Blender 4 Crashes on macOS Sequoia (Mid 2015 MacBook Pro): [BronzeMtlDevice setShouldMaximizeConcurrentCompilation:]

[mafia_ir]

Hey everyone, I’m running into a crash with Blender 4 on my Mid 2015 MacBook Pro (MJLT2) after upgrading to macOS Sequoia via OpenCore Legacy Patcher. Blender 3.9 works perfectly on Sequoia, but Blender 4 crashes immediately with a Metal-related error: -[BronzeMtlDevice setShouldMaximizeConcurrentCompilation:]: unrecognized selector. Oddly, Blender 4 works fine on the same hardware under macOS Monterey 12.3.1.

From what I’ve researched, Blender 4 requires Metal 2.2 for some of its newer GPU optimizations, but OpenCore Legacy Patcher only installs Metal 2.0. The crash seems to happen when Blender 4 tries to call the setShouldMaximizeConcurrentCompilation method, which isn’t present in Metal 2.0.

Has anyone else encountered this? Are there workarounds or patches to enable Metal 2.2 on older GPUs via OCLP? Or is this a limitation we’ll have to live with until Blender or OCLP addresses it? Any insights would be appreciated!

MacBook-Pro ~ % system_profiler SPDisplaysDataType              
Graphics/Displays:

    Intel Iris Pro:

      Chipset Model: Intel Iris Pro
      Type: GPU
      Bus: Built-In
      VRAM (Dynamic, Max): 1536 MB
      Vendor: Intel
      Device ID: 0x0d26
      Revision ID: 0x0008
      Automatic Graphics Switching: Supported
      gMux Version: 4.0.20 [3.2.8]
      Metal Support: Metal 2
      Displays:
        Color LCD:
          Display Type: Built-In Retina LCD
          Resolution: 2880 x 1800 Retina
          Framebuffer Depth: 24-Bit Color (ARGB8888)
          Main Display: Yes
          Mirror: Off
          Online: Yes
          Automatically Adjust Brightness: Yes
          Connection Type: Internal

    AMD Radeon R9 M370X:

      Chipset Model: AMD Radeon R9 M370X
      Type: GPU
      Bus: PCIe
      PCIe Lane Width: x8
      VRAM (Total): 2 GB
      Vendor: AMD (0x1002)
      Device ID: 0x6821
      Revision ID: 0x0083
      ROM Revision: 113-C5670E-945
      VBIOS Version: 113-C567A1-006
      EFI Driver Version: 01.00.945
      Automatic Graphics Switching: Supported
      gMux Version: 4.0.20 [3.2.8]
      Metal Support: Metal 2


MacBook-Pro ~ % /Applications/Blender.app/Contents/MacOS/Blender
*** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInvalidArgumentException', reason: '-[BronzeMtlDevice setShouldMaximizeConcurrentCompilation:]: unrecognized selector sent to instance 0x7f92bd8d6000'
*** First throw call stack:
(
    0   CoreFoundation                      0x00007ff8163df6e6 __exceptionPreprocess + 242
    1   libobjc.A.dylib                     0x00007ff815ec7bd0 objc_exception_throw + 62
    2   CoreFoundation                      0x00007ff81648718f -[NSObject(NSObject) __retain_OA] + 0
    3   CoreFoundation                      0x00007ff81634f3f5 ___forwarding___ + 745
    4   CoreFoundation                      0x00007ff81634f078 _CF_forwarding_prep_0 + 120
    5   Blender                             0x000000010d23c443 _ZN7blender3gpu10MTLContextC2EPvS2_ + 1667
    6   Blender                             0x000000010d23590b _ZN7blender3gpu10MTLBackend13context_allocEPvS2_ + 43
    7   Blender                             0x000000010d13fb46 _Z18GPU_context_createPvS_ + 86
    8   Blender                             0x000000010854be8f _ZL28wm_window_ghostwindow_ensureP15wmWindowManagerP8wmWindowb + 607
    9   Blender                             0x000000010854bc1d _Z29wm_window_ghostwindows_ensureP15wmWindowManager + 125
    10  Blender                             0x00000001085090e9 _Z8WM_checkP8bContext + 185
    11  Blender                             0x000000010851e27b _Z19wm_homefile_read_exP8bContextPK21wmHomeFileRead_ParamsP10ReportListPP21wmFileReadPost_Params + 2619
    12  Blender                             0x000000010852a692 _Z7WM_initP8bContextiPPKc + 322
    13  Blender                             0x0000000107aff2c5 main + 773
    14  dyld                                0x00007ff815efc2cd start + 1805
)
libc++abi: terminating due to uncaught exception of type NSException
zsh: abort      /Applications/Blender.app/Contents/MacOS/Blender

 

[galad]

Blender is checking the system version to decide whether to call or not that method, your system is a Frankenstein of newer pieces and old Metal, and so the method is called because it's supposed to be present.

Blender could check if the method exists by calling respondsToSelector:, but the again who knows if there are others unavailable APIs or something missing in the shaders compiler.

You could try to open a bug report on Blender bug tracker, but I don't know if it's something that they want to support, even all the other Intel Macs will be on the chopping block quite soon.