10 ms·

I reinstalled MacOS on a 2011 MacBook Air and it was actually shockingly hard. Thankfully, my machine booted and worked fine, so I didn't need to create a boota

by rconti 8mo ago

I reinstalled MacOS on a 2011 MacBook Air and it was actually shockingly hard. Thankfully, my machine booted and worked fine, so I didn't need to create a bootable USB stick. From memory: - Network recovery boot cannot connect to your wifi because reasons. It'll see the SSID, but won't even prompt for password. It's totally unclear why nothing is working. - Fall back to old IOT SSID with ancient protocols - You cannot directly download or install High Sierra (the latest supported OS) for reasons I don't remember. - I can't remember how, but somehow you can install Lion - Launch beautiful Mac desktop. App store won't work because the certs are too old, or something. Safari won't work, because the supported SSL protocols are too old. - Use a modern Mac to download a DMG installer for a slightly newer OS - Copy it to a USB stick - Find a USB stick big enough to hold it, try again - Plug USB stick into target Mac, copy installer to desktop, run it - Now you have a more modern OS that can actually connect to websites - Also teh app store works, so you can upgrade to High Sierra using the app store. But yeah. Man, the desktop was so beautiful and refreshing.

Gigachad 8mo ago
My best guess is the macbook is freaking out over the combined 2.4 + 5ghz network. It used to be standard to have these with two different SSIDs. Or you have WPA3 required, though I'd think you'd experience issues with many devices doing that.
- dylan604 8mo ago
  My first thought was incompatible version of 802.11[a-z] as well.
CharlesW 8mo ago
OpenCore and MIST are two great tools for fans of obsolete Macs. https://github.com/ninxsoft/Mist https://github.com/ninxsoft/Mist
- aa-jv 8mo ago
  Yes .. in case its not obvious, you can use MIST to get all the old MacOS installers for offline use ..
cosmic_cheese 8mo ago
> Man, the desktop was so beautiful and refreshing. I get the same feeling when doing a fresh install+boot of both OS X 10.9 Mavericks and Windows 7. They're just so much more pleasant than what we have now. It'd be nice if modern desktop operating systems took a lesson or two from their past selves.
- jcgrillo 8mo ago
  I feel the same way about Unix desktops. The newer stuff just.. looks gross? And it's difficult to use. I'm very thankful for Mate, especially the Alt+F2 behavior, but also the simple menu layout vs some horrible combination of search and popups.
  - deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
  - cosmic_cheese 8mo ago
    GNOME 2/MATE isn't quite to my taste for my personal use, but it is cozy in a way that post-3.0 versions aren't.
    - jcgrillo 8mo ago
      For me it's the difference between "this is a computer" vs "this is a computer trying to be a cell phone". I think that's what everything from the last 15yr is trying to be--a phone. And not everything is a phone. On a computer we have a keyboard and a mouse, which are much, much more precise tools than vague gestures on a touchscreen. EDIT: I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say this is basically everything that's wrong with the computer(-adjacent) industry. We can appreciate the problem statement by asking "why would anyone want to make a computer be a phone?" The answer is a terminal case of a particularly defensive form of groupthink. It goes something like this: (1) "everyone is talking about the iPhone" (2) "i need to feel relevant, ergo i must make phone noises too" then they rub these two neurons together, and since it's the only two they got it isn't hard for them, and this process repeats a few generations and like a nuclear chain reaction soon enough the entire industry is trying to make everything be a fucking phone. It shouldn't be like that. EDIT2: As a species we don't play these games with other tools. Cars--some super early attempts had weird shit like tillers for steering but we quickly outgrew that idea and settled on the steering wheel, levers for the other hand, and pedals for the feet. Same with airplanes and tracked vehicles (bulldozers, tanks, etc). Same with machine tools. This stupid game people are playing with computer interfaces these days is fundamentally inhuman.
skhr0680 8mo ago
