Windows guy trying to understand Mac OS

[alexmartinpc]

Thanks, I'm not using a battery right now, by the way, so every time I swap the HDD by the SSD, I have to disconnect the charger and I guess I'm clearing the CMOS equivalent, in other words, time resets I believe. May be that's the problem?

 

[allan.nyholm]

Thanks, I'm not using a battery right now, by the way, so every time I swap the HDD by the SSD, I have to disconnect the charger and I guess I'm clearing the CMOS equivalent, in other words, time resets I believe. May be that's the problem?

I found someone with a similar issue https://apple.stackexchange.com/que...capitan-application-cant-be-verified-it-may-h

A solution might be:

28
If you are confident in the integrity of your installation media, you can use the terminal to bypass this message completely. The below instructions are for installs performed via a bootable USB stick:

1. Open the terminal:
2. Enter: installer -pkg /Volumes/Mac\ OS\ X\ Install\ DVD/Packages/OSInstall.mpkg -target /Volumes/"XXX" where XXX is the name of the disk you're installing to.
3. Wait for the installation to say it's complete. You will not see any sort of progress display.

This allowed me to install El Capitan a couple of weeks ago. I didn't have any internet access at the time, and my Mac had a completely empty hard drive, so I was very happy that I could force the install to go through.
I suspect that this method could be adapted for live installations, but failing that, consider creating a bootable installer and then following the above instructions.

 

[alexmartinpc]

Cannot believe it! The time change command made it work! Thanks man!

 

[allan.nyholm]

Cannot believe it! The time change command made it work! Thanks man!

That's great to hear!

 

[alexmartinpc]

I am installing OS X 11.6 and in the setup process I am asked to enter a name and a password. Can't I leave that space blank so there is no password?
I've been able to remove the password of the original HDD user, so why am I forced now to enter one?

Nevermind, I put a password and then removed once logged in.

Well, fantastic experience at last, by that I mean I was able to make a bootable and install the basic stuff. Now I need to know which of the unsupported versions, if any, works just as good or better than OS X 11.6.

I mean, my friend, who had a really slow MBP, all broken, imagine his reaction if I show him this resurrected MCP with finally a properly working touchpad, keyboard, battery, charging port, which system is way faster, runs way smoother, and has, for example, High Sierra 100% working fine. That would be awesome.

Oh, before I forget, officially this macbook supports up to 1066Hz RAM speed, but I inserted a 1333Hz speed RAM, and in the overview panel it shows 1333Hz, as if it was recognizing it. Nevertheless, some people say that the info under overview or memory is not really trust worthy, so... any tool or utility to check if the RAM is actually being supported at 1333Hz and it's not working at 1066Hz?

 

[alexmartinpc]

Also... where should I check that everything is up to date?

I see an Updates tab under the App Store, but, is there any other app or place where you can/should check for updates?

I'm starting to experience that this OS is more like a mobile OS, like Android, with a single place where all your updates come from (Google Store), rather than Windows Update + drivers + manufacturer site motherboard + programs from the web and their respective updates + Windows Store... I guess it is the Unix thing.

 

[Nermal]

I see an Updates tab under the App Store, but, is there any other app or place where you can/should check for updates?

There may be a Software Update icon in System Preferences (which is in the Apple menu). I can't remember whether it was there in 10.11 though.

Typically you only need to worry about driver updates when using third-party hardware.

 

[hwojtek]

means it is installed in the HDD, which means it's not what I am looking for.

Yeah, how'd you expect it otherwise? Windows is same.
Your solution: put the original HDD into any USB enclosure, leave the SSD inside the Mac, start the computer holding "option" (alt) key, select your Recovery disk to boot from, reinstall from Recovery to internal disk, job done.

How in heavens can I access any interface that comes to play BEFORE the HDD is read?

Using "U", "F" keys held down on powering on to boot from USB or FireWire, respectively?

Where is the data and files that this MBP uses before loading the HDD and OS?

In UEFI.

Like, how do you troubleshoot something if you don't want to use any HDD or SSD. If you don't want to use the OS.

You use Apple Hardware Diagnostics either on a CD or USB.

what if the HDD broke and I didn't have any HDD with mac OS installed?

