Category: OS X

Origin legacy version no longer available

Published on by BluebellFlora1 Comment

EA_Mai has announced that from 14 January 2020 the legacy version of Origin will no longer work. Users must be running the latest version to be able to play their games.  In a nutshell:

  • You must be running macOS 10.9 Mavericks or higher to run the current version of Origin.
  • Games in your Origin games library will still be available but you will not be able to play them unless you upgrade to Mavericks or higher.
  • Mac users running 10.7 Lion will no longer be able to run Origin or play any games requiring Origin such as Sims 4. If your Mac cannot upgrade past Lion your only option is to buy a new computer. Macs which cannot upgrade past Lion:
    • Late 2006 15″ and 17″ MacBook Pro and earlier
    • Early 2008 MacBook Air
    • White MacBooks
    • White iMacs
    • Mid-2007 Mac mini and earlier

If your Mac is not listed above you will be able to upgrade it to Mavericks or later. To upgrade to a later version of macOS open the App Store and search for Apple.

Sims 4 Lion users – do not update your game

Published on by BluebellFlora3 Comments

Update December 2019 – EA have announced that Origin will require macOS 10.9 Mavericks or later. To keep playing your games your MUST upgrade your OS.

The upcoming patch on 3rd October will no longer support macOS 10.7 Lion. If you are running Lion do not update your game and make sure you turn off automatic updates now. If you update you will not be able to roll back to a previous patch level so your game will be unplayable. EA_David has posted this statement in the Sims Mac forum at Answers HQ.

How to turn off automatic updates in Origin:

  1. Click on Origin in the menu bar then Preferences, or click on your account in the bottom left corner of the Origin client window then Application Settings:
  2. Make sure you are under the Application section and scroll down to Client Update. Turn off Automatic Updates so it looks like this:
  3. You can apply Origin updates but make sure Automatic Updates are disabled after each update. I also have a slightly more in-depth article here about updates.
  4. If you have to reset Origin make sure you disable automatic updates in the log in screen:

Unfortunately this means that Realm of Magic is the last pack Lion users will be able to play as any subsequent packs will need the game to be updated. The obvious workaround to this is to update your Mac to a later version of macOS which you can do through the Mac App Store.

Feel free to ask any questions below. The following related articles may also be of interest:

– Installing  macOS on an external drive
– Sims 4 minimum and recommended system requirements
– Disabling Origin automatic updates and startup
– Resetting Origin
– Fix for ActivationUI 32-bit file
– ActivationUI fix rolled back due to Lion issues

Sims 4 hot fix patch – fixing the Lion issue, bringing back the incompatibility error

Published on by BluebellFlora6 Comments

EA have released a hot fix patch to correct various issues created by the patch last Tuesday 16 April. One of the fixes is specifically for Mac users running 10.7.5 Lion:

Fixed an issue where Mac players on certain older versions of OS X were unable to launch the game. As a result, we rolled back a fix that was done for Mac players on 64-bit systems that eliminated a false error message which said, “The Sims 4” is not optimized for your Mac and needs to be updated.

The rolled back fix they are referring to is this one. Unfortunately we will start getting the error message again when launching the game after an OS update, or subsequent patch if they don’t fix it again in the next one. But I shouldn’t imagine this is anything to worry about, more an inconvenience than anything. It really is in EA’s interests to fix this error, otherwise the game will not load on the next version of macOS after Mojave.