Migrating from El Capitan to High Sierra on new Mac - major problems.

Rod


Joined
Jun 12, 2011
Messages
9,628
Reaction score
1,830
Points
113
Location
Melbourne, Australia and Ubud, Bali, Indonesia
Your Mac's Specs
2021 M1 MacBook Pro 14" macOS 14.4.1, Mid 2010MacBook 13" iPhone 13 Pro max, iPad 6, Apple Watch SE.
Ah yes, well that would prevent the process. I neglected to note that my wifes CCC backup was of macOSX High Sierra and the new device macOSX Mojave. So obviously they were compatible with the device but we did have to update the new device after the clone completed to Mojave again. Perhapes El Capitan would be too old?
I suppose trying to see if it would boot at all would prove that either way but maybe risky?
Alternatively could the OP update his old MBP to High Sierra first?
 
Joined
Jan 1, 2009
Messages
15,452
Reaction score
3,808
Points
113
Location
Winchester, VA
Your Mac's Specs
MBP 16" 2023 (M3 Pro), iPhone 15 Pro, plus ATVs, AWatch, MacMinis (multiple)
One alternative would be to install Sierra on the 2017 MBa (since it originally came with that) and the use MA.
Yes, but frankly from where you are it seems to me to make better sense to reinstall HS on the new machine and use MA at the right time to migrate from the clone to get everything in the right place and all set up for you. You could go back to Sierra and do the same thing, but eventually you will want to move on when updates to Sierra stop, so why not just do that now, while everything is up in the air?
 
OP
krs

krs


Joined
Sep 16, 2008
Messages
3,555
Reaction score
610
Points
113
Location
Canada
Why not simply reverse clone your SuperDuper copy of your 2011 MBP to the new device. This keeps everything intact as per the old device.
I did this 6 months ago using Carbon Copy Cloner to copy the contents of my wife's 2011 MBP to her new 2018 MBPr.

You simply need to boot the new device from the clone then using SuperDuper select your new device MacintoshHD as Target and the clone as the Source and clone.
I am assuming that SuperDuper works in the same way as CCC and that it is bootable.

This is exactly what I ended up doing.
So far it works fine with a few exceptions - which may actually be normal
Exeption 1 - the passwords for Apple Mail didn't transfer to the new Mac. The passord field was empty. adding the password manually for the two mail accounts made that work.
Exception 2 - There were some games on the old Mac downloaded from the Apple store. They didn't work on the new Mac after cloning, Apple seems to check the hardware.
Plan is to delete those and get them from the Apple store again - I assume without having to pay again. I will try that tomorrow.

I also read that Microsoft applications have to be reregistered bcause of the new hardware, but that didn't happen.
I tried Word, Excel and PowerPoint - they all work fine on the new Mac.
 
OP
krs

krs


Joined
Sep 16, 2008
Messages
3,555
Reaction score
610
Points
113
Location
Canada
Alternatively could the OP update his old MBP to High Sierra first?
Yes, that could certainly be done.
But the whole idea was to keep the existing OS which the user finally got comfortable with and just change the hardware.
That's why I'm jumping through loops to get this all working on ElCap
 
OP
krs

krs


Joined
Sep 16, 2008
Messages
3,555
Reaction score
610
Points
113
Location
Canada
Yes, but frankly from where you are it seems to me to make better sense to reinstall HS on the new machine and use MA at the right time to migrate from the clone to get everything in the right place and all set up for you. You could go back to Sierra and do the same thing, but eventually you will want to move on when updates to Sierra stop, so why not just do that now, while everything is up in the air?

If Apple didn't have the habit of either deleting or changing some existing capability on newer releases, going directly to HS would make sense for this user.
However, I have used Macs since OS 6, that's a lot of years ago, and until Snow Leopard I think the evolution of the OS went well.
But from Lion onwards I feel Apple keeps paying less and less attention to the Mac and things software related have been going downhill steadily.
Every OS release that I have used after SL has had capability removed that I was using and one would typically only find out after one upgraded and used the OS for a while.
So the plan is to use ElCap as long as possible and then jump say 5 or 6 OS releases.
 

