I would like to perform a clean installation of MacOS Big Sur on my MacBook Air 2017. I've read two articles on how to do this, one said I don't need a USB installer, the other one said it is required. I just want to make sure before I do anything, do I need USB installer or is it possible to download Big Sur from the internet when performing clean installation?
Thank you.
Internet recovery is my first choice for reinstalling OS X. From time to time there are problems with internet recovery. Corrupt recovery partitions, firmware passwords, and a lot of misc hardware problems are what will usually prevent you from using internet recovery.
If you don't have another machine to write your USB installer, I would just make one to be safe. You could also run Apple Diagnostics before running internet recovery to make sure hardware won't be an issue. Out of hundreds of OS X installations I've done, I've only had a handful fail in a way that prevented me from using the original OS afterward, and in those cases it was always a major hardware issue.
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In MacOS Catalina, you can still work around the notarization and signing requirements to download from anywhere by running
sudo spctl --master-enable
With the new security features in Big Sur, which I cannot try myself, I am concerned that the workaround might disappear. Can you still, at your own risk, run binaries that you compile yourself or download from elsewhere, by using this command?
The answer to this question might also be different on Apple Silicon ARM chips, which aren’t available to anyone without a limited-supply transition developer kit. In the off-chance that someone with one of these kits sees this post, what are the options for restoring the ability to download and build without gatekeeper blocking and requiring notarization? This is really important to know for internal development.
Also, ignoring all the risks, let’s say my computer is on a local secure network and I am only downloading, sharing, and compiling things I KNOW are safe by communicating with the developers. A lot of responses to questions like this that ask about disabling security seem to dodge the question and tell me not to do it, but I promise that I am cautious.
Just upgraded my 2015 MacBook Pro to Big Sur. Running sudo spctl --master-enable still works.
I downloaded the latest Mac OS X from AppStore to upgrade my Mac OS X 10.7.5
When I run the installer, after restarting it gave me an error regarding my Macintoch HD and it says that the problems couldn't be repaired asking me to restart backup my data then relunch the installer.
The problem is when I restart it keeps comming back to the installer, no mather what I did, I tried to fix the HD problem using diskutility but it also failed.
Also I have a HD of 1T Where I wanted to backup my data (using command line, since I can run the terminal) but my external HD is NTFS therefore its read only
What I would like to do is:
Either fix the installer problem and complete the upgrade
Find a way to transfer my data to the external HD first, than erase my Macintoch HD and try again the upgrade.
Please if you have anyclue, I'm really stuck here, and I can't afford to lose either my internal or external hard drives data.
Thanks in advance
P.S:
I have tried the solutions over here http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-57608837-263/how-to-manage-a-failed-os-x-mavericks-installation/ but I couldn't solve my problem yet
you have a damaged file system and it cannot be repaired. to find out why reboot while holding down command+R and in recovery mode open disk utility and try to repair the disk. It will tell you why it cannot be repaired.
It may be that you need to replace the disk or just reformat it. you will need to format it as HFS+ for you to be able to install on it. you will lose all data on the disk! back up your data before reformatting
report back here after figuring out why the disk cannot be repaired and i will update my answer.
I'm trying to learn to code in Objective C, but I am not ready to commit to purchasing a Mac for just this purpose, seeing as I have a good Dell laptop. My computer has VMware installed on it, but I do not know how to actually go through the steps, and I do not know what I need to install or purchase(if absolutely necessary). Eventually, I hope to get a Mac, so this won't be needed, but until then, I want to find a way to compile Objective C so I can actually learn how to use it. Thanks.
While it is technically possible, I'll tell you from experience:
To run Xcode and the iOS Simulator, you will need to have MacOS running. Oficially it only runs on Apple Hardware, buuut, you can always use virtualizers and Hackintosh. There are plenty of good tutorials online if you choose this method.
My advice: DON'T do it!
When I started to develop iOS apps, I had a Windows PC, but after trying lots of different approaches to virtualize MacOS, with none I had great results. I bought a MacBook on a sale, and it's just a better iOS development experience overall. It's priceless not to have to deal with driver searching and compatibility issues.
