Why all this resistance to updating/upgrading ?

MacInWin said:

Randy, according to this: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2362057 the Archive and Install was not available for SL.

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So? It was probably the first OS that didn't offer the option, so there was little or no cruft left behind by the older versions of the OS. It's certainly a problem now.

Maybe not you, Randy, but I have see lots of comments here and elsewhere rhapsodizing over SL. I totally understand your business use and sympathize about Adobe. I run a virtual machine with Win7 on it because I have a business printer for my wife's business that would cost well over $10,000 to replace and the drivers for it were last updated for Win7 (never for Mac). So I keep Win 7 limping along to do that one print job every week. If/when Apple abandons Intel for its own chips then I will have to make some hard decisions about what to do. I may have to use one of the older Macs I have to run Win7. (Or convince my wife to retire and sell the business. Yeah, right.)

Hey, I said I was done with this. So I'm going to make that my last comment in this thread. Good discussion.

the Archive and Install was not available for SL.

Click to expand...

It seems it was available with Tiger according to this and Archive and Install:

This chapter is from the book
Mac OS X Help Line, Tiger EditionMac OS X Help Line, Tiger Edition

Click to expand...

Installing or Reinstalling Mac OS X | Installing, Upgrading, Backing Up, and Restoring Mac OS X | Peachpit

I had forgotten about that older Mac OS X install option, and maybe it was available even earlier.


EDIT:
Gee, it seems that the Mac OS X "Archive and Install" has been available almost from the begining when I read sections from here, complete with several restrictions:
General advice on performing an Archive and Install
General advice on performing an Archive and Install

Anyway, that's old history and we sure don't have such a choice these days.






- Patrick
======

I note Randy that you take exception to my statement, "There is also resistance to backing up to iCloud. I bought and continue to pay a monthly fee of AU$1.99 for increased iCloud storage primarily to backup our combined 6 devices in case of loss or unavailability of our local backups and the encryption option offered to preserve settings and passwords'.

I would argue that iCloud has had a pretty good track record as far as security goes. Phishing attempts aside. I am not suggesting that one save sensitive documents directly to iCloud either, personally I only sync Reminders, Notes, Contacts, Calendars, iCloud Drive and Find My Mac/iPhone/iPad/Watch, the latter I think would be a silly thing to ignore but of course that's up to the individual. It is hard to avoid being signed into iCloud in some form because nowadays you will be continually pestered to do so in the form of notifications.

I DO NOT sync my Desktop or Documents folders directly to iCloud. My Documents Folder is contained in a password protected encrypted .dmg (disk image) which I created with Disc Utility and stored in OneDrive. Yes I have to update it occasionally but even out of date it still contains a host of paperwork I would hate to loose. So even if iCloud were breached and all my data was hacked the hackers would still be faced with cracking an encrypted disk image to access my personal files.

I do an encrypted sync of my iOS devices using iTunes once a month to iCloud and a weekly encrypted sync of my iOS devices to my MBP using iMazing.
This gives me local flexibility and an emergency remote backup which includes passwords, preferences and settings.

Much of my reasoning is based on my "disaster plan", living as I do half of the year in Bali, a volcanic island subject to volcanic eruptions and tsunami.
What would I do in the event of a large earthquake or flood? Hopefully I would have time to grab my iPhone off the bedside table and that might be all.
My TM backup, clone and laptop could all be lost being in various drawers and locations.
It's possible even my iPhone might be lost in the ensuing confusion.

So after we are eventually secure and perhaps returned to Australia how do I get back all my data if i have no Mac devices at all?
I figured first I would just buy a new iPhone, login to my Apple account (my ID password is complex but memorable). I could then restore my iPhone from my iCloud backup albeit I know it would be slow.

This would include my Password Manager which is backed up to iCloud so I would now have access to any other logins required. I can restore my email accounts from iCloud backup and the mail from the servers.

My photos can be retrieved from Google Photos later as can my documents and the various third party apps I own once I have a laptop running and can access the receipts, CD Keys, passwords etc from my saved Documents Folder.

