Run Aperture on any Mac

ksv

web developer
Partially in desperation after discovering my Mac wouldn't install or run Aperture, I figured out a solution to both and want to share it with others wanting to use Aperture on your more than a year old Mac that Apple wants you to replace.

You need HexEdit and BBEdit or TextWrangler.

To disable the installer check:
1) Create a writable image of your Aperture DVD with Disk Utility. Eject the DVD and open the image file.
2) Hit command-shift-g in Finder and enter '/Volumes/Aperture/Aperture.mpkg/Contents'
3) Open Distribution.dist in your text editor
4) Search for 'function installationCheck() {' and enter 'return true;' on the next line. Save and close the file.
5) Et voilà! Aperture now installs with any CPU/GPU.

To disable the application startup check:
1) Install Aperture (after modifying the installer script as described above)
2) Open HexEdit and browse to '/Applications/Aperture.app/Contents/MacOS/'.
3) Open 'Aperture'. HexEdit saves a backup automatically to 'Aperture~' when you write changes to the file, so you don't have to worry about messing up. Be aware that HexEdit is quite buggy in 10.4. Don't click anywhere I didn't tell you to click.
4) Hit cmd+f. In the 'Find' field, enter '49 48 48 32 6D C9'. Make sure 'Matching:' is set to HEX. Hit return.
5) Click the bar of the 'Aperture - Data' window. Replace the selection with '49 48 48 32 59 59'.
6) Click the search window. Using the procedure in step 4 and 5, replace
'49 4C 48 32 6D 35' with '49 4C 48 32 58 C5'.
7) Save and close the file.
8) Done! Have fun : )
 
oOOoo nice stuff!!

I was furious when I ran Aperture Compatibility Checker and was told it won't run on my iMac G5. I could understand if it were a G3, or even a G4, but a friggin G5?!! come on.

There are a lot of pro photographers out there using imac/ibooks under the assumption that "you only NEED powermacs for high-end video tasks, not image editing".


anyhoo, what kind of mac are you running? how does is hold up?
 
Thank The Cheese said:
anyhoo, what kind of mac are you running? how does is hold up?

I'm on a dual 1.8 GHz with a GeForce FX 5200 GPU with 64 MB VRAM. It runs quite acceptably except from the fancy-schmancy visual effects in the interface.

The GPU in the iMac is faster, if I remember correctly.
 
They have Aperture locked down to newer Macs? Is this justified, or is it an attempt to get users to upgrade their machines? If it runs on the machine, it runs on the machine. Why are they locking it down?
 
dmetzcher said:
They have Aperture locked down to newer Macs? Is this justified, or is it an attempt to get users to upgrade their machines? If it runs on the machine, it runs on the machine. Why are they locking it down?

It's obviously quite slow on older Macs, but not defective. It's certainly done to make people replace their computer.
 
has anyone tried this on an iMac G5 with same/simiar specs to mine? (see signature) I might buy aperture if it runs OK. Especially if it's only a couple of filters that run sliggishly
 
apparently, it all depends on what gfx chip you have. basically anything in an iMac that isnt the GeForce FX5200 will run.
 
:: looks a system profiler and faints when he reads GeForce 5200 ::

:: picks himself up ::

What's wrong with the 5200 anyway? I don't mind it being a little slow, and I could care less if all it means is that a couple of filters are unavailable to me.
 
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