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'Continuity Activation Tool' Enables Handoff on Older Macs
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Thank you. Do you then need to run this software to get it to work or will it work with just with the hardware change ?
This is incredibly cool. Pretty neat what the community can come up with. Now they can install this and immediately disable it like the rest of us! Ok, I'll admit that at least the SMS message thing on the Mac is cool. Phone calls are just kinda annoying.
Ah, I was under the impression that the 2011 MBPs had it, but you're right. But the 2011 Airs and Mini do, yet they aren't supported.
That's such B.S. My Mid 2011 MBA came out 3 years ago. I bought it exactly 2 years ago and it was relatively fresh when I got it. It also has bluetooth 4.0 LE in it. Can you please explain to me why you think it shouldn't support handoff?
I think it's time you changed your signature line then
They do last. All of them are still in use, and my iMac rarely shows its age. Haven't upgraded it to Yosemite yet... It may start showing its age a lot more prominently at that point.
The thing is, anyone that had an older Mac might think you can just get a new card and swap it, because, the AirPort card used to be changeable, when it was first introduced. That isn't the case anymore, I don't think the card is swappable on any Mac made for the last several years.
I would really like to know why the 2011 MBA was excluded in the first place... it has the exact same wifi/bt chip as the MBA 2012. My only conceivable explanation is that they didn't want to piss late-2011 MacBook Pro users off with the fact that their more expensive and newer machine was not capable of doing something that an entry level Air was...
Anyway, I manually applied this "hack" on my MBA even before this tool came out, every Handoff function works flawlessly, naturally...
Anyway, I manually applied this "hack" on my MBA even before this tool came out, every Handoff function works flawlessly, naturally...
I'm confused. Does the Early 2011 MacBook Pro require a hardware change to support Continuity?
As far as I know, you need to update the Bluetooth hardware, though reading the article it seems you don't?
Really want to get Continuity working on my Early 2011 MBP
As far as I know, you need to update the Bluetooth hardware, though reading the article it seems you don't?
Really want to get Continuity working on my Early 2011 MBP
You should also tell users on this forum that if you reset PRAM on a modified Mac you potentially loose both WIFI and BT because the PRAM is reset to defaults = setting Kext Dev Mode to "0".
(Kext signing is set to be enabled so modified Kexts don't load)
If a User has a second System to boot from it's easy to recover from that, you could even set the Kext Dev Mode to "1" again in Open Firmware but this all is not easy for many/most Mac Users.
Why no dongles?
Question: are the kext restrictions resolved by the nifty new Activation Tool the same reason that Bluetooth 4.0 dongles do not enable Continuity?
So I'm thinking...for machines that do not have built-in Bluetooth 4.0, is it now possible to buy a Bluetooth 4.0 dongle, activate it with the Bluetooth Explorer (from the developer Hardware IO Tools; info here), run the Activation Tool, and then use Continuity in Yosemite? This would make things a lot easier for those of us whose Macs don't have built-in Bluetooth 4.0, like my late 2009 27" iMac.
Does anyone know if this would work?
UPDATE: The Reddit page says that it doesn't work with BT dongles. Assuming it was tried fully after the patch (i.e., with the Bluetooth Explorer tool), that's too bad. If anyone could figure out how to fix that, this would help a LOT more people!
Question: are the kext restrictions resolved by the nifty new Activation Tool the same reason that Bluetooth 4.0 dongles do not enable Continuity?
So I'm thinking...for machines that do not have built-in Bluetooth 4.0, is it now possible to buy a Bluetooth 4.0 dongle, activate it with the Bluetooth Explorer (from the developer Hardware IO Tools; info here), run the Activation Tool, and then use Continuity in Yosemite? This would make things a lot easier for those of us whose Macs don't have built-in Bluetooth 4.0, like my late 2009 27" iMac.
Does anyone know if this would work?
UPDATE: The Reddit page says that it doesn't work with BT dongles. Assuming it was tried fully after the patch (i.e., with the Bluetooth Explorer tool), that's too bad. If anyone could figure out how to fix that, this would help a LOT more people!
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You can turn off the iPhone link in the Facetime preferences (uncheck iPhone Cellular Calls). Does that not work?
The "could cause problems" link referenced in the article is NSFW and should be labeled as such.
Please stop with all the crying about it not working on older Macs and that Apple's doing it on purpose to make more money. Duh - they're a business and the objective is to make money.