So in a week I could be pretty much back to where I am now minus some data like media files I downloaded but nothing important.

So my point here is; consider a major disaster, a fire or a flood or even just theft. Consider you were away from home at the time and all you had was your iPhone and maybe not even that.
How would you get back all your precious data?

If you have a plan, like a bootable clone in a bank vault somewhere, good for you, if not I challenge you to think of another viable way without relying on a cloud based remote backup.

If you don't have a plan, well that's okay too unless you really don't want to loose any of your data in which case i suggest you make one soon.

This is just how I do it, I'm sure others have different plans, I'd love to hear what they are. Personally I think my system is fairly fool proof but if anyone has any suggestions I'm certainly open the hear them.

Sort of a last comment from me on this topic...

It's not that I want to reminisce about the "good old days", I was simply looking for the next logical, stable release to upgrade all the family Macs to.
Seems my the best bet is High Sierra since almost all of them still use rotational hard drives and it's unlikely they will ever be upgraded to SSD's.

Maybe that will also resolve my "quirks" with El Capitan and I will definitely do a clean install.

Rod Sprague said:

I note Randy that you take exception to my statement, "There is also resistance to backing up to iCloud. ...

I would argue that iCloud has had a pretty good track record as far as security goes.

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For a while there Apple was in the news constantly with regard to their on again/off again cooperation with the government. They HAVE, at times, given the government access to the information that they hold for users.

And news about break-ins to cloud-based services has been rampant. Heck, even Yahoo and Facebook have been hacked.

And...have you heard about "The Red Gorilla Effect?"

Of course, the biggest problem with backing up to the cloud isn't even security, it's that access to the Internet itself is a huge bottleneck. (It's okay as a lower-tier solution in a multi-tiered backup plan, but not a great idea as a primary or secondary backup solution.) Here's the deal. Most broadband ISPs have monthly data caps in the 300 GB to 1,000 GB range. Also most ISPs provide much lower upload speeds than download speeds. Typical Comcast 50 megabit/sec service is about 10 megabit/sec upload. So it might take many days to back up a modern medium-range desktop system. To back up a 3TB iMac 27" would take about a month.

When a failure happens and you must recover, time is often of the essence (at least it is if you are running a business). You want to get back to work ASAP. Assuming you patiently waited a month to back up your 3TB Mac 27" to the cloud, if your hard drive crashed it it would take six days to recover your data from the cloud over a 50 megabit/sec connection.

Backing up to an inexpensive rotating disk hard drive that you purchase from someplace like Other World Computing, using something like SuperDuper! or CarbonCopyCloner, will be way faster, more flexible, recovering your data will be instantaneous, and will provide a much higher level of security.

Rod Sprague said:

Much of my reasoning is based on my "disaster plan", living as I do half of the year in Bali, a volcanic island subject to volcanic eruptions and tsunami.
What would I do in the event of a large earthquake or flood?

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Cloud-based backup, as I said, is fine as part of a multi-tiered backup plan where your data is very important to you and you want to provide a fail-safe. However, I wouldn't choose it as the first or second tier of a backup plan.

Worried about your data in the event of a natural disaster? For users with a need for an off-site fail-safe backup (in addition to a regular backup), I instead suggest a limited backup of just their data (e.g. your Documents folder and anything else that absolutely can't be replaced) to a portable backup medium (e.g. a large capacity flash drive or one of the new pocket-able SSD's that look sort of like a flash drive but have a huge capacity) that they always keep with them in their pocket. If your office or home suffers a fire, flood, or theft, your invaluable data will be with you and if you survive it will survive. That's about all that you need from a fail-safe off-site backup.

I have spoken about multi-tiered backup plans here before, haven't I?

You may want to check out:

Backing Up Your Mac: A Joe On Tech Guide
(Take Control Books)
https://www.takecontrolbooks.com/jot-backing-up

MacInWin said:

Cloning with CCC, testing that clone and restoring from it with Migration Assistant is not really much of a "chore," actually.

