I am guessing that's the case. Another very valuable use, at least to me, was to do an asr from the disk image to a second external and use that as a sandbox to test new software. That way if I decide not to install it I don't have to track down all the various bits that it may have installed beyond just the application. The immediate thing that I would want to test is XtraFinder. I really miss having icon labels that grab your eye but XtraFinder has been getting mixed reviews in Sequoia.
Can still be done but what should take perhaps 5 to 10 minutes with the crazy fast Thunderbolt transfer speeds, is now nearly a two hour chore with my sadly slow internet connection and the need to download a full system installer rather than creating a clone.
BTW Admittedly my experiences are 7 or 8 systems out of date, but both SuperDuper and CCC do a better job of creating asr disk images than Disk utility. Again you need the cloned system to create that asr disk image. Hmmm I wonder if there is a full version of disk utility in the recover boot that would let you accomplish that, still from the sounds of things I am guessing the scan for asr step would fail.
I’ll try to keep this brief and simple...
As already mentioned, the OS portion is very protected on Apple Silicon Macs. Additionally, Apple has been moving more and more to the user folder. For example:
Some system extensions aren't compatible with current versions of macOS or won't be compatible with a future version of macOS. Learn what to do if you see an alert about system extensions or kernel extensions.
support.apple.com
This post gathers info about macOS Sequoia system extensions, network extensions, and third-party app extensions. It also tells how to enable or disable the extensions on macOS Sequoia.
iboysoft.com
Therefore, unlike the past, an OS reinstall is of little or even no benefit. Additionally, with the further sandboxing, experimentation seems easier — though not limited to experimentation. In fact, after upgrading to a new Mac mini, I’ve gone back to multiple accounts (for myself). As of now, one general (e.g., email, broad web surfing, photos, music), one for “work” (i.e., photo and video editing creation, etc), and a test bench account. Because, even though there are utilizes such as
AppCleaner or I can manually hunt down app remnants with not a ton of time and effort, organizing by account or deleting and recreating one (e.g., test bench) is a fairly simple way to keep the clutter contained and managed. That and incremental backups (e.g., TM, CCC) are a simple means of versioning (i.e., undo some mistakes).
With that said, as far as I’ve read but haven’t done since (probably) macOS Catalina, you can still install macOS to an external drive to use as a secondary/test system.
In the modern era,
erase all content and settings, which (basically) destroys and recreates the Data volume, then restore (i.e., user data migration) from an external SSD or fast network storage is the expected method, and should be fairly efficient. That is, assuming such an extensive ‘wipe’ is necessary.
