Black Screen After MacBook Pro Update to macOS Big Sur
discussions.apple.com
discussions.apple.com
When these "major" releases risk completely breaking my laptop, I see zero incentive to update. I read through the release material and find absolutely nothing compelling. Apple seem stubbornly intent to celebrate these releases as huge step forward. Yet, the feature set is barely noteworthy.
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OSX Release Starter Pack
* "Bold New Design" - we tweaked the colors and made some things round.
* "Refreshed X" or "Powerful X" - we took something and changed it for the sake of marketing
* List of Safari Updates - Just, why? Why is that attached to an OS release?
* A bunch of other apps that are apparently only releasable with a new OS version. In particular, messages will take up 20%+ of the release content to essentially highlight the ability to put emojis and faces on everything.
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I've definitely gone from "I'll buy a mac because it's a mac" to "Maybe my next machine will be Windows. It's cheaper, more reliable, and just works"
I don't really want to update it, but am going to have to, as it no longer receives security updates from Apple, as you say won't run latest XCode, which also homebrew complains about and says it can't support my OS, and increasingly software I want to install won't cause the OS is too old.
But there are zero features of an OS update i want. I am terrified of what's going to happen when I update.
However, i still far prefer MacOS UX to Windows, myself. I just a quite fine with it on 10.12.
And my 2015 Macbook is still running fine, by the way, have no need of an upgrade for more CPU or RAM or anything like that.
The work laptop is a maxed 15" macbook a year or two old, and it can barley handle video conferences, let alone bazel compilations or debugging in vscode. Keyboard and touchbar are a mess as expected. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.
I'm going go straight to a Linux/windows desktop, since I'm working from home anyways. More ram, cpu and a real modern video card is basically what I want, and I won't get that with a mac.
I was in a similar boat. Top spec macPro, all the bells and whistles...and the machine ground to a halt trying to compile anything. Rust was particularly bad, but the worst was trying to compile modules for ONOS, which needed some custom Bazel massaging to begin with. First time in my life the "compiling!" xkcd strip[0] was relevant to my life.
Here's a forum thread for more info: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/upgrading-2013-2014-mac...
Since a few versions, you can actually get the latest safari on the previous OS. So even if safari is the one thing you want you don’t need the update.
> In particular, messages will take up 20%+ of the release content to essentially highlight the ability to put emojis and faces on everything.
Messages in particular probably needs the new OS due to catalyst updates.
https://9to5mac.com/2020/11/15/apple-explains-addresses-mac-...
This was Apple’s last straw in my book. Yes they’re backtracking, but this wasn’t some extra miscellaneous data someone forgot to remove. Further it took a hail storm of PR (in the dev world) to push change.
Moving to Linux ecosystem, despite loosing the rather smooth Apple ecosystems
System-wide VPNs should still tunnel everything, so it's not as much of a security disaster as it sounded like, but I still don't like that. It's my computer, I should be able to firewall whatever I want.
I always use a "slug"[1] to (re)inforce a VPN.
It's extremely difficult to go around it - certainly not by accident ...
I'm looking into dual-wifi travel routers that will run OpenWRT (and thus give me root) and can do WireGuard at reasonable speeds. I've been meaning to do it for iOS devices anyway (these things phone home constantly, with no way to turn it off) and now it's going to be needed on Apple Silicon macs, too.
Perhaps - and of course that point is well taken.
However, if the hardware device is complicated enough to actually run the VPN then you are back to wondering how it can fail, who can attack it and how things can accidently go around it.
Not so with a slug - it is a dead simple bridge that can't be seen on the network.
If you meant wifi, do you have configs available or hardware you recommend?
[1] I know, I know, why use Edge? Fun fact, Netflix doesn't render at higher than 720p on Firefox/Chrome because of DRM issues.
In short:
1. Run this command as an administrator: reg add hklm\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\EdgeUpdate /v Allowsxs /t REG_DWORD /d 1
2. Download and reinstall the new Edge.
Note that Microsoft has said that old Edge will stop getting security updates soon, though I don't know what this actually amounts to as the old Edge's engine remains in Windows for application compatibility even when old Edge is nominally removed.
I'd also suggest that you send feedback to Microsoft about any problems you have with new Edge, using the built-in "Send feedback" tool or Windows' Feedback Hub.
On Linux I am rarely if ever compelled to reboot unless I upgrade the kernel and want to use specific features like virtualization. There's just no going back once you get used to this.
I'm still on Mojave on my 2013 MacBook Pro.
The main reason I'd still consider a Mac for my next machine is because there's no other manufacturer that seems to take their trackpads seriously.
Why is there no real competition for Apple's trackpads?
Well you're in for a surprise once they render your Mac completely obsolete in a few years.
I'm seriously considering changing my daily driver to a Linux machine, and getting a mac mini strictly for running iOS builds.
Would need to do some work to kick off a build from the Linux machine which deploys the app to the iOS device, but it should totally be possible with xcodebuild command line tool...
I think the general workflow would be:
1) Develop on the Linux machine in Flutter or React Native. 2) Primary day-to-day / hour-to-hour testing device = Pixel. 3) When ready to build on iOS device, network request is made to the Mac Mini, which then kicks of xcodebuild to deploy the build to the device.
Would need some sort of fast file replication tool. And debugging would be a chore.
Uhg.
I got bad news for ya: I just bought a new Yoga a month ago and it is just as bad if not worse.
* Animated ads in the start menu tiles
* I've had to upgraded and restart almost every other day for 4 weeks
* there are ads that keep reapparing in the tiles on update
* there are constant popus reminding me to log in to my windows account (or problems that I can't log in because I HAVEN'T)
* nVidia ads popping up in the lower-right corner
* MSoft ads popping up in the lower-right corner.
* Also, day one: tried installing some LabView software and BSOD (well, the new pretty color blue they use and the high-res warning).
* Starting a new app takes about 15~30 seconds (I believe it is phoning home the way macOS does, not sure).
Win10 now looks and feels like an annoying clickbait website. Once macOS includes ads, it'll be an equally appalling UX.
The only respite I get are logging into AWS compute instances or my Ubuntu and FreeBSD boxes. They can't take away my BASH CLI.
EDIT: I'm getting a lot of "it never happened to me." Yes, I'm sure some of you haven't seen this. I'm jealous.
