Had to change up my OS configuration again on my 2012 MBP. The TV app in Sequioa was doing this weird thing where if I clicked on one of the icons for a TV show in my library, the app would crash. This did not happen with every TV show only some of them. While I don't really buy TV shows or movies from iTunes anymore, the fact that half of my old purchases can't be played on my Mac because the app will crash, is not acceptable. So, once again I left the world of OCLP for a macOS that can officially run on here. After going back and forth between Mojave and Catalina, I settled on Catalina. While I prefer the iTunes UI, I noticed some issues with the store, namely on the TV side of things. Seasons that are visible on the TV app store on my iPhone/Catalina are either difficult to find or non-existent on the iTunes Store (I noticed this on both Mojave and on the latest version of iTunes for Windows). It's so strange to see Catalina get a new version number and a 2026 copyright date.
Going to Catalina instead of Mojave of course means not having Office 2008. To make up for this I installed the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack on my Windows XP VM in VirtualBox. Despite not officially supporting Office 97, I was able to succesfully convert a DOCX file and save a copy of it as a .doc file. The MOCP was hard to find though since Microsoft loves to randomly remove its older software. I eventually found a copy by copying a link from some college's website and putting it into the Wayback Machine ("FileFormatConverters.exe" is the file name for the MOCP).
One thing I missed from Sequioa was using Stacher. Stacher 7 doesn't run on anything older than Monterey (keeping in line with Chrome's minimum OS requirements). However, I still had a copy of Stacher 6 from 2024 and much like PPCMC 6, all I had to do to get it working again was replace youtube-dl with yt-dlp (renaming the yt-dlp binary to youtube-dl) and update Python.
One thing I missed from Mojave was iTunes' internet radio. I tired Windows 7 and 10 in VirtualBox, but both attempts were unsuccesful. Windows 7's last iTunes worked fine, but W7 couldn't be activated due to me having previously activated my copy of Windows 7 in VMWare. Windows 10's iTunes had audio issues. I tried Windows XP's last iTunes in my XP VM, but it seems that it can't connect to the server anymore and unlike old Mac versions, there's no patch to fix it. Remembering that the classic Mac OS versions of iTunes had been patched, I ended up downloading Sheepshaver and making a Mac OS 9.0.4 setup with a patched version of iTunes 1. Internet radio plays flawlessly. I can browse the web on Firefox while Sheepshaver plays internet radio in the background.
Only issue I have left in Catalina is Discord voice chat. I can't use the Discord client because it doesn't support Catalina anymore, so I am using the browser version via Firefox. Every time I try to join voice, I keep getting bounced back between the "authenticating" message and the "disconnected" message despite giving Firefox permission to use my headset mic.
I went from Mojave to Sonoma on my Mac Pro (via OCLP) in October 2024. At the time I decided that I would upgrade to Sequoia when Apple released Tahoe. Hasn't worked out that way.
When Tahoe hit, OCLP announced that it was not supported yet. I waited until OCLP would support Tahoe before moving to Sequoia. I figured any other bugs would be worked out in Sequoia by that time. That hasn't happened yet and as of right now, Tahoe is still unsupported by OCLP.
In the mean time I've been paying attention to what others on Sequoia have said on the OCLP subreddit. It has not been a winning endorsement for OCLP/Sequoia. Another part of my issue is that of my three video cards, one is PC only. When I upgrade and reapply root patches that card has to be pulled. I can reinstall it once root patches are complete. But, this is a pain. And based on what I'm hearing about Sequoia, it's not an effort I feel like undertaking.
So, until something changes with OCLP, I'm sitting still on Sonoma. That's fine, because other than a few minor irritants, I'm not having any issues. For me, Sonoma tends to have the WindowServer process grab more and more ram over time. By a day and a half of use, this causes my MP to forget that it has two ethernet ports. Apps run slow as well and with internet and the network out I can't do much. I am forced to restart.
So, I nuked the problem. I have a cronjob that force shuts down the Mac at 4:10am every morning and Onyx is scheduled to start the Mac at 4:15am. This is all done while I'm sleeping. For me then, I see no difference - the Mac is essentially still on 24/7 as I wish. But the problem is rectified every morning. I don't know if anyone else experiences this, but it's really the only issue I have with OCLP.
Finally…iTunes and the radio. I've mentioned this a few times, but I will mention it again. You can still play radio streams directly, even if you cannot browse to them. All you need to do is get the stream URL or PLS file and drop that into iTunes. iTunes will play it directly and it becomes a part of your library.
If I were to be using OS9 and iTunes though, I would install iTunes 4.0. That, as I have also mentioned in the past, is the ONLY version of iTunes that will let you stream your iTunes library across the internet. So, for instance, if you had a Mac at home and at work that both had iTunes 4.0 installed, you could stream your library at home to your Mac at work. 4.0 remains the only version that can do this as Apple stripped the functionality out with the 4.0.1 update.
github.com
