aperture 2 trial hack

Update: 18feb08 My original hack required multiple edits in order to get the program to run, but Michal has found a far better method that just means a single change is required – I’ve reproduced it here from his comments and email so it’s easy to see what to do.

Update: 04mar08 At the request of hydr0, I’ve added screen shots of the application to demonstrate what zero-padding is – click on the image to view the whole application window grab if you require more context.

I’d sort of promised myself that by the time Aperture 2 came out I’d have managed to get a machine that was modern enough to be supported natively and be able to drop this script hackery rubbish… Needless to say, in light of certain other recent events a new Mac isn’t likely in the near future, and besides, if Aperture 2 is faster than 1.5.6 as all the early reviews indicate, maybe I don’t need to upgrade afterall.

Ok, this time I don’t have the original media, just the same trial package as everyone else so there will be two stages to this. The first is to allow the installer to run and ignore the minimum requirement checks – I skipped this last night on my PowerBook and didn’t install any of the helper packages and happily crashed my system when trying to quit the program. Not recommend.

In order to get the program installed on my MDD dual 867MHz G4 I had to fudge the speed test:

1. Download the trial from Apple’s website
2. Open the ApertureTrial.dmg disc image
3. Create a new directory on your hard drive
4. Drag the two items out of the .dmg and onto your local disc
5. Right-click on the ApertureTrial.mpkg file and choose Show Package Contents
6. Open the Contents directory
7. Right-click on the ApertureTrial.dist file and choose Open With and then Other...
8. Choose a text editor such as TextWrangler or TextEdit
9. Scroll down until you find: function installationCheck()
10. Change the next var regexp line to read: var regexp = /Power/;
11. Change the next line to read: if (!checkCPUFrequency(600000000))
12. Find the line below this that reads checkRAMRequirement and change the value inside the brackets if desired
13. Save this file
14. Double click on the ApertureTrial.mpkg icon and the installation should complete. Note you will need the trial licence key emailed to you by Apple

This will change the limit from a 1.25 GHz PowerBook to a 600MHz generic Power machine (ie: any G4 system). Note that you can drop the RAM requirement below 1GB and take the CPU limit down below 600MHz if you desire, but I would really, really question how usable this would make the final program.

After the installation has completed (don’t forget to rename your existing Aperture program – the trial will stop if you haven’t and ask you to do so) you will find that it fails to launch, complaining the the computer doesn’t meet requirements. Now it’s time for the hex editor (<a href="http://www.suavetech.com/0xed/0xed.html">0xED.app</a> is my favourite choice here) on the binary, just like before.

Michal’s new version:

1. Open 0xED
2. Choose File -> Open...
3. Navigate to /Applications, then Aperture.app, then Contents, then MacOS, and finally choose the Aperture file and then click on Open
4. Ensure the editor is set to Overwrite mode (Edit -> Write Mode)
5. Enter 6d21b0 into the Offset box and hit Enter
6. Check the ASCII side of things and you should see the string performRequirementsCheck starting under the cursor
7. Replace the string with performLicenseCheck
8. Switch to the hex view, and erase the extra five characters (the Check string) with zeros
9. Save this file
10. Launch Aperture as you normally would

That’s it: no more video card checks or RAM limits to edit.

The data before editing looks like this:

After editing, it should look like this:

---

1. Open 0xED
2. Choose File -> Open...
3. Navigate to /Applications, then Aperture.app, then Contents, then MacOS, and finally choose the Aperture file and then click on Open
4. Ensure the editor is set to Overwrite mode (Edit -> Write Mode)
5. Enter 6D237C into the Offset box and hit Enter
6. Check the ASCII side of things and you should see the string PowerBook starting under the cursor
7. Open Terminal and type sysctl hw.model. On my MDD dual 867MHz system this returns: hw.model: PowerMac3,6
8. Replace the Book part of the string in the 0xED window with the four characters after the word Power in the sysctl result. In my case, this means Mac3 so the string in the 0xED window now reads PowerMac3
9. Save this file

This has changed the requirement for a G4 laptop to be a test for your exact system. Now it’s time to change the CPU requirements, as Aperture still expects a 1.25 GHz minimum G4, and now there are two options: the first is to open the Info.plist file and hand edit it, or you can type one command at the Terminal (the second way is faster, but changes the plist from ASCII to binary – not an issue for most people).

Option 1:

1. Using either a Text Editor or the plist editor that comes with the Developer Tools, open the file /Applications/Aperture.app/Contents/Info.plist
2. Look for the key called: RKG4LaptopMinimumCPUSpeedMHz and change the value that follows it from 1250 to something less than your system, eg: 600
3. Save the file
4. Launch Aperture as you normally would

Option 2:

1. Open Terminal and type: defaults write /Applications/Aperture.app/Contents/Info RKG4LaptopMinimumCPUSpeedMHz -int 600
2. Launch Aperture as you normally would

This does work, but I have had problems when quitting Aperture: the program does keep all of my changes but often crashes on termination. So far as this evaluation goes, I can live with that but maybe others out there can sort out a clean shutdown ?