Ye Macce Threade

[ironbut]

Apple has installers for everything back to Sierra available online.

Here's the page with a link for the Mojave installer.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210190

I make thumb drive installers as I do upgrades. I have them all the way back to Mavericks and a DVD for Snow Leopard if anyone ever needs a copy.

But, like I said, that Apple support page has links to Sierra, High Sierra, El Capitan, Mojave and Catalina.

[HiWire]

On 10/25/2020 at 8:29 PM, Knuckledragger said:

2012 Mac Mini quad core etc etc.  It was running Sierra.  My issues were based primarily about Apple's shitty policy with older versions of OS X (you have to download it, or start downloading it before they update it or you can't have it in the App Sore) not loading from .dmg.  Even a known good .dmg sourced from a friend gave me errors.  After two days of that and still being stuck on Sierra, I said the hell with it and went with Catalina. 

The actual install of Catalina was slow, but relatively painless.  What's been a headache is ...everything since.  In Cat everything has to have permission to do anything.  I've got a few basic apps working, but nothing more.  For the last (checks watch) 18 hours I have been trying to get Migration Assistant to move (some of) my old data on to this machine.  Then I have to get Little Snitch (firewall), 1Password (does what it says on the tin) and my photo and audio apps up and running.  Then I might get daffy and try to get Steam to run.

I think I spent several hours on and off trying to get Migration Assistant to run on Catalina (it kept signing out)... I thought it was because I had upgraded an unsupported Mac, but maybe there is a bug in the current version.

Some of the macOS install problems come from expired certificates. I've had to install older versions of macOS on some computers and I got the "Install macOS application is damaged" error – deleting one of the .plist files can fix it as described here (Method 2):

https://osxdaily.com/2019/10/24/fix-install-macos-application-damaged-cant-be-used-error-mac/

 

I left a 2010 MacBook Air installing the dosdude1 10.15.7 patch over the weekend (it was stuck at the blank grey screen with the black bar) – by the time I checked it this morning, the Apple symbol was there and the bar was just about done, so I did a hard shutdown and restarted it (this happened before with one of the other MacBooks). Then it continued to install macOS and booted up successfully.

It tried twice to install Safari 14.0 and claimed that the installer failed, but when I started Safari it was updated and runs without a problem. So you might experience some irregularities with 10.15.7 on some of the unsupported Macs, but generally they run fine. This particular MacBook Air has 2GB of RAM, so it is struggling as Activity Monitor shows the operating system uses about 1.6GB RAM with no apps running and it creates a 2GB swap file on the SSD. In general, I wouldn't recommend installing Catalina on a Mac with less than 4GB of RAM.

If anyone is curious, Howard Oakley at the Eclectic Light Company has drawn up some diagrams showing how the boot volumes are laid out in recent versions of macOS, including Big Sur:

https://eclecticlight.co/2020/09/16/boot-volume-layout/

 

P.S. If you're having problems launching third-party applications after installing Catalina with the following error message: 

Exception Type: EXC_CRASH (Code Signature Invalid)

 

Open Terminal and run the following command:

sudo nvram boot-args=amfi_get_out_of_my_way=0x1

This will disable an AMFI (Apple Mobile File Integrity) check that prevents exotic apps like Microsoft Word from launching.

Reference link:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macos-10-15-catalina-on-unsupported-macs.2183772/post-28325409

Edited October 28, 2020 by HiWire

[Grahame]

Meanwhile ...

https://www.macrumors.com/2020/11/02/apple-november-event/

"Third event in 3 months, Apple. There better be some Arm-powered Macs this time
Just One More Thing, eh?"

https://www.theregister.com/2020/11/03/apple_announces_next_event_which/

 

[Knuckledragger]

Fair warning: This is going be an absolutely (film) nerdy post and probably of zero interest to anyone but myself.  With that said...

For years my friend Brent (listeners of my radio show will know him as bludvesel) has given me shit about the incredibly boring names I use for my computers: 2012MacMini, 2011MacBook, 2015MacBookPro etc.  I do this so I always know what I'm looking at on my network.  My Wintendo has the imaginative name "Monolith" because it has a huge black case by Fractal Design. 

Now I have two Macs of the same model and year.  With that in mind, I spent several hours renaming all of my Macs.  Brent uses musicians that he likes for his machine names.  For me that'd be an impossible task, picking which ones.  Instead I went with film directors

• 2012 Mac Mini Quad Core i7: Kubrick, named after Stanley obviously.
• 2012 Mac Mini Dual Core i7: Fellini, named after Frederico.  I considered Antonioni, but I found it too hard  to spell.
• 2010 Mac Mini Core 2 Duo: Ulmer, named after the cult director.  Fitting as he was a full generation older.

