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Show HN: OS X Mavericks Forever

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Re: Show HN: OS X Mavericks Forever

#121

Post by aspenmayer »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #30
brewmarche wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it depends on what was the current version when your model came out. Should have said mid-2014 like OP, sorry

> Should have said mid-2014 like OP, sorry I don't want to belabor the point, but just to be clear—I am referring to a mid-2014 MBA, anything newer and Mavericks wouldn't work! (There is no "late 2014" MBA as far as I'm aware.) Mine offers to install Yosemite in recovery mode. It may indeed be based on when that specific computer came off of the assembly line or something, I have no idea, but for that exact model of…

There are multiple boot-time recovery options, but you might not have a required firmware update to use them. Per everymac, all 2014 MBA’s should be able to run up to Big Sur?

What is offered to install when you do this?

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/use-macos-recovery-...

> Option-Command-R: Start up from macOS Recovery over the internet. Use this key combination to reinstall macOS and upgrade to the latest version of macOS that’s compatible with your Mac.

https://everymac.com/systems/by_capability/maximum-macos-sup...

> MacBook Air "Core i5" 1.4 11" (Early 2014)11 (Big Sur)

> MacBook Air "Core i7" 1.7 11" (Early 2014)11 (Big Sur)

> MacBook Air "Core i5" 1.4 13" (Early 2014)11 (Big Sur)

> MacBook Air "Core i7" 1.7 13" (Early 2014)11 (Big Sur)

When updating to the new macOS, firmware updates that govern the pre-boot and recovery environment are changed/updated, and you can downgrade macOS again afterwards. You can usually install the firmware updates without updating macOS, but finding them is usually the harder part. You could probably swap hard drives to a scratch SSD if you wanted to update your firmware via updating macOS entirely without affecting your live install, or install macOS on a USB drive, which should not affect your internal SSD install, but like all upgrades, have a backup or pull the internal SSD.

Re: Show HN: OS X Mavericks Forever

#122

Post by Wowfunhappy »

SlowTao wrote: post #115

So you know how there are different religious factions that broadly have very similar views but they practically go to war due to the variance of small details... screw mavericks, OSX 10.4 Tiger FOREVER!!!!

Hey, Tiger is cool, you won't get any shade from me! I would find it extremely difficult to use as a daily driver though, much moreso than Mavericks.

I do try to support other old versions of OS X where possible. Aqua Proxy supports Snow Leopard for example, which took some effort. (I wish it could support Tiger too but there's no way to build Go binaries for Tiger.)

Re: Show HN: OS X Mavericks Forever

#123

Post by Lammy »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #120
Lammy wrote: post #118

> Remove apps and features which don't work anymore, and would just make me sad if I saw them. sudo rm -rf /Library/Widgets/Weather.wdgt Some of these could be fixed if you find a replacement API. Try this modded Weather widget for example: https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/weather-dashboard-widget-da... And check out Download #2 (`Working_Widgets.zip`) here: https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/widget-collection-2005-mac…

I'm actually the author of those fixed widgets! They are on the website in the app library. (Even though they aren't "apps"... I originally wanted to make a separate page for non-app Mavericks software but it felt weird.) The idea is, remove the nonworking ones to start out since they're broken, and then you can install the working copies.

wow that will teach me to read usernames lol

Thank you!

Re: Show HN: OS X Mavericks Forever

#124

Post by philistine »

robertoandred wrote: post #73
philistine wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both those projects can only go skin deep. The macOS experience is not only how it looks, but the depth of its interactivity and the thoughtful implementations within that depth. I still shudder when I see the limitations of dragging files in Windows. The fact I can drag a folder to a save dialog to jump to that folder is so natural to me, and Windows and Linux never bothered with those details.

Unfortunately that experience keeps getting degraded. The hiding of proxy icons is crazy to me.

Read that, it's enlightening!

https://tidbits.com/2022/03/26/tipbits-always-show-window-pr...

Re: Show HN: OS X Mavericks Forever

#125

Post by Wowfunhappy »

stuaxo wrote: post #7

This is nice, I wish there was way to bring the old Rosetta over, though I guess it probably needs something like all/some parts of the OS to be compiled as fat binaries to work,

You'd need to compile a custom kernel, but it might it be possible.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/rosetta-on-10-7-and-abo...

> 10.6 xnu does have special support for rosetta, namely in kern_exec where it seems to set some special ppc environment bits if the oah binary is invoked (and of course there's the handler to call the oah binary for a ppc mach-o, but the former is more important for minimal viable example since you can always invoke oah manually). I think this bit is actually needed because the kernel has other codepath here when allocating memory. (Not 100% confident though, bit it makes sense there are different conventions about base address, region sizes, etc.)

