macOS 15 Sequoia on Unsupported Macs Thread

[PropClear]

Probably not worth spending time on, but when attempting to run patches again today in OCLP I got:
"metallib already installed (15.3.1-24D70), skipping"
It does not matter I suppose but it looks like it was already there before today. Ah well.

Metallib is not KDK, in my case (until yesterday) 24D60 was available - Metallib 24D70 is online since 15.3.1 release yes, KDK not - but all was just meant for information nothing more, git release date is from today.

 

[Larsvonhier]

You don’t have video/dynamic wallpapers on do you? The default video wallpaper brought my late 2015 iMac to a crawl, almost unusable. Once I’d set it to a completely static image and rebooted, Sequoia actually feels snappier to me that Ventura or Sonoma ever did, I love it.

One solution for non-metal GPUs for having somewhat fluid dynamic wallpapers: Re-encode the movie clips to your actual screen resolution of your old MacBook. Works fine here on a couple of my Macs.

 

[houser]

One solution for non-metal GPUs for having somewhat fluid dynamic wallpapers: Re-encode the movie clips to your actual screen resolution of your old MacBook. Works fine here on a couple of my Macs.

Excellent tip. Did not think of that. Needed for metal Macs also.
Maybe a little OT but perhaps it can be briefly tolerated as this is a nice little aesthetics fix for legacy Macs on OCLP.

I transcoded the Aerial movies to H264 and my native GPU resolution and those play fine with no fans.
It will however not pick up as a wallpaper when the screensaver is stopped as those screensavers do natively but will set a black screen as wallpaper. Have you seen a fix for that also by any chance? Would be nice..albeit not vital in any way.

 

[houser]

Metallib is not KDK, in my cast until yesterday 24D60 was available - Metallib 24D70 is online since 15.3.1 release - was just meant for information nothing more, git release date is form today.

Thanks, yes I confused Metallib with the KDK. Appreciated hint.

 

[deeveedee]

You don’t have video/dynamic wallpapers on do you? The default video wallpaper brought my late 2015 iMac to a crawl, almost unusable. Once I’d set it to a completely static image and rebooted, Sequoia actually feels snappier to me that Ventura or Sonoma ever did, I love it.

Just a background color, but thanks for the suggestion.

It's not that my old 2010 laptop's performance is unacceptable... it's just not as responsive (as with previous versions of macOS). Still amazed that it's running Sequoia with OCLP!

 

[Larsvonhier]

Excellent tip. Did not think of that. Needed for metal Macs also.
Maybe a little OT but perhaps it can be briefly tolerated as this is a nice little aesthetics fix for legacy Macs on OCLP.

I transcoded the Aerial movies to H264 and my native GPU resolution and those play fine with no fans.
It will however not pick up as a wallpaper when the screensaver is stopped as those screensavers do natively but will set a black screen as wallpaper. Have you seen a fix for that also by any chance? Would be nice..albeit not vital in any way.

hm... will have to check on i.e. my old MB5,2 with such a re-encoded background movie.

 

[houser]

hm... will have to check on i.e. my old MB5,2 with such a re-encoded background movie.

Don't worry about it. It was a nice idea. It works once and then needs a reset. Probably needs code to fully work.

 

[MacinMan]

You don’t have video/dynamic wallpapers on do you? The default video wallpaper brought my late 2015 iMac to a crawl, almost unusable. Once I’d set it to a completely static image and rebooted, Sequoia actually feels snappier to me that Ventura or Sonoma ever did, I love it.

Which dynamic video Wallpaper are you talking about? I have a late 2015 27" iMac and while I don't use OCLP daily, when I do, I don't remember ever having any slow downs. I do remember though that people who have lower tier configurations than mine though, had issues I didn't. Mine is the standard top tier config Apple sold before you got into custom configurations. When you refer to dynamic video wallpaper, I'm going to make the assumption you're talking about the default Sequoia forrest. I've never had slow performance on either an iMac 17,1, or MBP 11,1 when I've messed with Sequoia and used the defaults.

Edit: In fact, in terms of the iMac, I have very few issues with running an installed copy of macOS via open core in comparison the a majority of people here. The main issues are, the two main issues I have, affect other things I need so that's why I can't use open core installed macOS as a daily driver. With that said though, a lot works as it should and If I need to do something that isn't affected by the limitations, then I'll run an open core install for a bit without issues.

