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Did anyone succeed in installing Mojave on the MacBook Pro 16”? It ships with Catalina but my corporate requires Mojave to connect to the corporate network.

I followed the instructions here but once I select booting from the Mojave external drive I get a “forbidden” icon and the system shuts down.

pkamb
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Ronen
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4 Answers4

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No. This won’t work since the drivers to run this hardware only ship with Catalina.

If your support team isn’t ready for Catalina have them get you VMware fusion so you can run the older OS virtually while they contemplate supporting the new os.

bmike
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    Thanks. I will try the VM path and see if they bite. I suspect they won't. – Ronen Nov 20 '19 at 18:44
  • Why can't you grab the drivers that ship with Catalina and use them under Mojave? – Vikki Nov 21 '19 at 01:57
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    @sean the T2 chip runs secure boot, so you’re looking at reversing that os, bridge os, macOS and all the peripherals. Getting Mojave ready is the least of the challenges that face Ronan. Great question, though - glad you commented. It’s possible Apple didn’t close the door hard, but very unlikely – bmike Nov 21 '19 at 04:11
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    @Sean Even if they're installed, there's no guarantee that the old OS will know that those are the drivers it should use - or even that it's able to use them. You're literally trying to make an OS run hardware from the future. – benwiggy Nov 21 '19 at 08:06
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I just spent a chunk of time with Apple support; they said it's impossible to install Mojave on the 16". Sigh.

Also this: "No macOS Mojave on MacBook Pro 16" from gottabemobile.com

d0g
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Likely Possible. I partitioned the drive got the Mojave install on and it booted in Mojave but then wanted to confirm startup disk I selected Mojave and eventually also gave the forbidden icon. So it boots but Apple mark it as incorrect at the final part of the load. These chipsets were used in previous MacBook. So maybe using Hackintosh tools we can get past this part.

People saying use VM ignore that there are many high end apps like Soundgrid in Music that will take too much performance hit running in a virtual machine. Apple are mad forcing use to use a new OS until the software is ready.

Alien
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  • The software was released in June 2019, as was the previous in June 2018 and 2017, and the pattern continues. At some point, you can't blame Apple for this. No one is forced to upgrade or buy new gear - with the prevalence of quality used gear and easily predictable release cycles just educate yourself and shop wisely. If you know you can't run the latest OS, buy up the still brand new “old gear” at a steep discount as soon as the new 16" releases. Surf that sweet, been already debugged and stable existence if that's your thing. No shame in using gear that's 1 month old or more. – bmike Jan 13 '20 at 20:59
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I have tried without success. I believe Mojave doesn't have the necessary drivers. You can indeed downgrade if you have an older MAC. First, you will need to revert the File System changes though. Catalina creates a volume with 2 disks Macintosh HD and Macintosh HD data.

Start recovery mode (Command+R), open Disk Utility, select the disk and then Delete the volume. Good luck!

Udhy
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Suzane
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  • How do you get an older 16 inch MacBook Pro? this answer probably belongs on a different question. Maybe you can edit it to explain how this makes sense to the question at hand here. – bmike Jan 13 '20 at 21:00