You use any Apple computer to create a bootable USB from an installer file using /createinstallmedia option.

 

[robvas]

I would patch and install high Sierra on that Mac. Runs better IMO

 

[alexmartinpc]

Thank you Robvas. First, I want to point out the improvements over El Capitan:
-Sierra: Basically same visuals, but I get Siri, Auto-Unlock, app tabs, Universal Clipboard, Messages improved
-High Sierra: new file system (nice), and just a few tweaks in some apps
-Mojave: dark theme, desktop stack, few tweaks in some apps, Metal graphics (worried about this)
-Catalina: app tweaks but not a whole lot of changes

With that in mind, I would go for High Sierra since I would get Siri, new file system... looks like it's the most worthy of them all. I want to ask you if Mojave or Catalina, that use Metal graphics, would be a problem for my GT 9400M GPU. I want the macbook to be as responsive or better than with El Capitan. I would not trade a newer OS, which is basically a few tweaks here and there, over performance and smoothness of the whole system.

Notice my MBP 13" has 2x4GB = 8GB 1333Hz RAM, Intel P7550 2.26GHz, nVIDIA GF 9400M and a SSD, so it's really maxed out. I'm all worried about performance, but this DOSDude guy is presenting a way older MBP than mine running Mojave, and if it runs Mojave, it runs Catalina. Please, answer me from experience, not from "I believe that a 2009 PC won't be able to run properly this or that". I know as a fact that in Windows, a 12 or 15 YO machine will run better with W10 than it will with W7 or Vista.

 

[seinman]

Thank you Robvas. First, I want to point out the improvements over El Capitan:
-Sierra: Basically same visuals, but I get Siri, Auto-Unlock, app tabs, Universal Clipboard, Messages improved
-High Sierra: new file system (nice), and just a few tweaks in some apps
-Mojave: dark theme, desktop stack, few tweaks in some apps, Metal graphics (worried about this)
-Catalina: app tweaks but not a whole lot of changes

The old hardware in a 2009 won't support some of these features, just so you're aware. Specifically, and I may not be 100% on this so if I'm wrong I hope someone corrects me, the following features will never work on that laptop:

-Siri (requires newer security chipset)
-Auto-Unlock (requires newer wifi chipset)
-Metal graphics (requires newer graphics chipset)

 

[leman]

I'm starting to experience that this OS is more like a mobile OS, like Android, with a single place where all your updates come from (Google Store), rather than Windows Update + drivers + manufacturer site motherboard + programs from the web and their respective updates + Windows Store... I guess it is the Unix thing.

Yep, it's designed to be a sane user experience

Many Unix and Linux flavors come with a central software catalogue to streamline software/driver installations and upgrades. Since Apple has tight control of hardware in the Mac, they can ship all the drivers as part of the standard OS. Of course, if you have some specialized third-party hardware (SCSI storage etc.), you might need to install the driver separately.

 

[cwerdna]

Sometimes, printer drivers aren't bundled in Mac OS and need to be installed separately.

 

[Fishrrman]

"Nevermind, I put a password and then removed once logged in"

You WANT to have a password for administrative purposes.
I suggest you re-enter one if you can.

You have a 2009 MBP?
Then use El Cap or 10.12 "Low Sierra" if it will run.
Those are 2 of the best OS releases in recent memory.

 

[alexmartinpc]

I just installed Catalina on the MBP 13" mid 2009, upgraded with 8GB RAM 1333Hz and a SSD, plus a full deep clean of the whole system. It's running simply great, no problems at all. Just one, actually, Siri works fine, but there are times when she bugs and does not listen, like there's no mic. Other times it works flawlessly. Anyways, I believe I'm gonna deactivate it, since it's not that necessary.

Everything else is fine. So, it all turned out real good.

 

[clueless88]

That’s great! Glad to hear that Catalina is working fine on that machine!

I was going to see if earlier versions would work better on my Larazus-ed mid 2012 MBP, but if you are happy I will stick with Catalina.

Congratulations—nice that these aren’t necessarily disposable items.

 

[decafjava]

I can't contribute anything to this thread, but let me say this is one of the reasons I love Macrumours. So much polite helpful conversation to get the OP on track. So nice to see!

