Running iMovie on a G4

March 17th, 2009 | Tags: , ,

Apparently, there is no way to directly run the new iMovie ’09 on a PowerPC G4 processor. (Not that I would blame them, since even the good G4s are fairly slow by today’s standard, and Apple wants to keep up a level of satisfaction with their products.) Anyway, [there is a work-around available](http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20090130074400511) if you ever want to try. (Which I probably will, so I note it here.)

> To patch iMovie ’09 so that it will run on a PowerPC G4, Control-click on iMovie and pick Show Package Contents from the pop-up menu. In the new window that appears, navigate into Contents » MacOS. Now you’ll need a hex editor such as the free HexEdit; once you have that, edit the file iMovie in the MacOS folder.
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> Use the File » Go To Address function in HexEdit to go to the following addresses, and replace each existing entry at those addresses (7C 08 02 A6) with 4E 80 00 20. The addresses are 15fb9c, 15fc7c, and 15fe00.
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> What you’re doing here is replacing the PowerPC instruction for mflr r0, which basically initializes the stack for the called function, with blr, which essentially causes the called function to always return, voiding the purpose of the function. So when the function is the PowerPC check, you’ve essentially patched your way around it.
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> When done, save the file and quit HexEdit, and iMovie ’09 should launch on your G4.

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