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It’s also worth taking advantage of Time Machine for an extra safety net. The first flash drive is for Big Sur and the second is to be used as a backup installer for Catalina in case anything goes wrong in the process. These drives must be modified in Disk Utility to work as your bootable OS installer. You’ll also need a couple of USB flash drives with at least 16GB storage. But before you get started, there are a few things you need to do.įirst, you need to make sure you’re starting the process with your Mac running Catalina.
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To upgrade you’ll need a patcher to trick Software Update into thinking your computer is compatible. How To Upgrade an Older Mac To macOS Big SurĪnyone with an incompatible Mac will have noticed that Software Update doesn’t give you the option to install Big Sur. In spite of this, some people are still having problems and in that case the only solution is to contact Apple Support directly for help. Thankfully, Apple has offered a workaround for users experiencing these kinds of issues. Anyone with a late 2013 or mid 2014 model MacBook Pro is able to upgrade their system but may end up facing a permanent black screen. Some MacBook Pro users are having difficulty with Big Sur even though their device is technically compatible. If you have any of the devices below then you’re going to have to install Big Sur the hard way:Īll of the devices mentioned above are now seen by Apple as obsolete products, meaning they’re no longer supported technically either by replacement hardware or through OS updates. Whether or not your Mac officially supports Big Sur depends on the model as there is no set cut-off point. Although older computers may not officially support Big Sur, it doesn’t mean that it’s impossible to install. If your old Mac is optimized and you’ve taken good care of it then it’s probably still running great. However, with every new update older Macs get left behind even though some devices can last for several years. What will the new interface look like? What new features are there? And, importantly, will it be compatible with my Mac? Big Sur is a significant update that is supposed to bring macOS more in-line with iOS.
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For Mac users, the release of the newest macOS update is always a big day.
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