I did this and considered it the easy way of installing an OS on a Mac circa 2011 vs. DVD then messing around updating that ... > Plug USB stick into target Mac, copy installer to desktop, run it Apple has a whole page on making a bootable USB, it can save you a step: https://support.apple.com/en-us/101578 https://support.apple.com/en-us/101578
- FireBeyond 8mo ago
  If the bootable USB even works. Monterey won't, or any out of support OS.
AnotherGoodName 8mo ago
>You cannot directly download or install High Sierra (the latest supported OS) for reasons I don't remember. This one’s a doozy because i hit it last month. The updates are over https. The default certificates are 10year expiry. I had an elderly relative (who disabled updates because they were scared of the computer changing) really upset everything was broken. Gmail app gave obscure can’t connect messages, almost all websites failed to load. When i went there of course the os wouldn’t update as well. We use https for everything now. The keychain system is so hidden from users it was hard to even get to for myself. Took a usb key of a set of certificate updates. Harder than you think because when you look in keychain you’re not sure of which certificate is used for which and it’s a pain to find what you need. In the end a transfer from a healthy mac worked enough to get a manually downloaded os update running and from there it was fine. What a doozy though! If you know of people with old macs that stopped working at the start of this year this is why
- JadeNB 8mo ago
  > The keychain system is so hidden from users it was hard to even get to for myself. These days, keychain access is under /System/Library/Core Services/Applications/Keychain Access.app. That's not intuitive, but, once you know it's there, it's not hard to navigate to it. Was it different under older versions?
  - latchkey 8mo ago
    command-space... type "keychain access"
    - rz2k 8mo ago
      command+shift+g Then s<tab>/l<tab>/cores<tab>/a<tab> Simple! However, while Spotlight works well when you know what you are looking for, it can still be useful to navigate the filesystem, and it's too bad that Apple hides tools in relatively obscure locations rather than somewhere like /Applications/Utilities.
  - conradev 8mo ago
yieldcrv 8mo ago
Yeah LOTS of devices are iced out of wifi because wifi devices started combining the 2.4ghz and 5ghz SSIDs to the same name and for whatever reason 2.4ghz only devices cant find the SSID unless you if there is a name conflict on the 5ghz frequency its also less likely that you have access to the router now to change the SSID
- Wowfunhappy 8mo ago
  > and for whatever reason 2.4ghz only devices cant find the SSID unless you if there is a name conflict on the 5ghz frequency Huh? Is this true? It doesn’t make intuitive sense to me—if the device doesn’t have a 5ghz radio I would expect it to be physically impossible for the 5ghz network to interfere.
  - embedding-shape 8mo ago
    I've had this issue too on older devices, until I made the SSIDs different by suffixing 2ghz and 5ghz to each one. I think I've had it happen both on an older Android and older MacBook but it was a while ago, could be misremembering.
    - wtallis 8mo ago
      I think enough of us were running dual-band networks sharing the same SSID back in the day that doing so now cannot be the entire reason for things not working.
      - yieldcrv 8mo ago
        "band steering" implementation from the router side is the issue
  - yieldcrv 8mo ago
    It's called Band Steering and it messes up older devices. Its truely an L direction that the wifi industry has gone, its a reaction to overcrowding of the 2.4Ghz spectrum by automatically moving capable devices to the 5Ghz SSID so happens that its not backwards compatible very well to 2.4Ghz only devices. Not because of the frequency itself but because of the band steering implementation from the router
greenavocado 8mo ago
Or you can do things the easy way and install a Kubuntu 25.10 and have all good modern amenities without a fight.
- rconti 8mo ago
  I started as a desktop Linux user in 1994 and I can guarantee you it would have been more work for me to install Kubuntu for the first time :) Regardless, this one is going on eBay, so it's probably best for it to be running the latest Apple OS. Whether the $60-or-whatever I get for it is worth the hassle is another story.
jamesy0ung 8mo ago
