Adventures In OS Upgrading

Wow… Never really had problems with most computers but Apple Macs, My God! Ok I’m dealing with some rather old hardware to be fair, but still, I have some old Windows hardware and had fewer problems.

Pain 1, I have an old iBook G3 800 laptop. This is a pretty, white laptop that Apple made. I initially wanted to get it to run Mac OS System 9 on it because, 1, I never actually used the old OS before and wanted to play with it, and 2, I remember the computer could do it.

Booted up the system and noticed it was using OS X 10.4 (I think, that last version that handled Power PC chips?) and dug out my system CDs and looked to see how to get System 9 on it. Apparently, with this computer, you had to install OS X before you could install OS 9. The additional software CDs had the System 9 install files on it. Installed them. Reset the boot to system 9 and rebooted… And the machine got stuck at the happy Mac image and stayed there. Hmmm…

Googled a bit to see how I could get back to OS X and nothing worked. Sigh. I did find a post about having to do this operation using the original OS X that came with the laptop. Ok. Reinstalled OS X 10.2 on a cleaned hard drive. Installed the System 9 stuff again and reset the machine to boot into System 9. Again, happy mac image but nothing else. Hmmm… Ok looks like that idea is out the door. Time to put the machine back into OS X.

Reinstalled OS X 10.2 and then 10.3… I think I could have just jumped in with 10.3 but wasn’t thinking clearly. I then realized my 10.4 disks were DVDs which the laptop couldn’t handle without me digging in the closet for the Lacie DVD external drive. I didn’t want to do that so the machine is stuck at 10.3.

So that was pain 1.

Pain 2, I have a MacMini (4,1) machine. It has been sitting neglected for long enough. I thought it would still be current but when I went to the App Store to see if I can move to Catalina (10.15), the App Store refused saying my machine is not supported by that version of the OS. I feel sad. So what is the highest version my machine can support? Apparently High Sierra (10.13). Great, App Store, High Sierra please! App Store: Nope! Huh? Google how to get High Sierra for may machine and find a page with an App Store Link and sure enough there it is in the App Store. Why didn’t you give me that in the first place. Try to ‘get’ the download and… App Store: Nope! You need a more modern App Store to ‘get’ the software, which means I needed Mountain Lion (10.8) at least. Sigh. OK APP STORE! Can I please get Mountain Lion. App Store: Nope! Arg. Google, App Store Link, App store link requires I pay for Mountain Lion. Fine. $30 and wait for an email from Apple in a day’s time.

Sheesh. A day later I get a link. Yay! Ok, App Store, ‘get’ Mountain Lion! App Store: Ok, but it seems you haven’t agreed to Terms and Services in a while. You need to agree to that before we let you have the download. Ok, App Store, how do I agree to that? App Store:… Me: Hello? When it gives you that error, App Store is not helpful enough to present you with a dialog to agree to the terms of service so you can move on; and here I thought Apple was all about the use experience. My experience is starting to affect my calm.

Google search and apparently it will be in your Quick Links, account information. Ok. The main page of App Store DOES NOT HAVE the quick links section. The main page is ‘Featured’ stuff, but you have to go to ‘Top Charts’ to get to the quick links section. Oh this makes perfect sense, uh-huh. Click on account… and… App Store: I’m sorry, you need the updated version of App Store that comes with Mountain Lion in order to monkey around with your account settings… Are you messing with me now? This is insane. Chicken an egg problem.

Google to the rescue, apparently downloading a free app will also bring up that terms of service query… Which begs the question, why couldn’t the App Store do that happen for an OS download. Ok, find the first free app in the featured section and ‘get’ it. App Store: Nope! You need OS X 10.14 at least to install this app… Oh crap. The realization that there are probably very few apps left that will work with 10.6. So it is a needle in a haystack problem to find an app that looks stupidly simple enough that it would still work on such an old system. Thankfully I found one. Some stupid postit note like application. Yay! Terms of Service Achievement Unlocked!

Ok, back to the business of upgrading. App Store get me Mountain Lion! App Store: Sure thing! Wait, seriously? No back talk! Oh thank God. Mountain Lion upgrade was smooth.

