Currently have 2013 MacBook Pro with Sierra. Have Photoshop CS6 and a few other items which run well enough for me. Don't want to change. Planning on buying a new 16" MacBook Pro with a 2TB upgrade. As I understand it, it should not be too hard to partition it and be able to run Sierra or Catalina as I choose. I'm not that tech savvy, so I will probably have my local Mac store do it. I guess I have two questions: 1) is this a fairly simple process, not much to worry about if the tech is competent? 2) I suppose easiest for me would be just to "clone" my entire existing 500gb MacBook Pro on to a new 1TB partition (and make sure it can't upgrade automatically), and then delete/move things as I get the Catalina "side" running (new Microsoft Office, Logic, etc.). Does this this all make sense? Appreciate any comments.
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Dual boot Mac
- Thread starter ltlredwagon1
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Yes, not too hard to do that (set up multiple booting systems on a Mac) But, there's one flaw in your plan. The 16" comes with Catalina, too new even for Mojave, and won't boot an older system. CS6, for example, is not, AFAIK, working on Catalina - period.
Except Sierra won't run on a 16". The earliest OS that will run on a Mac is the latest one that was out when it shipped.
Thanks. Sorry, but I guess you're a little over my head. If I'm following you correctly, you're saying that I CANNOT have two "separate computers" running on the new MacBook Pro -- one partition having my "old computer" (Sierra with Photoshop, etc.) and the other partition ("new computer") running Catalina newer apps. Is that right? I travel quite a bit. Is my only solution just to carry around two MacBook Pros?
I have to run Sierra. Your only two options are to buy an older machine that will support Sierra (eg, a 2015 Macbook Pro Retina as I did) or, as I was told by Apple, buy a brand new current machine with sufficient RAM (16GB at least) and run Sierra inside a virtual machine, using, say, Parallels.
I'll have 64gb RAM. Okay, so I CAN do what I want if I do this? https://www.macstrategy.com/article.php?168
Yes, but one thing to be aware of. You won't be able to create a fresh install of Sierra using a freshly downloaded or archived MacOS 10.12 Sierra installer. This is because the certificate contained within it has expired. You will get error messages saying the installer is corrupt or something like 'Application is damaged, can’t be used to install macOS'. Can Parallels or VMware create a virtual machine by importing an existing working OS from a DMG of it created by Disk Utility or by using Migration Assistant? Others will know the answer to this.
I did manage to do a clean install of OS Sierra onto a fresh external drive last week. This is how I did it:
I copied the ‘Install macOS Sierra' installer that I had archived onto the desktop of my Mac.
Then I went to System Preferences, then Date & Time. Then I clicked lock at the bottom and unclicked the box next to ‘Set date and time automatically’
Then I launched Terminal.
In Terminal I typed sudo date 0115124517
Pressed return
This set the clock on my Mac to to a date before the certificate inside the OSX Sierra installer had expired.
I then disconnected the Mac from the internet
Now your Mac will show this date.
Only then did I launch the ‘Install macOS Sierra’ disk. Instead of getting an untrusted certificate warning it carried on as normal and gave me a choice of disks on which to install OS Sierra. I chose the frsh connected blank hard disk and ended up with a clean install of OS Sierra.
Only then should you connect your Mac back to the Internet and under Date & Time click the set date and time automatically box.
Having siad all that, there might be an updated Sierra installer according to Tidbits:
Redownload Archived macOS Installers to Address Expired Certificates - TidBITS
Signing certificates for macOS installers have expired, so Apple consultants and IT admins who maintain troubleshooting toolkits containing older installers will need to download new copies.
tidbits.com
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I am running Sierra and Mountain Lion virtual machines with Parallels on my 2018 Mini under Catalina. It works perfectly and all my legacy software runs faster than it ever did on the original old Macs. Setting it up was a bit confusing and I never found a good guide for doing it. I already had a clone of an old Mac with Sierra on an external SSD, and that was easily turned into a VM however this created a blank system disk and the VM booted from the external SSD which needed to be connected for it to work. So I just ran an old copy of Carbon Copy Cloner in the virtual machine to copy everything I needed from the external SSD to the virtual startup disk.
I'm sure there are other ways to set this up, but it worked well for me since what I wanted was virtual versions of two older computers. I'm also running Windows 10 with Parallels and that is also great - much faster than the old Windows machine that it replaced.
I'm sure there are other ways to set this up, but it worked well for me since what I wanted was virtual versions of two older computers. I'm also running Windows 10 with Parallels and that is also great - much faster than the old Windows machine that it replaced.
VMware Fusion 12 *Standard* is now *Player* and is 'free' for personal, non-commercial usage. If interested, check at site to see if it meets requirements; its own and yours.
https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Fusion/12/rn/VMware-Fusion-12-Release-Notes.html