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Comment by mister_hn | Hacker News Reader

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mister_hn

when you buy new hardware, you have already the new versions of OS. You don't have a choice

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Yep. That was my Catalina frustration, too.

My phone broke last week so I bought an iPhone 11.

My Mac wouldn't connect/sync with it unless I upgraded to Catalina.

So I upgraded to Catalina, and now all of the software I used on Mac doesn't work at all. (iZotope Audio editing, Native Instruments, Cubase, Audacity, and more. None of it works in Catalina.) Catalina also makes my Mac Mini not recognize my LG monitor unless I Cmd-Opt-P-R flash PRAM and reboot a few times just to get it to send a signal to the monitor.

So now the Mac is useless to me. I literally can't use it for anything I was using it for. It has no working programs on it.

So I switched back to Android, found an old Windows laptop, re-installed my audio software on Windows, and I'll just work without Apple until they fix their OS, or maybe never again.

FWIW, and to their credit, iZotope and NI sent out emails to all customers before Catalina was released to the public clearly warning them not to upgrade yet.

Apple doesn't want to give you a choice but you can still do it:

1. Use some mac to download an older OS installer. The links are hidden but you can find them in some forums etc.

2. Create a bootstick - either manually or with software like dosdude's really nice patchers (find them here: http://dosdude1.com/)

3. Backup your stuff (not only time machine as it would reinstall the new version of macos again) and install the old macOS to get your apps and files back on it

This is something I really hate about Apple - why can't they just provide some official download links that keep working?

With Apple I have a love-hate-relationship because some products (MBP until 2016/17, iPhone 5s/SE) and software (keynote, pages, lot of parts of the OS) are awesome while their software policy and planned obsolescence screws you hard if you just follow their lead as a simple user.

You always have to take care not to update too early, use workarounds to integrate devices with different Apple software (like with airdrop) and if you brick devices there is few ways getting back to business (no helpful error messages like the icons they show on boot when something goes wrong or messages from their system diagnostic like "HDD is damaged" while it's just the cable).

You can simply restart with Shift-Option-⌘-R and reinstall the macOS version the hardware shipped with or the most compatible version.

[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904

I know but that is not possible in every situation. I for example had no recovery mode on a MBP so I needed to get the Apple software on it somehow.

The tool from dosdude can do a bit more. With it I managed to install High Sierra on a MBP from 2009 (which isn't compatible anymore but it runs flawlessly).

Before it had an HDD with Windows only and no access to recovery mode or diagnostic tools. Thanks to the "High Sierra Patcher" everything works now :)

While there are exceptions, Macs frequently won’t boot an OS which is older than what the sku originally shipped with.

You can sometimes finagle it by playing around with kexts (I once even had success with a custom kernel designed for AMD Hackintosh’s), but it’s a somewhat involved process with no guarantee of success.

Many enterprises have their own official disk image that they burn onto new hardware, ensuring complete control.

Disk images don't work with Macs any more. Apple has forced us onto 'workflow-based' installations which are supposed to ensure firmware for all subsystems are installed as well, by running the OS installer every time. However, this is pretty time-consuming.

You really don't have 'complete control' of Macs any more. Apple do what they like with your hardware.

But that doesn't work with iOS devices, right?

I bought new hardware, but I installed windows 7 on it instead of windows 10.

on Mac i guess you can't go down so easy.. There's no installation medium anymore and everything goes through their crappy AppStore