Install Lion On Unsupported Mac

I know this is not a common scenario, but for the few people that upgraded a Mac originally equipped with a Core Duo processor to a Core 2 Duo processor, here is the procedure. I have an iMac version 4,1 that I upgraded years ago, and it worked. The person who found the solution had an upgraded Mac Mini. You will need a second computer that is Lion capable for this tip to work.


Install Lion On Unsupported Mac As always, Make sure you have a backup of the original install! This worked for me, but always be prepared for the worst.

OS X El Capitan (10.11) on Unsupported Macs macOS Extractor and MacPostFactor are apps that guide you through patching and installing OS X El Capitan (10.11), Yosemite (10.10), Mavericks (10.9), or Mountain Lion (10.8) on your older Mac. This thread focuses on OS X El Capitan. Many older Macs lost out on the ability to run OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.3!), but some hard working fellows have created a free third party tool called MLPostFactor that allows for the newest version of OS X to be installed on older, officially unsupported Macs. The process used to be quite complicated, but with MLPostFactor it’s easier than. Install OS X Mountain Lion. STEP 1: Purchase OS X Mountain Lion. The operating system is not free. Purchase and download the Application from the Mac App Store using an Apple ID on any Mac or functional computer running OS X 10.6.6 or later. STEP 2: Create a Bootable USB Drive Using UniBeast. We need to download micropatcher from GitHub. ( MicroPatcher Download ) 2. Plug your boot-able MacOS Monterey USB Drive into the computer. Open up mac terminal and type sudo. Open up the micropatcher folder and drag and drop the ( Install-SetVars.sh ) file into the terminal and then you need to drag and drop the ( USB with Monterey.


I made, and used, a Lion Mac OS X Install ESD on a thumb drive. Instructions to make one can be found all over the Mac centric web sites. Then follow this procedure:
  • Put the unsupported Mac in Target Disk mode and plug it into a Lion supported Mac.
  • Run the Lion installer and make sure to choose your unsupported Mac's hard drive. Let the install finish.
  • Boot back into the supported Mac's OS, and put the unsupported Mac back to target disk mode.
  • Delete the PlatformSupport.plist at /System/Library/CoreServices on the unsupported Mac's hard drive.
  • Reboot the Unsupported Mac and it should boot into Lion normally.

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Install Os X Mountain Lion On Unsupported Mac

crarko adds: I don't have the equipment to try this, but it seems plausible. As recommended in the hint, have a complete system backup handy in case something goes awry.]

Update 2019-05-02: For those of you who want to install macOS 10.14 on an unsupported Mac,check this post.

I have a MacBook Mid 2007 (more technically named MacBook2,1) that officially can not be upgraded beyond Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion). It is however possible to install Mac OS X 10.9 (Mavericks) on it with quite good success and not too much effort.

I want to first write what does not work:

  1. Sleep mode – not working at all – leave on or shut down
  2. The build-in web camera – “works” but not as it did in 10.7, I think
  3. YouTube-video (etc), works occationally (now worse than in 10.7, my experience)

I suggest you read the user comments to this post. A few helpful readers have shared their experiences.

What you need:

  1. A USB Memory, 8GB or larger
  2. Mac OS X Mavericks (i had the install/upgrade Application that I had myself
    downloaded on another Mac, from App Store, when I upgraded it from 10.8 to
    10.9. I always keep these for possible future use.)
  3. SFOTT: I used version 1.4.4 which is currently the latest stable
  4. Audio/Video-drivers from (not here anymore, se comments below).
    Warning, this is one of these horrible download pages where you don’t know
    where to click to get the right thing, and what gives you spyware. You
    should get the file mac-mini-mavericks.7z. Discard anything else without
    opening. The 7z-file can be opened with StuffitExpander, that already
    comes with Maverick

Making a bootable USB-drive
You first need to use SFOTT to create your bootable USB-drive (it is called “key” in SFOTT). You simply double-click on SFOTT on a Mac where you both have your Mavericks Install App and your USB-drive. SFOTT is a self guiding menu-driven application. It will take some time to make all the settings in SFOTT (it took me perhaps 15 minutes), but it was self-explanatory and not very difficult. Use the autorun mode to create the drive.

Big Sur For Unsupported Macs

Recovery Scenario
When you install a Mac OS upgrade there is a risk your Mavericks system will not boot. When upgrading from 10.9.0 to 10.9.5 like I did, it will not boot. My impression (after reading different sources) is that this recovery is needed when upgrading from 10.9.0 (or 10.9.1 / 10.9.2) but not later. Nobody knows about 10.9.6 of course, because it is not out. Minor upgrades to applications or security upgrades should not cause need to recovery.

