OS Update

[exncite]

So I see another OS is out I'm running Ventura 13.5.2. is there really any advantage to upgrading to Sonoma 14.0? Is there a disadvantage to the upgrade?

 

[ferrarr]

Upgrading really is a personal choice. If your Mac is doing everything you expect from it, then you can stay where you are. Since you're only one OS version back.

 

[Slydude]

This summary of the new features might help you decide whether you want to upgrade. I've been running Sonoma since the public beta and it has been very stable for me.

macOS Sonoma: 50 New Features and Changes Worth Checking Out

Apple on Tuesday released macOS Sonoma, the latest version of the company's Mac operating system. macOS Sonoma introduces interactive desktop...

www.macrumors.com

 

[Randy B. Singer]

So I see another OS is out I'm running Ventura 13.5.2. is there really any advantage to upgrading to Sonoma 14.0? Is there a disadvantage to the upgrade?

There have been two huge disadvantages to upgrading, that many (but certainly not all) users have experienced.

1. A surprising number (but still not a huge number) of users have gone to upgrade their Macs, the upgrade stalled in the middle, and this bricked their Macs. So, if you are considering upgrading, it would be an excellent idea to have a fully updated, tested, bootable clone. (I highly recommend SuperDuper! for this.) That way, if things go sideways, you can always do a restore from your clone.

2. A surprising number of users have found that after upgrading to Sonoma, one or more of their expensive peripherals (i.e. printers and scanners) no longer work. Even worse, some companies, most notably Brother and HP, have said that they won't be providing updated drivers for older printers (with some printers that they aren't providing updated drivers for being not so very old) for Sonoma. So, before you upgrade to Sonoma, you might want to check to see what the driver situation is for your printers and scanners with regard to Sonoma.

 

[MacInWin]

Randy, I think number 1 is mostly for Intel systems, as the Mx series will boot from recovery and reinstall the OS, even in the case of a brick. At least, that's what I've read. That could be wrong, my upgrade to Sonoma on three machines all went flawlessly.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

Randy, I think number 1 is mostly for Intel systems, as the Mx series will boot from recovery and reinstall the OS, even in the case of a brick. At least, that's what I've read. That could be wrong,

I've heard from a couple of folks with Apple Silicon Macs who said that they couldn't get their Macs to boot into recovery once it was bricked. (I seem to recall that I've even seen users post to that effect here.) I think that having a clone backup before you upgrade is simply a really good idea. It's probably a really good idea in any case, as one's startup drive can potentially fail at any time.

 

[Rod]

Personally I like Sonoma. I have an M1 MBP 14" so, being written for silicon Macs it should work well and it does.
What has impressed me is that it also runs very smoothly on my wife's 2018 MBP 13". This surprised me a little because that model is the earliest MBP capable of running Sonoma so I expected a few features would be missing and there are but they are minor omissions.

These are the macOS Sonoma features that aren’t available to Intel Macs - 9to5Mac

At WWDC 2023 yesterday, Apple unveiled macOS Sonoma, its latest operating system coming to Mac users later this year. The...

9to5mac.com

Generally it seems to run cooler and faster on both devices.

Game Mode on the M1 definitely works as claimed especially with other apps running in the background.

Widgets are "helpful", I have three and Stage Manager will definitely have uses for some users although I don't really use it because I still prefer Mission Control.

The OS has a strong emphasis on display features so the first big change you will see is the Login Page. The Users and Password box have shifted to the bottom of the screen and are much smaller. This I believe is to give you a better, uninterrupted view of the "beautiful" new Wallpapers.
It does keep your previous Wallpapers as "Your Photos" though, so it's easy to opt out of the new Landscape views and return to whatever Wallpaper you had in Ventura. See Wallpaper in Settings.




So to sum up, transitioning from Ventura to Sonoma is pretty easy with the minor consideration of setting up Stage Manager and Widgets which were on by default. Below I have shown my settings.




Using the above settings means that I have to click on my Desktop to see my Widgets otherwise they are not visible. As stated I don't really use stage manager at all at the moment.

Lastly, my wife had been experiencing issues with our Epson USB printer scanner in MacOS Ventura; printer/scanner settings continued to display two identical printers despite my best efforts to remove one. One worked, the other didn't. It kept defaulting to the one that didn't. Now only one shows and it works perfectly. What has changed is that she now needs to use the Epson Scanner app for scanning. The old method of clicking on the Scan tab in printer/scanner settings is gone.

So to sum up, transitioning from Ventura to Sonoma is pretty easy with the minor consideration of setting up Stage Manager and Widgets as per screen shot above.

I do take onboard what has been said in the previous posts about "Bricking" and printer issues.
I can only say that it's more or less essential to ensure your device is running well has sufficient storage and problem free before Upgrading. The idea that Upgrading will "fix" their ailing device is a persistent fallacy. As for the printer issue, it's clear some changes have occurred, in our case my wife's Intel MBP device now works as intended with our printer so we're lucky.

As always a good backup prior to a Upgrade is an essential and a cloned backup a very good idea.

 

[MacInWin]

I've heard from a couple of folks with Apple Silicon Macs who said that they couldn't get their Macs to boot into recovery once it was bricked. (I seem to recall that I've even seen users post to that effect here.) I think that having a clone backup before you upgrade is simply a really good idea. It's probably a really good idea in any case, as one's startup drive can potentially fail at any time.

Interesting. I suppose if the firmware is updated in the process it could be bricked, but in that case I suspect that even a bootable clone would not boot, most likely. In any event, a good backup is always a good idea.