Apple’s EFI embeds an older version of wpa supplicant, possibly you are trying to connect to a network with a newer encryption standard like WPA3. I don’t that’s too unreasonable for a 15 year old computer
- Svoka 8mo ago
  Downgrading network to 2.4G is probably all they needed.
  - degamad 8mo ago
    I assume that's what - Fall back to old IOT SSID with ancient protocols meant 2.4G and not WPA3.
  - rconti 8mo ago
    Probably this- my IOT network forces 2.4GHz, whereas my WPA2 and WPA3 networks both use 2.4 and 5GHz on the same SSID.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 8mo ago
      If a device only supports 2.4Ghz, wouldn't it only see the 2.4 option? Just having a network available that the device's radios can't even see shouldn't break anything. (I'm personally leaning towards WPA3 being the problem)
- muhaccount 8mo ago
  Thanks for the explanation! Makes sense. Unreasonable? To me, no. Makes complete sense given the age. BUT it doesn't support, IMO, "Apple is the opposite of planned obsolescence". Yes, tech nerds can do tech nerd things to make it work...that's not a "plan". I apologize if that came off harsh. I feel like your comment had a different angle/context than where I took it. Apologies if so. Microsoft hate is easy to come by on HN (I get it), so I don't like seeing a Apple's coincidental victories magnified in one of the few areas Microsoft does well as a feature.
FireBeyond 8mo ago
LOL, yes. I just tried to put Monterey on a 2021 MBP and holy hell. USB installer. "Not supported OS, you can quit, or install in reduced security mode". Reduced security is fine for me. "Installation of Reduced Security failed." Cool. "Get the IPSW and do a DFU install". Nah, you can't do that. "Drag the IPSW onto the target Mac where it says DFU in Apple Configurator". Nope. No error, just nope. Dig dig dig. "You might need to do this from an older computer. Even an Intel MBP running Ventura". Hey look, I have one! Alright, install Apple Configurator. "Nope. You need Sequoia to install Configurator." Jesus wept. This is an OS that is 4 years old, on a 5 year old laptop. Apple, "It just works". Find an old version of Configurator from some guy on Reddit that zipped one up. Now we can do an IPSW install. Good luck, mortals.
- morsch 8mo ago
  Helped an aqaintance set up a new computer with pre installed Windows 11 a while ago. As in Windows was already on there. How hard could it be? Just getting past the mandatory online account ID took us half an hour, and only worked because she was diligent in writing down her password for Skype 10 years ago which somehow (I realize why but it's insane) now is her Microsoft account and involved in logging in to Windows. Then we stared at a non-interactive initial update screen for another half an hour before it offered the option to postpone updates. I assume if you ship your new computer somewhere without Internet, you simply cannot use it?! And of course all the dumb dark patterns, as if designed by a scumbag pick-up artist. Then I had to deal with Windows file sharing to copy stuff from the old PC which was exactly as intuitive as it was in LAN parties around 2000 (used mostly the same UI, as well); but at least unlike the new quick share features worked eventually. Don't get me started on how we got her old printer to work. It's still a miracle to me and involved multiple reinstalls of multiple drivers and finally digging through to a Windows 2000 era dialog listing various printer interfaces and manually selecting the right one that at some point popped up. I was all but convinced she'd need to buy a new one.
  - FireBeyond 8mo ago
    I mean, I agree, and that is one of the reasons I left the Windows ecosystem. My partner has Windows on her work laptop and ... oof. But still... > I assume if you ship your new computer somewhere without Internet, you simply cannot use it?! This is true of new Macs too, for the MDM enrollment check. The OOTB installer will not complete without internet access. Back in the days of Monterey you could "black hole" those DNS records, but not any more. No functional access to at least half-a-dozen Apple services and you cannot complete OS installation.
qingcharles 8mo ago
I bought one of those old Apple brand USB Ethernet adapters for pennies on eBay which can help to have on hand in situations like this.
lebuin 8mo ago