Ok, App Store ‘get’ me High Sierra. App Store: Sure thing. Install… At one point it was telling me it would take about 45 minutes. Ok, fine, leave it be and did something in the garden. Come back in about an hour and I see a screen with the Apple logo and a progress bar that was at about 80% mark and no other information. Ok, still working. Go back to the garden to do some more work. About 2 hours later check again, same screen no change. Hmmm… Leave it from some time more to see if it was still actually doing something and nope. Looked like it was stuck. Sigh. Hard boot, brought back the screen and still stuck. I’m really sad.

Ok, reinstall 10.6. Wait. Reinstall 10.8. Wait. Back in sort of business. Maybe the leap from 10.8 to 10.13 is just too much for the installer so I will try and tackle it more incrementally. Find the list of versions and tried to find those versions in App Store. App Store Mavericks please! App Store: Nope! And your never gonna get it either. Huh… Google some more. Apparently the next version after Mountain Lion that you can get is El Capitein. I guess Apple have their reasons. App Store El Capitein Please! App Store: Nope. God damnit! Just get me to the blasted link page you useless PO…! Google, El Capitein please! Google: Here’s an Apple page with a link to a download file. This time I decided to get smart and store all these upgrade links onto a USB drive. I do not want to go through this nonsense again. I ended up downloading Sierra and High Sierra as well just so I can avoid the App Store. El Capitein and Sierra were full install downloads, I.E. 5-6 GB images while Mountain Lion and High Sierra seemed like internet installers. And nothing like file name consistency on Apple’s part for these files. Oi!

At any rate… Install 10.11, and wait… Install 10.12, and wait… I may have been able to jump to 10.13 from 10.11 but I was at this point not trusting Apple. Install 10.13, and wait… I got nervous a little when I saw the same Apple logo and progress bar screen that I saw earlier in the failed High Sierra install but thankfully, no problems this time.

FINALLY! So my MacMini 4,1 is now on High Sierra. And it is absolutely… Turtle slow. But at least I’m am semi-current. Ok, now to get some software for the beast. App Store some software please! App Store: Nope! Most of the software I’m going to show you will require 10.14 or 10.15. Too bad for you I can’t show you which ones will work on High Sierra. App Store! You are absolutely USELESS! App Store: I know.

Google, Xcode, apparently for High Sierra I need version 10.1 and there is an Apple Developer page with has all the old versions. But this brings up another issue. Safari is horrible. It failed to download the large Xcode package quickly. I ended up getting Chrome and it downloaded the package in half the time Safari did failing. Who the hell uses Safari. Even the tabs cut off part of the web page you are viewing. I can’t believe anyone at apple thinks Safari is giving a great user experience. Even when I was using the iBook’s version it was rubbish. I see it still is. I do notice that Google just downloads the xip file which is fast. Then you have to expand it using Archive Utility which is super slow. Looks like Safari was doing this at the same time so that you didn’t have to do this after the download. So Safari may have been given blame where it may not have warranted it.

As of this moment I’m still ‘expanding’ the Xcode download. And wow, pkzip, 7zip, Winzip have never been so slow even on machines which have specs much weaker than this MacMini. What is it trying to do?

I wonder if I should even bother with my other MacMini (3,1) which is even older and less supported. Plus that machine has given me a lot of grief. I tried upgrading the HD to an SSD and it worked for a while. I even had it become my LINUX machine but at one point it ended up dead and could recover. I tried to reinstall OS X on the SSD but that didn’t work for some reason. I ended up popping back in the original spinning disk hard drive and it started to work again. I think the DVD from on the machine is also misbehaving. I still have the cover off because a disk got stuck inside and there was no other way to get the disk out. Disassembling that machine is a nightmare.

I think for now I have had enough frustration. I’ll try and use this MacMini 4,1 for my development until I reach my limit an consider a new MacMini or another Mac Laptop. I’m not entirely a fan of laptops though. I hate ALL laptop keyboards. No exception. Cursor keys are always useless and prone to error input with my fingers. The extra ‘fn’ (function) key to get at certain features of the keyboard. Insert, delete, page up, page down, home and end are all in different places. F keys are not always F keys. So much frustration with laptop keyboards I end up connecting a normal keyboard to the machine just to remove that frustration from my life. Track pads are another device I despise which I end up connecting a Logitech trackball mouse to solve. I’m glad OS X recognizes multi-button mice otherwise I would be all sorts of rage.

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