 

[Larsvonhier]

Which dynamic video Wallpaper are you talking about? I have a late 2015 27" iMac and while I don't use OCLP daily, when I do, I don't remember ever having any slow downs. I do remember though that people who have lower tier configurations than mine though, had issues I didn't. Mine is the standard top tier config Apple sold before you got into custom configurations. When you refer to dynamic video wallpaper, I'm going to make the assumption you're talking about the default Sequoia forrest. I've never had slow performance on either an iMac 17,1, or MBP 11,1 when I've messed with Sequoia and used the defaults.

Edit: In fact, in terms of the iMac, I have very few issues with running an installed copy of macOS via open core in comparison the a majority of people here. The main issues are, the two main issues I have, affect other things I need so that's why I can't use open core installed macOS as a daily driver. With that said though, a lot works as it should and If I need to do something that isn't affected by the limitations, then I'll run an open core install for a bit without issues.

As in general public: The perceived "majority" does not necessarily be the de-facto majority. Just perhaps noisier and louder.

 

[amaze1499]

Just a background color, but thanks for the suggestion.
View attachment 2483370


It's not that my old 2010 laptop's performance is unacceptable... it's just not as responsive (as with previous versions of macOS). Still amazed that it's running Sequoia with OCLP!

The performance is undeniably decreasing with every update. That goes for MacOS as well as iOS.

Just by looking at the processes running in the background, be it syncing to cloud, security or graphics heavy basic tasks. Legacy drivers trying to balance all that and it's obvious where it all goes. Still, i am grateful for OCLP to work as it does. But its also dawning on me the trade off might not longer be feasible. This 13 year old processor is being driven on the limit. On the other hand, why for instance would i need a 13MB fat picture to be synced onto every device with all kinds of data included, when years back the info I needed out of this file was actually just 500k big?

Eventually it's a question of having the latest security, technology and performance available over return of investment, I guess?

 

[luckyduke23]

The performance is undeniably decreasing with every update. That goes for MacOS as well as iOS.

Just by looking at the processes running in the background, be it syncing to cloud, security or graphics heavy basic tasks. Legacy drivers trying to balance all that and it's obvious where it all goes. Still, i am grateful for OCLP to work as it does. But its also dawning on me the trade off might not longer be feasible. This 13 year old processor is being driven on the limit. On the other hand, why for instance would i need a 13MB fat picture to be synced onto every device with all kinds of data included, when years back the info I needed out of this file was actually just 500k big?

Eventually it's a question of having the latest security, technology and performance available over return of investment, I guess?

During my ongoing search for a solution of the performance problem at boot time (gray background problem), I found a solution on the Internet that worked very well for me when NVRAM and SMC resets did not bring any improvement. Open Mission Control and create a new space. Then delete the old one. Reboot the machine and for me it was then back to optimal performance immediately...

 

[houser]

The performance is undeniably decreasing with every update. That goes for MacOS as well as iOS.

Just by looking at the processes running in the background, be it syncing to cloud, security or graphics heavy basic tasks. Legacy drivers trying to balance all that and it's obvious where it all goes.

Eventually it's a question of having the latest security, technology and performance available over return of investment, I guess?

I hear you, but I would disagree with the decrease in performance to some extent and say that the 2012-ish and newer Metal Macs can be optimised via OCLP to run very well with any OS from Catalina up to Sequoia with no major practical differences and are still not that different from a 2019 Intel Mac that I get to use now and then with regards to everyday tasks. Stunning work by Dortania really..
If you see very sluggish behaviour a vanilla install might help or something hard or soft might be interfering with performance.

Video or Pro stuff is a completely different thing and the one thing legacy Macs do pretty badly is anything beyond 1080p H264 video. Stutter and fans galore!
The Arial Dynamic desktop movies for example are also HEVC/H265 which got hardware support according to my notes
with Macbook Pro and Air 2016 or newer and iMac 2017 and newer. I have not used any of those with OCLP lately so can't say how they perform with OCLP but I would assume they would be fine with H265 and possibly Dynamic Desktop also with less fanage

Agreed 100% on your second point on security and ROI. That is the deciding factor here also.
I am also watching Apple closely and how they are affected by the current situation in the US with regards to integrity and control over data. Strange times.

