would prefer less technical, less exploratory, less challenging dialog, you won't get further argument from me. Enjoy.

Oh, @K two , I donated.

 

[rehkram]

Well personally I'm well aware of the risks involved, and yet I'm still interested to discuss and read about them.

But in this thread? At go live time on new public releases of macOS & OCLP? WTF? It's like D-Day, and Winston Churchill decides to call the whole thing off as too risky! 🤣

Why not start a new thread? This one is the "Sonoma on unsupported Macs" thread. The issues being raised are not Sonoma specific, they are general design-, security and philosophical considerations that apply to all permutations of OCLP + macOS. Well worth discussing, I agree. But slightly OT here.

So, to be frank deeveedee, I think your timing and location were way off. I like reading your stuff and have learned a lot from your contributions. But this is a distraction. The train has already left the station.

 

[MacinMan]

Does someone have a link for donating to the project ? I'm going to give something, but not sure where to give.

 

[deeveedee]

@rehkram I hope you're kidding. Agree that I should have realized sooner. Then again, they should have found a cure for cancer a lot sooner too. So sorry for my delayed intelligence and for the fact that I didn't make my discovery earlier.

EDIT: if you want to get lots of "likes" - that's the way to do it. Me personally, I'm not here to win the popularity contest. So sorry if I wasted your time.

EDIT2: @rehkram I need to correct one thing that you claimed in your criticsm of me... You claim that none of my concerns were Sonoma-specific and thus should have been in another thread that was "more general." My concerns didn't arise until the Devs injected root patches to fix Wi-Fi FOR SONOMA. Is that specific enough?

 

[hanksliu]

After I upgraded to Sonoma, the camera was not working on Safari.

I installed OCLP 1.0 and upgraded my 15 inch mid-2014 MacBook Pro to macOS Sonoma. The camera works fine in Chrome and Firefox, but not in Safari browser.

 

[0134168]

I generally agree but so far all went smoothly here without clean install...🙏

That´s nice news! 👍🏻