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biggeordie

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 19, 2020
4
0
Morning all

I hope everybody is well.

I recently bought a a used MacBook Pro Retina 13' Early 2015 to see if I liked the Mac over my windows laptop....ive never used anything other than an iPhone historically so know nothing about Apples OS.

My MacBook has Catalina installed and to try various apps before I officially buy them if I liked them, I downloaded Office 2019 via a torrent, Winrar via a torrent and investigated how to set up my MacBook to accept apps from ALL.

The files downloaded were DMG files, but neither installed, inexplicably the only thing that installed was Adobe Reader...

As I said, I simply want to test the applications to see if I can use them as I love the MacBook, if I like them I will buy them, but so far I can't install / trial any of these downloads.

Am I being dumb...does Catalina not allow cracked apps to be installed, do I need to buy the original apps and take a chance on not liking them and wasting my money?

Any help offered is hugely appreciated.

Thanks in advance

BG
 

ParagJain

macrumors 6502a
Jul 24, 2011
590
141
Most of the modern day software will have a trial version of the software that you can try it out; Microsoft 365 also has it.
You may want to try working with trial versions and to help you decide. later you like it, you buy it

Also, if your documentation are simple enough then you can always use open source or free to use softwares like google docs/sheets & presentations. its free, very powerful and does the job just by using browser.

Torrenting will only hurt our jobs and livelihood.
 

biggeordie

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 19, 2020
4
0
Hi

As I said, once id tried I would buy it if I like it, that is not in doubt.

The apps I am wanting to buy do not have trials, mostly music production software etc, so simply want to try before I spend significant money on an app that might not agree with me.

I am assuming you are not willing to assist me in case I go on to not to buy and carry on using the cracked versions? I respect your point of view but assure you I would not be using cracked software to produce music with, esp the valuable songs I write, simply not worth it, not worth it at all.
 

ilikewhey

macrumors 68040
May 14, 2014
3,616
4,680
nyc upper east
Your gonna have to be more specific, did you drag the files into your Mac folder? Btw Catalina doesn’t work with x86(32) and only x64, you can avoid this by downgrading to Mojave
 

biggeordie

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 19, 2020
4
0
Your gonna have to be more specific, did you drag the files into your Mac folder? Btw Catalina doesn’t work with x86(32) and only x64, you can avoid this by downgrading to Mojave

Hi There,

Thanks very much for your reply.

I opened the Dmg file, it said click twice to install, then a couple of what look like CMD windows pop up and run through a couple of short processes, I then end up with a virtual drives on the desktop, however hard I try I cannot install anything...the only thing that has installed is Adobe PDF Reader.

I think it must be as you said the torrents downloaded must have been in 32bit?

Is downgrading relatively simple to a non Mac laymen?

Thanks in advance

BG
 

ilikewhey

macrumors 68040
May 14, 2014
3,616
4,680
nyc upper east
yeah you're gonna have to reinstall the drive, same process as windows, get a empty usb drive and make a boot loader, just google how to downgrade to mojave, ofcourse we don't know for sure if itss because of x86 issue or not, but this certainly sounds like it.
 

biggeordie

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 19, 2020
4
0
Morning mate,

Thanks for your advice, genuinely appreciated.

Firstly, I have no data on the macbook pro that I need to keep, as I said, i bought this macbook to try to see if I liked it...turns out, even in its factory settings form, I love the feel of the thing, everything about it just screams quality.

So I tried to do a clean install of Mojave, I hopped over to the app store, downloaded Mojave but the OS keeps trying to auto install over Catalina prompting me with an error saying it is not compatible.

I assumed the Mojave image would be at the very least saved to my hdd, however it seems to have been auto deleted...

What am I doing wrong here? I have tried googling for a solution but to no avail (or at least not to my inexperienced mac self)

Thanks for bearing with me on this

Regards

BG
 
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