 

[alexmartinpc]

I can't contribute anything to this thread, but let me say this is one of the reasons I love Macrumours. So much polite helpful conversation to get the OP on track. So nice to see!

Yeah, so far so good. I've read some misleading info here and there, people tend to talk about what they feel it's gonna happen without really knowing it or having really a clue, besides, since I'm quite savvy about PC, my filter is huge and I really see through when people are talking without much knowledge.

God, there's one thing I hate about MacBooks: their names. Why don't Apple call them officially "MacBook 1, 2, 3..." just like with iPhones. It's so lame to call them MacBook 13" mid 2009. Please, put a proper name, hahaha, stop this agony.

That’s great! Glad to hear that Catalina is working fine on that machine!

I was going to see if earlier versions would work better on my Larazus-ed mid 2012 MBP, but if you are happy I will stick with Catalina.

Congratulations—nice that these aren’t necessarily disposable items.

Yeah, I'm so happy about it. I actually did not try OS X El Capitan with this full upgrade, but since dosdude showed Catalina with a MBP that's slightly older than mine, I was sure it was going to go OK. Really, no computer is disposable if they pass through my hands, Windows or macOS. I would only toss a 2007 or older PC. This MBP now serves perfectly fine as a pdf/word/email laptop for the go. The battery endurance is not that great, even brand new, but for the typical average user that does not need at all a powerful CPU or GPU to do his/her daily tasks, such as my friend, it's fantastic. He's so excited that his old, ready to toss MBP has become again a real laptop, fast, that can do whatever he needs, besides the Catalina news made him his day.

I thought it was going to be the opposite, but I have to say that I believe Windows 10 would work better with this hardware. For example, the boot time with Windows 10 and same hardware machine would be much better on Windows 10. If Windows 10 is a 10/10 in performance with hardware this old, installing macOS would make it score 8.5/10, after 2 days trying everything out. A quick note I wanted to share.

 

[Madonepro]

Yeah, so far so good. I've read some misleading info here and there, people tend to talk about what they feel it's gonna happen without really knowing it or having really a clue, besides, since I'm quite savvy about PC, my filter is huge and I really see through when people are talking without much knowledge.

God, there's one thing I hate about MacBooks: their names. Why don't Apple call them officially "MacBook 1, 2, 3..." just like with iPhones. It's so lame to call them MacBook 13" mid 2009. Please, put a proper name, hahaha, stop this agony.

I guess that's why this site is called MacRumors. Doesn't have to be true, the more speculation the better. As for naming, I like just MacBook Pro, it's simple, everyone knows what you mean, without an elitist take to it. Doesn't really matter to this community what your Mac is, you've got a Mac, welcome.

 

[cwerdna]

God, there's one thing I hate about MacBooks: their names. Why don't Apple call them officially "MacBook 1, 2, 3..." just like with iPhones. It's so lame to call them MacBook 13" mid 2009. Please, put a proper name, hahaha, stop this agony.

It's Apple's goofy marketing. Maybe the identifiers (https://everymac.com/systems/by_capability/mac-specs-by-machine-model-machine-id.html) would be closer to what you'd like (e.g. MacBook6,1) or the other identifiers at https://everymac.com/systems/by_capability/?

I'm guessing it's due to Steve Jobs trying to simplify the product line when he returned. Look at the nuttiness for these years while he was away:

Mac Release Dates 1993 - Macs By Year: EveryMac.com

Technical specifications for all Apple Mac models released in 1993. Dates sold, processor type, memory info, hard drive details and more.

everymac.com

Mac Release Dates 1994 - Macs By Year: EveryMac.com

Technical specifications for all Apple Mac models released in 1994. Dates sold, processor type, memory info, hard drive details and more.

everymac.com

Mac Release Dates 1995 - Macs By Year: EveryMac.com

Technical specifications for all Apple Mac models released in 1995. Dates sold, processor type, memory info, hard drive details and more.

everymac.com

Mac Release Dates 1996 - Macs By Year: EveryMac.com

Technical specifications for all Apple Mac models released in 1996. Dates sold, processor type, memory info, hard drive details and more.

everymac.com

I didn't follow Macs at all back then. I suspect it was a lot of wasted engineering and tooling effort besides complication with marketing, the sales channel, inventory, and retailers needing to stock such a plethora of machines.

