How to Fix iMessage

[Hans88]

I agree with that, it's high time for people to stop contacting Apple support as this won't fix anything or only temporarily, it will rather bring more attention on hackintosh users. Let's wait for the gurus here to find a way.

 

[Hans88]

I finally plucked up the courage to change to clover after my iMessage stopped working when I went over to a RAID 0 setup.

I have managed to get everything working (I think) as I have the customer code which does not change on restarts.

I gave apple a call, gave them an OS X/SN from my real macbook pro. The lovely man on the other end of the phone put the customer code in I gave him, but no luck. He attempted this at least 4 times. He then told me he had another customer earlier that day with the same problem and had to pass it onto the "Mac team" as he was a part of the "iCloud" team. Unfortunately I was busy and couldn't continue with the call, which was logged and I have been given a reference number to call back at a more convenient time for myself.

I have had this code once before, and when I called it was entered into apples system and it activated immediately. I am now worried that, as this is the second time of me calling with another customer code, they might be a little more thorough with their investigations. Has this happened to anyone else?

Let me share some of my observations. As what unknowingly I've been doing lately; when you call Apple to fix the iMessage problem along with the customer code, the support person will ask you for your serial in order to remove that serial from their blacklist authentification system. Providing a serial from a real Mac wont fix anything as the hackintosh serial will still be there on their blacklist. The block isn't really totally on the Apple ID but rather on the machine. Now if you're going to provide the serial of your hackintosh the support person will instantly tell you that's its not a valid serial. Now having lots of people calling with an unvalid serial will only arise their attention on this illegal practice. So either way we are stuck for now.

 

[Henties]

My take on Apple locking us out from "basic" iCloud services is that it will not happen.

Apple opened "basic" iCloud" services even to users on Windows machines, why would they suddenly want to lock them out again.

I guess that most users have been fairly happy with Apple's "basic" iCloud sevices, especially when compared to the mediocre Windows copycat alternative. Some of them even dropped windows altogether and switched their allegiance to Apple. I am one of them.

iTunes is, already for some time now, an Apple iCloud service, available on Windows platforms, locking anybody out of that may very well impact Apple's iTunes revenue
earning capability. Apple is certainly not going to kill the goose that helps lay the golden eggs.

Apple has two choices in this matter.

Tighten up security so as to exclude a large community of hackers from using iMessage/Face Time, so that Apple's cost of maintaining these free services remain within manageable proportions, or alternatively convert these services into revenue earning entities such as Microsoft has done with Skype.

Only the future will tell which direction Apple will be taking, in the meantime lets not
panic and continue hacking away with patience in order to find a solution that satisfies
the needs of us, the hacking community.

----- All computing devices are waiting patiently for input at the same speed -----

 

[Oshawapilot]

I keep seeing the advice to not clone from a real mac. I understand if 2 people log on at the same time but I have an old Mac Mini that is exclusively used as a HTPC running snow leopard. It will never even be logged in with any apple account.

Ditto question from me - I have an old Macbook Core Duo (the very first gen original white model) that is all but dead as the Wifi is dead and the keyboard is flaky. It hasn't even connected to the net in maybe 6 months, and if it meant I had a set of genuine numbers to work with I'd be more than happy to pack it up and officially retire it once and for all to use those numbers elsewhere.

 

[overboostv4]

As promised, I picked this up yesterday:
2009 Mac Pro. 4,1

xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx:MLB
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
000000: 4a 35 39 33 30 xx xx xx xx xx xx 54 43 |J5930xxxxxxTC|


Something to mention, when I browse my network, my Pro sees the cloned imac as a PC.



Also worth mentioning, as it likely is part of the same authentication system that apple is doing on these machines. When users are flashing the 4,1 pro with 5,1 pro firmware, they are also getting mixed results as to what 'about my mac' is reporting. Just do a google search for firmware hack on mac pro and you'll find a bunch of links on this topic.

 

[searose]

Number of Bytes making up the MLB .... 13
Number of Characters in the string .... 13
Your System Type .... MacMini3,1
Last four digits of OSX S/N .... F9G5
First five hex values of MLB .... 4a 35 30 30 39
First five string values of MLB ... J5009
Last three hex values of MLB .... 5a 5a 43
Last three string values of MLB ... ZZC

Confirmed ROM value matches Ethernet (en0)
This is a late 2009 Mac Mini

 

[JPWood17]

Number of Bytes making up the MLB .... 13
Number of Characters in the string .... 13
Your System Type .... iMac7,1
Last four digits of OSX S/N .... 6X89

xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx:MLB
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
000000: 57 38 37 34 35 xx xx xx xx xx 42 39 41 |W8745xxxxxB9A|

 

[demonknight9]

Why is this not affecting ML? It's the same service, or is it not?

