M4 iMac 24" Setup Woes

[whitby]

I thought it might interesting to relate some issues I had when helping a friend to set up their brand new M4 iMac, base model (16GB RAM, 256 GB SSD, no ethernet).

Some observations and comments here (for back ground I have an M1 iMac with 16GB and 1TB with enthernet, 16" M1 Max MBPro, 14" M4 MBPro, M4 Pro Mac Mini with 64GB RAM and 2 TB SSD). The friend was replacing an old 2013 21.5" iMac which was well past its 'sell by' date.

1. I had not realized that Apple had deleted the Touch ID option as standard on the base units since 2024. When I purchased mine in 2021 it had the Touch ID on all models. This was a sneaky uplift in price since the option for Touch ID is now at extra cost on the base models. As a result the model my friend purchased did not have Touch ID much to their chagrin.

2. They decided to copy their existing MBA setup to the iMac and then changed their minds and canceled during setup using the cancel button which did not present any warnings as to the consequences which turned out to be quite dire. If you do this, you have to rebuild the entire Mac from scratch with no instructions provided at all. No guide, nothing. You have to know how to erase and rebuild the system using Recovery. This is not friendly.

3. During the rebuild process, you get a black screen showing a diagram of a mouse and keyboard which we eventually deduced was meant to tell you to turn on your Mouse and Keyboard, this despite the fact we had been using them both to get to this point and they were both on. We had to turn the mouse off and on to get it to respond. Doing the same to the keyboard did nothing. This is the most obscure screen I have seen in a while and I have rebuilt Macs many many times and never seen this.

4. Once the Mac downloaded a new copy of Tahoe which took around 2 hours over a 1 Gbps Internet connection, we proceeded to set it up from scratch and encountered the most egregious error I have encountered on a Mac setup. The friend, for reasons not immediately apparent, used a long password for the machine which we was entered twice and accepted. The machine booted into the OS and they were away. However when tyey needed to make some changes and were required to re-enter the password it would not accept it. We assumed this was because the upper case lock key was on or had been on when they set it up, but no, that was not the case. What we did discover is that it was not allowing us to enter the full password, so you needed a password that was longer than the password entry dialog allowed. This was completely unexpected. So we rebuilt the machine from scratch, again.

5. During the process of trying to avoid having to go back and start again, my friend thought that they could reset the password using their Apple ID, but instead the dialog lead them into changing their Apple ID password which has had a lot of repercussions. The confusion over which password and login was expected is not that obvious to anyone who is not familiar with the process, but asking for a password to login to a hard disk (Login to Macintosh HD is a nonsense prompt) made no sense to them when they were trying to erase the disk and reload the OS. You have to erase the system completely and cannot use the existing disk format and just reload a new OS copy without knowing the system password you are trying to reset. Amazingly over complicated. I sorted it out and erased and re-activated the machine.

Bottom line is that it took 24 hours plus to get this machine up and running, hardly a prime exhibit for the ease with which Apple pretend you can setup your new machine. My friend is beginning to wonder whether they made the right decision.

 

[mreg376]

Well, problem number one was canceling an installation halfway through and expecting to recover from that conveniently.

I really don't understand about the password, and the most likely culprit was that the password he was trying to re-enter was wrong.

I have had new Macs of all types since 2007 and never had a problem setting them up. Sounds like the trouble was the result of bad decisions, sloppiness, and possibly bad advice.

 

[whitby]

I have been setting Macs up since 2000 (I have owned around 25 Macs, so have plenty of experience with Apple systems and have a computer systems background so I am not unaware of possible system issues) and I watched them enter the password when it was setup and when re-entered several times and failed, so I know that was not the issue. As for advice, they took the advice of an Apple representative, so I would question two of your conclusions, although wrong decision in the first place was absolutely correct. As for abandoning the transfer from one machine to another, I have done that many times without the issues observed but for older Macs on earlier releases of the OS. I have a suspicion it is related to the need for more security to prevent Macs being stolen and repurposed.

I presented this information as possible assistance and a warning to people who are newer to the process not for my friend or myself to be accused of being incompetent.

 

[Fishrrman]

Do you know what the "erase all content and settings" option is for?

If you had used that, you would not have had to "rebuild" the Mac at all. It would have "reset itself" in a couple of minutes. You really have to try this to see how it works.