I had to do a fresh install on a 2015 iMac. Same problems with the SSL certificates. I found it rather shocking that a 10 year old computer cannot be booted anymore, and as far as I understand it it's mostly because apple chooses to serve certificates with poor backwards compatibility on a domain that is used for updates, which is just lazy.
Angostura 8mo ago
Temporarily disable dual-band wifi and go to 2.4. Temporarly open the network with no WPA - should be good to go
eleveriven 8mo ago
That era of macOS had a kind of clarity and restraint that’s hard to describe
andai 8mo ago
It was designed to hydrate the soul.
wolfhumble 8mo ago
> But yeah. Man, the desktop was so beautiful and refreshing. ". . . that new user interface builds on Apple's Legacy and carries it into the next century and we call that new user interface Aqua because it's liquid. One of the design goals was when you saw it you wanted to lick it . . ." Steve Job, Macworld San Francisco 2000: https://youtu.be/Ko4V3G4NqII?t=405 https://youtu.be/Ko4V3G4NqII?t=405
wodenokoto 8mo ago
I have an old iPad and a not that old MacBook Pro maybe 2017?) which both are almost useless as they cannot connect to many WiFi routers. Any work arounds?
- clairegraham 8mo ago
  What issues did you have? I have a 2016 (catalina) and a 2017 MBP (ventura) and they connect to my ubiquiti AP (5G / WPA3) at least. Haven’t tried others in a long time. I do have completely separate 2.4 and 5 GHz SSIDs so that may be related. I did have issues with these machines running Linux due to driver support (broadcom BCM43xx) but USB to ethernet worked fine.
  - wodenokoto 8mo ago
    A cheap linksys that has 2.4 and 5 separated is elusive to my 2011 iPad (and so are my AirPods Pro making the other wise beautiful screen on the iPad useless for watching movies at the gym) and the MacBook Pro won’t connect to school WiFi making it useless as a hand-down to my nephew. No one at school knows anything technical about the WiFi as it’s supplied by a 3rd party. Both are running latest available software.
pidgeon_lover 8mo ago
I had to reinstall MacOS Lion manually recently, as Macs do not have a BIOS and require a MacOS environment to begin installing Windows. I was installing Windows on legacy Macs, because it gives me 30+ years of software and performs well, unlike MacOS (5 years software if lucky, unusably slow performance on older hardware). I intentionally did it all the hard way offline from a Windows host, so that I could replicate it without depending on someone else's flakey servers (which incidentally refused to serve me OS installer images) I detest crummy Unix-style online stub installers and package managers, because the original downloads are always down when you need them, and it's much harder than it should be to force offline replicable reinstallation.
- Tsiklon 8mo ago
  To my recollection on the machines that shipped with Lion (circa 2011) you’ll want to set up a protective MBR with the appropriate drive dimensions on the GPT, to get it to install windows like with boot camp. To my recollection on machines with discrete GPUs this is what triggers the appropriate hardware configuration (BIOS boot, disabling the internal GPU and switching the MUX to only route via the AMD card) But I do recall getting the internal GPU working with this trick https://github.com/0xbb/apple_set_os.efi https://github.com/0xbb/apple_set_os.efi
  - pidgeon_lover 8mo ago
    Thank you very much for that! That might explain why one of the macbooks I installed Windows on seemed to have laggy screensavers, whereas the others (Air) seemed to work just fine. I installed the MacOS Lion installer from a memory stick to the internal SSD (partition 1), Mac OS Lion itself to partition 2 (minimal size) and Win7 to partition 3 via Bootcamp, and it works well, aside from laggy screensavers on one of them, and losing around 10GB to the Mac Lion installer partition 1 (I don't know if there's a way to force it to install MacOS to 1x partition, rather than 2x, while fully offline)
pndy 8mo ago
The road is bit longer when you decide to use Open Core Legacy Patcher. I managed to install Sonoma or Sequoia on my 2011 mbp but it was barely usable - nearly every Apple application was broken due to lack of Metal support. So I've pick Manjaro and while every now and then Wifi stops working, it's bit more capable but nothing crazy tho since it's nearly 15 yo machine.

