Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

'Continuity Activation Tool' Enables Handoff on Older Macs

Roadstar said:
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.
Click to expand...

Yep.. or worse, they could block this hack... I'm sure they could


oh well .. Time to tell Apple about this then ....
 
McDLT said:
Will future software updates wipe this out?
Click to expand...

Lol - Of Course. Apple is guarneteed to shut this down. They must deny perfectly good hardware, to force you to buy newer Macs/iOS devices. It's apple's green initiative, don't you know. Make older machines obsolete as quickly as possible to ensure they go into the trash ASAP.
 
Tech198 said:
Yep.. or worse, they could block this hack... I'm sure they could


oh well .. Time to tell Apple about this then ....
Click to expand...

They changed it several times through the Beta, but in all they don't particularly care as they've only changed it in response to types of exclusions/inclusions there were.

Originally it was just including Macs with the support and afterwards only included specified Macs (since some Macs which had the card didn't gain support).
 
simonmet said:
This is such *********. I just don't know Apple any more. I'd love to hear their response as to why they disabled it on seemingly perfectly capable hardware.

I pretty much hate the company now.
Click to expand...

I'm sure you would be the same person complaining that the feature you implemented on a unsupported device is killing you battery life because the Bluetooth chip is not efficient enough.
 
Alon1 said:
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?
Click to expand...

Same here, mine is even older... My Mid 2009 MBP works beautifully, especially after upping the RAM to 8GB and installing an SSD this past winter - it's been running like the day I bought it. Kind of bummed this won't work for me.
 
sweet

Hi, just applied this to my mid 2011 mac air, works well. but

i can airdrop to my phone fine, but i can't airdrop from my phone (5s) to my mac, any ideas? mac doesn't appear in airdrop

cheers
 
Replace the wireless card in a MacBook Pro? I assume that's not a trivial thing to do.
 
I don't understand how the feature worked during the betas for me and once it became final it did not. I have an early 2011 MBP. How could it work if it required that hardware?
 
avanpelt said:
Replace the wireless card in a MacBook Pro? I assume that's not a trivial thing to do.
Click to expand...

Depends -
If you have a 2011 model, just finding the correct card is the hardest part (2012 model). I ordered it, waited a few weeks, then installed it in 10-15 minutes. Super easy and OS X immediately saw the BTLE support.
 
rdlink said:
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.
Click to expand...

These are exactly our feelings and position.
 
While waiting for the BT4 board, I ran the app and got stuck at checking OS kext protection, asking me to reboot. Search led me to this command:
sudo nvram boot-args="kext-dev-mode=1"
that bypassed the kext protection, and i should be good to go.
 
Amazing example of supply and demand at work! These cards look to have shot up in price since people were talking about this during the beta testing. Now it's widely known (I only found out earlier today after trying to set it up on my MBP). They are getting expensive. Anyway, just got mine from Amazon UK. The only one they had I think. So will get to try it out in a few days and just hope I don't have to faff with it again after every update.
 
I seriously appreciate the effort put forth and admire the ingenuity of this community, yet I still don't understand why Apple would intentionally disable a feature that worked in the beta on older macs that were still comparable. My late 2011 macbook pro had all features working (except sms forwarding) including handoff as of Beta 5. Beta 6 saw them disabled but I figured the public release would bring them back, as we know it didn't. While its not a big feature to me and something that I most likely won't use often, I find it dishonest on Apple's part to intentionally exclude machines that clearly were compatible with the new feature. I won't be swapping out my wireless card to make handoff work, but after the iPhone 6 and now this, I may be looking elsewhere when it's time to get a new machine.
 
Handoff and better WiFi

I have a 2011 15" Macbook Pro and I see that I would need to upgrade the Wireless card to a BCM94331PCIEBT4CAX to enable handoff. My question is does this card also give me 802.11ac connectivity? If not is there a card I can get that does? I have a new Airport Extreme base station and would like to take advantage of the faster wifi if possible. Thanks!
 
I wouldn't advise anyone to bother upgrading their older macs to a Bluetooth LE card for this, it only works about 30% of the time when you've got the latest hardware!

Its not worth it, its a gimmick that works poorly, if Apple ironed all the bugs out id suggest otherwise but I can't see it happening anytime soon.
 
whartnett said:
I don't understand how the feature worked during the betas for me and once it became final it did not. I have an early 2011 MBP. How could it work if it required that hardware?
Click to expand...

I had the same experience. During the beta handoff was working on my 2011 15" MBP. Now with the release it isn't. Was it doing it over Wifi instead of bluetooth? Did anyone else experience this behavior?
 
Dilster3k said:
Can't believe they crippled capable older devices on purpose. Also not allowing them to function with Bluetooth 4.0 adapters... But yeah I have Bluetooth shut off all the time, yet I still get annoying phone calls on my Mac because it works through Wi-Fi instead.

Glad this hack was released for other users.
Click to expand...

Well, I guess Apple just removed my reason for updating, since I can't afford a new computer right now and they don't make a replacement for my 17 inch MBP.
 
mcapanelli said:
I seriously appreciate the effort put forth and admire the ingenuity of this community, yet I still don't understand why Apple would intentionally disable a feature that worked in the beta on older macs that were still comparable. ...
Click to expand...

Really? You honestly can't understand why? The apple that encouraged people to be creative is no more. It's a company that only wants to maximize its profits at the expense of its loyal customers. Soldered ram in desktop machines, sticking with 1 gig of ram in iOS devices for at least a year too long, keeping with 16gig to milk the customers to upgrade storage, etc...

You are walking wallets, nothing more. Consumers to be dazzled and amazed? Not any more. It's the minimum amount to keep the money train rolling, nothing more. It's locking down systems to purposely enforce planned obsolescence, so you upgrade more quickly, while making eWaste at a quicker pace.

Apple's green initiative is increasing the pace of computers filling landfills.
 
Why does this feature even need Bluetooth? Why didn't Apple just make it work over WiFi?
 
There's a reason why Apple doesn't have Handoff enabled on capable macs: Encryption.

The 2011 MacBook Air and 2011 Mac Mini has Bluetooth 4.0 LE, but doesn't have the proper chip to help encrypt the handoff signals to limit it to matching devices with matching Apple ID. So while Handoff may work with the enabler, the signal is not encrypted and is very open to attacks.

Without the proper encryption authentication, there are high chance that some non-matching iOS devices nearby may be able to pick up the handoff signal. That can mean disaster in terms of privacy.

(Imagine you were searching XXX content on your mac, but you decided that you may be comfortable watching it on your phone, so you hand it off to your phone. But, since that mac is sending unencrypted handoff signal, junior using his iPad may accidentally see your XXX content if bluetooth is turned on and has the compatible iOS device)

Basically, for handoff to work safely, Bluetooth LE signal has to be encrypted, and Older Macs and USB Bluetooth Dongles don't have proper chip to encrypt to signals

(note that encryption chip I'm talking about is proprietary)
 
elmateo487 said:
Seriously? You are sad that nearly 4 year old computers don't support a new feature?
Click to expand...

What is 3 and a half years for a computer??? A Mac is not an iPhone getting replaced every 2 years.

My Mac Cube was in use for 6 years, same with my white MacBook which I used for seven years. I expect my new MacBook Pro to last me at least 6 to 7 years.
 
Count Blah said:
Apple can not close this down soon enough. Allowing this goes against their new business model - anti-green planned obsolescence. All wrapped in "Going Green" NON recycled wrapping paper.
Click to expand...

Boy do I have a lot of other First World Problem angst.

[Update: and now I can't find my XANAX !!!!!]
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back