Comment by trollbridge

Comment by trollbridge 2 days ago

12 replies

Yes, you can install any version of macOS that was ever supported for your Mac. (It’s been a long time since they used System Enablers.) I’m so frustrated with Tahoe that I’m about to do this.

valleyer 2 days ago

But you cannot, in general, migrate your data backwards. Apple's system apps will upgrade their data stores forward only. This isn't a problem if you are willing to e.g. re-download all of your (Mail.app) mail.

  • ValentineC 2 days ago

    > But you cannot, in general, migrate your data backwards. Apple's system apps will upgrade their data stores forward only.

    One huge reason to use third-party programs where possible. I dislike Apple's tight coupling of utilities as it is.

    • valleyer 2 days ago

      Yep, that's a great workaround, as long as you have third-party apps you're happy with.

  • xoa 2 days ago

    Yep, though you can mitigate it a little bit in various ways. For one weird example, I keep my main user Home folder on my NAS and mount it via iSCSI. Mostly that's for data integrity/size/backup purposes, but it does also make it free to snapshot before trying out a system upgrade. If I hate it I can rollback my entire set of user data along with the OS.

    Though amongst many other wonderful things lost in the mysts of Mac history I still desperately miss NetBoot/NetInstall and ultra easy clone/boot with something like CCC and TDM. It's so fucking miserable now in comparison to do reinstalls/testing/restores.

    • dagi3d a day ago

      @xoa may I ask what do you use as iSCSI initiator?

      • xoa 19 hours ago

        Sorry for missing this! I use Xtend SAN by ATTO [0], which has been around a long time but is still getting basic updates including native Apple Silicon support now, and seems to perform well. It uses a kext and I do worry the day may come that Apple kills support despite having nothing ready to go for equivalent functionality, but so far so good.

        ----

        0: https://www.atto.com/products/xtend-san-iscsi-initiator/

larsmaxfield 2 days ago

Safari can't be upgraded past a certain point on older versions of macOS. That can cause certain websites to break. Minor but annoying.

  • MarleTangible a day ago

    While we're talking about Safari, it also developed this bug where picture-in-picture leaks memory like crazy where it sometimes consumes over 80GB of RAM, gets compressed to nothing but freezes the app to the point where I cannot type anything in the address bar.

  • zapzupnz 2 days ago

    That's where the WebKit previews come in handy, if you stick to a preview version you know matches a stable version.

    • socalgal2 a day ago

      Certain features are not supported unles you're on MacOS 26, period, even with Safari TP