Rod


Joined
Jun 12, 2011
Messages
9,628
Reaction score
1,830
Points
113
Location
Melbourne, Australia and Ubud, Bali, Indonesia
Your Mac's Specs
2021 M1 MacBook Pro 14" macOS 14.4.1, Mid 2010MacBook 13" iPhone 13 Pro max, iPad 6, Apple Watch SE.
To start with I do not agree that that Apple has played a decreasing amount of attention on software development. The introduction of a unique new filing system in Mac OS High Sierra and System Integrity Protection (SIP) alone should be enough to illustrate Apple's ongoing commitment to software development. New editing options in Photos, new Screen Capture caperbilities, new touch pad gestures and options, DarkMode, the impending move to 64bit apps only, iTunes controversial dropping of mobile app management, the list goes on and on.
What I think you are criticizing is change.
Apple has never in my memory removed a function but they have changed the way we access those functions and sometimes they are combined into other actions.
This is the way it has always been at each new OSX upgrade.
Upgrading more than one or two OSX's at a time would only magnify the quantity of changes making it even more difficult to adjust.
It has been demonstrated time and time again that gradual incremental updates ensure mobile device compatibility, security and functions transition smoothly to the next version.
Much of El Capitan's OS will not be compatible with the OS after 10.14 Mojave, not least the change from HFS+ to APFS and the removal of 32bit app comparability.
Given that Apple tends to remove the last OSX from the App Sore after the release of the next one I personally would not want to stuck running El Capitan when macOSX 10.15 is released.
We have seen enough issues with users transitioning from Sierra to High Sierra but at least the issues are current and understood. In a few years they won't be and the software will have evolved so far that the catchup will be difficult to say the least.


Sent from my iPhone
 
OP
krs

krs


Joined
Sep 16, 2008
Messages
3,555
Reaction score
610
Points
113
Location
Canada
Apple has never in my memory removed a function ............

Well.....
I think the "Save As..." function that disappeared for a while was probably the most noticed one of the ones that disappeared.
At one point one had to use the option key to bring it back and eventually it ended up in the "File" drop down again but it now works differently that it did before.

The other function I miss a lot is the "Bounce" feature in Apple Mail.
I know people argue that this didn't actually work, and yes, in specific cases it didn't, but for the ones it did it sure got my email spam down to one or two messages per week, now I'm back to a dozen a day.

But you're right - most of the issues relate to change - a lot of unnecessary change and in my opinion poorly thought out by Apple.
Take the 'tags' for instance - tags (or equivalent) used to highlight the complete row in the colour selected, now all it does is place a dot at the very right of the name field.
I use a wide screen monitor and a very wide name field to accomodate the full name if it happens to be long. So if a tag is shown where the name in the name field is short, it's sometimes difficult to determine which file or folder name the tag lines up with.
With the previous implementation that was not a problem. Apple should have at least kept the old way as an option - I don't see any reason why Apple changed that.
The new implementation also has a bug - at least I consider that a bug. Don't know if it is fied in releases beyond ElCap.
If you have a larger number of files tagged, say 30 or 40 sequentially, then to remove all those tags one cannot just use the shift key to select them all and click to delete them, one has to delete them in smaller chunks of 8 or 10 at a time.
That was never a problem with the old implementation.

There are dozens of these little bugs or quirks in ElCap that I eventually either found a work-around or am living with, I'm sure there are more with Sierra and High Sierra etc.
I just don't want to go through that every year with every release.
 

IWT


Joined
Jan 23, 2009
Messages
10,218
Reaction score
2,175
Points
113
Location
Born Scotland. Worked all over UK. Live in Wales
Your Mac's Specs
M2 Max Studio Extra, 32GB memory, 4TB, Sonoma 14.4 Apple 5K Retina Studio Monitor
I think the "Save As..." function that disappeared for a while was probably the most noticed one of the ones that disappeared.

It didn't disappear - it got hidden.

