I am ages old. My first iPhone was the original release. Old habits die hard.
Thanks for the clarification. Good to know.
Not sure it is anywhere in the screen docs that appear when setting up a new iPhone.
If you perform a full system restore from Time Machine, you will end up with the system software saved to your Time Machine volume.
Similarly, if you boot a clone and then use it to re-format your Mac’s internal storage and clone the system back to it, you will get whatever version was running when you made the clone.
If you choose to reinstall macOS (not restore a backup) from Recovery mode, then you can choose three options:
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If you enter recovery mode with CMD-R, it will install the most recent version that was previously installed on that Mac. In general, this will be the latest version you have already used.
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If you enter recovery mode with CMD-Option-R, it will install the most recent version that is compatible with your hardware.
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If you enter recovery mode with CMD-Shift-Option-R, it will install the version that was pre-installed on your Mac (or the closest available version if it is not available).
If you enter recovery mode with CMD-R, it will install the most recent version that was previously installed on that Mac. In general, this will be the latest version you have already used.
Not true in my case. THE LASTEST VERSION I used for days was 10.15.5 Public Beta. Maybe I should have done a second reboot after the update installed.
The restore from recovery was 10.15.3 and created a nightmare. Now that I know how to fix it by restoring both my data and the OS backed up by Time Machine, not such a nightmare.
That feature isn’t well documented for long time users like me who lived in an era when Time Machine did not back up the OS, only the user data.
I logged what happened as a bug in Feedback but I have no intention of testing if they fixed it although it would maybe take half the time the nightmare required.
But I sure hope they fixed it so it would do exactly what you described. The last OS version running on the machine. Easy enough to fix, restore the last release and then run the beta updater next so it boots up in the last version used.
You sure? I do not recall that ever having been the case. I always thought TM (unless instructed by user ignores) backed up data, apps, and system. When you restore is where you’re given the option to only copy parts back.
I have been using Time Machine since it was introduced in 2008. I have used a Mac since 1984.
I do not recall in using Time Machine seeing a column when I am restoring that shows the version of the OS being restored.
Until I had the nightmare incident. Late last year I think or maybe early this year. First time I saw it. I tend to try to forget harrowing incidents.
I try not to need to do a full restore except when I upgrade my computer. Over the last 12 years I will bet I did a full restore less than 10 times.
I am old now, so maybe my recollection is incorrect or I never tried restoring data plus the OS.
Maybe someone else has a better memory but going back 12 years, I do not recall seeing that option until recently. Believe me before I called Applecare I searched online for a solution or similar problem.
I always installed the current OS first (used to be on disc, then CD Rom, now online and highly automated) then restored my data.
But now app updates are way more frequent and an app could get updated to work with the latest version of the OS and not be backwards compatible.
That was the case with both Time Machine and Photos. Apple seems to know what Version of the OS the user last installed.
So when recovery installed a previous version, Apple would not detect it and would not feed me an update they believed I had already installed. And there is no other way to get a complete OS other than Apple sending a message that an update is available and installing it over the internet.
I have no idea how they distribute or update the OS to people without internet connections. Is that even possible?
No CD Rom drives on Apple machines nor does Apple market one under the Apple brand.
Beta software has always been a special case. I’m not surprised it selected the most recent non-beta revision.
Apple, and nearly all other companies with beta programs, explicitly tell you to not use beta software on production systems. It is expected that there may be critical bugs and that it may not be possible to recover from those bugs. Many beta programs (not sure about Apple) also tell you to wipe the computer after the beta program ends in order to ensure that it doesn’t leave behind any corrupted content.
And you won’t. You select a date/time. It will restore your entire system, including the OS, as it existed at that point in time. It does not provide a way to install a different OS version from what was running at that time.
If you need to install a different OS version, the recommended approach is to install the OS from scratch, then use Migration Assistant to copy over your documents and apps from a Time Machine backup.
These days, they are only distributed on-line. Which can be a real problem if you don’t have a fast connection.
If you are near an Apple store, you can (or at least could before the coronavirus lockdown) take your computer to a store, connect to their Wi-Fi and upgrade there.
But you can use any USB optical drive you like. CD, DVD and Blu-Ray are all compatible. Apple doesn’t provide Blu-Ray video playback software, but you can still use BD-R drives for data storage.
WRT off-line system installation, if you have an installer, you can use the bundled createinstallmedia script to make a bootable USB flash drive. With that, you should be able to boot the media and, from there, wipe your computer (if you need to) and install macOS.
Here’s Apple’s support page on how to create bootable media for recent macOS versions:
If you want to see all the options (including versions of macOS not listed in the above article), you can run createinstallmedia without any parameters to see it’s help text.
In the past, this script could be used to burn a bootable DVD in addition to making a bootable thumb drive. It’s probably not possible anymore, due to the size of the installer. Apple says that flash drives need to have at least 12 GB of free space, which is larger than even a dual-layer DVD.
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I’ll add one more “gotcha” that hobbled me recently. After I did exenteration surgery on my iMac to replace my Fusion drive with a 1 TB NVMe stick and upgrade RAM from 8 to 32 GB, I managed to put all the parts back in with nothing left over https://i.pinimg.com/474x/ef/1c/30/ef1c3067e0982adb74c2443f900f3978–medical-humor-funny-cartoons.jpg, but When I did a Safari and a Security Update a week later, the Mac hung during the update. I eventually ended up in the Internet Recovery partition despite having a bootable clone and a USB thumb drive containing a working Mojave Installer, but couldn’t “talk” to the iMac showing me a 1-bit spinning globe because (at least for me) Internet Recovery didn’t load Bluetooth. Fortunately, I WAS able to find a wired keyboard and a wired mouse, and I’m up running again.
And, I agree entirely with Adam’s wisdom regarding keeping your Macs on the same generation of the OS, although right now I’ll bet many of us with relatively new OR old machines will find ourselves “living dangerously” some time in the next year or two, “armed” with one or more ARM and one or more Intel Macs simultaneously.