Meanwhile on my new MacBook PRO 2019:
* Fans randomly turn on with nothing running and `powermetrics` has the fan at 3200 RPM and cpu temp of ... 40C? I literally have to reboot to get them to turn off. I walked into my office one morning and apparently the fans had been running all night with no apps loaded and nothing using considerable power.
* Only some USB-C ports work with my belkin Gigabit adapter. I had to experiment with where-to-plug-what to get it to work. Apparently all USB-C ports on it are NOT the same. Grrr.
* Gigabit adapter never goes to sleep, stays warm when plugged in
* The apple display adpater port + USB-A + power jack periodically drops the screen, and sometimes when I log in I have to open my laptop (I stay docked), wait for the video to mirror, then close my laptop and wait for it to switch to the external monitor.
* Too many Catalina updates this year! But they are faster than my Win10 box.
I have a W10 that I run as a second machine. Updates are annoying (but they don't cross the line of being "terrible" for me).
The ads are something that I haven't noticed. I wonder if that's manufacturer specific. I know I'm running a clean, vanilla install on my setup.
Plus a maths programming language. No games though
Considering that iOS already includes ads, it may not be that long.
- Apple Arcade ad right there at the top of the Settings app: "Apple Arcade 3 Months Available Free >"
- Very often when I just want to listen to the music I purchased, I get a full-screen ad for Apple Music that takes about 20 seconds to load, and cannot be dismissed until it does.
These two things are enough to get me to move to something else, if there was a viable alternative for my workflow. There isn't yet, but I'm keeping an eye out.
There are only really two places to move to: Mac or Win.
If you're nothing but a code jockey, then sure, *nux/bsd can replace your day-to-day, but for the rest of us, we need one of the two, usually with MSOffice. (I work with Google, even they aren't 100% google docs internally!)
> Animated ads in the start menu tiles
I wouldn't know, I removed the default tiles and I'm just using stuff I manually pinned.
> I've had to upgraded and restart almost every other day for 4 weeks
My uptime currently is 7 days, last reboot was me wanting to manually upgrade to 20H2. YMMV.
> There are ads that keep reapparing in the tiles on update
Hasn't happened to me.
> there are constant popus reminding me to log in to my windows account
I'm using a local account, I don't get any popup to log in using my Microsoft account.
> nVidia ads popping up in the lower-right corner
How? I've never seen this in my life. I'm running an NVIDIA card.
> MSoft ads popping up in the lower-right corner
I think I got the "you should upgrade to New Edge" popup once, doesn't appear anymore because I did (I wanted to try it out)
> Also, day one: tried installing some LabView software and BSOD
No BSOD yet, but YMMV, drivers can vary in quality.
> Starting a new app takes about 15~30 seconds
I wouldn't know. I've got 64 GB of RAM and a fast NVMe. Nothing loads in more than one second from cold start for me.
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Either brand PC are loaded with additional crap (of course I ran the O&O Shut Up 10 thing just after first installation) or my experience is much nicer than I've read on this forum.
Acer's hardware is inferior in every measurable spec but hasn't failed me yet, and that's frankly all I want from it. It works and it stays out of my way.
Yeah IIRC they can also resize the start menu manually if they don't want any tiles.
Wow you succinctly captured how using Windows feels for me on a day to day basis vs Mac.
Sounds like you have Nvidia's "Geforce Experience"(or whatever it's called) installed. Good thing is you probably don't need it.
> * Starting a new app takes about 15~30 seconds (I believe it is phoning home the way macOS does, not sure).
Huh, that is weird. Have you tried turning off this phoning home feature? I think it's called SmartScreen on Windows 10 and you can disable it somewhere. But Microsoft are really the masters of UI dark patterns when it comes to this; they let you disable most of this crap during install but only via near invisible buttons to access these options.
But I agree Windows 10 is insanely frustrating at times. It's what ultimately gave me the last push I needed to switch to Linux.
Are you plugging your power cable into the left side of your mac? I had the same issue, and plugging it into a right-sided port fixed it. It sounds like a joke, but it's real.
https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/363337/how-to-find...
I'm on Linux now. It randomly breaks but so does Mac so I might as well have a tiling window manager.
Selected models maybe. In general- no. Not more reliable, not just works.
While bricking updates for Windows are rare, the most infamous Windows update bug deleted all user data.
If you want stability, desktop Linux is now the best out of a bad set of options. If you need more software support, run Windows in a VM where it can't destroy anything important.
That being said, Windows updates have a bunch of minor issues, but rarely result in these machine breaking issues that OSX has.
Paying thousands of dollars for a gimped developer experience plus the recent decisions around ‘security’ have been dubious to say the least (Apple granting themselves exceptions around filtering mechanisms in new network extensions APIs)
Since I can’t work because I’m waiting for the replacement, I started tinkering to see what I could do and it turns out that the T2 security chip was totally nuked – the weird version of iOS it runs (BridgeOS) was broken/missing, which means the hardware won’t even power on, POST, or light up the screen to tell you. Without the T2, you don’t have a computer anymore, basically.
Turns out that this chip can be flashed by using a specific set of incantations: https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/apple-configurator-2/a...
So, here’s what I had to do:
1. You need another Mac running the exact same build of the OS on the dead machine. I begrudgingly needed to update my Mac Mini to Big Sur to get it to work.
2. Plug a USB-C cable into the front left port of your dead MacBook, fire up Apple configurator on the functional machine and click “Revive.”
3. Wait, hope it works.... but there’s no confirmation so you just have to wait a long time and hope it was long enough, then hold the power button for 30 seconds to see if it’ll turn on.
4. If that doesn’t work (it didn’t), then you should run “restore” which is exactly the same. Wait a long time, hold the power button for 30 seconds and hope. Eventually, in my case, it powered up into internet recovery, and acted as if it were a new Mac. Everything is gone, but it’s at least functional as far as I can tell.
This will ONLY apply to the T2 models, which are not the ones mentioned in the OP, but it seems like a similar issues. These steps at least revived my machine, but it was so obscure that even Apple support didn’t know about this, so ordered a replacement. I can’t be the only one to have run into this, but I’m pretty pissed that I blew two entire days trying to figure out what was going on.