In all apps native to Apple, if you don't see "Save As", simply hold down the Option key and "Save" becomes "Save As' - or both appear.

Ian
 
OP
krs

krs


Joined
Sep 16, 2008
Messages
3,555
Reaction score
610
Points
113
Location
Canada
It didn't disappear - it got hidden.
That is technically correct, but for the average Mac user it essentially diappeared.
It's not that Apple announced anywhere that the "Save As..." feature is now available by holding down the option key.

I use the "Save As....." option many times a day, and so does everyone else I know - I really don't know what Apple was thinking when they made that change.
 
Joined
Jan 1, 2009
Messages
15,452
Reaction score
3,808
Points
113
Location
Winchester, VA
Your Mac's Specs
MBP 16" 2023 (M3 Pro), iPhone 15 Pro, plus ATVs, AWatch, MacMinis (multiple)
Save As is well and visible in Mojave. I see it in Safari, Pages, Numbers, Word, Excel. Where is it missing for you?
I use a wide screen monitor and a very wide name field to accomodate the full name if it happens to be long. So if a tag is shown where the name in the name field is short, it's sometimes difficult to determine which file or folder name the tag lines up with.
On my wide screen monitor Finder, (I presume that is what you are talking about), has grey lines and white lines to help you track across to find the right data for any file. This arrangement is, I believe, the default. It looks kind of like the old barred paper from mainframe printers.

If you have a larger number of files tagged, say 30 or 40 sequentially, then to remove all those tags one cannot just use the shift key to select them all and click to delete them, one has to delete them in smaller chunks of 8 or 10 at a time.
That was never a problem with the old implementation.
Wrong. I just did exactly that. I chose 80 files, applied a tag, then reselected them all and removed the tag. Done. Used the shift key to select them both times.

While "bounce" as a function is not there in Mail, it's simple enough to write a rule in Mail to bounce a message back to the sender when mail arrives. You can even set the action based on which address is in the "To:" field of the incoming so that you can customize the return message. (I'm presuming your reference to "bounce" is similar to Outlook's "out of office" function. I have never actually used anything called "bounce" in Mail.)

Bottom line: Most of your complaints about Mojave lost functions are not actually lost, just implemented in a different way. Change is not hard when taken incrementally, but can be brutal if small changes are put off until they become, in toto, major.
 
OP
krs

krs


Joined
Sep 16, 2008
Messages
3,555
Reaction score
610
Points
113
Location
Canada
Save As is well and visible in Mojave. I see it in Safari, Pages, Numbers, Word, Excel. Where is it missing for you?
"Save As....' disappeared from the File drop down in Lion - people complained enough and loud that Apple brought it back in a later OS.
I thought that was well known - it was quite an issue at the time.
It's not miising on Elcap which is what I am using myself right now, but that is not what we were discussing previously.
On my wide screen monitor Finder, (I presume that is what you are talking about), has grey lines and white lines to help you track across to find the right data for any file. This arrangement is, I believe, the default. It looks kind of like the old barred paper from mainframe printers.
I understand what you are saying (comparing it to paper from main frame printers), but on ElCap I sure don't have anything like that.
Maybe there is an option I can enable that I have not found, or this is Apple's idea of fixing the problem I described.
I found Apple has the habit of never wanting to asdmit they made a mistake and reverting back to the way a feature worked before. That happened with "Save As..." as well when they brought it back in a later OS.
Wrong. I just did exactly that. I chose 80 files, applied a tag, then reselected them all and removed the tag. Done. Used the shift key to select them both times.
All I can say is that this is definitely a problem with ElCap. I'm using ElCap on a late 2012 Mini - that Mini was originally shipped with 10.8 so I'm not doing anything "funny" with it like with the 2017 MacBook Air. I have checked with others running ElCap and they have the same problem I have.
But I'm glad to see that Apple is fixing these annoyances.
While "bounce" as a function is not there in Mail, it's simple enough to write a rule in Mail to bounce a message back to the sender when mail arrives. You can even set the action based on which address is in the "To:" field of the incoming so that you can customize the return message. (I'm presuming your reference to "bounce" is similar to Outlook's "out of office" function. I have never actually used anything called "bounce" in Mail.)
No, "Out of Office" is totally different.
The "bounce" feature would send a message back to the sender that the email address the original email was sent to does not exist.
I used it regularly to reduce my email spm to basically nothing over the period of two years. People claim it doesn't work to reduce spam, that it actually creates spam, bt that is more theory because in practice it worked for me and others as well.
And yes, one can write a script to do the same thing, but the discussion was about features that Apple had eliminated in future OS's
Here is a bit of a discussion about 'bounce' disappearing
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3194053