by rconti 8mo ago

Gigachad 8mo ago

My best guess is the macbook is freaking out over the combined 2.4 + 5ghz network. It used to be standard to have these with two different SSIDs. Or you have WPA3 required, though I'd think you'd experience issues with many devices doing that.

dylan604 8mo ago
My first thought was incompatible version of 802.11[a-z] as well.

CharlesW 8mo ago

OpenCore and MIST are two great tools for fans of obsolete Macs. https://github.com/ninxsoft/Mist https://github.com/ninxsoft/Mist

aa-jv 8mo ago
Yes .. in case its not obvious, you can use MIST to get all the old MacOS installers for offline use ..

cosmic_cheese 8mo ago

> Man, the desktop was so beautiful and refreshing. I get the same feeling when doing a fresh install+boot of both OS X 10.9 Mavericks and Windows 7. They're just so much more pleasant than what we have now. It'd be nice if modern desktop operating systems took a lesson or two from their past selves.

jcgrillo 8mo ago
I feel the same way about Unix desktops. The newer stuff just.. looks gross? And it's difficult to use. I'm very thankful for Mate, especially the Alt+F2 behavior, but also the simple menu layout vs some horrible combination of search and popups.
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- cosmic_cheese 8mo ago
  GNOME 2/MATE isn't quite to my taste for my personal use, but it is cozy in a way that post-3.0 versions aren't.
  - jcgrillo 8mo ago
    For me it's the difference between "this is a computer" vs "this is a computer trying to be a cell phone". I think that's what everything from the last 15yr is trying to be--a phone. And not everything is a phone. On a computer we have a keyboard and a mouse, which are much, much more precise tools than vague gestures on a touchscreen. EDIT: I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say this is basically everything that's wrong with the computer(-adjacent) industry. We can appreciate the problem statement by asking "why would anyone want to make a computer be a phone?" The answer is a terminal case of a particularly defensive form of groupthink. It goes something like this: (1) "everyone is talking about the iPhone" (2) "i need to feel relevant, ergo i must make phone noises too" then they rub these two neurons together, and since it's the only two they got it isn't hard for them, and this process repeats a few generations and like a nuclear chain reaction soon enough the entire industry is trying to make everything be a fucking phone. It shouldn't be like that. EDIT2: As a species we don't play these games with other tools. Cars--some super early attempts had weird shit like tillers for steering but we quickly outgrew that idea and settled on the steering wheel, levers for the other hand, and pedals for the feet. Same with airplanes and tracked vehicles (bulldozers, tanks, etc). Same with machine tools. This stupid game people are playing with computer interfaces these days is fundamentally inhuman.

skhr0680 8mo ago

I did this and considered it the easy way of installing an OS on a Mac circa 2011 vs. DVD then messing around updating that ... > Plug USB stick into target Mac, copy installer to desktop, run it Apple has a whole page on making a bootable USB, it can save you a step: https://support.apple.com/en-us/101578 https://support.apple.com/en-us/101578

FireBeyond 8mo ago
If the bootable USB even works. Monterey won't, or any out of support OS.

AnotherGoodName 8mo ago

>You cannot directly download or install High Sierra (the latest supported OS) for reasons I don't remember. This one’s a doozy because i hit it last month. The updates are over https. The default certificates are 10year expiry. I had an elderly relative (who disabled updates because they were scared of the computer changing) really upset everything was broken. Gmail app gave obscure can’t connect messages, almost all websites failed to load. When i went there of course the os wouldn’t update as well. We use https for everything now. The keychain system is so hidden from users it was hard to even get to for myself. Took a usb key of a set of certificate updates. Harder than you think because when you look in keychain you’re not sure of which certificate is used for which and it’s a pain to find what you need. In the end a transfer from a healthy mac worked enough to get a manually downloaded os update running and from there it was fine. What a doozy though! If you know of people with old macs that stopped working at the start of this year this is why

JadeNB 8mo ago
> The keychain system is so hidden from users it was hard to even get to for myself. These days, keychain access is under /System/Library/Core Services/Applications/Keychain Access.app. That's not intuitive, but, once you know it's there, it's not hard to navigate to it. Was it different under older versions?
- latchkey 8mo ago
  command-space... type "keychain access"
  - rz2k 8mo ago
    command+shift+g Then s<tab>/l<tab>/cores<tab>/a<tab> Simple! However, while Spotlight works well when you know what you are looking for, it can still be useful to navigate the filesystem, and it's too bad that Apple hides tools in relatively obscure locations rather than somewhere like /Applications/Utilities.
- conradev 8mo ago

yieldcrv 8mo ago

Yeah LOTS of devices are iced out of wifi because wifi devices started combining the 2.4ghz and 5ghz SSIDs to the same name and for whatever reason 2.4ghz only devices cant find the SSID unless you if there is a name conflict on the 5ghz frequency its also less likely that you have access to the router now to change the SSID

Wowfunhappy 8mo ago
> and for whatever reason 2.4ghz only devices cant find the SSID unless you if there is a name conflict on the 5ghz frequency Huh? Is this true? It doesn’t make intuitive sense to me—if the device doesn’t have a 5ghz radio I would expect it to be physically impossible for the 5ghz network to interfere.
- embedding-shape 8mo ago
  I've had this issue too on older devices, until I made the SSIDs different by suffixing 2ghz and 5ghz to each one. I think I've had it happen both on an older Android and older MacBook but it was a while ago, could be misremembering.
  - wtallis 8mo ago
    I think enough of us were running dual-band networks sharing the same SSID back in the day that doing so now cannot be the entire reason for things not working.
    - yieldcrv 8mo ago
      "band steering" implementation from the router side is the issue
- yieldcrv 8mo ago
  It's called Band Steering and it messes up older devices. Its truely an L direction that the wifi industry has gone, its a reaction to overcrowding of the 2.4Ghz spectrum by automatically moving capable devices to the 5Ghz SSID so happens that its not backwards compatible very well to 2.4Ghz only devices. Not because of the frequency itself but because of the band steering implementation from the router

greenavocado 8mo ago

Or you can do things the easy way and install a Kubuntu 25.10 and have all good modern amenities without a fight.