My ailing 2015 Macintop isn't current renamed because it will mess up some dependencies in Traktor (or more to the point, data Traktor uses.)  Eventually it will become Bergman. 

[HiWire]

One More Thing

Boo-urns to Intel and some bold claims on the new Apple silicon in the new Macs.

The claimed performance and battery life improvements are compelling – the ball is in the developers' court to develop native apps to maximize these gains.

To me, the only fly in the ointment is the 16GB RAM on the 13" MacBook Pro – the older Intel MBP can be configured with up to 32GB (they probably have a lower than 5% takeup rate on that configuration, though).

It's really great to see the Mac Mini get some love – they're super handy for HTPC, developers, and all sorts of people.

And it's great that they are holding the line on the prices. Some of the Macs were starting to look like a really poor value with mediocre performance/features and old silicon.

Edited November 10, 2020 by HiWire

[TMoney]

Some really big claims, yeah.

Can't wait to see what reviewers think.

Also, everything today was the 4+4 chip. Presumably they also have 6/8/more? core chips in development for the big laptop and for desktop.

Edited November 10, 2020 by TMoney

[morphsci]

The Mac-Mini is also limited to 16GB RAM also. That is a huge monkey in the wrench for me. If you are in need or want of higher RAM they are still selling Intel based Mac-Minis with up to 64GB RAM.  I think the highlight for me was the MacBook Air, which hasn't interested me in a while.

[HiWire]

It turns out the RAM may be part of the whole SOC package, so no DIMMs.

The people who are screaming the loudest about Boot Camp compatibility probably own multiple computers.

This finally gives Apple an edge while the unwritten mantra for the Intel era has been "It's just like a PC, but thinner and more expensive and the ports keep disappearing!"

That being said, I may need to buy a few Intel refurbs for work before the new era fully begins.

Edited November 10, 2020 by HiWire

[ironbut]

Love the virtual conferences! 

The releases were what I expected. 

Nothing there for me yet (hell, I just upgraded my iMac to Catalina on Sunday) but I took a big swig of the Kool-Aid and now I'm looking forward to see what comes in the next couple of years!

I can't wait to see real world benchmarks for audio processing with the M1 chips limited to 16G of ram.

I worked with my 2012 15 inch MBP (4core) while transitioning into my place in Oregon and it's 16G.

Used it in clamshell mode (closed) with an ASUS 24" monitor. 

It did a lot of high speed fanning but it didn't really choke on the projects I was working on then.

Rendering/bouncing was a little slow but I could live with it.

Anywho, I have little doubt that most casual users would have any issues with any of the new Macs but I guess we'll see in the next few months.

I'm guessing the next gen chips will have more ram integrated or have motherboards that will accept ram? 

Great to see John Hodges back in the mix!

[morphsci]

Also not sure why they introduced the MacBook Pro. I don’t see paying $200 more for a touchbar and nothing else? Not sure what is “Pro” compared to the new Air.

[Knuckledragger]

Let's have a shitpost!

 I've used Vox as my light duty playback app on OSX for ages now.  It supports FLACs and other formats, and scrobbles to last.fm.  Unfortunately, it's devolved into SaaS and borderline spyware at this point.  It now requires an account to even access the advanced options.  Enter DeaDBeeF, which is FLOSSy, has a somewhat cringey name but does just about everything one might care about, right out of the box.  It supports FLACs etc, has built in last.fm support, and handles replaygain (which Vox does not.)  As a bonus, it lacks spyware and doesn't require an account.

[HiWire]

34 minutes ago, morphsci said:

Also not sure why they introduced the MacBook Pro. I don’t see paying $200 more for a touchbar and nothing else? Not sure what is “Pro” compared to the new Air.

It's not particularly compelling to me, either. A bigger battery, slightly better FaceTime camera, and a bit more thermal capacity than the Air. Its Intel predecessor could be upgraded to 32GB RAM and 4TB of storage.

I'm thinking about moving to Catalina now (it's running on quite a few of the old spare Macs) and I'll be installing Big Sur on a test system when it releases on Thursday.

 

DeaDBeeF may be a weird name, but I found out there is a fine (deeply nerdy) tradition behind it (Wiki):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_number_(programming)#Debug_values

"Magic debug values are specific values written to memory during allocation or deallocation, so that it will later be possible to tell whether or not they have become corrupted, and to make it obvious when values taken from uninitialized memory are being used. Memory is usually viewed in hexadecimal, so memorable repeating or hexspeak values are common..."

"DEADBEEF (hexadecimal number 3735928559)... Famously used on IBM systems such as the RS/6000, also used in the classic Mac OS operating systems, OPENSTEP Enterprise, and the Commodore Amiga. On Sun Microsystems' Solaris, marks freed kernel memory (KMEM_FREE_PATTERN)"

Looks like a good music player. I'm getting tired of iTunes bloat (the PC versions stopped playing my movies until the latest update).

