macOS Sierra (OS X 10.12)

[TheStu]

Already possible.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOPKd-YBX_s

I meant having the eGPU power the internal display in macOS. That video showed it working in Windows, and I suppose the way I phrased it, sentence A led logically to sentence B, and sentence A referenced both OSes.

 

[Tyranicus]

Hmmm... The late 2009 unibody white plastic MacBook is essentially the same thing internally as my mid-2009 aluminum 13" MacBook Pro.

However, the late 2009 plastic MacBook gets the macOS Sierra love, but the MacBook Pro doesn't. WTF?!? I would have predicted neither would get it, but this seems odd.

http://www.everymac.com/systems/app...nibody-late-2009-mid-2009-macbook-pro-13.html

Operating under this theory that the internals are basically the same, I installed Sierra onto the drive from my late 2008 15" MacBook Pro (using an external enclosure and my 2012 Retina MacBook Pro for the installation), deleted /System/Library/CoreServices/PlatformSupport.plist and attempted to boot it. It booted just fine, but no USB devices, including the built-in keyboard and trackpad would function. Clearly, there is a difference in hardware between this machine and the 2009 MacBook that is enough to prevent it from working. I will hold out hope that someone out there will figure out a USB controller driver for it.

 

[Tyranicus]

This guy made a tool that patches the Sierra installer for several unsupported Macs. (basically all the Macs that supported El Capitan but do not support Sierra) I just tested it with my late 2008 MacBook Pro and can confirm that it works.

 

[Eug]

Awesome! Thanks for the heads up. I wondered if someone would do that. I have similar hacks for other machines.

Note though occasionally there can be weird unexpected issues if my previous experiences with similar Mac OS X hacks are anything to go by. For example odd video glitches or sleep issues or stuff like that.

IOW, once we do this we start to venture into a sort of light hackintosh territory as we have to worry about compatibility issues when doing OS point updates.

 

[Tyranicus]

Awesome! Thanks for the heads up. I wondered if someone would do that. I have similar hacks for other machines.

Note though occasionally there can be weird unexpected issues if my previous experiences with similar Mac OS X hacks are anything to go by. For example odd video glitches or sleep issues or stuff like that.

IOW, once we do this we start to venture into a sort of light hackintosh territory as we have to worry about compatibility issues when doing OS point updates.

Yeah, thankfully, I have other Macs that are supported, so I can always pop the drive into my Mac Pro if I need to delete or replace files added by an update.

 

[Eug]

Yeah, thankfully, I have other Macs that are supported, so I can always pop the drive into my Mac Pro if I need to delete or replace files added by an update.

The easier solution is just to wait a month before updating. Lots of people on the internet willing to be guinea pigs.

But yeah I too have supported Macs. Or actually I should say, when Sierra comes out just one fully supported Mac.

 

[Tegeril]

My late 2009 Mac mini, with identical devices in it as the supported 2009 Macbook, is very sad.

 

[Tyranicus]

My late 2009 Mac mini, with identical devices in it as the supported 2009 Macbook, is very sad.

This tool will work to get Sierra installed on your mini.

 

[Tegeril]

Sure, but with ever-present unease with every subsequent point update wondering what's going to break next

 

[RampantAndroid]

A new OSX version? Yay, Apple can show me how they don't invest in code quality one bit with an entirely new release!

It'll be exciting: my battery life will get EVEN WORSE, Safari will be even MORE sluggish, OSX will lock up more frequently too - even when it's a fresh install!

(Yeah, I hate Yosemite. I have a 2014 rMBP...and it started great, but it's getting bad. I'm tired of dealing with Apple's crappy ecosystem. If only the Surface Book wasn't even more expensive.)

 

[Eug]

You might have a point if you weren't running Yosemite.

 

[RampantAndroid]

You might have a point if you weren't running Yosemite.

I guess I mean El Capitan - whatever the current garbage from Apple is. It's all garbage these days. (just like my iPhone. Both mine and my wife's phones have issues charging. We can't repro the problem on demand, we've switched to Apple brand cables only...but we sure as hell wake up a few times a month with a phone that never charged one bit. Apple's response? "I don't see anything wrong here, goodbye!")

If only windows phone wasn't so awful...

 

[Eug]

I guess I mean El Capitan - whatever the current garbage from Apple is. It's all garbage these days. (just like my iPhone. Both mine and my wife's phones have issues charging. We can't repro the problem on demand, we've switched to Apple brand cables only...but we sure as hell wake up a few times a month with a phone that never charged one bit. Apple's response? "I don't see anything wrong here, goodbye!")

If only windows phone wasn't so awful...

Some of the iPhones tend to get lint into the charging ports, which can make charging wonky. Try cleaning out the ports first. Or if the connection is loose, it may not charge. And also, it depends on the charger. Hopefully you're using the Apple charger.

 

[RampantAndroid]

Some of the iPhones tend to get lint into the charging ports, which can make charging wonky. Try cleaning out the ports first. Or if the connection is loose, it may not charge. And also, it depends on the charger. Hopefully you're using the Apple charger.

I cleaned them prior to going in. My wife's phone had charging issues same time as the touch screen went out, making me wonder if there's a either a grounding issue (if it's hardware) or if it's just entirely a software problem.

