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You have no idea who signed off on anything at Apple. Nobody here knows what happened. It may have been an entire team that made the mistake. What happens now, Apple fires their entire team over this? I think not. Like I said nobody here knows what happened so telling me your personal scenario with your company really doesn't matter. There's no way you can relate unless you were at Apple and knew exactly what happened. The issue was discovered one week after the Big Sur update. This forum is acting very dramatic only because it's Apple. Had Microsoft made this blunder and didn't fix it until a month later the Windows fans would just say, "Business as Usual", accept the update and move on instead of going on forums trashing a company even though they fixed the blunder in a week's time. SMH.
I think it speaks for apple that we expect more from them, and they should be up to it. Also I think if it would be a whole team, that team still has a manager. Also sure why not fire the whole team ?
 
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I think it speaks for apple that we expect more from them, and they should be up to it. Also I think if it would be a whole team, that team still has a manager. Also sure why not fire the whole team ?
Well when you raise your own expectations you're setting yourself up for disppointment. So Apple didn't match up to your "high exceptions", are you going to switch to Windows full time now? Sounds like that's the plan since Apple can't fulfill your high exceptions.
 
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I need to have my 2TB Dropbox folder on an external drive. I also host a dozen websites on my laptop and have a dozen email accounts ... on a machine with only 128GB of storage space. It's so easy to run out of space... I've operated this laptop for years with only 4GB of free space. Need to get creative.
Not sure why you felt the need to tell me this.
 
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Running a 2013 MacBook Air with thousands of hours of usage. Runs like new, but has only 128GB of storage space and 4GB of memory. Upgraded the OS several times over the years. Heavy usage, working great.

However, apparently I "cheaped out" when I purchased this laptop 7 years ago.

(Yes, it can run Big Sur just fine should I choose to install it.)
Not sure why you're telling me any of this.
 
Haha, really don't be daft. Any it's down to the developer not Apple on how the App is built.
I don't feel as daft as your baseless criticism.

This isn't an app, it's an operating system update. It's Apple's operating system update. Microsoft doesn't distribute bundled x86 and x64 binaries of Windows. They distribute them separately. I can't imagine why Apple wouldn't do the same.
 
I fell victim to this issue last week. Finally found my “box of random cables” hoping to have a thunderbolt cable hiding, but no... just every other cable imaginable. Now I get to spend 30 bucks on a cable that I’ll only use one time to connect my MacBook to iMac to get out of this install error cycle.
The best cable to use with Configurator is the USB-C charging cable which comes with the MacBook, as long as the host Mac has USB-C.
 
Well when you raise your own expectations you're setting yourself up for disppointment. So Apple didn't match up to your "high exceptions", are you going to switch to Windows full time now? Sounds like that's the plan since Apple can't fulfill your high exceptions.
I don't think its actually a "high expectation" for an installer to check available and necessary disk space. On the other hand you seem to settle for below average for the sake of not being disappointed... Also demanding better from Apple, doesn't mean I need to switch.. it means I demand better from Apple.
 
There have been way more bugs that require you to "simply" restart your computer.. like it's a bloody Windows machine or something. They seem to think that this sort of solution is acceptable. I realize Big Sur is a pretty big change for Mac OS, so I hope it improves in the future.
 
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There have been way more bugs that require you to "simply" restart your computer.. like it's a bloody Windows machine or something. They seem to think that this sort of solution is acceptable. I realize Big Sur is a pretty big change for Mac OS, so I hope it improves in the future.
Where is the big change ? They changed a couple of icons and added a new cpu architecture to support, but the latter is only a change in the compiler and leaves most devs unaffected.
 