 

[misenko]

Here are my uneducated thoughts. You are asking Apple to spend time troubleshooting an issue, in which you already know the problem. The problem is obviously that we are all running non-Apple hardware.

Apple, having to assume you're a "normal" Mac user, is spending resources tracking down an issue in which they can find no solution. In fact, I would argue that telling them you're working on a Hackintosh confirms that whatever reasons they had for changing the way it was working, was successful.

As I said, I don't know the technical details of why this is suddenly not working, but what I do know is that when you're trying to steal gold from the den of a dragon, you don't walk in and start yelling your location and intention.

I understand this is the world of Hackintosh, and sometimes my PC runs so well, that I forget that I am in a constant state of cheating. I almost get complacent to the point where I feel entitled to have it all working correctly, and get quite bent out of shape with Apple when it doesn't.

I appreciate all the work being done to get this working, and I hope something can be found that becomes stable in the long term. My fears of course are that tomorrow my iCloud and other more key features will suddenly stop working, and nothing will be able to be done forcing me to make a hard choice about my future with Apple (at least Apple PCs).

So, my advice would be for everyone to work with each other to figure out the problem, while trying to leave Apple out of the loop as long as possible. Tipping them off that our community is having issues, or using methods that give away our position, is not going to help us in the long run, and I would hate for Hackintosh to fail.

That said, I have a 2009 MBP that I can use to help if needed. I just don't know what to do, or what information you need.

I agree with you that people should stop calling Apple to resolve their issues if they are not legitimate mac users. But in global, this is a very, very negligible percent of users so I'm sure Apple do not instruct their operators hard to catch these attempts. Those users knows what they do and it would be also very hard to reveal such froud by Apple operators. So they rather try to resolve the usr's issue. But I'm sure most of those operators have no idea what is a hackintosh

But other group of people - apple devs for sure works on security topics and trying to find a way how to make impossible to use services like imessages on non-genuine apple hardware. But here is the point. In my opinion Apple willl do not block services like iCloud, iTunes and others even to hackintosh users, why? Because this unlike immesages generate big money for them. A person who has hackintosh will never buy a real mac because it is either expensive for him, or is a very limited to funcionality the user needs. Hackinotsh users are usually experienced users - geeks who like to experiment and try new things - exactly like me But I know I would never buy mac because it is not for me. I have iPhone, iPads but would like to use services like imessage with my wife for example in compfortable way. Hackintosh is perfect solution if imessages would work Unfortunatelly, this does not generate money for Apple, you only make a load on their servers, especially with facetime and this generate cost for them. This is the reason why they try to block such services at any cost. But iStore ? I'm sure even if you have hackintosh, you would buy some stuff with your AppeId, wouldn't you ? And this is the reason why such services are still available, because believe me, for Apple there woudn't be easier task than block your ID even on iStore, iCloud and other services. iStore? - money, iCloud? - money, xCode? - money, iMessage? - no money, FaceTime? - no money. Shall I continue? I don't think so and everyone got the point... So for those guys who worry about iCloud, iStore, I would say you can sleep fine

In any case I hope some gurus here will find a way how to bypass it but it would be very difficult.

 

[demonknight9]

I agree with you that people should stop calling Apple to resolve their issues if they are not legitimate mac users. But in global, this is a very, very negligible percent of users so I'm sure Apple do not instruct their operators hard to catch these attempts. Those users knows what they do and it would be also very hard to reveal such froud by Apple operators. So they rather try to resolve the usr's issue. But I'm sure most of those operators have no idea what is a hackintosh

But other group of people - apple devs for sure works on security topics and trying to find a way how to make impossible to use services like imessages on non-genuine apple hardware. But here is the point. In my opinion Apple willl do not block services like iCloud, iTunes and others even to hackintosh users, why? Because this unlike immesages generate big money for them. A person who has hackintosh will never buy a real mac because it is either expensive for him, or is a very limited to funcionality the user needs. Hackinotsh users are usually experienced users - geeks who like to experiment and try new things - exactly like me But I know I would never buy mac because it is not for me. I have iPhone, iPads but would like to use services like imessage with my wife for example in compfortable way. Hackintosh is perfect solution if imessages would work Unfortunatelly, this does not generate money for Apple, you only make a load on their servers, especially with facetime and this generate cost for them. This is the reason why they try to block such services at any cost. But iStore ? I'm sure even if you have hackintosh, you would buy some stuff with your AppeId, wouldn't you ? And this is the reason why such services are still available, because believe me, for Apple there woudn't be easier task than block your ID even on iStore, iCloud and other services. iStore? - money, iCloud? - money, xCode? - money, iMessage? - no money, FaceTime? - no money. Shall I continue? I don't think so and everyone got the point... So for those guys who worry about iCloud, iStore, I would say you can sleep fine

In any case I hope some gurus here will find a way how to bypass it but it would be very difficult.

Looks like you got it all worked out Misenko Please don't continue