That’s Big Sir to You
shirtpocket.com
shirtpocket.com
Apple is making a lot of unpredictable moves in the name of security and a lot of uncertainty now surrounds the future of bootable backups as protection against catastrophic data loss and/or transformation.
It’s good to see SuperDuper have a partial path forward. I’m crossing fingers Apple will be able to reshape its security paradigm while enabling third-party backup software to create bootable backups for Apple Silicon machines.
I’m trying to understand the impact of the internal drive dying in the last fragment here. Since these Macs have soldered-on-the-board SSD internal storage, wouldn’t the drive dying require a complete logic board replacement in the first place, which means this condition is not salvageable for an end user without professional repair service anyway? It’s not like an end user could replace it like with Macs of the past (or is it?).
On a general note, it’s extremely irritating when Apple drops macOS support for some Macs every year while the latest version still has several limitations and bugs. Anyone who gets on to the latest and greatest version of macOS with hardware that’s older than five years would be taking big risks. In general (with several exceptions), the longevity of the hardware was one of the attractive factors while paying a premium for Macs (also lesser e-waste is a bonus). But deeper problems in macOS could more than offset such benefits (resulting in more cries about planned obsolescence).
But yes, from OS X you needed a secondary boot loader (BootX) to be discovered by OpenFirmware, whereas for classic Mac OS OpenFirmware itself found the payload to boot (which differed between Old World and New World systems).
What I've done personally, is started making backups to an SSD. In the event of a problem, I buy a new Mac and restore it to that, in a very fast manner. This means that, including shopping, roughly half a day of work will be lost. This is acceptable to me.
If you really can't wait, then don't sell your old Mac and keep it around for as long as it's supported.
Don't get me wrong, I'd rather Apple didn't drop this function. But I do understand that cloning is a feature that's not used much, and that temporarily falls by the wayside in the development process.
I do something similar. I run Time Machine backups, then have what I call “hot backups.” These are CCC bootable clones to a zippy external SSD. I update them every 4 hours.
Also, most of my crucial data is “cloudy,” in things like GitHub.
APFS has the new “split” system, with a separate “data” volume. This can be used for Restore Mode rebuilds.
I have not had to rely on a full backup restore from Time Machine in years. The hot backup has been fine. It also means that I don’t have an issue wiping my computer and taking it in for service. I have the luxury of having a backup device (usually a couple of years older model of my primary).
This is Apple really turning the screws on "You will not install an OS except from our official servers."
You can boot from an external Thunderbolt drive, it's USB drives that people have been having trouble with.
>In researching the process, various Mac users have found success with non-Thunderbolt 3 drives, but under oddly specific circumstances without any real rhyme or reason for them working. Save yourself the time and just use a Thunderbolt 3 drive from the outset.
https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/01/03/how-to-boot-an-ap...
You'll need to explicitly bless the volume beforehand to boot from an install that was made on another Mac though.
This has been a problem since the advent of downloaded OS installations (complete move as of 10.7). Other software, too. With Mac OS, some portion is only a little past a beta state, and some hardware gets cut off before that same portion of the OS gets better. While I'd prefer how it used to be—an OS was largely stable and feature complete when shipped (on a disc or disk)—there's no reason for me to think that approach will ever return.
that will be $1499.95, might I interest you in upgrading to a new model for only $1500?
I think it's fair to say that Apple expects their users to use a professional repair service (less likely) or buy a new machine (more likely).
The fact that you and I might prefer to replace a drive ourselves isn't really a factor in how they design their systems.
All IT professionals know that quickly restoreable external backups are really the good and proper way, but the reality is that we're only human and most of us fall short of the ideal (just like with exercising, eating healthy, maintaining your teeth, etc).
Google's approach with ChromeOS is to force you to treat the laptop storage as a cache by technical means, rather than as primary storage. iOS and Android also largely use that model. Windows and MacOS are clearly heading in the same direction, they're just moving slower due to legacy.
I still find it irksome that what costs ~$100 and takes 15 minutes on a Thinkpad costs ~$1000 and takes a week on a Mac.
Today (well, for years now), Mac OS can only be upgraded with Apple's installer. Went to an Apple reseller to buy a hard-disk with Mac OS (Mojave or earlier) to test-upgrade my old Mac Mini and whether my somewhat involved builds still work, only to find out that the old Mac Mini's firmware can't boot from APFS, and a firmware upgrade for APFS isn't a separate download like it used to be but comes only as part of Apple's monolithic online install.
This is very significant for delivering/testing Mac OS apps on newer OSes, and in particular to F/OSS developers who can't always go with the program and buy new hardware all the time. It's also relevant with audio and video professionals who need their driver- and timing-sensitive rig to work rather than going through yearly upgrade treadmills.
https://bombich.com/blog/2020/11/03/yes-you-can-have-bootabl...
Both articles seem to imply Apple is dropping the ball on supporting tools for the partition/system changes they're making. The CCC seems more like a rallying cry:
> If Apple ships macOS Big Sur without fixing the underlying utilities that facilitate creating a bootable backup, you can choose to defer the upgrade. There is no urgency, no impetus to upgrade to macOS Big Sur. If we defer the upgrade choice, that sends a clear message that we're willing to wait for Apple to deliver quality software, rather than hitting an artificial deadline with an OS that's not ready.
>Right now you can install Big Sur onto your CCC backup to make it bootable, and in the future we'll use Apple's APFS replication utility (ASR) to clone the Big Sur System volume. Apple has assured us that they are working towards fixing the problems in ASR that prevent it from cloning the Big Sur System volume.
So, there is a bug that needs fixing, and until then you'll have to install the OS on top of your backup as a separate step.
As for Apple Silicon Macs:
>CCC is a native application on Apple Silicon and is 100% compatible with Apple Silicon Macs. CCC will automatically proceed with a Data Volume backup when backing up an APFS Volume Group on Apple Silicon Macs — that's a complete backup of your data, applications, and system settings. If you would like to make your Apple Silicon Mac backup bootable, you can install Big Sur onto the CCC Data Volume backup.
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:H8cV_m...
That's surprisingly shitty for such a premium product, especially coming from a company that claims to be reducing e-waist.
Apple was the first vendor to glue-in batteries inside all of their laptops effectively forcing people to upgrade every 2-3 years when battery life degrades. Their "e-waste" and "green economy" posture is pure hypocrisy.
As far as I know, there are NO hackintosh arm64 macs (ie running Big Sur on a Graviton2 instance or ARM Neoverse N1 dev kit, for example), so be aware of who/what you are reading, caveat emptor, etc applies both ways, to what you are reading from the Hackintosh community as well.