 

[deeveedee]

I am also watching Apple closely and how they are affected by the current situation in the US with regards to integrity and control over data. Strange times.

Interesting. What specifically are you watching?

 

[houser]

Interesting. What specifically are you watching?

Probably not something for this thread. Maybe your security thread? But it is not subtle though...

 

[Mystere65]

deleted

 

[Kevo]

Someone mentioned trying Safari Technology Preview recently and it still having the same issues as the current version. Well, I went to archive.org and guessed at a date of June 2024 and downloaded an older version. I installed it and it shows as being 18.0 and sure enough, it works with webgl and cloudflare verify.

I'm not sure if there are any particular downsides yet, but if anyone else would like to try it out, just go to archive.org and put in https://developer.apple.com/safari/resources/

Then go to June or July of last year and download the preview version. I think I'm going to try using this version exclusively for a bit and see if there are any gotchas, but it will be nice if I don't need to use a second browser so much.

 

[deeveedee]

@Kevo That's a clever way to get old Safari versions! If you can find Safari 18.1.1 using the same technique, I suspect that will work for you, too.

EDIT: Safari 18.1.1 Release date was Nov 19, 2024.

 

[Nautiluss]

Someone mentioned trying Safari Technology Preview recently and it still having the same issues as the current version. Well, I went to archive.org and guessed at a date of June 2024 and downloaded an older version. I installed it and it shows as being 18.0 and sure enough, it works with webgl and cloudflare verify.

I'm not sure if there are any particular downsides yet, but if anyone else would like to try it out, just go to archive.org and put in https://developer.apple.com/safari/resources/

Then go to June or July of last year and download the preview version. I think I'm going to try using this version exclusively for a bit and see if there are any gotchas, but it will be nice if I don't need to use a second browser so much.

Thank you very much for the idea - it really works! I installed Safari Technology Preview Release 201 (Safari 18.0, WebKit 20620.1.2), and it’s clear that there were no issues with Cloudflare verification at that time, allowing me to use just one browser without any problems.
It seems like such an obvious solution, but for some reason, I didn’t think of it myself. Finding previous versions of Safari is quite a quest.

 

[Macdctr]

I took delivery of this 2017 MacBook 1.3GHz/16GB/500GB with Ventura loaded on it. I then upgraded to Sequoia 15.3.1 on it and have not had any issues using this laptop so far.

I have been spending my time upgrading the 2015 MacBook Pro and MacBook Airs, I figured I would try seeing how well these poorly reviewed MacBooks will do with the current MacOS. So far I don't have any major complaints. Even the butterfly keyboard has not been an issue for me.

 

[candidosoares]

Sequoia

Imac 27 retina 4k, AMD Radeon R9 M295X 4GB
Why does this happen?

 

[borp99]

(removed)

 

[Geejfi]

for my 2014 MBP 15" running 15.3 on 2.2.0

does anyone elses Preview app's Adjust Color setting in the menu not work at all (this is for ANY photo that I try to edit), here is what mine looks like, and is there going to be a fix? It is a good feature.

 

[olad]

Sequoia 15.4 Beta (Build 24E5206s) out - all of 15.44 Gb! No, I am not about to install it. Just for everyone's info.
EDIT. My M1 MBA requires the full 15 Gb download also.

 

[ronton3]

Sequoia 15.4 Beta (Build 24E5206s) out - all of 15.44 Gb! No, I am not about to install it. Just for everyone's info.
EDIT. My M1 MBA requires the full 15 Gb download also.

I am installing it right now, we will see how it goes.

 

[Kevo]

for my 2014 MBP 15" running 15.3 on 2.2.0

does anyone elses Preview app's Adjust Color setting in the menu not work at all (this is for ANY photo that I try to edit), here is what mine looks like, and is there going to be a fix? It is a good feature.

It's a known problem. I have seen no indication that a fix is coming or being worked on. It's possible, but I would say it's low probability at this point. Personally I am thinking that I might have only a year or so left with my trusty 2012 MBP before I have to start looking for something newer. The scary thing is I'm tempted to buy a new machine with a ton of RAM so I can play around with some local LLMs. 🤑