Can new MacBooks Pro run a VM with older OSX (El Capitan)?

[paoling]

Hello!

I'm waiting for my MBP 15 2016 to come, it will be shipped in 4-5 weeks...
In the meantime I realized that one of my most used apps has been broken by OSX Sierra, due to the deprecation of the objective-c garbage collection.

Now, since this app is one of the main reasons I'm on OSX, I started to doubt about my upcoming macbook. While it's clear that I won't be able to directly install El Capitan on it, I was wondering if using a virtual machine with El Capitan, would be a viable (terrible) solution. This way I would be able to use this app again, and enjoy my new laptop at the same time.

The question is: does the VM wrap any of the calls from the OS to the hardware, so there won't be compatibility issues with using El Capitan on a VM?

Has anyone tried?

 

[cuestakid]

what app would you use to run the VM? I know vmware fusion has built in ability to create a VM from the recovery partition. That said, you could try and download El Captian from the App Store and use try and make a VM from that installer.


http://www.macworld.com/article/298...le-os-x-10-11-el-capitan-installer-drive.html

I don't know if VirtualBox will do it, but I think you will have a better chance with Vmware

 

[macmee]

Hello!

I'm waiting for my MBP 15 2016 to come, it will be shipped in 4-5 weeks...
In the meantime I realized that one of my most used apps has been broken by OSX Sierra, due to the deprecation of the objective-c garbage collection.

Now, since this app is one of the main reasons I'm on OSX, I started to doubt about my upcoming macbook. While it's clear that I won't be able to directly install El Capitan on it, I was wondering if using a virtual machine with El Capitan, would be a viable (terrible) solution. This way I would be able to use this app again, and enjoy my new laptop at the same time.

The question is: does the VM wrap any of the calls from the OS to the hardware, so there won't be compatibility issues with using El Capitan on a VM?

Has anyone tried?

......... uh, what are you saying Sierra changes in regards to ARC?

edit: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/...e-c-garbage-collection-is-no-longer-supported

OH DEAR GOD. WHAT?
[doublepost=1479699418][/doublepost]Have you tried running the binary directly:

1. Choose “Show Package Contents” in the context menu.
2. run Contents/MacOS/Fraise

(replace 'Fraise' with the name of the app you are trying to run)

 

[Intell]

Older apps that were written back in the 10.4-10.6 era and never updated since may use objective-c garbage collection and it is no longer supported with 10.12.

In regards to the OP's question, you can run any version of OS X from 10.5 Server to 10.12 in a virtual machine without a problem so long as the virtual machine program supports that version of OS X.

 

[macmee]

Older apps that were written back in the 10.4-10.6 era and never updated since may use objective-c garbage collection and it is no longer supported with 10.12.

In regards to the OP's question, you can run any version of OS X from 10.5 Server to 10.12 in a virtual machine without a problem so long as the virtual machine program supports that version of OS X.

I....... don't even.......

what is the technical justification for this?

is it not sufficient to mark garbage collection as deprecated and leave it in for legacy support?

 

[AlanShutko]

I've had experience running 10.6.8 and later in a VM. I've never tried 10.5....

 

[Intell]

I....... don't even.......

what is the technical justification for this?

is it not sufficient to mark garbage collection as deprecated and leave it in for legacy support?

It's Apple. They don't really have any technical justification for much of what they do. There may be one, but I don't know it. I do know that starting with Xcode 5 it wouldn't compile anything that uses objective-c garbage collection without first changing it all to ARC. Even running the binary directly from Terminal doesn't work. It just complains about objective-c garbage collection no longer being supported.

 

[AlanShutko]

I....... don't even.......

what is the technical justification for this?

is it not sufficient to mark garbage collection as deprecated and leave it in for legacy support?

They deprecated garbage collection in 10.8, 4 years ago. They announced that all App Store releases had to remove garbage collection by May 2015. I suspect the technical reason that they finally killed it was that it was hard to keep working with other Objective-C features that are added to support Swift.

FWIW, here's what Chris Lattner has to say about GC. He's the Director of the Developer Tools department at Apple, leading the Xcode, Instruments, and compiler teams.

 

[cuestakid]

As an IT pro who primarily supports Windows, these types of issues are common, and why things like VMware VMs exist. They allow you to run versions of windows that may not be supported anymore because of a business critical application. You can, in many cases also isolate it so that it does not cause harm to your network. I have no reason to doubt the OPs need or question-it is simply how technology works. Many business need to keep specific apps running because they only run on a specific version of an OS. The blame should be with the software maker, not those who need it.

 

[AlanShutko]

I have no reason to doubt the OPs need or question-it is simply how technology works.

That's exactly why I have personal experience running older versions of OS X in a VM (Parallels, in my case). I've needed to run various versions of Xcode for projects, and the older versions would not run on the current OS.

 

[paoling]

Thank you for your kind replies. Yes I've got that error by running the application with terminal.

There's no one to blame here. Except maybe, Apple. The software in question is Redmatica Keymap Pro. I'm a sample library developer and this app is vital to my job. There are no alternatives, at all.

The developer sold his company to Apple, which implemented a couple of functions of Keymap in Mainstage, and nothing more.

I made some tests on my 13' 2012 with parallels and it works amazingly good (with no latency on the sound part), so I suppose that the newer upcoming machine won't have any problem either.