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Black Screen After MacBook Pro Update to macOS Big Sur
- BitwiseFool 6y agoOn the day Big Sur came out we got an email from IT saying that under no circumstances should any employee install it. I'm glad out IT knew about this release's problems so early.
- capableweb 6y agoMost likely they just applied common sense which goes for any release of any major software, don't upgrade on day 1, especially in a professional environment where you need the equipment to work most of the time.
- classified 6y agoI don't think they were that prescient. They probably just followed what should be standard common sense by now: Never, ever, install a new OS on a machine that you can't afford to lose that very same day. Always wait for reports from early adopters or victims of bushy-tailed curiosity.
- divtiwari 6y ago'Bushy-tailed' well that's a new word that TIL, on a lighter note. :)
- prewett 6y ago"Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed" is the usual phrase, creatively altered by the parent. (See https://wordhistories.net/2018/07/01/brighteyed-bushytailed-origin/ https://wordhistories.net/2018/07/01/brighteyed-bushytailed-... for an in-depth etymology)
- bob33212 6y agoEven if the upgrade was smooth they could end up with a ton of support calls asking how to change it back or how to turn off Bluetooth.
- racl101 6y agoYour diction is outstanding.
- dagmx 6y agoThat's just standard IT policy at most companies. Favour tested stability over being on the newest stack.
- heipei 6y agoEspecially when that "stack" is just your operating system. Like, what feature does a new OS like Big Sur include that was previously denied to you on a previous version of OS X? I don't get the eagerness to upgrade, especially after Catalina had proven to be somewhat bug-ridden as well.
- vmception 6y agoApple often ties their whole pipeline to OS updates for developers. 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.
- MilaM 6y agoI don't understand why Apple makes it so difficult to ignore major OS upgrades at least for some time. Most users would be better off waiting at least a couple for a point release of Big Sur. Being responsible for a couple of Macs in my family this makes me quite angry actually.
- dawnerd 6y agoWhat’s so hard to ignore? Apart from the little red dot if you have settings in your dock and maybe one notice it’s not like it’s nagging you like windows does.
- MilaM 6y agoI can ignore it no problem. But less proficient users, like my mother, will not know or remeber this advice. 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.
- aeyes 6y agoIf you have auto updates enabled it nags you every day with a popup notification window asking to update, exactly the same way Windows does it (at least on my machines).
- racl101 6y agoI think it's just common sense to wait for the bugs to get ironed out of new software when you are working with mission critical software and hardware. 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.
- nix23 6y agoWhy is your IT department allowing personal system-updates and need to write emails about it?
- Tagbert 6y agoWe also got an email from IT telling us not to update to Big Sur, but not because of any specific problem. Our IT department blocks all major OS updates for a few months while they do post-launch testing. 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).
- ashtonkem 6y agoIn my experience, this is the standard rule and not a response to any specific issue. I've been told not to upgrade work machines to new OS releases for damn close to a decade now.
- BitwiseFool 6y agoInterestingly enough, our IT doesn't send out alerts for Windows 10 feature updates. I suspect that because so many executives use Macs that this is the reason why the alert went out.
- ashtonkem 6y agoI believe there are more tools to manage updates across a fleet of Windows machines, so one can flip a switch and prevent all the windows laptops in the company from running major updates until you’re ready.
- hu3 6y agoYes it's called Group Policy. Companies can manage when every Windows machine gets updated and what gets updated on a granular level.
- justapassenger 6y agoApple has a pretty loose approach to backwards compatibility on macOS, compared to Microsoft with Windows. 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.
- cyberpunk 6y agomeh, I upgraded my work mbp on release day and everything works completely perfectly, I suspect you'd probably be fine... :}
- Gys 6y agoAs discussed elsewhere on HN already, this is about the 2013 and 2014 models.
- vorpalhex 6y ago..is that supposed to be make it any better? An OS update shouldn't kill my laptop, regardless of how old my laptop is. At most just don't let the update roll to laptops that are too old.
- anamexis 6y agoI don't think they suggested it makes it any better.
- bayindirh 6y agoIt's an anomaly, not all 2013-2014 macs experience this. Mine is fine. It doesn't make any better but, there's nothing sinister about it.