I recall once Jobs returned to Apple, Apple started marketing their stuff as good, better, best. Unfortunately, after his death, it seems like Apple has partly reverted to a complicated lineup in certain cases.

For the ummm... not very sophisticated Mac customer/potential customer, they can go to https://www.apple.com/mac/ or store and say... I want Mac laptop. There aren't that many choices. And, if they don't follow Apple's release cycle and 2018 vs. 2019, etc., they'll just buy whatever MacBook Pro they have of the size and price they want...

 

[alexmartinpc]

I guess that's why this site is called MacRumors. Doesn't have to be true, the more speculation the better. As for naming, I like just MacBook Pro, it's simple, everyone knows what you mean, without an elitist take to it. Doesn't really matter to this community what your Mac is, you've got a Mac, welcome.

It's not about being welcome here, it's about saying the name of the product and being able to identify the model. If a client calls me and says "hey, I have a MBP and it's not turning on". I have to ask, yeah, which one. And the lame part comes: "it's a 15" early 2012".

My point is Apple should call them MacBook Pro 2, MacBook Pro 6, MacBook Pro X, etc... stating the date of the release as the model number is such a bad thing. You have the iPhone X Max, the Motorola Moto 7 Pro, the ASUS tablet 5T, etc... since they have very few products compared to other companies, the name is the easiest thing to do, yet years later, we are still with the "mid 2009" thing.

Yes, I know Cwerdna, my model is MacBookPro5,5, but people do not use at all that name, so it's like it doesn't exist. Their new 2020 MBP should be called something like "MacBook Pro X 15" or you could go like every other company and call it "MacBook Pro XR450T". Even their actual identifiers would work, as long as Apple refers to the using that, so people start to use it as well, and when someone tells me "Hey, I have a MacBook Pro 8,0" I know already the model and all.

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

I thought it was going to be the opposite, but I have to say that I believe Windows 10 would work better with this hardware. For example, the boot time with Windows 10 and same hardware machine would be much better on Windows 10. If Windows 10 is a 10/10 in performance with hardware this old, installing macOS would make it score 8.5/10, after 2 days trying everything out. A quick note I wanted to share.

1. About UEFI:
In Mac, it's called EFI, not UEFI.
The files are stored in a hidden partition on the HDD/SSD name "EFI". If you can unhide it, you can open the files, study it, make changes. This is where people like Dosdude1 worked to create their patchers to install newer MacOS on unsupported Macs.
On an USB instaler, there is also a hidden EFI partition, which by default can only be seen by the iMac SMC+NVRAM (BIOS equivalence in PC).

2. About Windows on Mac machines:
You can create a WindowsToGo disk (still remember how to do, don't you?), plug it in the MBP. You will have a working Windows 10 64bit machine.
It will lack some drivers, which can be installed using BootCamp 6, and a few drivers require BootCamp 4.
BootCamp 4 USB can be created using the BootCamp Assistant in your current Mac.
BootCamp 6 can be downloaded somewhere on the Internet. Google for it.

And Windows guy, can you tell me what kind of fancy upgrades you have done on a 13" Windows Laptop, with soldered CPUs? Not very many, I guess. The same will applied to the MBP 13" you are holding.

I just laid my hand on my first Macs several months ago. I would stay away from a laptop thing if dreaming of upgrades.
Find some old Mac Pro or iMacs, and you will get your PC expertise soaring.

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

And to my experience, installing Catalina to a basic model 2009 MBP or iMac or MacPro is just as easy as installing Windows 10 on a Core 2 Duo PC/Laptop.
After creating an USB installer, you just need to boot it up and let the machine do it jobs, click mouse here and there. Things done. There are actually nothings to write home about.

The hard part is to create a proper USB installer, which dosdude1 has done for us.

 

[chucker23n1]

1. Where's the motherboard battery, so I can take it out, do a full CMOS reset and start fresh even from the BIOS?

There is none.

You can reset using macOS Recovery, but I'm not quite sure why/if you want to do that.