When Mavericks fails to start you need to “re-Patch” using SFOTT. I installed Mavericks on a separate partition, side-by-side with Lion, so when Mavericks failed to start my computer automatically started Lion instead and I could run SFOTT in Lion to re-Patch my Mavericks system.

If you can not do side-by-side you can start from your SFOTT-key (which you still have) and instead of installing Maverick you start the Terminal application. Find the SFOTT.app on the key, and find SFOTT.sh inside SFOTT.app. Run SFOTT.sh and you can re-Patch your broken Mavericks system. I did the entire procedure on my working Mavericks just to test it, and it seems fine.

There is if course no true guarantee that a future Apple upgrade will not break everything completely.

Installing Mavericks
Installation of Mavericks from the USB-drive is very standard. To start the computer from the USB-drive, hold down the “alt”-key (not Apple-key, not ctrl-key) while starting the computer. Choose SFOTT and proceed normally. After about an hour you should have a clean 10.9.0 Mavericks with network/wifi working. Video will work, but with problems (try Safari, and you will see), and Audio will not work.

Upgrade Mavericks
I used App Store to upgrade Mavericks to 10.9.5. That works just fine, until Mavericks fails to start (I ended up in my old Lion system on a reboot, if you have no other system installed your computer with probably just not start). This is where you need to recover your system using SFOTT.

Fixing Audio and Video
The 7z-file I referred to above contains Audio and Video drivers. You run the application “Kext Utility” and the you drag the contents of the folder Extensions into the Kext Utility, and it will install the drivers. There is a folder with “optional wifi drivers”, I have not installed those because wifi has been fine all the time for me.

Upgrade Unsupported Mac

The MacBook2,1 has Intel GMA950 Video, and there are no supported 64-bit-drivers for Mavericks. The drivers I suggest you to install are supposed to be drivers from a public beta of 10.6 (Snow Leopard) that Apple once released. They seem to work quite fine for me though. And not installing them is worse.

I suggest you upgrade to 10.9.5 before fixing Audio and Video. I guess a later Apple-upgrade could break Audio and Video and require you to reinstall drivers.

Problems booting the SFOTT key
I first created the SFOTT key using the SFOTT beta (that is also supposed to work with Yosemite), and I used System Preferences/Startup Disk (in Lion) to start the installion. This failed and my computer just started up in Lion.

I then created the SFOTT key using 1.4.4, AND i restarted the computer holding down the alt-key. This worked. This key also later worked when I used System Preferences/Startup Disk (in Mavericks) to choose startup drive.

Driver Problems
There are open source Audio drivers called VoodooHDA. I installed those ones with success, but audio volume was low. I tried to fix with no success. Later I found the drivers I referred to above and that I recommend.

I found another download for what was supposed to be the same Video Drivers. But the Kext-utility did not work, and I installed the drivers by copying them directly into /System/Library/Extensions and this gave me a broken unbootable system. I don’t know what went wrong, but I recommend the drivers I linked to.

Video/YouTube Performance
Some videos seem to play perfectly, others dont. I had problems with 10.7 too.

Background and about SFOTT
There are several Apple computers that can run 10.7, that have a 64-bit processor, but that can not officially run 10.8 or later. There are a few issues:

  1. Video Drivers – and in the case of my MacBook2,1 the unofficial ones mentioned
    above may be good enough
  2. 32 bit EFI. Even though the computer has a 64 bit processor, the EFI, the
    software that runs before the Installer/Operating system, is 32 bit, and not
    capable of starting a 64-bit system.
  3. Mavericks does not believe it can run on this hardware.

As I understand it SFOTT installs a little program that 32 bit EFI is capable of starting, and that in turn is capable of staring a 64 bit system. Also, SFOTT patches a few files so Mavericks feels comfortable running on the unsupported hardware.

Macbook

You can do all of this on your own without SFOTT. SFOTT “just” makes this reasonably easy.

There are plenty of forums, tools and information about running Mac OS X on unsupported hardware (also non-Apple-hardware: a Hackintosh). Those forums of course focus a lot on problems people have.

Mac Os On Unsupported Mac

Yosemite
It is supposed to be possible to install Yosemite in a similar way. SFOTT has a beta release for Yosemite. For my purposes going to Mavericks gave me virtually all advantages of an upgrade (supported version of OS X, able to install latest Xcode, etc).

Install Lion On Unsupported Mac

Conclusion
In the beginning of 2015, it is not that hard to install Mavericks on a MacBook Mid 2007, with a quite good result. I have pointed out the tools and downloads you need and that will work.