rconti 8mo ago
I started as a desktop Linux user in 1994 and I can guarantee you it would have been more work for me to install Kubuntu for the first time :) Regardless, this one is going on eBay, so it's probably best for it to be running the latest Apple OS. Whether the $60-or-whatever I get for it is worth the hassle is another story.

jamesy0ung 8mo ago

Apple’s EFI embeds an older version of wpa supplicant, possibly you are trying to connect to a network with a newer encryption standard like WPA3. I don’t that’s too unreasonable for a 15 year old computer

Svoka 8mo ago
Downgrading network to 2.4G is probably all they needed.
- degamad 8mo ago
  I assume that's what - Fall back to old IOT SSID with ancient protocols meant 2.4G and not WPA3.
- rconti 8mo ago
  Probably this- my IOT network forces 2.4GHz, whereas my WPA2 and WPA3 networks both use 2.4 and 5GHz on the same SSID.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 8mo ago
    If a device only supports 2.4Ghz, wouldn't it only see the 2.4 option? Just having a network available that the device's radios can't even see shouldn't break anything. (I'm personally leaning towards WPA3 being the problem)
muhaccount 8mo ago
Thanks for the explanation! Makes sense. Unreasonable? To me, no. Makes complete sense given the age. BUT it doesn't support, IMO, "Apple is the opposite of planned obsolescence". Yes, tech nerds can do tech nerd things to make it work...that's not a "plan". I apologize if that came off harsh. I feel like your comment had a different angle/context than where I took it. Apologies if so. Microsoft hate is easy to come by on HN (I get it), so I don't like seeing a Apple's coincidental victories magnified in one of the few areas Microsoft does well as a feature.

FireBeyond 8mo ago

LOL, yes. I just tried to put Monterey on a 2021 MBP and holy hell. USB installer. "Not supported OS, you can quit, or install in reduced security mode". Reduced security is fine for me. "Installation of Reduced Security failed." Cool. "Get the IPSW and do a DFU install". Nah, you can't do that. "Drag the IPSW onto the target Mac where it says DFU in Apple Configurator". Nope. No error, just nope. Dig dig dig. "You might need to do this from an older computer. Even an Intel MBP running Ventura". Hey look, I have one! Alright, install Apple Configurator. "Nope. You need Sequoia to install Configurator." Jesus wept. This is an OS that is 4 years old, on a 5 year old laptop. Apple, "It just works". Find an old version of Configurator from some guy on Reddit that zipped one up. Now we can do an IPSW install. Good luck, mortals.

morsch 8mo ago
Helped an aqaintance set up a new computer with pre installed Windows 11 a while ago. As in Windows was already on there. How hard could it be? Just getting past the mandatory online account ID took us half an hour, and only worked because she was diligent in writing down her password for Skype 10 years ago which somehow (I realize why but it's insane) now is her Microsoft account and involved in logging in to Windows. Then we stared at a non-interactive initial update screen for another half an hour before it offered the option to postpone updates. I assume if you ship your new computer somewhere without Internet, you simply cannot use it?! And of course all the dumb dark patterns, as if designed by a scumbag pick-up artist. Then I had to deal with Windows file sharing to copy stuff from the old PC which was exactly as intuitive as it was in LAN parties around 2000 (used mostly the same UI, as well); but at least unlike the new quick share features worked eventually. Don't get me started on how we got her old printer to work. It's still a miracle to me and involved multiple reinstalls of multiple drivers and finally digging through to a Windows 2000 era dialog listing various printer interfaces and manually selecting the right one that at some point popped up. I was all but convinced she'd need to buy a new one.
- FireBeyond 8mo ago
  I mean, I agree, and that is one of the reasons I left the Windows ecosystem. My partner has Windows on her work laptop and ... oof. But still... > I assume if you ship your new computer somewhere without Internet, you simply cannot use it?! This is true of new Macs too, for the MDM enrollment check. The OOTB installer will not complete without internet access. Back in the days of Monterey you could "black hole" those DNS records, but not any more. No functional access to at least half-a-dozen Apple services and you cannot complete OS installation.

qingcharles 8mo ago

I bought one of those old Apple brand USB Ethernet adapters for pennies on eBay which can help to have on hand in situations like this.

lebuin 8mo ago

I had to do a fresh install on a 2015 iMac. Same problems with the SSL certificates. I found it rather shocking that a 10 year old computer cannot be booted anymore, and as far as I understand it it's mostly because apple chooses to serve certificates with poor backwards compatibility on a domain that is used for updates, which is just lazy.

