FYI sony firmware update mac, post 10.8

I went through a rather frustrating experience just now trying to update the firmware on my a65(don't ask me why I'm so late) to 1.5.

Anyway the mac program requires one to use a 32 bit kernel. Snow leopard(10.6) was the last version of the OS which was able to run on 32 bit architectures, but it was possible through a little hack to boot Lion into 32 bit mode. Unfortunately Mountain Lion does not include a 32 bit kernel so the old trick didn't work.

I had to resort to a VM under parallels. I first tried windows but it wouldn't work, the Sony updater kept reporting a corrupted process.

Only after I booted a Lion VM and put the kernel in 32 bit mode was I able to run the software successfully.

here's the necessary flag to boot into 32 mode(alternatively you can hold down 3 and 2 during the boot process)

sudo systemsetup -setkernelbootarchitecture i386

hope this helps someone who might be having problems.