aperture 1.5.2 hack

Update: 15dec06 If you have a PowerBook model with a CPU below 1.25GHz then there’s no need to binary edit this version of Aperture: click on the post title to read the comment from Shane

As with all the 1.5 series, this latest update just needs the one change to the binary to function on a 1GHz 12″ PowerBook. The method is the same as for the Aperture 1.5 and Aperture 1.5.1 changes, but the location has changed:

0xbd38: 40 9E 00 88 -> 48 00 00 80

I’ll also take this opportunity to state that if the values at the above location do not match the values on the left of the arrow do not simply change the values and hope ! Magic hacking fairies or binary gnomes will not come and make the program work for you: double check the version number of the software is correct (all the digits must match) and that you have the correct binary file. Also note that all of my hacks are for PowerPC machines: if you wish to donate an Intel Mac (it is the season, afterall 🙂 ) then I’m open to offers, but as I understand it all of the Intel systems should ‘just work’ (as of Aperture 1.5).

This single line change will not stop the video card checks taking place: I’ve tried the changes modified from 1.5.1 but this caused the program to simply exit when launched, so it looks like the checking system may have been altered slightly. Anyone with an unsupported card that has 1.5.1 running should certainly make a copy of that working system before running software update.

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26 Comments

  1. Shane (XkThEOnEkX)

    Some People Will Find This VERY USEFUL
    I have a 1 GHZ Powerbook 12in DVI, with 768MB RAM, It has the Geforce FX Go5200
    I am a Professional Photographer, with an extensive computer background.
    I was able run Aperture 1.5.2 with out any HEX EDITS!

    With this Update, Apple placed the Minimum CPU Speed requirements in the Info.plist

    To Change The CPU Speed & Memory Requirements

    CTRL+CLICK on Aperture
    Choose Show package contents
    Open Contents folder
    Open Info.plist in a text editor

    To change Your RAM Requirements
    Locate at the top of Info.plist

    
       <key>AELMinimumRAMSize</key>
       <string>1000</string>

    Change to 1000 to 0 (TESTED)

    To Change Your CPU Requirements
    Locate at the bottom of Info.plist

    
       <key>RKG4LaptopMinimumCPUSpeedMHz</key>
       <integer>1250</integer>
       <key>RKG5DesktopMinimumCPUSpeedMHz</key>
       <integer>1600</integer>

    Laptop change 1250 to any integer above 10 (TESTED)
    Note: May Not Work on G4 Desktop

    If you have a G5 Desktop change 1600 to any integer above 10 (UNTESTED – Educated Guess)

    I HOPE THIS HELPS SOME 🙂

  2. Wow – thanks Shane ! I had never bothered scrolling to the bottom of the plist for this update and so hadn’t seen this at all. I’m not running an unhacked binary just as you suggest, with no problems so far.

    Neat.

  3. I concur: I have a 1.33 GHz 12″ PB. It required no hex edits. Plus I have over 1GB of ram so did not need to change anything at all. Finally, Aperture runs without a hack!

  4. SV549, I CONCUR, PLEASE READ THE MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS FOR APURTURE 1.5.2, You Will Notice Your System meets those REQUIREMENTS. THIS HACK IS FOR PEOPLE WHO DO NOT MEET THOSE REQUIREMENTS. Thank You

  5. Anyone have any luck in stopping the graphics card check? I have a PB 1GHZ 17inch and I upgraded to 1.5.2 and I can’t run it.

    I wish Apple would just lower the minimum requirements cause Aperture was running fine on my machine.

  6. Antonio,

    I have the same setup (PB 1Ghz, 17inch, 1GB RAM) and, after clearing the CPU check, hit the Graphics Card check and got kicked out of the application. I dug up another offset from David Djsiska’s blog which got Aperture running no problem.


    0xBD38 : 40 9E 00 88 => 48 00 00 88
    0xBDD4 : 40 9E 00 88 => 48 00 00 88

    The first offset (BD38) is posted here and clears the CPU check. The second offset (BDD4) appears to clear the GPU check. I’m running 1.5.2 on my machine now with no problems. Matter of fact, Library Upgrade just finished. Woo hoo! Time to get some work done.

    Merry Christmas man.

  7. Ryan,

    Thanks so much. That worked!

  8. While not officially supported, Aperture 1.5.2 runs on my 12″ iBook without any hack at all (last gen, 1,33Ghz, Radeon Mobility 9550 32mo, with 1GB of RAM). The officially required GPU still starts with Radeon 9600.

    Seems Apple finally understood that it wasn’t such an outdated computer after all…

    Anyway, no miracle, takes dozens of seconds to load a 10mpx RAW image and even more to edit highlights and shadows. But I won’t buy a new laptop just to move my library around, it’s edited on a MacPro…

  9. OK guys, how exactly do you achieve this with the 1.5.2 trial download? I’ve unpacked, edited and even edited hex but I can’t seem to get it to run.
    1.5 MacMini with 1 GB RAM and 12″PB 1.33 with 768MB RAM. Anyone wanna chime in with a step by step using the trial. It seems to me things are arranged a bit differently in the trial. Thoughts anyone?

  10. No worries guys it’s running now on my MacMini 1.5 😀

  11. I can’t install the trial in the first place because it won’t let me (1gb requirement) and there are no embedded code in the info.plist since i couldn’t installed it yet 🙁 any ideas?

  12. You can do this, but it’s not simple and a bit beyond what I’d imagined this hacks page would be covering: basically the installer is failing, rather than Aperture, so you need to right click (or ctrl+click) on the trial package and choose ‘Show Package Contents’ (or similar: not sure of the exact wording), then go inside the Contents directory, and look for another set of packages.