By "reset itself", I mean the Mac would have been returned to "moment zero". Moment zero is what you see (and the state of the internal SSD) when you first take it out of the box and press the power-on button for the very first time.

As mentioned above, maybe it's not such a good idea to cancel a setup/migration in progress. Can leave things in a messed-up state.

Finally, Fishrrman's "guaranteed to work right on the first try™" method of migration:
- get an external drive (HDD will work, but SSD preferred)
- get CarbonCopyCloner (you can download and use if FOR FREE for 30 days if you don't own it)
- use CCC to clone the source Mac's drive to the external drive
- DO NOT press the power button (on the new Mac) for the first time UNTIL you connect the CCC backup
- Now press the power on button and run setup assistant and migrate from the CCC backup.

 

[sickoagb]

Touch ID was always something you had to spec up for, even on the original 2021 24" iMac

 

[whitby]

Do you know what the "erase all content and settings" option is for?

If you had used that, you would not have had to "rebuild" the Mac at all. It would have "reset itself" in a couple of minutes. You really have to try this to see how it works.

By "reset itself", I mean the Mac would have been returned to "moment zero". Moment zero is what you see (and the state of the internal SSD) when you first take it out of the box and press the power-on button for the very first time.

As mentioned above, maybe it's not such a good idea to cancel a setup/migration in progress. Can leave things in a messed-up state.

Finally, Fishrrman's "guaranteed to work right on the first try™" method of migration:
- get an external drive (HDD will work, but SSD preferred)
- get CarbonCopyCloner (you can download and use if FOR FREE for 30 days if you don't own it)
- use CCC to clone the source Mac's drive to the external drive
- DO NOT press the power button (on the new Mac) for the first time UNTIL you connect the CCC backup
- Now press the power on button and run setup assistant and migrate from the CCC backup.

The unfortunate issue with “erase all content and settings option”, which I have used but my friend had not, still requires you to enter the machine password to start the process, which was the problem, as they could not get it to accept the password they thought they had entered. So they were stuck. Apple themselves told them to go into recovery mode and erase the machine.

I agree it was not a good idea to stop the migration but once you hit that cancel button you are done it would appear.

Also CCC is my favorite utility and I use it a lot for just such a purpose as you describe. But they got way past that at the time I was asked to help.

 

[whitby]

Touch ID was always something you had to spec up for, even on the original 2021 24" iMac

I could not remember and thought Touch ID had been included on all models in 2021, my bad. But it was the Apple tech who told my friend it was always included but you are right about 2021 models. The lower spec GPU had no Touch ID and you had to add the extra GPU core to get Touch ID and the TB ports. My friend just missed the option when ordered their M4 iMac and had not realized it did not come without Touch ID. It apparently confused the Apple tech too. Sorry misled everyone here.

 

[whitby]

Learning moments from this episode:

1. Pay attention to the small print when ordered your iMac otherwise you will not realize that what you want is an option!

2. Do not automatically migrate one of your existing machines unless you intend to replace it. My friend was keeping the MBA they used for the migration activity so migration was the wrong option. Start up from scratch. This one decision resulted in all the problems that followed.

3. If you do start the migration do not stop it despite there being an option to do so. The system cannot recover cleanly and you will need to enter Recovery mode to get it back. Easy enough when you know how to do this, not if you are not that familiar with setting up a Mac.

4. Be careful with those passwords. Overly long and complex passwords can be a pain to re-enter correctly. I am still pretty certain it is possible to set up a password in setup that cannot be used when running the system normally, but I am not going to try it on one of my own machines since the consequences are a pain to deal with. You can reset the machine password using the Apple ID associated with the machine, but Apple do not make it easy to find or use.

5. Pay attention to the prompts when trying to change passwords as it appears to easier than you think to change your Apple ID password rather than, say, the one for the machine. At least that is what happened to my friend who did not realize they had changed their Apple ID password and not reset the machine password.

6. Do not always accept what ChatGPT/Gemini/Claude/Perplexity tell you. My friend tried to use them and they gave erroneous information. Apple techs are very helpful and the best source.

Again, I am posting this so that it might help less experienced users. For those of us with long experience, it would seem to be quite difficult to get into the position my friend found themselves in and I appreciate the comments, but I tried to show that even with Apple's so called easy process, it is quite easy to get into a complete mess for an inexperienced user.