- oneplane 6y agoIt's also possible that this is related to previous UEFI updates; there was an issue where those would be pushed via the same update paths are OS and app updates, but sometimes they would time out and not get installed; and then never get tried again. Not sure on what models this happens, but if that is the case we could be dealing with an issue related to different starting versions of the firmware during the update. Interesting to say the least.
- ARandomerDude 6y agoHonestly, I doubt most people at Apple would disagree with you. Bugs happen. I'm not saying it's good, it sounds like they need to improve testing and QA, make it right for their users, etc. But I'd be surprised if anyone in a meeting at Apple (seriously) said "let's black-screen-of-death the 2013/2014 models."
- 6y ago
- Naomarik 6y agoLooks like forced obsolescence. My former daily driver a 2015 Macbook Pro has somehow become so slow it struggles with the most basic tasks, even after a fresh install. Nothing seems wrong with it other than it's slow to the point that browsing the web is a pain and development work has become impossible. Wasn't like that when I bought it.
- gambiting 6y agoHow? I'm still using a Late 2008 MacBook Pro with Catalina and it runs absolutely fine for browsing and programming, and your 2015 model is running slow? 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.
- corytheboyd 6y agoRunning a 2012 MacBook Pro, also still works just fine for development. The screen suffers burn-in very easily now but it’s not a big enough distraction to upgrade :P
- leptons 6y agoApple switched to ARM CPUs. Your 2008 MBP now has an expiration date, where it will not be capable of any more OS updates after a certain date. All Intel Macs will not be supported after a certain date. We don't know what date that is yet, but it is coming.
- gambiting 6y agoIt already didn't get any "official" updates for years now but there is a community porting latest versions of MacOS to it, that's how I'm running Catalina. Besides, even with the ARM chips coming, it doesn't look like Intel macs will disappear straight away, x86-compatible MacOS will be around for years and years, if no for any other reason than that currently sold Intel macs will still be getting updates. And besides, it's a 2008 machine - if I only get a couple more years out of it then that's still great.
- 6y ago
- oneplane 6y agoWell, this sucks of course. Apple is to blame and should repair it for free, etc. But now I'm just curious as to 'how' this would work. Is there some sort of EEPROM, flash or controller on that board that gets loaded with new settings or firmware? I know Big Sur does some UEFI upgrades, but would that extend to the I/O board? Or is that a separate payload? Or perhaps the update is only for the SMC or Intel firmware which crashes with certain I/O boards during init and then once init is complete it can cope with any I/O board next boot?
- gumby 6y agoSystem updates also include firmware updates for all sorts of reasons. 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?
- varispeed 6y agoI wonder if it still sends personal data to Apple even after getting bricked? Has anyone checked if the bricked laptop sends any traffic?
- m3kw9 6y agoHad a black screen but cursor would show and spotlight worked but showed nothing else. Did a reboot with nvram reset and computer worked again
- scaglio 6y agoWow, I have a late 2013 MBP... If I'd read this before, I wouldn't upgraded. I think I was very lucky, no issues with Big Sur for now.
- tpoacher 6y agoWhereas if they were an innovative company, like microsoft, they would have chosen a better colour for their BSOD. Just sayin'. :p
- lisper 6y agoAt least the acronym still applies, so there's that.
- sib 6y agoAhh, brings back memories of this classic post from ~15 years ago... https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/t/14850/microsoft-announces-customization-of-bsod/?p=90446 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."'
- owenwil 6y agoI had this happen to me on a late 2019 MacBook Pro as well, but dramatically worse: the machine was totally unresponsive, no chimes, no power up, nothing. I tried everything, including the usual PRAM clear and whatever else, but Apple suggested a replacement machine. 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/apdebea5be51/mac 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 https://twitter.com/ow/status/1328389544119513089?s=21
- avn2109 6y agoIf this fix works as advertised, you should definitely make a StackOverflow post or similar, such that this fix is more searcheable than an HN comment! It could help a ton of people.
- 6y ago
- andy_ppp 6y agoI suspect Catalina is my last OSX...
- e40 6y agoWe have the development kit for the Apple Silicon Mac and we can't install the release of Big Sur (11.0.1). Gives > An error occurred preparing the update. > Failed to personalize the software update. Please try again. Very frustrating.
