"The user is at fault!" — hopefully not Apple's new attitude to software quality.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Revised macOS Big Sur 11.2.1 Update Properly Checks Free Available Space to Prevent Installation Errors
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
So who's fault is it then if the user decides to buy the base configuration and doesn't want to spend the money for more storage? You even blame Apple when the purchase was the consumer's choice. You guys here are ridiculous. SMH
If it breaks the OS installation? The OS vendor.
We're talking about storage availability, not the installer. That's what you were quoting me and posted a rebuttal to. And where did I say it's the user's fault about what happened? I said I don't understand why people buy the base configuration and install a ridiculous crapload of applications, games, movies and such to a point they barely have a drive space left. The system needs to run and do memory swaps so filling up the storage drive to a point there's barely any space left is silly, especially when there are plenty of cheap external drives available.
Just to let you know I'm already done with this thread. Apple has already fixed the issue in less than a week from when they posted the faulty software update for Big Sur. What's done is done and the situation has been handled and fixed by Apple. If you want to sit and harp and keep raising this dead horse from burial then go right ahead. I'm moving on to current news.
In my opinion, Apple should institute a OS warning prior to any install effort if the SSD space is low.
Wow. Got caught by this bug just literally day before yesterday on my father-in-laws laptop. Got deathly afraid by getting locked out his hard drive. The installation kept getting failed and it wouldn’t accept the encryption password when getting into recovery mode. And if you chose forgot password, entering iCloud credentials wouldn’t work either. Finally, after resetting the nvram it stopped asking the password when getting into recovery mode. Then I was able to make a clone into an external drive. It was way too stressful. My mistake for not taking backups for him first. Anyway, thankfully was able to do a fresh install and then move the data.
What I dislike immensely is that even if your hard drive is close to exhausted, Apple thinks nothing of silently downloading the "Install MacOS NextWhizBang" app (several gigs) into Applications behind your back, pushing you under the minimum free-space margin needed to swap out your virtual memory. This happened to me within the past month on my "virgin OS" externals, turning a simple bootload into an excruciating ten-minute slogfest, followed by another 15 minutes wasted time hunting to figure out why everything was running at a snail's pace. I finally created a folder of the same name as the app to stop it from continuing to download every time my back was turned.
You can change that. Open System Preferences : Software Update, click on "Advanced…" and uncheck "Download new updates when available:
My understanding is that the installation process did not warn the user they had insufficient space available for the upgrade. Seems a basic omission to me. Plenty of people bought Macs with just 128GB hard drives so keeping 35GB free is not that easy.
It's not just that it didn't warn; it's that it would proceed to (partially, incorrectly) install, and cause serious issues, including:
- an install loop
- rendering the system unbootable. "I tried to do the Big Sur update and near the end of the installation i get the message. Then i’m asked to select a startup disk. I’ve tried rebooted a few times and it always happens. I assume i’ll need to do a recovery of some sort."
- if FileVault is enabled, being unable to log in to Recovery. "If FileVault is enabled on macOS Catalina and Big Sur, you will be prompted to enter in your admin password before getting into recovery. Your password is NOT accepted for recovery."
So I find "well, why did this people have so much stuff on their computers?" just a tad callous.
It's great that Apple fixed this in relatively little time, but it was a serious bug.
My base model mid-2014 Macbook Pro is running smoothly on 11.2.1. Does take a while to boot up but my sister has the exact same model and it takes about the same time to boot so that's likely normal.
Here's a screenshot from the Cinema 4D installer. I mean it's right there, come on Apple.
