[X4U] New solution for sync contacts and calendars needed

[Jim Scott]

>> On 22/11/2011, at 8:18 AM, Ken Johnson wrote:
>> 
>>> OK, now we have iCloud, and soon, no Mobile Me. Great! OS 10.7, mandatory for iCloud, won't run on 2 of my Macs, one of which is an Intel Core-Duo machine.


Not to fret, OS X 10.7 Lion WILL run on Intel Core Duo, Core Solo or any Intel Mac that's been upgraded to Core 2 Duo. All that's needed is an Intel Core 2 Duo or newer Mac to use as an installer platform to install Lion onto an external hard drive or USB thumb drive. Once that is done, then remove this file from the Lion install on the external hard drive: System/Library/CoreServices/PlatformSupport.plist. Then use Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper to clone the modified Lion onto the "unsupported" Intel Mac using the external hard drive. 

Then reboot the unsupported Intel Mac into Lion and use it as if it were a supported-Mac install. However, be aware that any subsequent upgrade to OS X, such as 10.7.1, etc. will require that that PlatformSupport.plist file be removed again. Why? That plist file contains a list of "supported" Intel Macs, such as iMac10,1, etc. Any Intel Mac not on that list, such as MacBook1,1,  will cause a white circle with a diagonal slash to appear during the Lion installation process, which means the Lion installation is not supported because the installer has not found a supported Model Identifier, such as iMac10,1 which is a late 2009 Core 2 Duo iMac . However, once that plist file is removed from a full install, Lion can be cloned onto any Mac, where it will work just fine … until the version of the OS is updated. Then you have to boot from a Lion installation without the plist file so you can remove the plist file from the 10.7.x update on the Mac's internal hard drive.

It's more difficult to describe than do, but this is how to make Lion run on Macs whose Model Identifier is not on the plist. I've done it with Core Duo iMacs and Mac Minis upgraded to a Core 2 Duo processor, and it works perfectly. Regular Apple Software Updates install flawlessly, with the exception of an OS version update, as noted above. 

One thing I do when I install Lion this way is to create a second partition on the external drive onto which I install the Lion Recovery HD, which is not installed in a hidden partition on the Mac's internal hard drive during the cloning install. OTOH, I've also put the Recovery HD on a thumb drive since it's a bootable volume.

Do a Google (Siri?) search for "OS X Lion on Core Duo" and you'll get lots  of hits on this subject.

Lion performance, along with iCloud, on unsupported Macs is virtually identical to Lion on supported Macs, in my experience. That assumes the Mac otherwise meets Lion's basic requirements. YMMV. The more RAM, the better, in other words.

-- Jim Scott