 

[MacInWin]

Widgets are "helpful", I have three

What I like most about the implementation of widgets is that you can put them almost anywhere on the Desktop. There is an invisible "grid" of locations on the Desktop and you can put any widget in any of the grid boxes and the other icons on the Desktop will be moved out of the way. I have two on the DT, a clock and the weather. Yes, there already is a clock on the menu bar, but I like the look of an analog clock face.

 

[Rod]

I agree, as I mentioned I have three;
Calendar, because I can quickly see events for the day or launch the app.

Weather, just because I like to know the future.

And a Water Tracker (iPhone app), because I believe most people of my age are chronically dehydrated.

Here in Bali we have gone nearly 5 months without any significant rain and the daily temp hovers around 30deg C. You might think why do I need a weather app then? Guess I'm just hopeful. It will be handy when we go back to Aust. soon.

I love that you can add iPhone apps as well.

 

[M915 Driver]

There have been two huge disadvantages to upgrading, that many (but certainly not all) users have experienced.

1. A surprising number (but still not a huge number) of users have gone to upgrade their Macs, the upgrade stalled in the middle, and this bricked their Macs. So, if you are considering upgrading, it would be an excellent idea to have a fully updated, tested, bootable clone. (I highly recommend SuperDuper! for this.) That way, if things go sideways, you can always do a restore from your clone.

2. A surprising number of users have found that after upgrading to Sonoma, one or more of their expensive peripherals (i.e. printers and scanners) no longer work. Even worse, some companies, most notably Brother and HP, have said that they won't be providing updated drivers for older printers (with some printers that they aren't providing updated drivers for being not so very old) for Sonoma. So, before you upgrade to Sonoma, you might want to check to see what the driver situation is for your printers and scanners with regard to Sonoma.

I have a registered copy of SuperDuper 3.8 on my 2020 M1 MacBook Pro. When I make a clone using SD, it doesn't make the clone bootable. How do I make the clone bootable??
Thank you
Ken

 

[Randy B. Singer]

I have a registered copy of SuperDuper 3.8 on my 2020 M1 MacBook Pro. When I make a clone using SD, it doesn't make the clone bootable. How do I make the clone bootable??

I recall that directions for doing this are in the ShirtPocket Software blog:

https://www.shirt-pocket.com/blog/

They are also likely to be in the manual that came with a recent version of SuperDuper! If you can't find either, you should ask the SuperDuper! folks at:

[email protected]

(I've found them to be super responsive.)

Please let us know what they have to say.

 

[M915 Driver]

I recall that directions for doing this are in the ShirtPocket Software blog:

Shirt Pocket Watch

They are also likely to be in the manual that came with a recent version of SuperDuper! If you can't find either, you should ask the SuperDuper! folks at:

[email protected]

(I've found them to be super responsive.)

Please let us know what they have to say.

Thank you Randy

 

[Rod]

Without going into all of the details, and I could write several paragraphs on this, let me just say first that using a bootable clone to roll back to a previous macOS is no longer wise or practical.

Secondly, the SoC system is very good at restoring the macOS from Recovery and all that's required from the user is their personal data which negates the need for that backup to be bootable.

Lastly, as far as I know, bootable backups made via Legacy methods, although possible are not updatable. That is, although your data can be updated via sync the macOS version cannot be updated in the same way.

I only recommend a clone as a backup because I have two backups. A Time Machine Backup and a clone made with Carbon Copy Cloner.
Yes, in the past it was a bootable backup. Back then with the Intel Mac it was a simple process to boot from the clone, erase the media drive on the Mac and reverse clone the copy to the Mac. A simple way of rolling back to a previous macOS. All that changed with the release of macOS Catalina and later.

Nowadays I still find a clone to be more user friendly in the case of a "clean" instal. Of course you can automate the process using Migration Assistant but I prefer the manual method of Drag & Drop, something you can't do with Time Machine.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

Without going into all of the details, and I could write several paragraphs on this, let me just say first that using a bootable clone to roll back to a previous macOS is no longer wise or practical.

You'll have to convincingly explain this for me to accept it. SuperDuper! can still create a bootable clone for Apple Silicon Macs. You don't create the clone, or restore a Mac to an old version of the Mac OS, the same way that you used to, but it's still possible, and it's not onerous to do either.

Secondly, the SoC system is very good at restoring the macOS from Recovery and all that's required from the user is their personal data which negates the need for that backup to be bootable.

As I said previously, I've heard from a number of users (they've even posted here) who have gone to upgrade to a new version of the Mac OS, it stalled in the middle, and their Mac was bricked, and they found that they couldn't boot into Recovery. Having a bootable backup could be a godsend in that situation.

 

[M915 Driver]

Thank you for the replies.
I did finally get a bootable clone from SuperDuper. I trashed the SD app using AppCleaner, then doing a fresh download from Shirt Pocket and reinstalling the app. I then formatted my external drive and ran SD and the result was a bootable clone of my system drive.
Again thank you for the replies.
Ken

 

[MacInWin]

(they've even posted here

Randy, do you have a link for those posts? I'd be interested in reading them to see what the resolution was. Thanks!

 

[pm-r]

I did finally get a bootable clone from SuperDuper. I trashed the SD app using AppCleaner, then doing a fresh download from Shirt Pocket and reinstalling the app.

A rather interesting solution to your problem, and it may be helpful to others.

Personally, I have only used Carbon Copy Cloner for creating clones and other migration tasks and Recovery and never had a problem with it. But I guess any application can mess up during the download and install process.



- Patrick
=======

 

[Randy B. Singer]

Randy, do you have a link for those posts? I'd be interested in reading them to see what the resolution was. Thanks!

You can do a search through the archives here as easily as I can.

 

[MacInWin]

Not gonna bother. Thanks!