gokigen

I’ve gotten a nice plastic macbook and reviving it refreshed my emotions towards software and (including but not limited to) apple’s decisions on how to distribute it.

After bowing to software engineers for functional recovery mode and quick network install of an OS, a problem arose — that OS was macOS X Lion. I vaguely remember reading about it in a magazine and sure remember it was quite some time ago, so when Firefox told me that due to incompatibility it cannot install, the need to upgrade become obvious.

Having started update through the menu, I’ve read about OS versions and update mechanism. Two things learned: 1. Apple doesn’t tell when the release is EOL (but thankfully they have a security mailing list) 2. All OS updates after Lion are carried only through the App Store. That sure put me down — I’ll have to log in to have updates! But that was trivial, real hassle was still waiting down the street.

I’ve opened the official “download latest macOS” page — it got a nice feature overview and a link to app store. It (just as front page of the App Store.) proudly presented Mojave as the best release that I was sure to want and yet pressing ‘install’ told me that my hardware is incompatible. Bummer. Search for Sierra and High Sierra (the oldest supported releases to date) didn’t produce anything — consulting help pages got me back to OS download page and the “previous releases for unsupported hardware” section in the end of it that had a direct link to app store. Download required apple-id login and it failed ...on all systems older than Sierra, urging user to update the OS. According to apple, that was due to software vulnerability that could expose payment information — too bad, because I’ve tried doing something that cost nothing.

As the official method got me stuck in 2011, I employed methods appropriate for 2011 and since I had no other mac around, acquired install media most unofficially (glad they provide checksums for the images). Since macOS requires nothing but license agreement and works more-or-less exclusively on company’s hardware, I’m still unsure if that’s even a piracy and if there’s a note in EULA that states I should feel guilty of it — but I got my system upgraded and updated, so my conscience was at peace.

After that, it was a breeze — by some reason, macOS retained some settings and help files from older versions, but that’s rather good than bad. So, default settings tailored, couple of applications installed, everything backed up to samba share mimicking time-capsule, then by some reason recovery mode can’t pick that share up — so when hard drive is replaced with SSD I just copy system partition directly (and realize that should’ve been the first step) — and voila, finally everything's done and ready.

I’m pleased with the system — maybe especially so since I’m not the end user. Hardware is great, OS ecosystem is pretty good too. Fingers crossed, in some years I would be able to replace it with the elementary OS or the kind, so the transition from would be smooth and forever end the era of the Windows XP.

If you have to work with that system, there's a security guide.