More details on my Twitter: https://twitter.com/ow/status/1328389544119513089?s=21
This is an Apple Hardware and macOS issue and should be posted on https://Apple.StackExchange.com
Probably because going to these lengths is rare, and people will just service/replace the ocassional problematic machine.
Whereas in Linux land this is much more common, and you're on your own commercial support wise (and with friendly forums to guide you).
What's way more common is random hardware failures, unrelated to the OS. I've never had to deal with apple support and hope I'll never have to, but HP enterprise support isn't frictionless either. A colleague of mine had a swollen battery, which wasn't user replaceable (guess not only Apple has bright ideas). He called up the support, which went relatively fine but in the end he had to send the computer in for repairs for two weeks and was advised to save his data as the machine would be wiped. Luckily removing the SSD was possible and didn't void the warranty...
The next business day, on-site support presumably costs extra. (We have it for servers, but I don't deal with laptops until they're out of warranty.)
It's the effect of:
(1) millions of Macs updating at the same time (fastest OS updates in the industry) vs a smaller number of Linux users scattered upon every distro and updating at random piecemeal intervals (and Windows users fragmented into 2000000 possible configurations and OEMS, with different pain points and issues, that nobody cares for, and is not newsworthy, plus the blame can be dilluted between MS and the PC vendor.).
(2) Apple doing bolder changes with releases than Windows or Linux does (adopting new things faster, custom processors and co-processors and SOCs, whole new languages, new filesystems, etc), so risking more problems.
(3) Apple news sell (few would care for "Asus botched the production run of one of its 200 models"), so they magnify the issues that 1000 or 10,000 people see as if they concern 100,000,000+ users (or half a billion in the case of iOS).
(4) Hackers and tinkerers being angry that they're not pandered by Apple, as if they ever were the target group for Macs, and as if curation and the concept of the walled garden is not central to macOS/iOS (in the positive light: not "I can't get off the garden" but "it's a peaceful garden where I can focus on X things, creeps, crazy people, junkies, etc don't get to screw around -- and yes, this means that to achieve that I can't do any arbitrary thing I might want either").
Around the PPC change, Apple took the grand strategy of backing away from this idea of controlling what their users were able to do with their machines. Now they're moving back to their "we say what our machines are for and if your use case doesn't match then screw you" attitude.
Many of Apple's business decisions of late have been nothing but hostile to the idea of allowing users to do what they want with their devices. As a very long time Mac OS user, this whole idea of a "walled garden" was never central to the Mac, and while Apple have always been a sufferer of NIH syndrome, it seemed in the mid-2000s that they had finally got over this and started playing nice with the rest of the industry. So much for that.
In this case, however, my job requires I use the Mac issued to me so y’know, it was in my interest to get it going again while I waited for a replacement.
As a freelance developer, my MacBook Pro is my livelihood. It’s dependence, great support and MacOS / Linux CLI was it’s main feature. Now it’s gotten to the point where you’re better off waiting 4 years before buying a new product line so the general public beta tested it long enough.
I’m getting a lot of Microsoft in the 90’s vibes from Apple these days. Anyone else as well?
We need a new razor, something along the lines of "do not attribute to FANG marketing what is better explained by misplaced expectations".
I think you overestimate some professional people's income (especially if it's sporadic) and underestimate their other expenses.
I've known many freelancers who buy a new laptop twice a decade at most. It will be the single most valuable object they own, and may be the result of saving for months and careful consideration of what to buy, intending it to use it for many years.
A spare good laptop "just in case" is not a realistic option for them.
Most of them could buy a second laptop if circumstances arise where it's absolutely necessary, but it would be hardship. So they wouldn't get one just as a "nice to have", a spare laptop lying around doing "nothing". Especially if it's going to be outdated by the time you have some use for it. Events where you need a spare device are quite rare after all.
That might be below "the basic cost" of running a sensible business, but for people on median and/or sporadic incomes it's a significant cost, only worth bearing if and when it becomes necessary.
I don’t mean to belittle anyone’s hardships, the stress of failing in particular. Being a "pro" is not amateur work.
Except for the obvious extreme scenarios, if your business collapses when your laptop fails, I think you are at fault, not Apple.
First, on Apple devices there are more software-induced failure modes than there had been in the past, and many of these failure modes are far more difficult or obscure to recover from. An OS update bricking your system in a way that Time Machine (or a disk image or similar) couldn't recover from was incredibly rare until rather recently.
Second, Apple devices have become so integrated and locked down it's now impossible to use some of the historical strategies to get yourself back up and running faster in the event of an unexpected failure. For example, you can no longer take the drive out of your current device and stick it in a replacement device to continue working. You've gotta make sure you have a perfectly working backup system to do that now, and even that takes waaay more time then the old-school drive swap. We're still not at the point where it's easy to shift your entire life from one machine to the next unless everything you do is cloud-based (which isn't the case for most).
Third, Apple's devices in particular have become harder to repair. They have more proprietary features than they did in the past, and a less friendly attitude towards repair than in the past. Apple don't release detailed documentation or repair manuals on how to e.g. revive the T2 chip, and AFAICT some of the tools needed to diagnose and repair Apple devices are internal only. It's now also impossible for all but an SMD repair shop to replace certain components if they fail because they are now soldered to the logic board. This, combined with the turnaround time for repairs on Apple products being ridiculous, has put even more pressure on people to have more robust backup plans than before, and penalises those without these plans moreso than in the past.
Forth, Apple's devices have become more expensive in the first place - or at least, there are now fewer options for folks to get the machines they need from third parties via upgrades. I typically work in smaller businesses and with freelancers and contractors, and many of these folk used to buy lower end models and upgrade the components over time as their needs improved and components got cheaper.
With soldered storage these days it can also be more difficult to find a suitable machine to buy e.g. used while you wait for your main machine to be repaired. Need a 1TB device? In the past, you could pick up any used machine on the market of approximately the specs you need, and simply swap in aftermarket storage. Now? Well, you're limited to the tiny portion of Macs originally sold with 1TB drives. There may be some way to use an external drive for this, but damned if I can find instructions on how to do so on Apple's website. What I can see however is a disclaimer that Macs with a T2 chip might be more difficult to use external startup disks with. I'm sure I could figure it out eventually, but I'm pretty sure your average freelancer would struggle.