First virtualize MacOS X, inside then iOS with XCode. See http://www.macbreaker.com/2012/07/mountain-lion-virtualbox.html
Yes you can, you need to virtualize OSX inside you Windows, and then use XCode as the other stated, however it doesen't work with nearly all AMD CPU's but i think Dell uses mostly Intel. And a Mac costs alot. For example i don't have money for one, the cheapest one costs $1,600 where i come from, but if you are going to get a Mac, i would wait for that.
But they really are expensive, and i only need a Macbook for debugging.
[Assuming you already have the mac installation image or vmware file]
Sadly Vmware does not include support for mac in it's latest versions
So you'll have to patch(aka Vmware Unlocker for OS X) it.
Follow this link http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/files/file/20-vmware-unlocker-for-os-x/ (you'll be required to set up an account)
Or alternatively you can download the VirtualBox(https://www.virtualbox.org/)
Happy Coding
Use virtualbox instead of VMWare. If it does'nt work, install the extension pack for virtualbox.
Is it possible to install it on VirtualBox or other virtualization solution? If yes, how fast it works?
I don't see any problem running MonoTouch frameworks/IDEs in a virtualized Mac.
I can expect a lot of problems transferring across the USB cable the compiled applications to a real iPhone/iPad to test it. iTunes and XCode tend to be very picky about the configurations.
Buying a cheapest Mac might be easier and less costly if you consider the time you might waste, but your mileage may vary.
The evaluation version of MonoTouch will run, but the SDK tools used on the production version wont.
We were able to develop and deploy apps to real devices under VMWare Player and WMWare workstation. The problem we have is MonoTouch activations. It would activate and randomly need reactivation. It would work for a while then it would fail to activate.
Each time it failed we would need to contact support and reset the key so we could continue working. They do not support virtualized hardware and do not plan to fix the activation issue.
In the end we purchased real hardware.
Via VMWare Workstation I have it running quite nicely. Installing apps to iOS devices is fine, but creating a network for softdebug to find the iphone (or vice versa) is the only problem I've seen.
I'm trying to figure that out right now - I'll try and update this thread with the solution.
When I'm testing software I'm going to deploy or running through tests in the Windows world, I'll use VMWare images so that I can start from a fresh, known state at the beginning of each test. This has worked really well so that I can install software on different OS flavors or with other/different apps and drivers loaded. This makes it super simple to duplicate or nearly duplicate a customer's environment when addressing issues that crop up.
Now I'm tasked with doing something similar for Mac OS X. I'm far less familiar with this OS and didn't really see the same sort of thing available. I noted that the server version of 10.5 might allow this, but I'm not running that here. I've got access to 10.5 on a Mac Book and one of those Mac Minis.
Has anyone used Time Machine to put their test Mac box into a known state? Or do you have other ideas? I'm also interested in a solution for 10.4 since some of my customers run "Tiger".
I tend to test things that don't manipulate the global computer state (i.e. a lot of well written Cocoa applications) with the "Guest" account. Since Tiger (I think), the effects of using this account are wiped at logout, so you can easily get a virgin environment again.
By default, Time Machine excludes certain paths from backup. This could be detrimental to your testing strategy, depending on the system resources that your software touches. See this article for information on the exclusions. At a bare minimum, if you are going to use Time Machine to rollback, make sure nothing you are testing depends on any of the excluded files.
But, I think there is a better alternative, if you can live with Mac OS X Server: VMWare Fusion provides support for virtualizing instances of Mac OS X Server Leopard. Then you can use the same strategy you used for Windows.
From http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion/features.html
VMware Fusion boasts the most complete
OS support, supporting more than 60
operating systems in a virtual
machine, including Windows XP, Windows
Vista, and even Mac OS X Server.
Keep in mind, you cannot virtualize Mac OS X Client due to license restrictions, though.
An alternative (perhaps more lightweight) solution that I just found recently is an app called RooSwitch. It lets you swap configurations for an application. So you could have a bunch of different prefs files, cache files, etc for your app and create a named configuration for it. You can create multiple configurations to test new user setup, or to reproduce an issue using a customer's data without losing your own config. RooSwitch then lets you switch between all these different configs.
I haven't used it myself yet, but heard about it on a podcast recently and thought it sounded useful for my own development and testing.