I don't think its actually a "high expectation" for an installer to check available and necessary disk space. On the other hand you seem to settle for below average for the sake of not being disappointed... Also demanding better from Apple, doesn't mean I need to switch.. it means I demand better from Apple.
You misread my post. When did I state that you're expecting too much for the installer to check available space? I never wrote such a thing. I'm saying you're expecting too much if you expect a company made up of humans to be mistake proof. Are you mistake proof? I was saying what's done is done and what's the point of the continuing trashing? Let's be real about this. I'm willing to bet less than 5 people throwing fire about this were even affected, especially since this was fixed in a week. You do realize it can only affect people installing the OS and they had to have less space available for anything to go wrong? That's not a common daily thing such as running the OS or running software. Yes the OS should check for availability of space. Obviously it's not something Apple doesn't want to happen, that's why they fixed it in less than a week since the Big Sur update that caused this.

Funny how Microsoft could easily get away with this without fixing Windows 10 until a month later and people would barely say a thing about it. 🙄
 
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You misread my post. When did I state that you're expecting too much for the installer to check available space? I never wrote such a thing. I'm saying you're expecting too much if you expect a company made up of humans to be mistake proof. Are you mistake proof? I was saying what's done is done and what's the point of the continuing trashing? Let's be real about this. I'm willing to bet less than 5 people throwing fire about this were even affected, especially since this was fixed in a week. You do realize it can only affect people installing the OS and they had to have less space available for anything to go wrong? That's not a common daily thing such as running the OS or running software. Yes the OS should check for availability of space. Obviously it's not something Apple doesn't want to happen, that's why they fixed it in less than a week since the Big Sur update that caused this.

Funny how Microsoft could easily get away with this without fixing Windows 10 until a month later and people would barely say a thing about it. 🙄
But who here is actually suggesting Apple should be mistake proof? Being that this is a thread about a shockingly basic mistake, the proposition that would seem more relevant to respond to is "Why is one of the world's most resourceful, prestigious companies making such startlingly simple, easy-to-avoid errors?"
 
But who here is actually suggesting Apple should be mistake proof? Being that this is a thread about a shockingly basic mistake, the proposition that would seem more relevant to respond to is "Why is one of the world's most resourceful, prestigious companies making such startlingly simple, easy-to-avoid errors?"
You just contradicted yourself.
 
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When upgrading to macOS Big Sur, there was an error that would cause issues if there wasn't enough storage space available. Unfortunately, the update was not checking if there was enough free space before the installation started, which could lead to data loss.

First-Look-Big-Sur-Feature2.jpg

The free space issue has been addressed in a revised macOS Big Sur 11.2.1 update that was released this morning. According to Mr. Macintosh, the new update checks to make sure there is enough available storage space before installation starts.


If you don't have enough free space, the installer will say "There is not enough free space on the selected volume to upgrade the OS," and it will let you know how much additional space is required.

The new update that was released today is available only if you had not previously installed macOS Big Sur 11.2.1.






Article Link: Revised macOS Big Sur 11.2.1 Update Properly Checks Free Available Space to Prevent Installation Errors
is it just me or has Apple now changed updates, on all devices , to where you must update 'All' AND it doesn't tell you the size of the update? If this is so its a really silly and somewhat noxious change!
 
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You misread my post. When did I state that you're expecting too much for the installer to check available space? I never wrote such a thing. I'm saying you're expecting too much if you expect a company made up of humans to be mistake proof. Are you mistake proof? I was saying what's done is done and what's the point of the continuing trashing? Let's be real about this. I'm willing to bet less than 5 people throwing fire about this were even affected, especially since this was fixed in a week. You do realize it can only affect people installing the OS and they had to have less space available for anything to go wrong? That's not a common daily thing such as running the OS or running software. Yes the OS should check for availability of space. Obviously it's not something Apple doesn't want to happen, that's why they fixed it in less than a week since the Big Sur update that caused this.

Funny how Microsoft could easily get away with this without fixing Windows 10 until a month later and people would barely say a thing about it. 🙄
What has MS to do with this ? Also being an Apple forum naturally we speak about Apple - their achievements and also mistakes. Also when did MS make such a mistake of not checking install size ? You might bring in reference as you talk about MS all the time.