So while ultimately yes, you as a professional can do things to mitigate the circumstances of any single point of failure and should do so where it makes sense, from where I sit this is an increasingly difficult and time consuming process. And all of that extra difficulty has been forced upon its customers by Apple.
I got tired of having to figure out what codec incantations I needed to make videos play.
Much of the support was snarky "RTFM" or forum postings from 2007 about different distros.
Every couple years I try it again when people on HN insist it's better now, and within minutes there's a showstopper hardware compatibility issue or something.
I'm scheduled to try it again about a year from now.
Even with all that experience and care picking good laptops, and even after Ubuntu and Xorg autoconfig made the driver situation much better, I found myself having to: Fix kernel graphics driver bugs (spans of random pixels occasionally drawn on the screen due to something extremely subtle deep in the Intel driver), sound driver bugs, and being annoyed that nothing worked right with Nvidia on one of them (neither Nvidia's driver nor Nouveau worked properly), and debugging unreliable suspend.
Now I run Linux in a VM, and that's been perfect for userspace development. On a Mac, the four-finger swipe switches beautifully between Mac and Linux full-screen desktops, as if neither OS is really in charge. It feels more like running Xen, two OSes side by side, with Apple-quality GUI for switching and organising OSes.
Of course, not so good when the Apple device bricks.
The symptoms people are reporting now are very similar to what I saw when upgrading to Catalina - hours stuck on "about a minute remaining", many reboots and with what looked like glitchy display errors and "starting from scratch" progress bars, leading to a worrying feeling it was stuck in a reboot cycle or just bricked. I was immensely relieved when it eventually finished after hours of doing whatever it was doing, as I didn't have a spare working computer (all my old Linux laptops have broken :-/) And that was after leaving it for nearly a year (I installed Catalina this summer), so the problems should have been "ironed out" by then.
I'm really glad I haven't follow the system notification's prompt to update to Big Sur. From the Catalina experience, I suspect I'd be one of the brickage victims, and I can't afford that right now.
If it were always possible to restore from backup (as it generally is with Linux and Windows) that would be fine, I'd take the risk. But when Apple updates go wrong, it can be more serious as you can't necessarily boot at all, even to restore from backup.
Fullscreen the Linux VM, it becomes another desktop. Just swipe into it and continue working.
But I would expect it to work the same for other virtualisation software, because that's what MacOS does for full-screen apps.
It's nice that the swipe gesture is intercepted by the host instead of passed to the guest.
I swipe to full-screen remote desktops too (in this case to access another work laptop on my desk via my main monitor), it's really nice having them all available this way. It's like having a deluxe KVM, which also has a zoom-out thumbnail viewer when needed :-)
It's still called VMware Fusion but is now available in the variants Player and Pro: https://www.vmware.com/se/products/fusion/fusion-evaluation....
Before that it was an issue with different GPU/CUDA binaries causing conflicts and forcing a full reinstall of the system at random times when I was swapping conda envs for different python stacks.
I really really really want to be able to use Linux full time, but I haven't even got to the point of wanting to use something like video conference from a linux install, which I've heard is a nightmare.
That being said, setting up WiFi is a pain, I frequently set up raspberry pis with Ubuntu and just can’t get it right without needing to connect a screen.
With Catalina, my Mac speakers intermittently stopped working though. So it's getting more competitive as Mac gets worse.
> Since I can’t work because I’m waiting for the replacement
There's probably a few tens of thousands of stressed out freelancers right now who can't pay their rent this month because their only machine just got bricked by the Big Sur update (which presents itself via system notifications as if it's an ordinary software update, not a major event), and they are either stuck far from any Apple service waiting for a replacement, or worse, it's out of warranty and they can't afford to buy another machine.
But for a lot of developers, their work literally can only be done on on Apple devices. You can't develop iOS and Mac apps on anything else.
There are a lot of people for whom that is their job, including freelancers.
They could switch to a new domain of business, but that's a large change with many disadvantages. It's not like picking a different laptop just because you fancy a change. E.g. for an iOS developer to switch to being an Android developer, it's not hard to start but there's a lot to learn to be good at it to the same level and bring in the same money.
I would be surprised if my accountant updates to a new version of Excel within 3 days if it coming out, and would be very disappointed if as a result he wasn’t able to prepare my taxes. The situation you described is similar - someone who should know better throwing their old tools before they know for sure the shiny new one will work.
The Big Sur update is notified in the same way. It gives the appearance of being just another big software update.
Unlike Windows, Mac OS updates come out more often, about once a year for major version, and every couple of months for minor version. Despite the marketing fanfare, they are not as big a change as say jumping from Windows 7 to Windows 10.
Ok, maybe you still want to take care with a new OS. Like with Excel three days before filing taxes. (Though when do you expect the accountant to upgrade? They are always doing someone's taxes.)
Maybe you do try it in a VM first, and decide you like it, it works well for you. Some people try new OS versions in a separate partition. You can do that on a Mac, just like on a PC. It seems like it ought to be safe, because you've kept the old installation on as well. Just like on a PC, you can choose which to start up using the built-in boot menu.
Being sensible you take a full system backup first. Usually, with Apple, a backup is pretty good. You can reinstall from a backup provided the system can boot. Macs have a reinstaller built in. By analogy with a PC, it's more like "imaging" a Windows or Linux system, and as if the PC BIOS had built-in tools to restore from a backup image.
Following that analogy, the problem here is that Big Sur nuked the BIOS! It can't even reboot from external media, or the recovery partition. If a Window OS upgrade did that we'd not only be unhappy, we would also be rather surprised that we can't boot an external USB key to recover.
Windows 10 has new major releases every 6 months, changes might be more minor than a typical macOS major release. Windows also gets security patches and bug fixes every month, those are comparable to macOS minor versions.
Updates brick device across many platforms all the times. I've had plenty of PCs break from updates.
That you can even recover from a T2 failure at all without opening it up is quite nice. Perhaps my standards are low.
Most windows and linux machines can be reinstalled with a USB stick. If you don't have that USB stick they can usually be written with any macos, windows or linux machine.
Updates do not usually brick machines. I'm guessing your PCs that broke did not require another PC running the exact same windows version to fix? And I'm guessing that if those PCs were made within the last 5-10 years you could restore from recovery and not need another device?
