So today marks the release of macOS 10.15.4, a pretty average release for most users but quite a special one for laptop, Clover and AMD CPU users.

For details on what’s changed OS wise:

Laptops

With this release, we now have official Ice Lake support! Do note that Apple rarely supports GT1 GPUs for more than a .1 update as more of an accident so be wary. At the moment we know the following iGPUs are supported:

  • Iris Plus G4
  • Iris Plus G7

Other issues are:

  • We still need framebuffer dumps to know the best platform ID
  • MacBookAir9,1 isn’t yet supported by MacInfoPkg
    • As of commit 203a0ed we have MacBookAir9,1 support
  • Memory protections are in place breaking AptioMemoryFix, OpenCore, and OcQuirks

OpenCore fixed the last one in 0.5.7 thanks to the quirk ProtectUefiServices which fixes the use of DevirtulizeMMIO allowing the macOS kernel to fit nicely. ProtectUefiServices has been added to OcQuirks from revision 19. So be patient and don’t rush out to buy a machine just for hackintoshing.

Note: This is only for Icelake laptops, this issue is not related to macOS instead the firmware found on these machines.

Clover

Oh what fun, Clover’s drunk again and won’t boot for some of you! The specific issue seems to be only for Skylake and newer users. The specific of what happened:

  • Apple added Ice Lake and Comet Lake support to the kernel
  • Problem is it wouldn’t fit as-is, so the mask of the processor changed
  • This then meant that it turned from 16 bits to 20 bits long
  • This then broke Clover’s KernelPM and AppleIntelCPUPM patch

So because of this change, we have 4 paths to go down:

  • Disable CFG-Lock in the BIOS
  • Use a CPU ID that still works with the old KernelPM patch
    • Broadwell and older are fine.
    • Note doing this can partially or completely break XCPM.
  • Update to Clover with commit version af8a84f or later
    • r5107 is the minimum version, plus recent Cover updates moved to C++ breaking a lot of things so keep a backup.
  • Buy a hackintosh that starts with the letter M

For the CPU ID route, you can spoof to a Broadwell-H CPU with the following:

config.plist -> KernelAndKextPatches -> FakeCPUID -> 0x040674
  • Remember doing this can partially or even completely break XCPM.

And ofc, OpenCore doesn’t have any issues with this update. Just another nudge to go to the dark side. The specifics behind this is that Clover doesn’t know anything about symbols or structures, and so the patch is very generic whereas OpenCore can be much more precise.

Source

AMD Users

So with this update, the CPU Family patch has broken due to Ice Lake and Comet Lake shoving themselves in and changing the placing of families. So users will need to update their Kernel patches, specifically the following:

Comment: algrey - cpuid_set_cpufamily - force CPUFAMILY_INTEL_PENRYN
Count: 1
Enabled: Yes
Find: 31db803d00000000067500
Replace: bbbc4fea78e95d00000090
Mask: ffffffff000000ffffff00
MaxKernel: 19.99.99
MinKernel: 17.0.0
Skip: 0

Credit to NoOne for updating the patches.

The AMD OSX repo has also updated the patches.