So, it was the end of the line for my 27″ 2011 iMac. After 7 years of service, the new OS (MacOS 10.14 “Mojave”) wasn’t going to be able to be installed on the old faithful. There’s some tech reasons for that – Apple moved to minimum standard for graphics cards for their system (they have to support Metal). While there’s external GPU’s for my iMac, I haven’t seen one that supports Mojave. And, even if it did, I probably can’t afford it.
And I certainly can’t afford a new Mac at the moment.
Keyboard mapping tool. The is a bit of an issue, since I’ve got to be able to compile a project for release very soon. Well… shit.
Once the Mojave installer has finished downloading, select the Mojave icon in the macOS Mojave Patcher window. Select your Mojave installer and click open Now, select your volume by clicking the dropdown menu under the picture of a hard drive. Jul 16, 2018 What is macOS Mojave Patcher? MacOS Mojave Patcher is an application that lets you run macOS 10.14 on unsupported hardware. It is developed by developer Dosdude who also developed similar patches for Sierra and High Sierra firmware.
MacOS Catalina Patcher (formerly macOS Mojave Patcher, macOS High Sierra Patcher and macOS Sierra Patcher) is a small yet powerful tool that can help you create a bootable USB drive that can be used to install macOS Catalina on Mac computers older than mid 2012, basically acting as a macOS Mojave patch for unsupported Macs. All Mojave and older era wireless Cards no longer function BCM94322, BCM94328 and Atheros series included BCM943224, BCM94331, BCM94360 and BCM943602 still work great with OpenCore Legacy Patcher.
Fortunately, there’s always someone somewhere that wants to get just a little more life out of their machine – in this case, the Mojave Patcher will do some trickery to load MacOS on a machine that’s not supposed to have it. Nice. Though, reading the notes, it mentions machines with a Radeon 5xxx or 6xxx series GPU had weird colors. Well, how bad could it be.
The answer is very. But, there’s a simple fix (for me, at least). Typically, I run dual screen. When starting the process, I turned off the second screen and went about installing, getting everything working, and back to developing software. It would be unusable with the “weird colors” if I wanted to do any graphics work.
I turned the second screen back on, which is attached via Thunderbolt to HDMI. Boom – suddenly all of my colors were correct again!
That didn’t solve the other problems, though – hardware acceleration is disabled, which means my fairly snappy iMac runs like a dog. For doing something like writing this blog, it’s fine (I’m using Chrome, though results appear the same in Safari.) I would have said YouTube would be worthless, but actually it seems to run YouTube videos just fine. Same goes for NetFlix, though there’s some issues with the animations for launching a show.
I’m dreading seeing what performance is like running the Android or iOS emulators (if they launch at all.) . I’ll find out what the damage is there tomorrow.
So is Mojave usable on my old machine? Yes. Is the machine still usable? Yeeeaaahhhh… for the most part. I think it’s gonna take me a bit to get used to the laggy interface. Since I have to compile stuff and sign it for the App Stores, I HAVE to run Mojave, otherwise I wouldn’t have bothered with the upgrade. Should you bother with it? Up to you if you’re on an old, unsupported Mac. (Obviously if you’re on a supported Mac, by all means upgrade)
Run into the color issue? Try plugging in a second monitor and see if that does the trick. Honestly, I have no idea why it worked, but it does. 🙂
Two updates to this (and probably some more to come later):
First, scrolling in Safari was laggy and choppy. Dragging windows around was choppy. Quick fix – lower the resolution from the maximum (2560 x 1440) to one step top (1920 x 1080) pretty much eliminated it. Not butter smooth, but a huge improvement on all of them. It’s much more usable.
Now for the “wow, that gets weird” part: the “weird colors” issue reappeared on my main monitor, but the secondary display has the right colors. Reverting back to the previous resolution doesn’t fix it. Definitely a WTF item. 🙂
UpdatesImportant Notes:
- Using APFS is REQUIRED in Mojave in order to receive system updates via the normal Software Update method. If you choose to continue using macOS Extended (Journaled) as your filesystem type, you will NOT receive System Updates via System Preferences. If you are not using APFS, you can follow the 10.14.1 installation steps below.
- After applying ANY system update via Software Update, re-applying post-install patches using your Mojave Patcher installer volume will most likely be necessary. If you install a software update and the system fails to boot afterwards, this is what needs to be done.
10.14.6
10.14.6 can be updated normally via Software Update if using an APFS volume, and will need to be patched using an installer volume created with Mojave Patcher version 1.3.2 or later after installing.
10.14.5
10.14.5 can be updated normally via Software Update if using an APFS volume, and will need to be patched using an installer volume created with Mojave Patcher version 1.3.1 or later after installing.
10.14.4
10.14.4 adds new changes that ARE NOT patchable by the post-install tool of Mojave Patcher v1.2.3 and older! Before updating to 10.14.4, you you will need to use the latest Mojave Patcher version to create a new installer volume, using the 10.14.4 installer app. Then, update to 10.14.4, either by installing via Software Update, or by just using the installer volume you've created to install.
If you are currently running 10.14.1 or 10.14.2, you can simply use the Software Update pane of System Preferences (if using APFS) to apply the 10.14.3 update. Once the update is installed, you will most likely need to re-apply post-install patches to get the system to boot again. This process is detailed in steps 8 - 10 above. If you are currently running 10.14.0, you'll need to proceed with the 10.14.1 update method described below.
10.14.2
Macos Catalina Patcher
If you are currently running 10.14.1, you can simply use the Software Update pane of System Preferences (if using APFS) to apply the 10.14.2 update. Once the update is installed, you will most likely need to re-apply post-install patches to get the system to boot again. This process is detailed in steps 8 - 10 above. If you are currently running 10.14.0, or are using a non-AFPS volume, you'll need to proceed with the 10.14.1 update method described below.
10.14.1/macOS Extended (Journaled) volumes
Mac Os Patcher
The Mojave 10.14.1 update does NOT install properly on unsupported machines, and could result in an unbootable OS. If you want to install the 10.14.1 update (and are not currently running 10.14.1), perform the following steps:
• Download the latest version of Mojave Patcher
• Download the installer using the Tools menu of Mojave Patcher
• Create a patched USB installer
• Boot from that, and install 10.14.1 onto the volume containing an older release.
• Once done, apply the post-install patches, and you should now be on 10.14.1.