A few weeks ago, I fired up Adobe Photoshop from their CC platform. No go, something, something about an intel compatibility.
Do online and start googling the error I was getting.
Seems the newest version determined that my quad core Xeon processors didn't support SSE 4.2 or later. A LOT of people were fuming online that in order to run the latest version, they would have to get a new PC or laptop with a new processor that was now required for the newest version.
The current solution for many is to now install an earlier version until they figure out what they want to do. Ironically, I still run a lot of stuff on my old Mac Mini so I found out that I can run the most recent version of Photoshop on there instead.
I haven't checked into the issue for a week or so. I'm still not sure if anybody came up with a solid solution without having to buy new equipment.
I was with you until I looked up when SSE 4.2 was introduced.
SSE 4.2 was introduced in the Nehalem architecture...twelve years ago for desktop processors, ten for xeons. I really don't see anything wrong with Adobe requiring a processor newer than ten years old for software used by and large by creative professionals, people who make money with it.
If you're a creative professional working off a twelve year old computer, you're wasting money just from lost productivity waiting on that system - as well as flushing money down the drain on all the wasted energy running the system, unless you live somewhere electricity is insanely cheap.
A new computer would literally pay for itself in reduced power consumption alone, both idle and loaded wattage. A Ryzen 3600 uses less than half the power of a lot of xeon chips, has a single-core performance 50%+ higher than the very fastest second-gen quad core nehalem, and has two more cores.
Same goes for a modern GPU - everything is GPU accelerated these days, and you can get a several year old Nvidia card that is so power efficient the fans aren't even spinning most of the time.
Then there's the huge performance boost of NVMe.
The list goes on. Dude(tte). Buy a new computer. Or one at least made in the last 5-6 years?
I opened my late 2013 MBP, unplugged the IO board's cable, rebooted, OS finished upgrading. I left it unplugged for now (lost WiFi/BT, HDMI and one USB) not an issue for me, was using TB to displayport and gigabit lan adapter anyways. System works and reboots fine without IO board being plugged in. Ordered a 14$ replacement board from eBay.
Do steps 17 and 18 of this:
https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Retina+Disp...
Exactly. Mac has become windows in this sense. Updates aren’t safe and users must stay a few versions behind.
But in the pre iOSification days a new 10.x version would come out every few years, so the 10.x.1 version would come out a few months later with major bugs ironed out. You waited a few months, and then safely enjoyed 10.x.x updates for another 2-3 years.
With the annual release, your 10.x version comes out every year, the 10.x.1 version a few months later but it’s hardly as well tested, and you’re probably better off waiting for 10.x.2 and then by the time that’s done, Apple is already preparing you for 10.x+1.
When one of my older Macs became unresponsive due to that Apple network failure problem issue, I spent countless hours running various system cleaner utilities, uninstalling apps, and blindly running obscure terminal commands from Stack Overflow, even though my own initial console log analysis (and instincts) had more-or-less confirmed that it was an issue with trustd network connection timeouts to Apple's own servers.
Fool on me. This coupled with having to get my 2019 Macbook Air keyboard replaced twice (due to sticky keys) has me thinking out loud about moving away from Apple.
Good coverage of the trustd issue: https://tidbits.com/2020/11/13/apple-network-failure-destroy...
My impression is that over the past few years Linux has gotten a bit better at just working out of the box, Mac would be good if you never upgrade the OS (but if you do upgrade, you're rolling the dice on a major disaster) and Windows is pretty much where it was (and still not a great experience for developers). Basically, the 3 platforms seem a lot closer to each other than they used to be.
If the manufacturer can supply a working Linux laptop, that usually means other distros will run without difficulty on it as well.
MacOS is really nice, almost as good as Linux and great for those things like photo shop files or those unfortunate days there is no choice but to use MS office.
The only thing I miss about windows since switching my second machine to MacOS is how angry windows would make me every time I tried to do something on it.
If I had time, I'd do the same. I'm in this career because I wondered how these things work in the first place. Just because Windows or macOS are closed systems they're not less interesting. They're harder to understand and, sometimes challenge calls.
Linux is nice, way better when compared to 15 years ago but, it's not perfect. I'm going to buy a new PC in 12 months and I'd need to make some research about hardware compatibility and performance. Especially on the motherboard side. I have to make sure that it contains no funny devices or memory mappings so, I can't use an on-board peripheral until someone writes a quirk just for that.
OTOH, every platform has its nice applications. While Darktable is a very nice photo editor and Digikam is a perfect DAM, CameraBag or OmniGraffle doesn't work on Linux. Similarly, many basic functions of KDE's Dolphin (Protocol support, embedded git, etc.) is not present on mac. Similarly my IDE of choice (Eclipse) wasn't working well on macs until Big Sur.
However, while developing applications, Apple's design decisions and inner workings provide some nice insight and inspiration for better experiences and more sensible defaults.
Using diverse set of platforms is mind opening for me. It's important to understand the trade-offs of every one and, all of them are perfect in their own regard.
However, at the end of the day, I'm a FOSS lover and you can't pry my Linux systems from my cold dead hands. macOS on the other hand is just a nice closed system to develop open source stuff for me.
There are certified/tested Linux computers available from vendors like HP and Dell. Just buy one of them instead of wasting time researching hardware compatibility only for it to break later with no one to complain to. Some links:
HP Linux Hardware Matrix: https://h20195.www2.hp.com/v2/getpdf.aspx/4AA7-6280ENW.pdf Dell Linux Workstations and Laptops: https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/overview/cp/linuxsystem... Ubuntu Desktop Certified Hardware: https://certification.ubuntu.com/desktop Red Hat Certified Workstations (incl. Laptops): https://catalog.redhat.com/hardware/workstations/search
I make staggered updates and these systems are not very receptive for that. I wouldn't want to change my case just to upgrade the motherboard and the CPU. Also, I'm not sure that a small EliteDesk tower can accommodate all my disks (2HDDs plus 2SSDs) neither space, nor power-wise. I also use a PCIe sound card (for sound quality reasons) which needs a PSU connection via floppy connector.
At the end of the day, these systems are very nice as-is, but I need to get them as a package and they're not very flexible. My desktop usage scenario and update path is not very suitable for that.
Last but, not the least; I like to build my own desktop computers.