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It is if you have no idea about all that. Heck, I'm fairly knowledgeable and I'm just getting to that point. It takes a fair amount of work for a noob to figure out what to do and how to do it, and that is NOT what many people want to spend their time doing. So I think the "don't want to update" is often "oh god that means I gotta figure out how I should back up and what if some app or functionality doesn't work and what if I have to re-register my XXX software which I can't because it was from my old work and I don't work there anymore and/or it was bootlegged and/or I don't know where the *bleep* the install discs have got to so please oh lord isn't there some other magic way?!?!?"

Head_Unit said:

It is if you have no idea about all that. Heck, I'm fairly knowledgeable and I'm just getting to that point. It takes a fair amount of work for a noob to figure out what to do and how to do it, and that is NOT what many people want to spend their time doing. So I think the "don't want to update" is often "oh god that means I gotta figure out how I should back up and what if some app or functionality doesn't work and what if I have to re-register my XXX software which I can't because it was from my old work and I don't work there anymore and/or it was bootlegged and/or I don't know where the *bleep* the install discs have got to so please oh lord isn't there some other magic way?!?!?"

Click to expand...

I don't really understand why you think using CCC or SD is complicated.
You launch the application, select the drive you want to copy from, usually the hard drive, select the drive you want to copy to, and that's it.
Super Duper that I have used more recently just asks you if you want to use that backup with Time Machine - I always say "no", and then you just let it run.

If you need the clone/backup because your main drive is corrupt or something like that, you just clone the backup back - no restoring using Migration assistant, also no need to reregister anything. Migration assistant is used when you move to a new OS, not for straight backups.

Randy B. Singer said:

For a while there Apple was in the news constantly with regard to their on again/off again cooperation with the government. They HAVE, at times, given the government access to the information that they hold for users..............................

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People commenting in this thread have very different opinions about the various aspects being discussed - which is fine.

What surprises me is that I pretty much agree with everything Randy has posted since I joined the forum.

If you need the clone/backup because your main drive is corrupt or something like that, you just clone the backup back - no restoring using Migration assistant, also no need to reregister anything. Migration assistant is used when you move to a new OS, not for straight backups.

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You are correct if the problem is a broken Internal Drive and you replace it; but if you purchase a new Mac, almost certainly it will have a different OS (the latest) and you just can't clone back to that new Mac. For one thing, it wouldn't accept an OS older than that with which it shipped. And there could be Firmware and other changes which would be different.

That's when you need to use Migration Assistant to copy over all your settings and apps etc. That's when re-registering apps like MS, Adobe products and others become a pain.

I agree it's not "difficult" if you've done it before; but could be scary to first-timers.

Ian

What surprises me is that I pretty much agree with everything Randy has posted since I joined the forum.

Click to expand...

That may be due to you reading most of his posts at the ehMac.ca forums.





- Patrick
======

IWT said:

You are correct if the problem is a broken Internal Drive and you replace it; but if you purchase a new Mac, almost certainly it will have a different OS (the latest) and you just can't clone back to that new Mac. For one thing, it wouldn't accept an OS older than that with which it shipped. And there could be Firmware and other changes which would be different.

That's when you need to use Migration Assistant to copy over all your settings and apps etc. That's when re-registering apps like MS, Adobe products and others become a pain.

I agree it's not "difficult" if you've done it before; but could be scary to first-timers.

Ian

Click to expand...

Well, I differentiate between recovering from some sort of failure of the current Mac using a clone backup and migrating an existing Mac and the data to a new Mac.
Post #14 seems to mix up the two processes - I was just commenting on the process to recover from a failure of the current Mac where one wants to recover from that failure.

Migration to a new Mac is a different process, not really any more complicated than recovering using a clone but not a "clean", ie some apps may not work at all, some may require upissues, and a few require reregistration. I have also had family members swear that they lost files when migrating but I could never verify that.

pm-r said:

That may be due to you reading most of his posts at the ehMac.ca forums.

- Patrick
======

Click to expand...

I don't actually recall Randy's posts on ehMac.ca - my comments were from my own experience.