There's a reason we all love our Macs - they simply work better than Windows PCs. And its decisions like these, to only support recent generations of hardware with a limited set of cards and drivers, that make our computers work better. Trying to make Continuity work on that much wider range of systems would have added to the development and testing costs, made it take longer, bloated the code and jammed the support phone lines. Plus I'd bet the feature would have not worked as well for everyone including those with the officially supported machines.
Both of my Macs don't aren't supported but I'm OK with it. It's not going to stop me from trying these hacks though
It's not crying. It's anger. I paid $2000 for my MBA three years ago. It still runs like new. It has the hardware to do this easily. If Apple has a good technical reason to exclude the 2011 MBA I'd love to hear it. It would take about 2 minutes to build a technical post on their support site with the explanation.
Just bought the BCM94331PCIEBT4CAX
I'm going to attempt to replace the card in my Late 2011 MBP 17", but I'm a bit confused on the iFixit replacement guides. They list an airport replacement guide and a bluetooth replacement guide. Does anyone know which one of these I should follow to install this new card? I'm hoping it doesn't involve using any heat-guns lol.
I'm going to attempt to replace the card in my Late 2011 MBP 17", but I'm a bit confused on the iFixit replacement guides. They list an airport replacement guide and a bluetooth replacement guide. Does anyone know which one of these I should follow to install this new card? I'm hoping it doesn't involve using any heat-guns lol.
I have a late 2010 MBA and the feature I wanted most (SMS Relay) works wonderfully. I'm also able to receive calls on it, which is another plus but not nearly as important as SMS relay. It is pretty lame of Apple to not support features on older devices even though they meet all the necessary hardware specifications.
I did read, and I understand it. I just said it was confusing, something that could be corrected by not using a double negative.
You are right, they should stop innovation and adding new tech.
No one's demanding Apple to stop innovating and adding new tech. All we ask from them is to not impose artificial restrictions via blacklisting when a machine actually has all the necessary hardware.
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I'm quite sure they do. I'm running Trim Enabler with my 3rd party SSD and I have to re-apply it with pretty much every update. As this hack is also modifying kexts, I expect the behavior to be the same.
What are Apple employees doing?
With all the employees Apple has, I'm wondering why they are not doing a better or even an good job of fixing shortcomings and bugs.
I don't know why Continuity cannot be made to work through prior version of Bluetooth. I don't have the knowledge to appreciate the complexity of that particular problem, so my criticism must be muted somewhat. I don't like it however.
What are the longstanding problems which Apple is not addressing?
iBooks was moved from iTunes but the ability to change PDF and Book metadata is still absent. Not acceptable. iBooks is supposed to sync categories so other shared devices see the same material. But, the syncing takes forever, with my iPad spinning almost 30 minutes trying to update (even if there were no actual changes). iBooks does not allow materials to be placed in multiple categories.
I don't want to give all my business to Amazon, but the Kindle app smokes iBooks.
Contacts on mobile devices has poor functionality. Seems impossible to place new contacts or even older contacts into different groups like one can do on the Mac version of Contacts.
Calendar on mobile devices does not allow setting more than two alerts for events. And, when alerts are set for an event, and that event is moved, alerts are still active for the old time and date. If event are moved, so should be the alerts.
Apple still does not allow merging or easy use of multiple AppleIDs.
Seems Apple is putting too much emphasis and programmer time into Jony Ive glitter rather than improving functionality of existing applications.
With all the employees Apple has, I'm wondering why they are not doing a better or even an good job of fixing shortcomings and bugs.
I don't know why Continuity cannot be made to work through prior version of Bluetooth. I don't have the knowledge to appreciate the complexity of that particular problem, so my criticism must be muted somewhat. I don't like it however.
What are the longstanding problems which Apple is not addressing?
iBooks was moved from iTunes but the ability to change PDF and Book metadata is still absent. Not acceptable. iBooks is supposed to sync categories so other shared devices see the same material. But, the syncing takes forever, with my iPad spinning almost 30 minutes trying to update (even if there were no actual changes). iBooks does not allow materials to be placed in multiple categories.
I don't want to give all my business to Amazon, but the Kindle app smokes iBooks.
Contacts on mobile devices has poor functionality. Seems impossible to place new contacts or even older contacts into different groups like one can do on the Mac version of Contacts.
Calendar on mobile devices does not allow setting more than two alerts for events. And, when alerts are set for an event, and that event is moved, alerts are still active for the old time and date. If event are moved, so should be the alerts.
Apple still does not allow merging or easy use of multiple AppleIDs.
Seems Apple is putting too much emphasis and programmer time into Jony Ive glitter rather than improving functionality of existing applications.