Apple did not properly test or warn new buyers of severe M1 Issues

[pistonpilot]

Agreed. Apple should give you a free one. Did you speak to the manager, or corporate?

I am the Queen of free. I will involve Customer Relations to work out a solution.

I am using my fifth free replacement iMac courtesy of Applecare.

I bought my first 21" iMac in 2008 for 1799 Dollars. It was replaced.

The one I am using now, an i9 with a 2TB fusion drive will likely get replaced by AppleCare in the 2 years left. It will be replaced with a 4000 Dollar M1 because they will have to give me 16gb of ram, and 2TB SSD. They can figure out which Silicon Chip to give me.

I'm sure replacement #6 is coming soon. This one just got repaired with a new logic board and a new SSD for the Fusion drive.

 

[Jorbanead]

This entire post just gave me a headache.

Im not entirely sure why you want to do what you want to do - would a time machine backup not achieve the same basic result you’re looking for? If either of the machines fail, you’ll have the time machine backup to restore it. I know what you’re trying to do, but I’m not sure why exactly because I feel there are more elegant solutions possibly?

Edit: like others have said, you cannot boot an x86 OS onto an ARM processor. Unless there’s something I’m missing here...

I look forward to seeing this on r/talesfromtechsupport

 

[Aggedor]

I don't think you understand my initial post. You should read it again. It's very clear.

Hardly. Look at the posts that come after mine - you are describing EXACTLY the issue I am talking about. Several posters have tried to tell you this.

Specifically, you say:

"I was booting from a high-speed external SSD instead of the internal Fusion Drive. I wanted to be able to immediately boot the M1 Mini from my external drive in case of failure of my iMac or having it not available for repair.

This does not work. I am now finding that a bootable external drive created on either the M1 (if you are successful) or the iMac are not bootable on the other."

This is because, as I have said and others have said, macOS Big Sur on the M1 is a different operating system to macOS Big Sur on the Intel, regardless of how the disk itself is formatted.

 

[pistonpilot]

This entire post just gave me a headache.

Im not entirely sure why you want to do what you want to do - would a time machine backup not achieve the same basic result you’re looking for? If either of the machines fail, you’ll have the time machine backup to restore it. I know what you’re trying to do, but I’m not sure why exactly because I feel there are more elegant solutions possibly?

Edit: like others have said, you cannot boot an x86 OS onto an ARM processor. Unless there’s something I’m missing here...

A Time Machine restore takes 10 hours to complete.

Moving my external to the Mini from the iMac would take less than a minute.

 

[Jorbanead]

A Time Machine restore takes 10 hours to complete.

Moving my external to the Mini from the iMac would take less than a minute.

If you’re using super slow HDD drives then yes, but if you’re just transferring to the internal drive in the M1 mini it would be much faster.

Can you just have identical applications installed on both the mini and the iMac, and then use the external to host all your project files etc. that’s what we do in the studio and working on film projects and illustrator files. The main machine just hosts the applications and OS, and we use externals just to host the project files. So you can easily jump around to different machines. And then we also have time machine backups of the main drives too as extra backup.

 

[macintoshmac]

4 paragraphs and not one of them is correct.

I assumed nothing, I asked.

You are apologizing for Apple. Just admit it and we can all move on.

You did not ask a single thing. You said two things - that you wanted to do something and are not able to, and that Apple support misguided you.

Going through your comments and attitude towards other members, I understand you are here to vent out the frustration you are feeling. The least you can do is be courteous, grateful and thankful towards people who are taking the time to go through your outburst and still try to offer you a solution. None of them deserve how you are talking them down.

Like a member said, trying to use petrol in a diesel car only to find it is not going to work does not mean the diesel car is buggy, nor does it mean that the diesel car manufacturer was obligated to create an engine that could use both petrol and diesel, and while we are at it, in the same tank at that. It also does not mean it is petrol's fault it does not work the same way as diesel.

 

[macintoshmac]

Sure, it won't boot an external drive made on the M1 but other than that, it's just perfect.

It is buggy.

This is not a bug. This is that Intel (your iMac right now) and Apple Silicon (M1 mini) are two different architectures. Apple may not want to develop a solution for inter-compatibility. Does not make it buggy. Meanwhile, you have still not told what exactly did the people at call centre tell you that you discovered was wrong..

 

[leman]

@pistonpilot I believe that you are making an elephant out of a fly here. Your use case is very marginal and while I agree with you that it "should work", it's not a common or a recommended way to run a Mac. I understand you annoyance in this matter, but this certainly does not qualify as a "severe issue" in my book.

Now, if Apple support has misled you in terms of supported functionality, I am sure Apple will take back your machine without any argument. Did you tell them that you cannot use the computer under these circumstances?

 

[macintoshmac]

@pistonpilot I believe that you are making an elephant out of a fly here. Your use case is very marginal and while I agree with you that it "should work", it's not a common or a recommended way to run a Mac. I understand you annoyance in this matter, but this certainly does not qualify as a "severe issue" in my book.

Now, if Apple support has misled you in terms of supported functionality, I am sure Apple will take back your machine without any argument. Did you tell them that you cannot use the computer under these circumstances?

You are running the risk of being labeled an Apple apologist big time with this comment.

