Dipped my toe into the world of the unsupported this week. Using OpenCore Legacy Patcher,<https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/>, I’ve got an iMac 16,2 mid-2015 up and running with Sequoia. Normally I don’t bother with trying to push hardware past what it can officially do anymore, especially when said hardware is not mine but my partners, however in this
case we really want the Passwords app to be available on all her devices so
it was worth a prod.

Results are pretty good. It’s running at least as fast as Monterey was,
which is its last officially supported OS. Haven’t noticed anything not working, although not tried iPhone mirroring as yet. Process was not smooth however, there’s a nice Youtube video which makes it look so but there’s
a crucial step committed:
Here,<https://youtube.com/watch?v=rfa2aSm7OxQ&t=197> is where it talks about erasing a USB flash drive to create an installer. This drive -must- be partitioned as GPT otherwise Sequoia will not install onto it. Worse, it will give the impression of doing so but then breaking when you try to actually boot.

This caused me no end of issues until worked it out. It actually got as far
as putting Sequoia onto the internal HD and then rendering the machine non-bootable, since it hadn’t converted the internal drive and left it on macOS Journaled format which Sequoia will not boot from. Once I got the flash drive redone as GPT and got a working install on that, the installer
continued correctly and converted the Internal drive over to GPT/APFS. All
good from then, but did cause a small heart attack (leaving your partner’s machine unusable after promising improvements is -not- a good look...).

I’ve turned automatic updates off, as the OpenCore site suggests, in case some future update comes down which kills the install. This means I’ll need to pay attention to the OpenCore blog or something, just to make sure I’m
up to date with when I can install OS updates. I’m not expecting much functionality beyond what I’ve already got - the world of Apple
Intelligence etc. is unlikely to be supported on Intel I would have thought. But that’s fine - it just needs basic browsing/productivity/photos apps on
it along with the trigger for all this in the first place - Passwords. All of that is working without issue.

Cheers,
Ian

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Ian McCall <ian@eruvia.org> wrote:

Dipped my toe into the world of the unsupported this week. Using OpenCore Legacy Patcher,<https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/>, I’ve got an iMac 16,2 mid-2015 up and running with Sequoia. Normally I don’t bother with trying to push hardware past what it can officially do anymore, especially when said hardware is not mine but my partners, however in this case we really want the Passwords app to be available on all her devices so it was worth a prod.

Results are pretty good. It’s running at least as fast as Monterey was, which is its last officially supported OS. Haven’t noticed anything not working, although not tried iPhone mirroring as yet. Process was not smooth however, there’s a nice Youtube video which makes it look so but there’s a crucial step committed: Here,<https://youtube.com/watch?v=rfa2aSm7OxQ&t=197> is where it talks about erasing a USB flash drive to create an installer. This drive -must- be partitioned as GPT otherwise Sequoia will not install onto it. Worse, it will give the impression of doing so but then breaking when you try to actually boot.

This caused me no end of issues until worked it out. It actually got as far as putting Sequoia onto the internal HD and then rendering the machine non-bootable, since it hadn’t converted the internal drive and left it on macOS Journaled format which Sequoia will not boot from. Once I got the flash drive redone as GPT and got a working install on that, the installer continued correctly and converted the Internal drive over to GPT/APFS. All good from then, but did cause a small heart attack (leaving your partner’s machine unusable after promising improvements is -not- a good look...).

I’ve turned automatic updates off, as the OpenCore site suggests, in case some future update comes down which kills the install. This means I’ll need to pay attention to the OpenCore blog or something, just to make sure I’m up to date with when I can install OS updates. I’m not expecting much functionality beyond what I’ve already got - the world of Apple Intelligence etc. is unlikely to be supported on Intel I would have thought. But that’s fine - it just needs basic browsing/productivity/photos apps on it along with the trigger for all this in the first place - Passwords. All of that is working without issue.

Some months ago I used OCLP to put Sonoma on my 2017 MBA which would
normally go no newer than Monterey. Unfortunately using the then latest
version of OCLP I found WiFi would not work! I then rebuilt using an older version of OCLP and it worked fine for a while. I thought I had selected no auto updates but maybe I hadn’t as one day the MBA went belly up. I’ve now rebuilt the MBA via. a Monterey installer. However I was quite pleased with
the overall performance with Sonoma so I’m tempted to try again. Glad it’s working reasonably well for you :)

--
Cheers, Alan

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Ian McCall <ian@eruvia.org> wrote:

Results are pretty good. It’s running at least as fast as Monterey was, which is its last officially supported OS. Haven’t noticed anything not working, although not tried iPhone mirroring as yet. Process was not smooth however, there’s a nice Youtube video which makes it look so but there’s a crucial step committed: Here,<https://youtube.com/watch?v=rfa2aSm7OxQ&t=197> is where it talks about erasing a USB flash drive to create an installer. This drive -must- be partitioned as GPT otherwise Sequoia will not install onto it. Worse, it will give the impression of doing so but then breaking when you try to actually boot.

I recently installed Sonoma on a 2011 Mac Mini (ex-TimS of this parish) via OCLP. I didn't have the GPT issue but my USB drives often have a random collection of partitions on them so I make a habit of wiping them before starting. Typically MacOS wants to use APFS and APFS implies GPT, so I probably dodged that one by reformatting as APFS anyway.

