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. 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 we were away. However when we 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 we 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.
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. 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 we were away. However when we 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 we 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.