I find over the years Apple is trying more and more to force one totally into their eco system and I don't like it one bit.

krs said:

I find over the years Apple is trying more and more to force one totally into their eco system and I don't like it one bit.

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What specifically are you referring to here? I've been using Macs exclusively for about 14 years, and never felt forced into anything, but maybe we're on different wave lengths of thought here. But aside from that, I would assume people who buy Apple products like the Apple ecosystem, so it would seem to be a moot point.

krs said:

I don't actually recall Randy's posts on ehMac.ca - my comments were from my own experience.

I find over the years Apple is trying more and more to force one totally into their eco system and I don't like it one bit.

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Yes, they like to have control over their systems, so the non techie users don't mess everything up ad need help, with their self made issues. The technical people will either live with it, or move along.

usagora said:

What specifically are you referring to here? I've been using Macs exclusively for about 14 years, and never felt forced into anything, but maybe we're on different wave lengths of thought here. But aside from that, I would assume people who buy Apple products like the Apple ecosystem, so it would seem to be a moot point.

Click to expand...

The latest thing that got me annoyed was the constant message that popped up several times a day that the Mac couldn't log into iCloud.
I never used iCloud, don't want to use and have no interest in using it.
There was no option that said "Thanks, but no thanks" - to get rid of those annoying pop ups I finally logged in to get them to stop, but now I'm wandering what the Mac is uploading to the cloud without my knowledge.

I like the Mac, have for a very long time, but find Apple pushing their apps and services over and over again with no option for "Thanks, but no" pretty annoying.

krs said:

The latest thing that got me annoyed was the constant message that popped up several times a day that the Mac couldn't log into iCloud.
I never used iCloud, don't want to use and have no interest in using it.
There was no option that said "Thanks, but no thanks" - to get rid of those annoying pop ups I finally logged in to get them to stop, but now I'm wandering what the Mac is uploading to the cloud without my knowledge.

I like the Mac, have for a very long time, but find Apple pushing their apps and services over and over again with no option for "Thanks, but no" pretty annoying.

Click to expand...

Hmm, well I use iCloud to sync my messages and calendars between devices, so I'm always signed in. But all you have to do is go to System Preferences > iCloud to enable or disable any iCloud services. Simple.

usagora said:

Hmm, well I use iCloud to sync my messages and calendars between devices, so I'm always signed in. But all you have to do is go to System Settings > iCloud to enable or disable any iCloud services. Simple.

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By "System Settings" do you mean "System Preferences"?

Under System Preferences > iCloud there is no enable/disable option - all I get is a short description of what it does and an option to log in or create an Apple ID or recovery if I forgot my Apple ID. That's on El Camino.

krs said:

By "System Settings" do you mean "System Preferences"?

Under System Preferences > iCloud there is no enable/disable option - all I get is a short description of what it does and an option to log in or create an Apple ID or recovery if I forgot my Apple ID. That's on El Camino.

Click to expand...

Yes, I thought about that typo after I had already posted and was doing something else. Corrected.

Ok, so now I'm confused. You said in your previous post that you had logged into iCloud to stop the annoying messages. So I'm not sure how when you go to System Preferences > iCloud that it shows that you're not logged in. I assume you mean El Capitan, and as far as I remember there was nothing different between iCloud settings in El Capitan than later versions of macOS. I guess as long as you're not getting any messages prompting you to sign into iCloud, then all is well, but that's definitely where you would go, were you signed in, in order to enable or disable the various iCloud services.

Set up iCloud on your Mac
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208682

I like the Mac, have for a very long time, but find Apple pushing their apps and services over and over again with no option for "Thanks, but no" pretty annoying.

Click to expand...

At least we seemed to have gotten a bit of a delay from yet another Apple nag notice while I was working with my wife's 2007 24" iMac last week., But in actuality, I guess they actually mean to go and buy a newer model that could actually run Mojave!!! Gheese!!

I must remember to hit the "Details" button the next time it pops up and see what they acvtually might have in mind (she's already running El Capitan which is more than enough):









- Patrick
======