Angostura 8mo ago

Temporarily disable dual-band wifi and go to 2.4. Temporarly open the network with no WPA - should be good to go

eleveriven 8mo ago

That era of macOS had a kind of clarity and restraint that’s hard to describe

andai 8mo ago

It was designed to hydrate the soul.

wolfhumble 8mo ago

> But yeah. Man, the desktop was so beautiful and refreshing. ". . . that new user interface builds on Apple's Legacy and carries it into the next century and we call that new user interface Aqua because it's liquid. One of the design goals was when you saw it you wanted to lick it . . ." Steve Job, Macworld San Francisco 2000: https://youtu.be/Ko4V3G4NqII?t=405 https://youtu.be/Ko4V3G4NqII?t=405

wodenokoto 8mo ago

I have an old iPad and a not that old MacBook Pro maybe 2017?) which both are almost useless as they cannot connect to many WiFi routers. Any work arounds?

clairegraham 8mo ago
What issues did you have? I have a 2016 (catalina) and a 2017 MBP (ventura) and they connect to my ubiquiti AP (5G / WPA3) at least. Haven’t tried others in a long time. I do have completely separate 2.4 and 5 GHz SSIDs so that may be related. I did have issues with these machines running Linux due to driver support (broadcom BCM43xx) but USB to ethernet worked fine.
- wodenokoto 8mo ago
  A cheap linksys that has 2.4 and 5 separated is elusive to my 2011 iPad (and so are my AirPods Pro making the other wise beautiful screen on the iPad useless for watching movies at the gym) and the MacBook Pro won’t connect to school WiFi making it useless as a hand-down to my nephew. No one at school knows anything technical about the WiFi as it’s supplied by a 3rd party. Both are running latest available software.

pidgeon_lover 8mo ago

I had to reinstall MacOS Lion manually recently, as Macs do not have a BIOS and require a MacOS environment to begin installing Windows. I was installing Windows on legacy Macs, because it gives me 30+ years of software and performs well, unlike MacOS (5 years software if lucky, unusably slow performance on older hardware). I intentionally did it all the hard way offline from a Windows host, so that I could replicate it without depending on someone else's flakey servers (which incidentally refused to serve me OS installer images) I detest crummy Unix-style online stub installers and package managers, because the original downloads are always down when you need them, and it's much harder than it should be to force offline replicable reinstallation.

Tsiklon 8mo ago
To my recollection on the machines that shipped with Lion (circa 2011) you’ll want to set up a protective MBR with the appropriate drive dimensions on the GPT, to get it to install windows like with boot camp. To my recollection on machines with discrete GPUs this is what triggers the appropriate hardware configuration (BIOS boot, disabling the internal GPU and switching the MUX to only route via the AMD card) But I do recall getting the internal GPU working with this trick https://github.com/0xbb/apple_set_os.efi https://github.com/0xbb/apple_set_os.efi
- pidgeon_lover 8mo ago
  Thank you very much for that! That might explain why one of the macbooks I installed Windows on seemed to have laggy screensavers, whereas the others (Air) seemed to work just fine. I installed the MacOS Lion installer from a memory stick to the internal SSD (partition 1), Mac OS Lion itself to partition 2 (minimal size) and Win7 to partition 3 via Bootcamp, and it works well, aside from laggy screensavers on one of them, and losing around 10GB to the Mac Lion installer partition 1 (I don't know if there's a way to force it to install MacOS to 1x partition, rather than 2x, while fully offline)

pndy 8mo ago

The road is bit longer when you decide to use Open Core Legacy Patcher. I managed to install Sonoma or Sequoia on my 2011 mbp but it was barely usable - nearly every Apple application was broken due to lack of Metal support. So I've pick Manjaro and while every now and then Wifi stops working, it's bit more capable but nothing crazy tho since it's nearly 15 yo machine.