Even with a recent kernel, it continues to have power management problems, and the intel wifi chipset occasionally just decides to stop working. It's fine, especially given the good price I got, but it's been a hassle, and more than occasionally I wish I'd spent the money on upgrades to the Mac instead.
(And I say this as someone with a libre POWER9 desktop and a pinephone -- I love tinkering and live Linux, but when I'm working for a paycheck I get tired of dealing with Linux's issues)
I've been using Linux exclusively since 2007 and I've never had any motherboard compatibility issues. I think the only thing that may be shaky is wifi, but even that's pretty settled these days now that the hardware is more or less standardized. I'm not doubting your experience, just found that an odd thing to single out.
Some things I have experienced (not all hardware related but, notable and crippling):
- Additional SATA controllers had intermittent connectivity issues with Samsung SpinPoint drives
- Same additional SATA controllers' 2 port models were fine but, same chip's 4 port model was not recognized at all.
- Intel Speedstep was wonky.
- CPUFreqd needed hand tuned scaling profiles for good on-demand scaling.
- Fedora 4 mysteriously tried to redirect all my internal X11 comm via my physical Ethernet card. Needed to add an additional card as a primary network interface to solve desktop latency problems.
- One of my systems was unable to boot any OS installed on the non-GRUB drive. GRUB was unable to fire anything on that disk (regardless of OS brand, model and make)
- My latest system's on board Wi-Fi and BT adapter was unusable for 2 years.
The sound still breaks after every kernel update though as the drivers continue to evolve. I've been running Linux on my desktop for twenty years now, and I couldn't suggest anyone who hasn't to try a Linux on a next-gen motherboard as it is pretty much always a disaster for a year or two.
First, this isn't happening to all updates. Second, On a daily basis, Apple stores/support are widely available and with pretty good warranty coverage. Third, the quality of hardware/user experience for the average, non-technical computer user is on a different plane of existence when comparing Apple to non-apple laptops. Screen resolution and the companion software support, battery life, weight, and trackpad are completely unmatched in the non-apple world.
I play games and have used Windows, BSD and Ubuntu as my main drivers at different times over the past 20 years. My Thinkpad is currently on Ubuntu 20.04. My career is IT/Infosec.
I don't even use my laptop most days, but I'm tempted by an M1 air because the UX and value is amazing.
Dell’s XPS line can beat or match Intel MacBook Pros in those regards.
XPS 13 9310 (2020): 1200p (base, touch optional) or 2400p (touch only), 14h11/8h12 video playback, 1.2/1.27 kg, sleeker design [0]
Intel MBP 13 (2020): 1600p (no touch), 10h video playback, 1.4 kg [1]
(Also, OSes are subjective, but macOS has been pretty annoying to me recently.)
[0]: https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/new-xps-13-lapt...
The retina-esque screen is a $400 add-on, touchpad probably isn't as good as apple's, touch gesture support/nav no-idea. Battery life no-idea. For a non-macOS though, it looks pretty good.
I replaced the MBP since the I had to replace the thinnest keyboard in the world, but I had problems with BT, WiFi, crashes, random external monitor glitches, no support for two external monitors via TB 3.0 (look it up, same hardware works under windows!!). Ask my diehard OSX fan coworker that just had to upgrade OSX just to get wifi working at home. I stayed for Windows since my MBP stopped working a week after I got the keyboard replaced and to be honest I really can't bother to move back. Everything just works here.
OSX has left the domain of the power user and has been relegated to into the domain of the consumer user that likes the Apple marketing.
I am monitoring the situation with ARM CPUS closely and that would be a motivation to switch back, but right now it feels my next computer upgrade will be windows based high end laptop. Better OS and better price performance are hard to argue with.
PS: If you're a developer and you're still clinging to OSX, try it - the whole experience is next level (compared to the whole brew ecosystem). Download WSL for windows, get Ubuntu from windows store and use the Windows Terminal to experience native Ubuntu. Hell if you're using VS Code, all you need to do is type "code ." from Ubuntu to open VS Code in Windows and develop in native Linux.
RAM usage due to the Linux VMs might be the issue in your case, I have loads of it.
Win10’s last 2 years of “builds” are very good. It still rots like regular Windows, but I got 3.5 years of heavy use before reinstalling it. Main apps are Unity, Visual Studio 2017, and some hardware design stuff (SOLIDWORKS, KiCad, SEGGER). It feels so liberating to have all my niche apps on the PC without having to virtualize.
User experience on Windows is a little jankier, but the utility of the niche apps makes up for it. I miss AirDrop. If I were to advise Microsoft on one thing: fix the Control Panel situation in Win10. It’s like layers of bad makeup.
Windows also restores much worse than macOS. I miss Time Machine. I purchased a tool called Macrium Reflect which gets me close enough, and actually can restore a bootable system.
I truly want what you say to match my personal experience... but sadly not. Mac has just been superior in every way.
And now with the move to Arm and seeing the benchmarks starting to come out, it seems yet another huge reason to stick with Apple.
Typically with an Apple device, except for the butterfly keyboards, you could be reasonably sure that all the interaction points were at least mostly decent - display, inputs, speakers microphone, charger, system noise (fan and electrical). You could also be sure that the inbuilt feature set such as WiFi, Bluetooth, Thunderbolt, USB (USB3 was a clusterf... on PCs in the early days), even charging would work reasonably reliably.
The other nice thing about Apple's laptops for a long time has been longevity of batteries - Apple were the first manufacturer to move to 500 cycle batteries with the 2008 Unibodies, and then 1000 cycle batteries later on. Additionally, they have pretty good charging algorithms to preserve battery life over the long term - not something that is the case with many other brands.
However, I think Apple have regressed on some of these fronts since 2015 (maybe they'll redeem themselves with the M1). The touchbar and T2 have been notorious for strange issues. The USB-C only setup has been both obnoxious for anyone who ever needs to use a Type A device, and notorious for strange issues such as heat generation when charging from the "wrong" side - a clear step backwards from MagSafe. The quality of their machines has suffered with the butterfly keyboard, flexgate, less robust internals (see Louis Rossmann for more details!), and anaemic cooling (one of the most impressive things about the original retina MBP was the improvement in the cooling system for sustained performance vs the thicker unibody). MacOS itself also declined in quality somewhat obviously since somewhere around Snow Leopard, with mere flashes of brilliance inbetween since then.