Getting back on topic - Migrating from ElCap to a later OS.
Back years ago, with the various versions of OS X, Snow Leopard was considered to be the best stable version of the group.
There were very few new features in SL, Apple focussed at the time to clean up the OS, fix bugs and streamline the code.
Turns out they did that very well, I migrated all the Mac in the family to SL, they all ran faster than before and there were very few problems.
In fact, we only moved from SL to ElCap when some webinar software we needed to use on a regular basis was no longer supported on SL.

Now, along those same lines, is one of the new versions of OS X, 10.12, 10.13 or 10.14 considered a "best stable version" to move to?
Or are we not there yet?

I would be interested to hear what people's experience is.

I'm tempted to migrate one of our Macs to 10.14 to try it out.
We don't need or will use any of the new features that I saw, so this is strictly to get to the next "best stable version"

Hmmm...
Just came across this - a long list of potential problems with a lot of basic capability
https://www.techradar.com/how-to/macos-1014-mojave-problems-how-to-fix-them

Doesn't get me too exited to migrate to 10.14 at this time.
 
Joined
Jan 1, 2009
Messages
15,452
Reaction score
3,808
Points
113
Location
Winchester, VA
Your Mac's Specs
MBP 16" 2023 (M3 Pro), iPhone 15 Pro, plus ATVs, AWatch, MacMinis (multiple)
Hmmm...
Just came across this - a long list of potential problems with a lot of basic capability
https://www.techradar.com/how-to/mac...ow-to-fix-them
I read that article. Lot of "some people," "a few users," etc. in there with "potential" problems. I looked at all the "problems" and can say that I have had exactly zero of them in my migration to Mojave. Zero.

Is Mojave stable? Define "stable," or better yet, "unstable." All my applications work as advertised, my devices work, my peripherals work, my BT connections are solid, as are WiFi and Ethernet. My printers (I have three) all work properly, I have had no crashes. Is that stable?

Did anything change with Mojave? Certainly. The format of my SSD changed to APFS. My apps got updated by the developers, some of the changes I liked, some I didn't, but that's not Apple's fault or decision. I haven't lost any apps, although that's coming when the NEXT version of the OS comes out and Apple finally bans 32-bit software totally. For now it just warns me, but I'm getting very few of those these days as the developers have moved to 64 bit. Yes, Apple did change security of the system, blocking from a casual user system files and strengthening security overall. Is that a "loss" or a "gain?" I suspect that question depends on the user. I like security. Secure systems tend to be stable systems.

On "bounce," as you described it, it was a joke from the beginning. Spammers learned how to parse the bounce and verify that the email address did exist. So Apple removed useless code from the Mail application to streamline it. I'm ok with that, I like efficient code. I got rid of spam by using a service called Pobox to forward my mail for me. They filter out spam pretty well and send me an email with a list of the messages they have blocked each day. I used to check that each day, but now, after 5 years, I don't bother with that. They don't miss. And I don't see any spam. Win-Win.