Edited November 10, 2020 by HiWire

[TMoney]

https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-deep-dive

^ Wild article from Anandtech looking at the 5W A14 chip in the iPhone 12 trading blows in single threaded performance with the very best AMD and Intel have to offer ON DESKTOP.

Man... reviews of these new M1 chips are going to be CrazyGoNuts fast if Apple delivers what they hinted at today.

[HiWire]

As suspected, there aren't a lot of differences between the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro:

https://www.macworld.com/article/3596752/apple-m1-chip-13-inch-macbook-pro-macbook-air-performance-battery-design-display-price.html

The MacBook Air is a better pick for most people. I don't think the slightly brighter screen or higher clock speeds make any difference to the average user. The 512GB version of the MacBook Air has an 8-core GPU instead of the 256GB's 7-core, so that would be a good place to start.

Also, I've decided to revert the 2010 MacBook Air to macOS 10.13 (unofficial patch) as it runs too slowly on 10.15 to be useful.

I found out the hard way that it's cleaner to remove the Data partition when you're still running macOS 10.15 – boot to the Recovery Volume and delete from Disk Utility. Otherwise, the Data partition remains if you install 10.13 to the Macintosh HD partition. It doesn't seem to affect anything, but I'd rather have the system run without it.

Edited November 11, 2020 by HiWire

[Pars]

19 hours ago, HiWire said:

DeaDBeeF may be a weird name, but I found out there is a fine (deeply nerdy) tradition behind it (Wiki):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_number_(programming)#Debug_values

"Magic debug values are specific values written to memory during allocation or deallocation, so that it will later be possible to tell whether or not they have become corrupted, and to make it obvious when values taken from uninitialized memory are being used. Memory is usually viewed in hexadecimal, so memorable repeating or hexspeak values are common..."

"DEADBEEF (hexadecimal number 3735928559)... Famously used on IBM systems such as the RS/6000, also used in the classic Mac OS operating systems, OPENSTEP Enterprise, and the Commodore Amiga. On Sun Microsystems' Solaris, marks freed kernel memory (KMEM_FREE_PATTERN)"

I remember this from my days doing classic Mac OS programming. I think one of the books I used to have described it as "where the OS goes to die..." 

[Knuckledragger]

I actually know the origin of 0xDeadBeef, my point in drawing reference to the name is that it's similar to Foobar2000 which also use a programmer term as the name for the app.  FB2K is still my preferred playback app, but the OS X port is horrible.  I use it on my Wintendo for playback, but also replaygain (currently RPG scanning seems to be broken on DeaDBeeF.)

[ironbut]

Keep us in the loop on how OxDeadBeef is treating you.

I'm always on the lookout for a decent player for Mac and that one looks pretty cool!

 

[TMoney]

I have made the requisite sacrifice to the ghost of Steven P. Jobs. Please, Steve, don't brink my work computer!

[HiWire]

Good luck!

The Ars Technica review of macOS Big Sur is out: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/11/macos-11-0-big-sur-the-ars-technica-review/

There's nothing specifically in there that I would classify as a must-have feature, but I imagine there might be a few performance and security enhancements that will pay off in the long term. I'll be installing it to a test volume this afternoon.

 

[ironbut]

1 hour ago, TMoney said:

I have made the requisite sacrifice to the ghost of Steven P. Jobs. Please, Steve, don't brink my work computer!

 

You might see if you can do a dual install (or at least be sure and have a very recent backup).

If you rely on that computer for your work, that seems pretty daring to me!

For pro audio work, BS is not an option,.. yet!

[TMoney]

I just need MS Office and Dropbox, both of which have always been ready for day 1 updates.

I'm not reliant on anything exotic.

[TMoney]

Update failed for me, and seemingly for almost everyone else trying to download it. Apparently Apple is having server issues. Tomorrow it is!

Edited November 12, 2020 by TMoney

[ironbut]

I had some wacky issues with some apps that are connected to servers today.

I was on the verge of restoring Catalina and/or other panic driven measures.

Things seemed to have settled down now so it could be related somehow?

Anyway, glad you mentioned the server issues Adam.

[TMoney]

3 minutes ago, ironbut said:

I had some wacky issues with some apps that are connected to servers today.

I was on the verge of restoring Catalina and/or other panic driven measures.

Things seemed to have settled down now so it could be related somehow?

Anyway, glad you mentioned the server issues Adam.

I also had issues opening 3rd party apps. Apparently they try to connect to Apple servers to request permission, and the servers weren't responding.

Fix was to disconnect from the internet, open all the apps I needed, they turn the internet back on. 🤷‍♂️

[HiWire]

That would explain why my App Store updates weren't working.

Thanks for keeping us updated. I think I'll try to download it tomorrow or later.