- jchook 6y agoHm... There were more informative replies on the Apple support thread a bit ago... they got deleted?
- weagle05 6y agoI also had this happen on my late 2013 MBP 15, it stayed on black screen for hours. I had an external monitor attached, so I was curious if that was affecting the update. I unplugged the monitor and then reset the laptop. It took at couple attempts, but the update resumed and I'm running Big Sur with no issues.
- bob33212 6y agoI had a failure to boot on a MBP 2019 after Big Sur upgrade. I disconnected my ethernet and hdmi adapers and it booted. It gave me a message about kernel modules being disabled.
- mywacaday 6y agoIt's probably in the T&C's but why would events like this not lead to a class action? People working from home with no other hardware must be tearing their hair out.
- puranjay 6y agoBS like this is exactly why I moved away from Mac altogether. My wife's Macbook Air had a similar black screen after upgrading to Sierra. On my Pro, upgrading to Sierra completely messed up Cubase and a bunch of audio plugins, to the point that I had to reverse the upgrade. I still haven't upgraded to Sierra. Shortly after, I moved to Windows and despite its almost weekly updates, nothing has broken this bad on it yetm
- vmware513 6y agoNever update. Always wipe and clean install from USB sticky. Trigger nvram and smc reset after install. Your machine will be perfect.
- rsync 6y agoThis is God's own truth and it has been this way since Windows 3.1 which had the ability to upgrade to Windows 95. Just don't.
- fiftyfifty 6y agoThe problem is, it's not just Apple, the entire software industry has taken a turn for the worse. Everything has automatic updates these days: my phone, my watch, my computer, my TV, my car, and every single app I use on these platforms, and they are constantly breaking stuff, undoing functionality, loosing data and occasionally ruining devices permanently. I've been on the other side of these things too, with panicked-laden all night coding sessions trying to fix a bad update that went out. I've been in the software industry for almost 25 years now, I'm not sure what the answer is but the direction things have gone is unacceptable.
- ohazi 6y agoFor anyone still on the fence about the merits of Linux vs. OS X after the beating Apple has taken this week, there are rolling release distributions that allow you to set up a Linux system once, keep it up to date with small updates, and pretty much never have to deal with scheduling around a "major upgrade" that might work, or might require a reinstall. I've had desktops / laptops like this that have worked continuously for over ten years. EOL for these machines is usually a migration or a replacement. 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.
- AntiImperialist 6y agoI would highly advise against rolling release distribution of Linux. Please hear me out. 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.
- ohazi 6y agoFor servers? Yeah, I'd agree with you. 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.
- rv-de 6y agoMy T480 with LM20 is objectively the better workstation than my company MBP2019 - but at least it's 3 times as expensive and looks very shiny.
- donohoe 6y agoWith millions of devices this is bound to happen. I'm sure there are a few with every big update at such a large scale. It sucks, but it happens. Question is how this gets resolved by Apple.
- rootusrootus 6y ago> 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.
- swiftcoder 6y agoThe last time this happened to me, it turned out the update had just set the screen brightness to zero. Took me hours to diagnose.
- roymurdock 6y agoHahahahaha that could totally be the premise of a modern Seinfeld/Silicon Valley episode. You’re pulling out your voltmeter, opening up the laptop, testing your hard drives and cables, desoldering and resoldering components, spending hours on forums, and finally Kramer walks in and pushes the brightness key by instinct to show you a YouTube video, fixing your problem immediately
- vcanales 6y agoI tried upgrading a 2019 iMac with Catalina to BigSur. It failed after the black screen with the apple logo and a count down, by going to a screen I've never seen before that said something like "failed to _apply_ update". If I restarted, then I would land on the same countdown screen until it inevitably failed again. 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...
- Tsiklon 6y agoThe machine always could, for newer machines they decided to mute it for some reason, there's an NVRAM setting, if you want to mute the chime again: `sudo nvram StartupMute=%01` and the reverse: `sudo nvram StartupMute=%00`
- userbinator 6y agoThat's just Apple deciding for the users, like it has always been doing. It's funny to see the setting for it is so hidden; my PC motherboard has a "POST beep" setting in the BIOS setup, which doesn't require a terminal in a working OS to get to, and whose presence is helpfully reminded each time I turn it on ("press DEL to enter SETUP").