This caused me no end of issues until worked it out. It actually got as far as putting Sequoia onto the internal HD and then rendering the machine non-bootable, since it hadn’t converted the internal drive and left it on macOS Journaled format which Sequoia will not boot from. Once I got the flash drive redone as GPT and got a working install on that, the installer continued correctly and converted the Internal drive over to GPT/APFS. All good from then, but did cause a small heart attack (leaving your partner’s machine unusable after promising improvements is -not- a good look...).

The step I missed when playing with OCLP before is that the machine boots
into the chosen OS once installed, but there's a further step of installing
the drivers from the OCLP app after that. If you don't do it the machine
works but graphics are very slow and creaky. Once you have the drivers then
it works much better.

I’ve turned automatic updates off, as the OpenCore site suggests, in case some future update comes down which kills the install. This means I’ll need to pay attention to the OpenCore blog or something, just to make sure I’m up to date with when I can install OS updates. I’m not expecting much functionality beyond what I’ve already got - the world of Apple Intelligence etc. is unlikely to be supported on Intel I would have thought. But that’s fine - it just needs basic browsing/productivity/photos apps on it along with the trigger for all this in the first place - Passwords. All of that is working without issue.

I'm doing that too - I'm mostly using it remotely via VNC and I don't want
to get in a position where an update gets stuck at the boot menu or whatever that I can't get at via VNC. Even behind on updates it's still better than running High Sierra which is the last supported OS.

(I did previously have a black window using Teamviewer instead of VNC to
export the display - apparently there's no support for pre-Metal GPUs in TV
any more. I'm not sure if that was due to lack of GPU drivers on my prior setup, anyhow Apple's VNC works ok so not tried TV on this setup)

Theo

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On 2 Oct 2024, Theo wrote
(in article <a+f*aL0Vz@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk>):

The step I missed when playing with OCLP before is that the machine boots into the chosen OS once installed, but there's a further step of installing the drivers from the OCLP app after that. If you don't do it the machine works but graphics are very slow and creaky. Once you have the drivers then it works much better.

Oh yes - was completely unusable before that bit. They call that stage
“Root patches”, and it adds back in acceleration and proper network
drivers etc. specific to your machine. Without that it couldn’t even draw
the desktop background at first - just went to a pure white screen. You reminded me that I had to use an ethernet cable for this bit - it recognised the wifi card but could find no networks, and it recognised and offered to
join my iPhone hotspot but could never actually join it. None of this was a concern after the Root Patches stage.

Thanks,
Ian

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Ian McCall <ian@eruvia.org> wrote:

Dipped my toe into the world of the unsupported this week. Using OpenCore Legacy Patcher,<https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/>, I’ve got an iMac 16,2 mid-2015 up and running with Sequoia. Normally I don’t bother with trying to push hardware past what it can officially do anymore, especially when said hardware is not mine but my partners, however in this case we really want the Passwords app to be available on all her devices so it was worth a prod.

Results are pretty good. It’s running at least as fast as Monterey was, which is its last officially supported OS. Haven’t noticed anything not working, although not tried iPhone mirroring as yet. Process was not smooth however, there’s a nice Youtube video which makes it look so but there’s a crucial step committed: Here,<https://youtube.com/watch?v=rfa2aSm7OxQ&t=197> is where it talks about erasing a USB flash drive to create an installer. This drive -must- be partitioned as GPT otherwise Sequoia will not install onto it. Worse, it will give the impression of doing so but then breaking when you try to actually boot.

This caused me no end of issues until worked it out. It actually got as far as putting Sequoia onto the internal HD and then rendering the machine non-bootable, since it hadn’t converted the internal drive and left it on macOS Journaled format which Sequoia will not boot from. Once I got the flash drive redone as GPT and got a working install on that, the installer continued correctly and converted the Internal drive over to GPT/APFS. All good from then, but did cause a small heart attack (leaving your partner’s machine unusable after promising improvements is -not- a good look...).

I’ve turned automatic updates off, as the OpenCore site suggests, in case some future update comes down which kills the install. This means I’ll need to pay attention to the OpenCore blog or something, just to make sure I’m up to date with when I can install OS updates. I’m not expecting much functionality beyond what I’ve already got - the world of Apple Intelligence etc. is unlikely to be supported on Intel I would have thought. But that’s fine - it just needs basic browsing/productivity/photos apps on it along with the trigger for all this in the first place - Passwords. All of that is working without issue.

Funnily enough, I’ve literally just (like today) wiped my OCLP install on
my MBP2017.

It was OK for most things, but was also giving me a few frustrating issues.

For me though, it’s not my prime device (2020 iPad Pro is still doing well for that). I only use it really to do some bits of Photos library
management, and to store my movies and music collections.

I certainly like the new Passwords app though, and do make use of that in
my devices.

However, trying to run Sequoia, and Sonoma before it, just wasn’t working completely well here.

Although it has been reasonably OK, it has been suffering with more apps needing a Force-Quit. Safari has been one, where it just beachballs on
opening any webpage if I have any extensions installed.

It was also painfully slow uploading images to Photos in iCloud. It’s much faster if I use the iPad.

It also lost the ability to show the internal drive in DriveDX.

So, it’s back on Ventura now, the latest that is officially supported.
Still syncing everything though.

As I now put everything into iCloud, it was easy to make the choice to just wipe and start again.

It just shows, YMMV does always apply :-/

Never mind.

--
Andy H

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