Is Apple perfect? No! Do they make mistakes? Sure, and the recent iPhone6 battery replacement program is one example of them having to fix a mistake. The recent issue with butterfly keyboard keys is another. And I personally don't like the dynamic touch bar design at all or memory soldered to the logic board making it impossible for later changes, or pentalobe screws, or gluing parts in place in everything (Mac, iDevice, etc). But just because I don't like something in the design of an app, or the OS, or the hardware, that does not make it a "bug" or "defect." It's just something I don't like. And that is OK because I get to make a decision on whether or not my dislike of THAT is sufficient for me to avoid the update, hardware, app, whatever. I also originally did not like that iTunes no longer interfaces to the applications store and that updates are now over the air only. But I've adjusted to that and have discovered that I don't really miss iTunes any more. I didn't use it for music or videos, just applications, so now it's useless to me. But that's ok, I've moved on. They have plans for iTunes that don't match with my personal use for it, but it's THEIR software, so it's THEIR decision to make. If they drift far enough from where I want to be, I'll move to another manufacturer.

You want ElCap. Great, use ElCap. But when you move up to whatever follows Mojave, you cannot complain about "losing" your 32 bit software because Apple has been warning for years that it is coming. High Sierra warned, Mojave is warning more strongly, the next version will ban. Be prepared for that. But I predict that when Apple does release that upgrade there will be whining all over the internet about the "bad" decision and "mistake" from Apple in moving to all 64 bit applications. Some folks don't like change. But change happens. Otherwise we'd all be living in caves.

Going back to the original topic, I seriously suggest you make frequent backups. I still think that ElCap installation on the 2017 Mac will have issues down the road somewhere. There is some reason Apple doesn't support that version OS on that hardware. Sooner or later that incompatibility of firmware/OS/Application will appear.
 

Rod


Joined
Jun 12, 2011
Messages
9,628
Reaction score
1,830
Points
113
Location
Melbourne, Australia and Ubud, Bali, Indonesia
Your Mac's Specs
2021 M1 MacBook Pro 14" macOS 14.4.1, Mid 2010MacBook 13" iPhone 13 Pro max, iPad 6, Apple Watch SE.
I have to say I am of the same opinion as MacInWin. There is one other thing I neglected to add to my post when I mentioned the security advantages of incremental updates.
As of October 31st 2018 El Capitan will no longer receive security updates, meaning it is now an unsupported OS. This article explains the implications of this as well as illustrating some of the other previously mentioned drawbacks that will inevitably occur with older operating systems. No more security patches for OS X El Capitan, time to upgrade – JimmyMac
Considering the amount of malware out there and the amount of online banking I do, this alone would be reason enough for me to upgrade.
As for "stable" by my definition we have never had stable, no, we don't have stable yet and it's unlikely we ever will. And I might add this is not limited to the Apple Platform.


Sent from my iPhone
 
Last edited:
OP
krs

krs


Joined
Sep 16, 2008
Messages
3,555
Reaction score
610
Points
113
Location
Canada
Going back to the original topic, I seriously suggest you make frequent backups.

Thanks for taking the time to make these lengthy, informative posts - much appreciated.

I decided to install 10.14 on a back up of the 2012 Mini and play with it for a week to see what I find.
 
Joined
Oct 16, 2010
Messages
17,494
Reaction score
1,541
Points
113
Location
Brentwood Bay, BC, Canada
Your Mac's Specs
2011 27" iMac, 1TB(partitioned) SSD, 20GB, OS X 10.11.6 El Capitan
I decided to install 10.14 on a back up of the 2012 Mini and play with it for a week to see what I find.


Interesting considering your original intention and situation when High Sierra will probably not see any more updates and was a bit more "conservative" of critical macOS changes.

Just saying, but good luck and as I suggested at the other site, you'd get a lot more Mac help and suggestions here at mac-forums and you sure did eh??? ;D






- Patrick
======
 
OP
krs

krs


Joined
Sep 16, 2008
Messages
3,555
Reaction score
610
Points
113
Location
Canada
Well, part of the reason to try 10.14 was:
1. The oldest currently active Mac we have is a 2012 Mini and it's the oldest Mini that is officially supported on 10.14; 10.15 may not provide official support for that Mac
2. I rather do an upgrade to a new OS every three or four years rather than every year
3. Jake has no problems with 10.14, so I'm optomistic everything will be fine for me as well.
 

Shop Amazon


Shop for your Apple, Mac, iPhone and other computer products on Amazon.
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon and affiliated sites.
Top