Yeah, I really miss my Lenovo Thinkpad X230! Not.Sure do.
I also remember that laptop being over 2” thick and weighing seven and a half pounds.
Boy those were the days!
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Apple Provides Instructions to Fix macOS Reinstallation Errors on M1 Macs
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For everyone experiencing this issue, I'm truly empathetic. It's no fun to get a brand new and highly priced computer and then to have friction getting it setup the way you would like.
With that being said, there's an opportunity to do better. I'd like to volunteer to help reproduce the issue so I can provide the data to Apple Support. So far, has anyone been able to reproduce the concern reliably? I can't say that I have on my MacBook Air (M1, 2020) "Best"
With that being said, there's an opportunity to do better. I'd like to volunteer to help reproduce the issue so I can provide the data to Apple Support. So far, has anyone been able to reproduce the concern reliably? I can't say that I have on my MacBook Air (M1, 2020) "Best"
Rushed release?
How many outstanding bugs might be left for later? That will be addressed in software update.
What if there is a back log of dealing with bug reports?
Was the time between a final candidate long enough? Was it rushed, "we have to burn the system image and get it to manufacturing yesterday?" - those m1s have to ship, says management.
It wouldn't be the first time, or likely the last, that a incident happens. Haste makes waste.
How many outstanding bugs might be left for later? That will be addressed in software update.
What if there is a back log of dealing with bug reports?
Was the time between a final candidate long enough? Was it rushed, "we have to burn the system image and get it to manufacturing yesterday?" - those m1s have to ship, says management.
It wouldn't be the first time, or likely the last, that a incident happens. Haste makes waste.
Why does that matter? I had just screwed something up and decided instead of trying to fix it, I'll just reinstall.
<sarcasm>Wow, amazing in 130 posts, not to mention at least 2 other threads covering the same subject, not one person asked or answered that question</sarcasm>
Serious answer, there are a number of reasons that a user may need to restore a brand new computer. Don't assume it is immediately out of the box either.
Some of the reasons:
A migration assistant or time machine recovery fails during transfer. If that happens, it can leave the computer in an unstable state and the only solution is to restore the O/S
A user does not want all the extra Apps that Apple installs (iWork Apps). Sure you can just delete them, but in some cases there are preferences and libraries left behind. Plus, if you are deploying 100s or 1000s of computers at a time, the time and effort to manually remove applications is significant.
Companies are buying their first M1 systems and need to test deployment workflows. To test, a computer must be erased to a factory O/S. If any changes to the workflow needs to happen, the computer needs to be erased again to test the updated workflow.
So, yes there are valid reasons to reinstall the O/S after just receiving a computer. The bigger question is why do people think it is OK that Apple wasn't ready for users to restore their O/S?
It hasn't "just worked" for a couple years now.
But hey, all that QA money saved has made them a trillion dollar company!
Yeah, if they had any QA this should have been caught. This isn't even an edge case, it's literally following Apple's instructions to restore the OS. For me, someone who hasn't owned a new mac in almost 10 years, it's making me second guess my decision to try again.
I've been on the phone with Apple tech support now for nearly an hour trying to resolve this issue. I was having issues with my Samsung portable ssd drive and decided to do a factory reset on the computer (don't ask...its my computer at the end of the day I can do what I please with it).
This tech support agent is saying she's never heard of this before and neither has her supervisor.
Laptop: Macbook Pro 16 GB ram version
I'll keep you guys posted.
Update #1: call was escalated to the next tier. We tried erasing the drive again and it kept failing. Then we started reinstalling via Terminal through steps found here (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211983). Downloading the OS now, it'll take an hour or so.
Update #2: the download through the terminal failed 20 minutes in....this is going to be a long day...
Self-reflection - if it wasn't for the fact that the 16GB model isn't available for pick up in the store (where I live at least) and estimated shipping dates are early Jan. I would have just returned this and gotten a new one. I'm getting frustrated.