2. Where's the BIOS? How can I access what's BEFORE the OS loads? Can I update it?
I've read that it's this thing called Open Firmware, but after pressing "Command + Option + 0 + F" when booting up, it does absolutely nothing. In order to force the mac to enter the BIOS, I put the empty SSD instead of the original HDD with all my friend info, so there's nothing to load, but I always get a blank white screen, nothing going on, and sometimes a folder with a question mark blinks. I'd like to enter the BIOS or whatever it is that is before the OS so I can look into it, get familiar with the menu, see if the hardware is recognized correctly, etc...

Open Firmware was on PowerPC Macs. Intel Macs have EFI instead.

There are various shortcuts on Intel Macs, such as holding ⌥ on startup to choose a different boot volume, pressing D for diagnostics, etc. You haven't really specified what you're trying to do here.

The question mark + folder means it failed to find a bootable volume. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204323

3. I've seen that the last OS version this Macbook supports is the OS X El Capitan 10.11.6. I want to know if I can install, after the 8GB of RAM upgrade, a newer version of Mac OS. I've read something about patching Catalina to make it work in these laptops, but I've never done it, and I don't know if it's problematic as in WiFi not working, or sound, or if it can be done perfectly.

Well, there's usually threads about that on here. For example, here's running 10.12 on unsupported Macs: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macos-10-12-sierra-unsupported-macs-thread.1977128/

That chart says your model should have no issues.

4. Where are the drivers? How does the dedicated graphic card nVIDIA 9400M driver get updated?

Through system updates. It's not a custom third-party module, so there isn't really a custom driver to install. Now, if this were a Mac Pro tower with a GPU you put in, or a Thunderbolt-based eGPU solution, yeah, you might need or benefit from third-party drivers.

5. Since I don't understand if there's a BIOS or not, or if it works as it does in Windows... can I put the empty SSD, "mess around" installing Catalina, El Capitan or whatever, and in any time I want, remove it, put the original OS X El Capitan HDD from my friend and boot it up like normal?

No, not necessarily, as macOS updates can also update the EFI.

I'd like to back up all his data to an external drive, install everything fresh in the SSD, and then move his files and stuff into the SSD with the fresh installation. I'm a newbie here, and who knows, may be if you install Catalina, even if it's in a different storage drive, the BIOS/Open Firmware gets affected and cannot boot from the El Capitan HDD anymore. Just thinking what can go wrong...

That's possible, yes.

 

[Spudlicious]

I used to be a Windows-only guy, have a custom-built PC and stuff, but I got my first Apple computer a couple of years ago and have learnt a lot about how Macs work. So I shall attempt to answer your questions:

1. There is no CMOS battery, and there isn't even technically a CMOS. Macs use a combination of SMC (System Management Controller) which is similar to a BMC from a server, and the NVRAM (Non-volatile memory).

The SMC controls system parts like the fans, does temperature monitoring, controls sleep mode, battery charging, etc... and is kept "alive" as long as the system has power from the battery. The SMC can be reset by removing all power to the machine (disconnecting the battery and charger for a few minutes) or by using a key-combination when the machine is powered off. Resetting the SMC can fix some issues like high fan speed for no reason, or sleep mode issues, charging issues, etc... (Search Apple's support site for information on this as it varies from Mac to Mac.)
The SMC does not store any information or settings, other than fan controller settings. If you installed a Fan Controller app, this is why it is a good idea to reset the SMC after uninstalling the Fan Controller app.

The NVRAM (called PRAM on older Macs) is the closest thing to the CMOS of a Windows PC. It stores all sorts of settings and information such as the currently selected Startup Disk, boot arguments (verbose, single-user, etc...) and a whole host of other information such as recent diagnostics information, recent kernel panic information (similar to Windows blue screen crash-dumps), screen brightness, volume, etc...

You can reset the NVRAM by holding a key combination on startup. Usually it is Option (Alt), Command, P, and R. Hold these until the machine chimes and reboots twice. This will reset all firmware settings (called EFI variables) to their defaults.

2. There isn't really a BIOS or UEFI interface on a Mac. You cannot access any settings menu or anything. The best you can do is to hold the Option (Alt) key during startup to access the Startup Selection menu (Boot Menu). If you want to adjust EFI variables in the NVRAM, you need to boot into macOS and issue the "nvram" command as root (Administrator) in the Terminal. You can set all sorts of variables. For example, nvram boot-args="-v", will set the machine to always boot in verbose mode, which means that you will see text scroll on the screen when macOS is booting instead of the Apple logo. You can undo all these changes with an NVRAM reset.