- saagarjha 6y agoOn new hardware, this setting has been moved to System Preferences.
- Tsiklon 6y agoIt doesn't necessarily require a working OS - you can of course use either of the two recovery systems (On Disk, or Internet Recovery), a bootable time machine drive(IIRC) or an OS X installation USB Drive to do so. I do agree however that the low level system tunables are unfortunately very hidden.
- wishysgb 6y agoJust as a reminder, don't forget and buy more apple products. that will teach them
- verisimilitude 6y agoLook, I realize this is a meta point: but has anyone else noticed how TYPICAL the discussion in TFA is at the official Apple support forums? The atmosphere is absolutely poisonous there, in the strangest passive aggressive way -- every time I search for help there, I find tons of replies that are useless, and about 5% of the time I find a helpful tidbit. There's one user in particular, whose name I won't mention, who posts EVERYWHERE with just condescending garbage, and yet they have massive forum points (level 10, or whatever). 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.
- pram 6y agoEvery discussion about Apple is like this. Reddit, Macrumors, HN. They've all been captured by people who think Apple can not fail vs people who think Apple is the great satan
- pottertheotter 6y agoI see this all over the place where companies have outsourced their support to the community and give out levels like this. Netgear and Evernote have similar forums. You get high-level "community helpers" who respond with non-helpful and toxic comments.
- rsync 6y agoAgreed. I get this vibe from the Sonos and Ubiquiti forums.
- SkyPuncher 6y agoI'm really struggling to update my Mac for any reason other than being forced to (looking at you XCode and Developer tool chain). 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. ---- 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. ---- 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"
- SoSoRoCoCo 6y ago> 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 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.
- edwardwatson 6y agoMy 2015 MBP bricked when upgrading to Catalina. Thankfully I managed to recover back to High Sierra via Disc Utility/Recovery Mode. I upgraded to Mojave and now refuse to upgrade it any further. I have an iMac which will be staying on Mojave too. 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.
- Foivos 6y agoMojave should be getting security updates and bug fixes for one more year.
- diebeforei485 6y agoWhy does Apple push new macOS releases via Software Update on Day 1? 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.
- lisnake 6y agoWell, they did have a public beta stage for several months, which supposedly should have caught bugs like this one before general release
- diebeforei485 6y agoThere is a demographic that doesn't want to install betas but still wants the latest macOS/iOS as soon as it's out.
- cactus2093 6y agoIt doesn't auto install or show up as a badge notification though, so you kind of have to go looking to find it. 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.
- diebeforei485 6y agoThere was a Safari patch either the same day or the day after. 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.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- arnonejoe 6y agoI upgraded yesterday and it got stuck for 90 min. MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2019); Machine is 6 months old. Progress bar stopped at 95% after an hour. Did a hard reboot and it finished immediately. Working fine now.
- maxekman 6y agoAlmost the exact same thing happened to me; black screen with the progress bar at 90% and a movable mouse cursor. I let it be for an hour or so, then hard reboot and it booted right up. No problems after that.
- GnarfGnarf 6y agoHasn't anybody heard of loading the new OS on an external drive and dual-booting? (hold down Option key when powering up, you get to choose which OS you boot). 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.
- pram 6y agoYou can also do it easily with an APFS container now.
- eddhead 6y agoCost of Relevance 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.
- anthony_doan 6y agoYeah... that's why I wait a few months to download any new update from Apple. 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.
- prewett 6y agoI'm curious if any of these problems have happened to someone to wiped their drive and installed fresh. As a software developer I'm pretty sure the happy-path of "reformat and copy everything onto the drive" will work correctly, but I'm pretty sure that there's untested edge cases and bugs in all the varieties of 10.15.0 -> 11.0, 10.15.1 -> 11.0, 10.14.3 -> 11.0, 10.14.4 -> 11.0, etc., not to mention what happens when someone disables SIP to overwrite some system binaries. 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.
- mjcohen 6y agoI never update a machine I really need. My 2014 Mac Mini is on High Sierra and my 2015 MacBook Air is on Mojave. No updates even to Catalina for them. 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.