Finally we talk not one person doing a mistake. We talk about a team of developers letting that slip (Apple used to have 2 devs working on the same code to cross check each other in the past but I think they changed that). In addition they should have a standard package which appears not been used.
Also we talk about QA team letting that slip as well.
 
It doesn't help that Apple has frankly been stingy on storage for years. They've only just recently made 256GB the minimum when it should have been the standard base at least 5 years ago.
Yeah... It's pretty inexcusable that the installer didn't verify there was sufficient space before trying to do the upgrade -- but for some reason, sloppy code like this has become ALL too common. (DropBox's client is a long-time guilty party with this. It lets people try to open content shared with them even if doing so means it will run their drive almost out of space as the local copy of it downloads. They need to ensure there's some sort of margin of free space remaining, since the OS itself needs a bit of room to keep working properly.)

But Apple's ridiculous idea of selling so many devices with really small drives just makes it worse. Personally, I would never buy ANY laptop with non-removable/upgradable storage unless it had at least 512GB to 1TB of capacity. Yet Apple kept encouraging the purchase of the smaller capacity drives, and price gouging the people who did want custom configurations with larger sized ones -- claiming "People don't need to save much locally anymore, with everything going to the cloud."
 
This happened to my wife's Macbook. Tried to install the update, and then just errored out midway through. She was unaware of this issue before updating, and I only found out when she asked me to play tech support after the fact.

Had to boot up her computer in Target Disk Mode and clear up some space so the install could be completed. Did a Carbon Copy Clone in the process just in case the whole thing ended up FUBAR'd.

Thankfully nothing seemed affected in the process. Made sure to do a Time Machine backup afterwards just in case.
 
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This happened to my wife's Macbook. Tried to install the update, and then just errored out midway through. She was unaware of this issue before updating, and I only found out when she asked me to play tech support after the fact.

Had to boot up her computer in Target Disk Mode and clear up some space so the install could be completed. Did a Carbon Copy Clone in the process just in case the whole thing ended up FUBAR'd.

Thankfully nothing seemed affected in the process. Made sure to do a Time Machine backup afterwards just in case.
I think the news article is about installing the OS (upgrading from Catalina to Big Sur) and the system not checking for appropriate storage, not about installing software updates. The system requires 36GB of available space for the OS to install or it doesn't happen resulting is possible data loss. When upgrading the OS it has to set aside the System folder and remove the old OS (Catalina or earlier) and install the new one (Big Sur). Data loss resulted from not checking if the 36GB minimum was met. Software updates to the OS are not what this issue is about.
 
I think the news article is about installing the OS (upgrading from Catalina to Big Sur) and the system not checking for appropriate storage, not about installing software updates. The system requires 36GB of available space for the OS to install or it doesn't happen resulting is possible data loss. When upgrading the OS it has to set aside the System folder and remove the old OS (Catalina or earlier) and install the new one (Big Sur). Data loss resulted from not checking if the 36GB minimum was met. Software updates to the OS are not what this issue is about.
She was updating to Big Sur from Catalina.
 
The best cable to use with Configurator is the USB-C charging cable which comes with the MacBook, as long as the host Mac has USB-C.
Oh I wish it was that easy. Both my MacBook Pro and iMac a few years old and pre USB-C. Everything I've read so far says Thunderbolt 2 is the only way to go.

...darn you Apple for making computers that last forever...
 
Both my MacBook Pro and iMac a few years old and pre USB-C. Everything I've read so far says Thunderbolt 2 is the only way to go.

...darn you Apple for making computers that last forever...
Configurator will absolutely not work with true Thunderbolt cables so you would need to use a USB-A to USB-C cable. This is clearly spelled out in Apple's documentation:
For Apple Silicon computers: https://support.apple.com/guide/app...ore-a-mac-with-apple-silicon-apdd5f3c75ad/mac
For Intel computers: https://support.apple.com/guide/app...r-restore-an-intel-based-mac-apdebea5be51/mac
 
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