    Install each of the ones that isn’t Aperture, then unpack the Aperture installer, patch those files, and then run the new Application. Unpacking the installer is easy enough from the command line if you’re familiar with gzip and pax, but I haven’t tried it at all from the Finder. Some people say nice things about Pacifist, but I’ve not used it so I don’t know what exactly it can do to packages.

    Apologies for the vagueness of some names, but I don’t have the trial version, and have only talked someone through this over the phone, so didn’t see the exact steps.

  13. hmmmm… really stuck, ian could you explain how to patch the files? I downloaded the trial and have it installed but dont know how to patch the files because it says- Your computer does not meet the minimum hardware requirements for Aperture. PLEASE HELP!
    Thanks,
    Brad.

  14. Hi Brad,

    You’re getting stuck on the installer check: you need to open up the installer as roughly outlined in reply 12 above, install the support packages and then copy the application out of the installer package onto your hard drive and then patch it before simply running it.

    It’s not trivial though: I’ll see about doing detailed instructions if I get some spare time.

    HTH,

  15. Bradley

    YES! Thanks ian… got it working finally! Works well on My G4 imac, can be a bit slow on selecting colours, shadows and highlights and selecting photos but everything else is all good. By slow i mean slightly laggy. Despite these miner issues, DEFINATELY worth putting on your mac!
    Thanks,
    Brad

  16. Hello, i’m a enthousiastic amateur photographer and I enjoy small adventures with PC’s. Recently I successfully installed Mac on a regular PC. I wanted to try more, such as Aperture. I found your article and decided to try it myself. I succeeded! Here is how I did it.

    I’ll describe how to install the trial package on non-supported harware (i’m using mac 10.4.8 on a pc with P4 1,6GHz and 768mb ram). I read reply 12 above, and it did not make much sense, so here is what I did, in 10 steps:

    1) Get Pacifist on http://www.charlessoft.com and install it. (simple)
    2) Open the trial package with Pacifist (ApertureTrial.dmg). Don’t worry if it says it is shareware, it’ll work. (simple)
    3) Extract the three packages under ApertureTrial.mpkg/Contents/Packages
    4) Install ProAppRuntime.pkg and PluginManager.pkg. They don’t have any hardware checks, so that’ll work too.
    5) Open the third package (ApertureTrial.pkg) with Pacifist. You’ll see the Applications folder.
    6) Extract the Aperture.app to your desktop or the applications folder in the Finder.
    7) Close all instances of Pacifist, and open the location where you extracted the Aperture.app.
    8) Right-click (or ctrl-click) the Aperture app, and click ‘Show Package Contents’. You’ll see the ‘Contents’ folder. Open it.
    9) Open the ‘Info.plist’ file with TextEdit or something similar. Edit the lines containing the minimum RAM check (somewhere in the top of the file) and minimum CPU (in the bottom of the file), and save and close it.
    10) Start Aperture, and enjoy the best Photo application ever!

  17. Help, I am trying to follow these instructions and get the Aperture Trial installed on my iBook G4 (512 MB), but apparently things have changed with the 1.5.4 version. I have done everything just like the above note says, but the info.plist file doesn’t have any thing like those two lines. Where is the ram checker located now?

    THANKS SO MUCH FOR HELP!

  18. Runningfree

    Hi i have an iBook G4 all new to this hacking, i have downloaded the new 1.5.4 trial and i cant install keeps telling me i have the wrong card etc etc… how do i get through to replace these codes before installation..

    Machine Name: iBook G4
    Machine Model: PowerBook6,5
    CPU Type: PowerPC G4 (1.2)
    Number Of CPUs: 1
    CPU Speed: 1.33 GHz
    L2 Cache (per CPU): 512 KB
    Memory: 1.25 GB
    Bus Speed: 133 MHz
    Boot ROM Version: 4.8.7f1

    ATI Mobility Radeon 9200:

    thats my spec

    All help will be appreciated

  19. Thao Nguyen

    Code Changes for Aperture 1.5.6 (Upgrade from 1.5.2)

    My system: PowerPC Quicksilver 2002 1.78GHz Gigadesigns Dual CPU, 1.5G RAM, ATI X800 XT

    1. BF08: 40 9E 00 88 –> 48 00 00 88
    2. BFA4: 40 9E 00 88 –> 48 00 00 88
    3. C0A4: 40 9E 00 6C –> 48 00 00 64

    Seems to be working fine…

  20. I’m trying to follow no. 12 but I don’t know what to look for.. It says “look for another set of packeges”. This is an old conversation. Maybe there are oter ways to get Aperture to work on my macbook??

  21. If you have a Macbook (Intel CPU) laptop then simply download the 1.5.6 trial from Apple’s website and use that. If you have an older retail package then just enter that code that came with it rather than the 30-day trial one and you’re done.

    As far as I know, there’s no Intel Mac that Aperture won’t run on: no hacks required (as long as you have the RAM).

    HTH,
    Ian.

  22. how do you patch a file?

  23. Thao Nguyen

    Adam,

    Use a Hex Editor such as Mac HexEdit…Google it…

  24. What file do I edit with HEX editor?
    0xbd38: 40 9E 00 88 -> 48 00 00 80 For example..

  25. now we have v2.0 … who will be the first to figure this version out for the 12″ ???

  26. hi anbody sort out the hacks to get version 2 working on an unsupported 12″
    powerbook yet?