Update #3: tried the rest of the steps with tech support and nothing is working. It's being escalated to the Engineers.
This tech support agent is saying she's never heard of this before and neither has her supervisor.
Laptop: Macbook Pro 16 GB ram version
I'll keep you guys posted.
Update #1: call was escalated to the next tier. We tried erasing the drive again and it kept failing. Then we started reinstalling via Terminal through steps found here (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211983). Downloading the OS now, it'll take an hour or so.
Update #2: the download through the terminal failed 20 minutes in....this is going to be a long day...
Self-reflection - if it wasn't for the fact that the 16GB model isn't available for pick up in the store (where I live at least) and estimated shipping dates are early Jan. I would have just returned this and gotten a new one. I'm getting frustrated.
Update #3: tried the rest of the steps with tech support and nothing is working. It's being escalated to the Engineers.
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They fixed it already. Still shouldn't have slipped out but stuff happens.
If it was three months later and they still hadn't addressed it, that would be one thing - but again it's already been addressed with 11.0.1. At worse you need to sit through an update of an OS you don't intend to use; the perils of early adoption.
I do not believe they have. I updated to 11.0.1 before running recovery and still ran into the issue.
I found Apple's instructions to be lacking an important piece of information. For me the download would also fail because I was using the wrong volume. When they tell you to cd to /Volumes/Untitled you have to make sure the volume is named Untitled otherwise the download will fail when the temp disk runs out of space.
It’s not fixed in 11.0.1 I can confirm.
I’m now on my 3rd attempt at migration assistant from a 2018 MacBook Air to the new one. I have about 500GB of content in my home directory and it has failed mid way more than once.
The worst thing is it leaves you with half the data present in your migrated home directory and a whole bunch of stuff missing. And there’s no notification that it failed to copy some stuff.
Honestly migration assistant is buggy as hell and shouldn’t be trusted if you care about your data.
I’m now on my 3rd attempt at migration assistant from a 2018 MacBook Air to the new one. I have about 500GB of content in my home directory and it has failed mid way more than once.
The worst thing is it leaves you with half the data present in your migrated home directory and a whole bunch of stuff missing. And there’s no notification that it failed to copy some stuff.
Honestly migration assistant is buggy as hell and shouldn’t be trusted if you care about your data.
Have you tried erasing an M1 Mac and reinstalling? Failed for me with 11.0.1 and had to do the manual recovery as per the Apple tech note.
You rolled your M1 Mac mini back to Catalina? You are a guru!
By the way, this only effects M1 Macs and M1 Macs can't run Catalina. Better luck next time.
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Someone doesn't understand the progress that is UMA (Unified Memory Architecture).
Suffice it to say there have been more problems with this OS than I ever remember and I’ve been an early adopter/beta tester of every new OS since 2007.
i had to return my MBA M1 due to the external monitor max of 1.
I tried reinstalling Big Sur 8 times including these alternate instructions, no dice.
hot mess
I tried reinstalling Big Sur 8 times including these alternate instructions, no dice.
hot mess
I had the same issue but finally got it to work after reading somewhere to delete the new MacBook from Find my Mac
Same, pretty sure I upgraded before attempting to reformat and also got this issue, hence found these posts
For those asking why reformat a new computer: I would consider myself a relatively power user - bought this Mac knowing I would need to test all sorts before deciding whether to keep it (and my use cases are pretty specific so could not find posts online of people testing the same stuff) - which involved tinkering around many different system settings, which now at the end of that I wanted to reformat to either (1) keep it, starting fresh knowing which things not to tinker if they didn't go well pre-reformat! (2) return it, which also needs a reformat
I updated my machine to 11.01 prior to erasing and still have all these issues. Did the terminal. Tried the configurator but it wouldn't work, tried to boot to an installer. nothing worked. First computer in 22 years to have this happen. Now I have to wait a month for the replacement. Terrible.