High Sierra Public Beta 2 cannot be installed on iMac 2017

[Bob418]

After good results running High Sierra Public Beta 2 on my MacBook Air (mid 2012) and office iMac (late 2013), I tried to install it on my new iMac 5K 2017 (3.8GHz i5/32GB RAM/1TB SSD). I followed the exact same procedure as on other Macs:

• Enroll the iMac
• Download and install macOS Public Beta Access Utility
• Download the beta installer

When I ran the installer, it gave this message:

Installation of macOS could not continue.​

Installation requires downloading important content. That content can't be downloaded at this time. Try again later.​

I tried many times and the results remain the same.

Is it because my iMac is too new and Apple haven't added support to it in the beta?

Has anyone managed to install High Sierra Public Beta 2 on new iMac? If yes, please share your experience here.

 

[960design]

Does not apply directly to your case, but just as a support notice:
High Sierra (17A306f) is currently running on my iMac5kr, 27", Late2015

 

[Ebenezum]

Just curious why you want to install it on all your Macs?

I only install beta OS on a Mac Mini which has no important information and I can easily erase the drive if necessary. No way I'm going to install beta OS on my main Mac!

 

[EugW]

Have you tried running it from a different computer in target mode or running it off an external hard drive just to confirm it works?

Is it because my iMac is too new and Apple haven't added support to it in the beta?

I installed High Sierra Public Beta 1 on an external hard drive and it works fine on my 2017 iMac (i5-7600 / 575 / 1 TB SSD). However, I haven't tried Public Beta 2 yet.

 

[Bob418]

Just curious why you want to install it on all your Macs?

I only install beta OS on a Mac Mini which has no important information and I can easily erase the drive if necessary. No way I'm going to install beta OS on my main Mac!

The main reason is I want to test new video coding with Apple's pro tools. My experience with the beta on MBA and 2013 iMac are very smooth and all my main apps run well (or better) under High Sierra. So I decide to use the beta on the new iMac. Of course I have a time machine backup on external SSD, so the full system restoring won't take much time if I really need to go back.

 

[EugW]

Is it because my iMac is too new and Apple haven't added support to it in the beta?

The main reason is I want to test new video coding with Apple's pro tools. My experience with the beta on MBA and 2013 iMac are very smooth and all my main apps run well (or better) under High Sierra. So I decide to use the beta on the new iMac. Of course I have a time machine backup on external SSD, so the full system restoring won't take much time if I really need to go back.

You can test all of that with an external drive. In fact, you can just clone one of your other machines’ drive and run off there.

 

[Bob418]

Have you tried running it from a different computer in target mode or running it off an external hard drive just to confirm it works?


I installed High Sierra Public Beta 1 on an external hard drive and it works fine on my 2017 iMac (i5-7600 / 575 / 1 TB SSD). However, I haven't tried Public Beta 2 yet.

I directly ran the installer from my new iMac's internal drive, and it refused to install.

How did you install High Sierra Public Beta 1 on to your external hard drive?

 

[EugW]

I directly ran the installer from my new iMac's internal drive, and it refused to install.

How did you install High Sierra Public Beta 1 on to your external hard drive?

What I did for my HS PB1 install was to clone my iMac's drive to an external drive, then booted off that drive to install PB1. However, if it's not working for you on your iMac's internal drive, then it may not work for an external clone of that drive either.

Alternatively, you can just clone your laptop High Sierra drive to an external drive, and then boot your iMac off that. No need to mess with your iMac's internal drive at all. Or else you can use Target Disk Mode from your laptop.

 

[Bob418]

Alternatively, you can just clone your laptop High Sierra drive to an external drive, and then boot your iMac off that. No need to mess with your iMac's internal drive at all.

Good idea!!! I'll take this one and try it tomorrow. Thanks for your help.

 

[RoNagey]

After good results running High Sierra Public Beta 2 on my MacBook Air (mid 2012) and office iMac (late 2013), I tried to install it on my new iMac 5K 2017 (3.8GHz i5/32GB RAM/1TB SSD). I followed the exact same procedure as on other Macs:

• When I ran the installer, it gave this message:

Installation of macOS could not continue.​

Installation requires downloading important content. That content can't be downloaded at this time. Try again later.​

I tried many times and the results remain the same.

Is it because my iMac is too new and Apple haven't added support to it in the beta?

Has anyone managed to install High Sierra Public Beta 2 on new iMac? If yes, please share your experience here.

I have the exact same problem on my Late 2012 Mac mini so it's not due to the newness of your Mac.

 

[Huwpne]

I'm getting the same issue with a machine 2 years old

 

[EugW]

Did you remember to register the problem machines for the beta? Regardless if you registered before or not, each individual machine needs to be registered.

 

[Huwpne]

Did you remember to register the problem machines for the beta? Regardless if you registered before or not, each individual machine needs to be registered.

[doublepost=1500736969][/doublepost]Yes, already have the first Publlic Beta installed, it's not appearing in the App Store as an available update - so tried reregistering the machine, and got the message

 

[Bob418]

Today when I clicked the beta installer from Launchpad on my new iMac, it suddenly let it go. (It surprised me as I clicked it everyday and it never succeeded.)

I choose to proceed after a quick time machine backup. It took 35 minutes to complete the installation. It's acceptable as I have 470GB data in SSD drive which I chose to convert to APFS. I've run the system for 3 hours and it has been very smooth (as I expected). The system is doing the indexing work at the backend which is absolutely unnoticeable, unlike MBA 2012 and iMac 2013. But it does keep releasing more space from the SSD, now 12GB more free space. It should me more but I installed the full Xcode 9 beta 3 package.

My workflow highly relies on Homebrew (and its packages), and it works flawlessly with exception of 2 warnings on OS version (10.13) and Ruby version (2.3.3). So far, everything works, even Outlook gives no problem (MS seemed to have just released an update to Outlook). I'll now use my new iMac normally. Hopefully no big problems will happen

 

[Ebenezum]

The main reason is I want to test new video coding with Apple's pro tools. My experience with the beta on MBA and 2013 iMac are very smooth and all my main apps run well (or better) under High Sierra. So I decide to use the beta on the new iMac. Of course I have a time machine backup on external SSD, so the full system restoring won't take much time if I really need to go back.

That is a valid reason.

I do suggest making a clone of your Mac in addition to Time Machine which unfortunately has had its share of bugs in the past. I'm not saying that you cant use Time Machine but I cant recommend relying on it especially with beta software...