> Likely might need changes to dyld also for obvious reasons, but that's open source as well https://opensource.apple.com/source/dyld/dyld-132.13/src/dyl...

> Would be easiest to try getting a plain assembly hello world ppc binary working first. I see that someone on your linked thread tried copying translate binary but it crashed even without args; tracing in lldb would be the logical next step but seems he never followed up on that...

> Another thing which I'm not sure of is whether rosetta relies on existence of ppc-arch system frameworks; I'd assume not since they'd want to do high-level thunking here for performance, but maybe that only ends up being done in some cases? I couldn't find any docs on reverse engineering rosetta1m or if they exist they've disappeared.

A possible counterpoint to the last paragraph would be, if Rosetta doesn't need those system frameworks why are so many libraries in Snow Leopard compiled as intel-ppc universal binaries? If those actually get used, a port would be much more difficult.

Re: Show HN: OS X Mavericks Forever

#126

Post by scarface_74 »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #94
latexr wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is also another layer: when SIPS was introduced, there were tons of articles and videos teaching people to turn it off when they shouldn’t. This ranged from uninformed social media “developers” who confidently spewed dangerous bad advice, to outright bad actors trying to compromise your machine. Non-savvy users could still break their own systems by disabling these features easily. But largely I agree with you.…

> There is also another layer: when SIPS was introduced, there were tons of articles and videos teaching people to turn it off when they shouldn’t. ...see, I actually had the opposite frustration with SIP. So many people were so hesitant to turn it off, even when they had a clear use case. This is where the argument looses me. I agree that it's good to protect people from screwing up by accident. But if someone has t…

Until you install a piece of niche software that corrupts your entire system when installing it with SIP turned off…

https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/15235262/chrome-upd...

Re: Show HN: OS X Mavericks Forever

#128

Post by ryandrake »

xp84 wrote: post #90

> Removing stock apps from the Applications folder is completely safe—nothing will break—and this is your computer, so you should make it your own This is the part that hits home the most for me. I get the benefits of the hardened pc-as-appliance that Apple has shoved down all our throats as "for our own good" but using a modern Mac compared to even Mavericks, or Windows XP, feels to me like if someone came into my h…

Echoes of an article posted here [1] some time ago called I Don’t Like Computers which had the same nostalgic vibe about computing in the past. This is exactly how modern OS's and devices make me feel. The Personal Computer used to be PERSONAL. The User was in control. We used to be in the driver’s seat. We used to tell computers what to do. Now we feel like passengers, and the computer is telling us what it's going to do and hedging us into a few small scraps of functionality it deems safe for us.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30851371

Re: Show HN: OS X Mavericks Forever

#129

Post by Wowfunhappy »

scarface_74 wrote: post #126
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is also another layer: when SIPS was introduced, there were tons of articles and videos teaching people to turn it off when they shouldn’t. ...see, I actually had the opposite frustration with SIP. So many people were so hesitant to turn it off, even when they had a clear use case. This is where the argument looses me. I agree that it's good to protect people from screwing up by accident. But if someone has t…

Until you install a piece of niche software that corrupts your entire system when installing it with SIP turned off… https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/15235262/chrome-upd...

Because Google majorly screwed up, in a piece of software that runs with administrator privileges! Why the heck was it running with those privileges in the first place?! It's kind of nuts that Google faced basically no blow-back for rendering people's systems unbootable.

The Chrome updater could also have had a bug that completely deletes your home directory, and SIP wouldn't protect you. I guess your computer would still boot in that case, but how much would you care? The actual damage would be worse.

Anyway, this entire incident was notable precisely because it was so unusual—in ~9 years of SIP I'm not aware of any other instances where turning it off caused problems.

Re: Show HN: OS X Mavericks Forever

#130

Post by SnuffBox »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #101
SnuffBox wrote: post #69

> Web Browsers. There is no modern mainstream browser engine that works in Snow Leopard. You don't need one. You can either use RDP to a Windows Server running on a lightweight Mini PC (like I do) or use VMWare Fusion in unified mode to have a modern Chrome version seamlessly integrated into your desktop experience.

VMWare Fusion in unified mode is an option I may explore if Firefox Dynasty stops being maintained, but I know the integration wouldn't be seamless enough to satisfy me. Especially given that my web browser is the most used app on my machine, it kind of defeats the purpose of using Mavericks in the first place. Are you daily driving Snow Leopard? I'd be interested to hear about the experience, if you have anything in…

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