There are a lot of different key combinations that you can use, such as Command and R to boot into Recovery (needs macOS to be installed on the disk because that 2009 machine is too old and doesn't support Internet Recovery).

Open Firmware is an older firmware that older Macs (especially the older PowerPC-based Macs) but the newer Macs use Intel processors and EFI firmware.

3. Once Apple drops support for an older Mac, you won't be able to install a newer version of macOS than what Apple officially supports on that machine. If you try to boot the installer for a newer version you will simply see a "prohibited" symbol. There are ways to "hack" newer versions of macOS to run on older machines but it is not recommended as they can be unstable and certain things like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, graphics acceleration, etc... may not work properly. If you are still interested in trying anyway, you can look for patchers for macOS, I remember "dosdude1" made a working patcher for Mojave that I tested on an old Mac and it did work, but certain things were broken.

Remember that a Mac can run any operating system, such as Windows or Linux. So you could simply make a bootable UEFI (GPT) Windows or Linux USB drive, hold Option on startup and boot from there. Apple even makes "Boot Camp" driver packages that install all the necessary Windows drivers to make everything work like it does in macOS (brightness keys, etc...) but macOS would still run much better and I would rather not try to use Windows on it.

4. macOS handles the drivers. When you install macOS on a Mac, you do not need to do anything else or install any drivers. macOS has the drivers for every single supported Mac built-in to it and everything will just work which is quite nice. There is no way to update any of the drivers unless you update macOS itself.

5. Yes, you can use a different Startup Disk and everything and swap them out and everything will work just fine. The only thing I would do it reset the NVRAM after you swap the disks because newer versions of macOS could write variables to the NVRAM that older versions won't understand. But it should work fine.

What I would do, is download the latest version of macOS that the machine supports, which appears to be Mac OS X 10.11.6 El Capitan. You would need to use a functional Mac to do this though. Go to this Apple support article and click "Download OS X El Capitan" in Step 4. Then open the DMG file and follow the procedure until you end up with an "Install OS X El Capitan.app" application in the Applications folder. You then need to grab a USB drive that is large enough (8 GB should be enough), open Disk Utility, erase it as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) using the GPT Partition Table, and go to this support article and follow the instructions for El Capitan.

Once you boot into the installer, open Disk Utility, click the disk and erase it using the GPT Partition Table and Mac OS Extended (Journaled) as the file system. This will format the disk completely. You can then Quit Disk Utility and proceed to install macOS.

I hope this information helps you. The Mac world can be quite different to the Windows world. Many concepts are handled completely differently to Windows, some of them you may like, some you might not.

EDIT: Forgot a few things. To answer the question of equivalent things on Macs, here are a few. Remember that as the person above me said, some concepts in the Mac world are completely different.

Equivalent to Task Manager is Activity Monitor.app
Command Prompt or PowerShell is Terminal.app
Disk Management is Disk Utility.app
Notepad is TextEdit.app
Event Viewer is Console.app
Windows Credentials Manager is Keychain Access.app
System Information (sysinfo32.exe) is System Information.app
Settings or Control Panel is System Preferences.app

Also, every applications is actually just a folder or directory with a bunch of files inside. You can browse this by Control-clicking (Right-clicking) a .app file and clicking "Show Package Contents". This will browse you inside the application package and you can see what makes up an App on macOS.

macOS is also Unix-based. That means it is very similar to Unix and Linux in how it works and how the commands in Terminal work. For example, all the familiar Linux tools like dd, ls, top, uname, cat, grep etc... work in the Terminal. Even the Terminal itself drops you at a BASH prompt. Some may even say that macOS is like a really pretty heavily-modified Unix distribution, which isn't far off. This is why you may see many programmers using Macs as they give a very similar environment to that of Linux which feels familiar to those developers. There is even a Linux-style package manager (like apt on Debian or Ubuntu) called Homebrew available for macOS which allows you to install packages and stuff from the Terminal.

I think I have rambled on enough now, I hope this information helps you.

I really think that is an excellent briefing, well done you.