At the same time, Windows 10 has improved dramatically and is now solidly Microsoft's best OS since Windows 7, beating even that OS out in many ways. And, while I don't think the PC laptops have caught up, many of them are now within firing range of Apple devices - certainly close enough that in many cases, for the few that actually get all the touchpoints right, they offer an experience that isn't too far away from the best Mac experience I've had.
I've been running big sur on a 2020 iMac during the public beta. I had 4 issues that I raised that were solved:
* SMB wasn't loaded at login, so an SMB volume mapping failed
* Inbuilt VPNs (L2TP over IPSec) didn't work until the last but one before the public release, but wireguard worked
* Minor bug loading a JPG as the avatar for a Contact through Maps for my Home card. I got requests for additional info on this one.
In terms of apps and utilities:
* Bartender needed to be redone and has been
* Karabiner needed changes to replace a kext
* Utilities that add keyboard shortcuts etc needed some permission finangling
* Things like OneDrive and Google Backup and Sync needed disk permissions
* iTerm2 needed to be given full disk access
So all in all, Big Sur as an upgrade over Catalina, was pretty smooth. That was from a move from a laptop running Catalina as a Mojave upgrade via Migration Assistant.
YMMV.
No chance I’m rolling my dice with Linux on a laptop. Touchpad support is funky. I run FreeNAS, Linux, and raspberrypi boxes at my house.
WARNING: Back up your data before you restore the firmware on your Mac. When you restore the firmware on a Mac that contains an Apple T2 Security Chip, you are restoring the firmware on the T2 chip and on any volumes on your internal SSD storage. When this process is complete, any data on any SSD volumes is unrecoverable.
So this means that a firmware issue can lead to total data loss? Of course you should always have a backup, but nevertheless...
In very rare circumstances, such as a power failure during a macOS upgrade, a Mac that has the Apple T2 Security Chip may become unresponsive
The chip that has the keys for your system in its hands does not have redundant firmware images, like every cheap ass Android?
That's so wrong on so many levels.
It's very odd -- something about the moderation or something has created a community there that is extremely hostile to accurately identifying and quantifying real issues in software and hardware, and allergic to useful solutions.
Developer forums are much better, though.
Honestly, Apple has so few Mac SKUs (this is a good thing) that I imagine it is possible to exhaustively test firmware upgrades on every supported device in QC. Perhaps people upgrade with random devices plugged into their machines?
In the past it's been that developing on the latest iPhone needed the latest version of Xcode and the latest version of Xcode needed the latest version of the OS.
What's also (in)convenient is that unrelated security updates, like the one for Safari that was released the same day as Big Sur, are well hidden UI wise. You have to click a small link below the Big Sur upgrade notification to get to those important security updates.
As a developer I don't think I'll switch to Big Sur until I they stop supporting Mojave (i.e. the version behind Catalina, which is the version behind Big Sur).
If it ain't broke don't fix it.
Big Sur has fewer foundational changes than Catalina did. Most the changes are just UI changes (though I think there were some changes that affect Audio processing apps).
But even with Windows, bugs always happen and goal of IT is to keep your system and tools up, not chase after latest hotness. If IT allows immediate upgrade to a new OS, they’re playing with fire and waiting for an upgrade that bricks significant % of devices and brings company operations to the halt. Heads will roll as a result, especially if that’s in a remote work setup.
Yes, little things do break every now and then, just like they do on your Mac. These regressions are rare, and they're usually easy to fix. Once you've gotten past the initial install, blanking displays and fubared bootloaders aren't nearly as common as the doubt peddlers would have you believe.
Major upgrades are a pain no matter what software you're running. But commercial vendors like Apple and Microsoft are incentivized to make these updates flashy in order to sell you stuff (new hardware/software), or to market themselves ("look at our cool new/repainted stuff!"). You're always going to get big updates from these companies, and installing them never going to be boring.
But for the most part, these rolling release Linux machines end up being just that... boring! They chug along looking and acting the same for 5, 10, 15 years straight. If you wake up one day feeling like you want something flashy, you can always change your wallpaper. But for most days when you don't, there's really no good reason to have these big, catastrophic updates every year or two. They're a waste of everybody's time and energy.
The idea behind having a rolling release is that your upgrades happen in small chunks and therefore the breakages are small and manageable. The problem? The can come in anytime.
When you do LTS release upgrades for example, you know when you have to do that and can do proper preparations and set aside time to do it.
While the rolling distro upgrades work fine most of the time, the odd time it doesn't takes away all the supposed benefits... and it can happen at a time you're not prepared for.
For desktops / laptops, I think either approach can work, depending on your personal preferences.
If you prefer a big update that you can schedule, and are okay with setting aside a few days every year or two, and are okay with a repository that gives you "stable" application software that may be quite old, then a release-based distribution might work better for you.
If you'd rather deal with smaller updates, and if you like having a repository that delivers application software updates closer to when they're released upstream, then a rolling release might work better for you.
It doesn't make any better but, there's nothing sinister about it.
Nah, dude, they are in there saying "let's make more bags of money", which is exactly why software continues to suck at an accelerated rate. None of it is reliable long term and it changes so fast users can't keep up, other than having to shell out more and more money to stay in the game of usable software.
A few days ago I woke up and my Sonos won't respond with Alexa. The software got updated and now they expect me to jump through a bunch of hoops (including logging out of Amazon on my devices) to get it back, but I'm not.
I don't like using Windows but I admire MS's commitment to back compatibility. I know it adds a tremendous amount of work and makes some vulnerabilities very difficult or impossible to address.
TBF I don't believe MS can or does ship firmware updates for any hardware other than their own. So they are less likely to suffer this particular failure.
Ah, that's why they changed it from 5
> They have also occasionally shipped security updates for even older hardware.
Yes, only security updates
> I don't like using Windows but I admire MS's commitment to back compatibility. I know it adds a tremendous amount of work and makes some vulnerabilities very difficult or impossible to address.
Yes, but there's a price for backwards compatibility. It makes the goal of "it just works" near insurmountable.
