A plea for Mac compatibility...

In his Dorico Pro announcement post, Daniel said:

“Although Dorico 1.x was officially supported on only Mac OS X 10.11 or later, in fact it used to run on versions as far back as Mac OS X 10.9. Dorico 2, on the other hand, will not even run on computers running Mac OS X earlier than 10.11 (El Capitan)”

Thanks for that. May I make a plea, however. There are lots of studios still using the Mac Pro aluminium towers from 2009. Like me, many don’t like the current Mac Pro because you can’t upgrade it. The problem is that the 2009 Mac Pro doesn’t support anything newer than El Capitan (10.11).

I know that you are often held hostage to OS upgrades but please do all you can to support what many consider to be a Mac workhorse. Might be 9 years old but Apple have never made a better Mac Pro than those large towers.

The new Mac Pro is coming next year and I’ll have a look at it then so please, please, please, don’t drop support for El Capitan, if you can possibly help it.

[deleted as inaccurate - see Daniel’s comment below]

Dorico 2 will run on Mac OS X 10.11, I believe, but no earlier version. At the moment I don’t anticipate that we will need to move up the minimum OS version this year, but the changes coming in Mojave are significant and it’s possible that we may be forced into requiring a later minimum version if that is needed to support the latest version.

Sorry, PianoLeo, but you’re wrong this time (though you are very rarely so…)

Please see attached!

Which is why I redacted my post, 7 minutes before you picked me up on it :wink:
For the record, I just misread your message about El Capitan vs older than El Capitan.
I correctly remembered that Dorico 2 is built on newer QT Framework that requires a newer macOS than the old QT Framework…

Fair enough :smiley:

I read your comment on my iMac so went down to my studio to get the screenshot on my Mac Pro and didn’t recheck the thread.

Note to self: measure twice; cut once.

I apologise for any undue exercise I caused :wink:

If you have a 2009 Mac Pro 4,1, there IS a way to “flash” it such that it’s fooled into thinking it’s a Mac 5,1. I did this in a few minutes (though would have to look up how I did it) and am now successfully running Mac Sierra (and could now also presumably upgrade to High Sierra, etc.)…Was very helpful since I was otherwise not able to enjoy the very latest Logic update :slight_smile:
D.D.

Beechside, sad as it may be for you with an older machine, at this point it seems unreasonable to ask the team to write new code to support a 9+ y.o. machine. While I certainly sympathize with your beef with apple’s hardware tactics, I think you just need to get a new computer. (I understand we are ultimately talking about software/OS compatibility as much as hardware.)

I still maintain, though, that an “Early 2009 Mac Pro 4,1” (such as the one I have) can be updated pretty easily via a small hack to think that it’s a Mac Pro 5,1 (making it able to update to Sierra and I believe also High Sierra and possibly beyond - mine is now running Sierra)…I’ve done this with Dorico and it definitely runs (albeit more slowly - I’ve since also switched over to using a more recent vintage, 2015 MacBook Pro which runs much faster)…

  • D.D.

Beechside:

I have a 2009 Mac Pro 8-Core 2.66 GHz Mac Pro and did the firmware upgrade last year. I read that this is possible because much of the 2009 MP’s hardware is identical to later cheese-grater models, with a notable exception I’ll explain in a minute.

The firmware update not only buys you some time, it also allows you to upgrade the CPUs to ones used in the 2010-2012 Mac Pros. I upgraded mine to 3.33 GHz hex-core (x5680), effectively making the machine like a 2011 Mac Pro.

I think the only complication with the firmware upgrade was having to disable SIP in order to flash the PRAM after the upgrade; to disable SIP, I had to boot into recovery mode, if I recall correctly.

Upgrading the processors is a bit more complex, because unlike other Mac Pro models, the 2009 8-core used de-lidded CPUs. There’s a cottage industry of de-lidding services and vendors of de-lidded CPUs, if you want to pay the premium. Or you can do it yourself. I bought used x5680s on eBay and de-lidded using the clothes iron method: Delid Soldered CPU Guide - YouTube

You’ll find the firmware utility and lots of info here: http://forum.netkas.org/index.php/topic,852.0.html

There’s also a lot of great info at the MacRumors forums.

I think there’s a strong case to be made for keeping Dorico compatible with Mac Pro 4,1, at least until Apple releases a new upgradeable pro machine. Beechside is correct that Macs remain popular among music pros (and other pros). Yes, 9 years is old for a computer, but the last six years has been a strange, unprecedented era in Apple history for pro-oriented users.

I’ve had no problems with my upgraded computer, except for screwing up one of the de-liddings.

This macOS High Sierra Patcher will also work on your machine. I used it successfully on a 2008 MacBook Pro.

A discussion about this with other users can be found on the MacRumors forums.