Thanks for the idea

 

[Tegeril]

/shrug

I've had great success and performance with El Capitan on a number of different Macs included the above mentioned Late 2009 Mac mini.

 

[Eug]

/shrug

I've had great success and performance with El Capitan on a number of different Macs included the above mentioned Late 2009 Mac mini.

Yeah, El Capitan runs fine on my 2009 13" MacBook Pro too. (4 GB RAM and SSD.) I intend on trying the hack to run Sierra on it as well until I get a new MBP with Cannonlake in 2017.

 

[Eug]

Now that the macOS Sierra public beta is out, anyone run the MacOS Sierra Patcher Tool for Unsupported Macs on a 2.26 GHz Core 2 Duo mid-2009 13" MacBook Pro yet?

It seems that some Macs lose WiFi support with the Sierra hack, but so far it doesn't seem that this model is one of them, so I'm hoping WiFi should work.

 

[midwestfisherman]

I guess I mean El Capitan - whatever the current garbage from Apple is. It's all garbage these days. (just like my iPhone. Both mine and my wife's phones have issues charging. We can't repro the problem on demand, we've switched to Apple brand cables only...but we sure as hell wake up a few times a month with a phone that never charged one bit. Apple's response? "I don't see anything wrong here, goodbye!")

If only windows phone wasn't so awful...

What's wrong with getting a good android phone?

 

[Glo.]

A new OSX version? Yay, Apple can show me how they don't invest in code quality one bit with an entirely new release!

It'll be exciting: my battery life will get EVEN WORSE, Safari will be even MORE sluggish, OSX will lock up more frequently too - even when it's a fresh install!

(Yeah, I hate Yosemite. I have a 2014 rMBP...and it started great, but it's getting bad. I'm tired of dealing with Apple's crappy ecosystem. If only the Surface Book wasn't even more expensive.)

It is actually quite funny but my experience with macOS Sierra Public Beta 3(right now downloading PB4) is exact opposite of what you have described.

Possibly most stable and reliable release of them all lately.

 

[RampantAndroid]

What's wrong with getting a good android phone?

To keep it short since this isn't the mobile forum: battery life on all seems sub-par compared to the amazing battery life on my 6S+, updates are awful unless you're on a Nexus phone and if you ARE on a nexus phone, the headphone output is terrible. Oh, and the Apple camera while perhaps not the best is more consistent than the Nexus 6P from what I've seen.

Apple has A LOT going for them in the hardware department. The software department...well, 9.3.3 broke bluetooth again for me - some songs have noticeable distortion over A2DP (compared to my Macbook pro which plays the same songs through the same system without distortion.)

It is actually quite funny but my experience with macOS Sierra Public Beta 3(right now downloading PB4) is exact opposite of what you have described.

Possibly most stable and reliable release of them all lately.

Well, I hope this is true - because I don't feel like losing money selling my macbook (even though I really wish I could just run Windows 10 all the time...and Win10 + bootcamp means awful battery life due to the dgpu.)

 

[Eug]

Now that the macOS Sierra public beta is out, anyone run the MacOS Sierra Patcher Tool for Unsupported Macs on a 2.26 GHz Core 2 Duo mid-2009 13" MacBook Pro yet?

It seems that some Macs lose WiFi support with the Sierra hack, but so far it doesn't seem that this model is one of them, so I'm hoping WiFi should work.

So I did that. Works fine it seems, on my MacBookPro5,5. I couldn't give it a completely fair review though since it was insanely slow: I was running it off a laptop 5400 rpm drive over USB 2. Definitely not ideal. Also, I only have 4 GB RAM, so I wonder if that's also affecting the speed. However, once I actually have the OS and applications loaded, they seem to run fine, and responsively. Siri also works fine (as does sleep and WiFi). I did have one crash, but I think that may have been related to a loose USB cable. Fingers crossed.

However, I'm back to 10.11 as my full time OS, for two reasons:

1) My current VPN software doesn't work on 10.12. It's apparently been updated, but I don't have the updated version yet. I'm limited to whatever version is available.

2) While the patcher tool for the Sierra installer does work fine, the patcher tool for the macOS software updater doesn't list the release version of Sierra in its options. All the updater patcher tools options are for developer or public betas. Probably the last betas are the same version as the release, but it'd be nice to be sure of that.

EDIT:

Well, whaddya know?!? The release version for Sierra of my VPN software is now available. I'll go give that a try. I could have sworn it wasn't there yesterday. It only came out last week though, and it may have taken some time to filter down to the rest of us, so that makes sense.

 

[Eug]

One thing that may be interpreted as a good thing though is that Sierra no longer tells me laptop battery is in bad shape and needs to be replaced. The battery works fine, but just has a much shorter short battery life now, probably around three-fifths to two-thirds of what it used to be. Considering it's that old (years), that's not a surprise, but having the warning label there permanently in El Capitan is quite annoying.

BTW, 12.1 beta is now out. That was quick. It's apparently still very buggy. I think I might just wait until several point updates later before installing Sierra on this laptop permanently (assuming my VPN software now works).

Or maybe I'll just wait for the last version of Sierra next year and then install it to sell when I get a new Cannonlake MacBook Pro or something.