I'm not saying what MS or Apple is doing either is good or bad. I'm just explaining the pros and cons of both approaches. There's no wrong choice. You just need to be aware of the pros and cons before making a commitment on your choice. Dropping support for old stuff has been Apple's MO for decades now, while it feels to be the opposite for Microsoft
Is it maybe the last Safari update?
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/t/14850/microsoft-an...
'Major computer resellers such as Compaq, Gateway, and Dell are already lining up for premier placement on the new and improved BSOD. Ballmer concluded by getting a dig in against the Open Source community. "This just goes to show that Microsoft continues to innovate at a much faster pace than open source. I have yet to see any evidence that Linux even has a BSOD, let alone a customizable one."'
It sucks, but it happens. Question is how this gets resolved by Apple.
Old Apple would just replace the machines if there was no easy fix. Warranty or not. Not sure if new Apple is still that way.
The Mac was a novelty, a niche prpduct a decade or two ago to serve just a handful of use cases until it was thrust into relevance because of Windows' failings in the cloud development and transition era.
Now that it's everywhere, and the complexity of deployments and permutations of Mac's usage ever increasing they're stumbling just as badly as Microsoft did - perhaps worse, because Windows has to deal with orders of magnitude more different hardware and software.
So far, reformat and install has never given me a problem, but I also don't upgrade until Xcode forces me to, so probably the problems tend to be ironed out by then.
Incidentally, because of lots of music, pictures, and videos, I boot the Mini from an external 4TB ssd. I have to hold down option. It doesn't even ask about the internal drive.
Another example of my motto of "good enough is good enough" is that my photo handler of choice is Picasa. Works fine on High Sierra. On Mojave, it complains five times with a popup before it starts, then runs OK. Weird.
> An error occurred preparing the update.
> Failed to personalize the software update. Please try again.
Very frustrating.
I ended up deleting the hard drive and reinstalling Catalina, but the weird thing is that now my 2019 iMac with Catalina plays the boot chime, which is the only part of Big Sur that worked for me...
and the reverse: `sudo nvram StartupMute=%00`
I do agree however that the low level system tunables are unfortunately very hidden.
With the reports/articles about Big Sur and how it send data back to Apple, I am moving to PC.
I am not moving to PC thinking that Window doesn't do the same. It's just the line between Apple and Microsoft is slowly blurring.
The issue with Apple quality and dev friendly can be mitigated by good enough pc quality and linux vm. Apple is more and more tailor toward general consumers which led to more wall garden and questionable practices.
I worry that this opens me up to security risks, but the reality is, upgrading could break it again and force me to replace it when the hardware still has plenty of life in it.
I've got a 10.15 MBP, and I'm going to cautiously investigate macOS 11 on an external SSD while retaining 10.15 on my internal drive. I can also boot 10.14 from an SD memory card to reproduce customer issues.
Just don't.
It should have been on the App Store until 1-2 updates in (so enthusiasts can install it) and pushed to Software Update after then so issues are ironed out.
The exception though is that once a patch update for your current OS is available, it gets hidden by the Big Sur upgrade prompt, and you have to click into the non-obvious "more info" link to find that. Which seems like a bad UI choice, if you're going to force me into the upgrade then do it, but if you're going to let it be lighter touch then don't have it block out the other updates like that.
Either way - the Software Updates channel should be for things known to be stable, and Day 1 of a brand new annual release basically never fits that description.
Also, that sounds like a bug not forced obsolescence, apple just doesn't allow new MacOSes to be installed on hardware old enough unless you hack around it.
However, I was able to buy new batteries from apple for my non-unibody mac even after its update cycle is ended.
I can still buy aftermarket batteries for it and it works well. I might install something else on it in the future but, it's far from useless and dead.
The throttling sometimes happens because of a bad temp sensor / connection. Sometimes it's the charging port as well
It's also a good idea to clean install all major (annual) versions of Apple OS's. When you install one major version over another, the upgrade script has to try to convert the configurations for most system services to the format for the new OS version and the possible combinations of settings in those configurations is virtually unlimited. A lot of post-upgrade issues and sluggishness result from non-optimal conversion of those configurations, especially on iOS. If you back up everything and format the drive before installing the new OS, everything will work much better. Yes it takes extra time to do that, but you will save many multiples of that time over the next year because your machine will run faster and have fewer issues.
What am I paying the Apple tax for?
Maybe check if the cooling is clogged or the cpu is force throttling because some temp sensor is not working. Run apple diagnostic for that.
MacOS has a bunch of bugs (for me) and they have terrible QA as it seems, but I don't see planned obsolescence here.
More likely as someone in the thread pointed out, this is probably a bug related to some kind of defect or damage in the system's io board. Perhaps a certain revision of said board is a problem. Some suggest that something the upgrade does 'damages the board' .. perhaps through some kind of firmware update, but that story isn't so clear yet.
Maybe they could make that clear for anyone buying an Intel based mac since we all know they are switching over to ARM CPUs. They won't though, they will still be selling Intel Macs for some time, knowing that they won't be supporting those macs through the useful lifetime of the hardware.
It gets nobody anywhere, it's contradicted by a 20-year period of generally very reliable and long-lasting hardware from Apple, and additionally, it's lazy and uninformative.
Forced obsolescence is the deliberate undermining of a device to ensure that it cannot be used in the future. That would be if Apple intentionally included code in Big Sur to cause older MacBooks to mysteriously brick.
There is a big difference between intentionally writing code like this versus not performing adequate Q&A to ensure that such bug doesn't exist, and only the former of these qualifies as planned obsolescence.
Every upgrade since 10.10 has had a NOTICEABLE slow down on my MacBook Air 2013, and my 2012 Mac Mini, and more recently my MBP 2017 is showing signs of slow down and reduced battery life as well with each update. They can even be point updates, not major ones.
These happen man, and I can’t see the real benefits that I’ve gotten from say 10.10 -> 10.15 that would outvalue the degradation in performance I’ve seen. Ok you say, a MBA 2013 is ready for the pasture, but a maxed out (RAM, SSD) MBP that is 3 years old is really just entering midlife.
It’s not a random mistake.
History is not on Apple's side here.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/02/technology/apple-iphone-l...
[2] https://fortune.com/2020/02/07/apple-iphone-slowdown-update-...
That's the opposite of "forced obsolescence". And it's not even a close call. The stupid, credulous media coverage of this issue was embarrassing.