 

[theSeb]

You are trying to find a solution to a particular problem. The solution that you thought / was informed would work does not work. It's also not a good solution at all to your problem even if it did work. I work on 3 different Macs and a Windows computer seamlessly without trying to boot off the same external drive. For small files I use either iCloud or Office365 or GitHub or gitlab. For large files I would use an external drive. I keep the same, or similar, applications on all the computers and I can resume my work on any of them at any time in less than a minute. This has already been suggested by @Jorbanead and it is a perfect solution.

 

[Jorbanead]

OP may just be a lost cause here. As someone whose worked customer service jobs, I’ve met a lot of people that talk like OP who fail to accept what they have been told and resort to calling people names and blame everyone else for misunderstandings or miscommunication. I don’t doubt Apple could have misguided OP, we’ll never know, but people have already repeatedly tried to tell OP what they want to do just won’t work, and OP just continues to argue, deflect, and belittle people trying to help.

 

[xylitol]

What are the other "things about the M1 that have turned out to be entirely false"?

Oh well, I tried to open another can of worms but failed. Silly me. I'm a man so I called a man silly.

 

[Zazoh]

I think Apple is derelict in their testing of the M1 and in their information giving for the new chip.

@pistonpilot does not ask questions in her original post. She posits, to us, the above. In a poll asking if we had issues, just shy of 80% of us have had zero issues with the M1.

Does that mean tho, that we disagree with her statement?

No. Some do some don’t.

Some of you tried to explain why you don’t.
Some of you tried to offer alternative solutions.
Some of you tried to help her understand why her opinion differed from yours or was perhaps invalid.

When it comes to technology I prefer Apple Products above all others. I no longer am an iOS programmer, but when I was, I found their information and documentation to be some of the worst there is.

I don’t know if they were derelict in their testing. I don’t even know what they tested. They don’t share this information and if they did, I don’t assume, based on documentation, they would even get it right.

Apple is not kind to legacy technologies. They don’t care about the past for older hardware or software. They only move in one direction and assume we are on the same page with them.

Cables, chargers, drives, ports, they are shutting them all down. If we don’t get on the cloud technologies ecosystem pronto, we will all be suffering. I have, from my Mac, iPhone, iPad, or anyone of yours, I can access all the content I have created.

Here is my position.

My M1 works for me. I understand why it doesn’t for others. While I’m empathetic to those with problems, I don’t care about their problems. I may comment on them, I may upset some with my responses. But I love online forums and interacting with all walks of life. Been doing since the 70s when I dialed in on a 300 baud modem.

I will die on this hill, external storage and keeping content artifacts on a drive in a cabinet is a technology that is not long for this world. Move ya crap to the cloud, doesn’t have to be iCloud, and the world of computers becomes your access point to your data.

TL;DR everyone move your crap online and quit using external drives.

 

[jeanlain]

Anyway... This isn't going to help, but just so you know: back in the days of the intel transition, the same Leopard installation could boot an intel Mac and a G5. I tried it myself.
So in principle, Apple could make macOS entirely universal.

 

[ian87w]

Oh and I thought there will be great discussions about various actual issues with the M1 Macs....

I have been reading and collecting information on potential issues as there's no Apple store in my country. So if I bought an M1 Mac and something went wrong, I'll be SOL.

So far, the issues I'm seeing are wifi/bluetooth issues, and maybe external display/USB-C issues. My biggest concern would be USB-C issues where some external USB-C devices can ruin the Mac. That's scary.

 

[chrfr]

When MacOS Big Sur is being installed, it detects whether it's an ARM system or x86, then it installs the appropriate files and features.

This is not correct. The same files are written to the disk in either case.

 

[OldCorpse]

@pistonpilot does not ask questions in her original post. She posits, to us, the above. In a poll asking if we had issues, just shy of 80% of us have had zero issues with the M1.

Does that mean tho, that we disagree with her statement?

No. Some do some don’t.

Some of you tried to explain why you don’t.
Some of you tried to offer alternative solutions.
Some of you tried to help her understand why her opinion differed from yours or was perhaps invalid.

When it comes to technology I prefer Apple Products above all others. I no longer am an iOS programmer, but when I was, I found their information and documentation to be some of the worst there is.

I don’t know if they were derelict in their testing. I don’t even know what they tested. They don’t share this information and if they did, I don’t assume, based on documentation, they would even get it right.

Apple is not kind to legacy technologies. They don’t care about the past for older hardware or software. They only move in one direction and assume we are on the same page with them.

Cables, chargers, drives, ports, they are shutting them all down. If we don’t get on the cloud technologies ecosystem pronto, we will all be suffering. I have, from my Mac, iPhone, iPad, or anyone of yours, I can access all the content I have created.

Here is my position.

My M1 works for me. I understand why it doesn’t for others. While I’m empathetic to those with problems, I don’t care about their problems. I may comment on them, I may upset some with my responses. But I love online forums and interacting with all walks of life. Been doing since the 70s when I dialed in on a 300 baud modem.

I will die on this hill, external storage and keeping content artifacts on a drive in a cabinet is a technology that is not long for this world. Move ya crap to the cloud, doesn’t have to be iCloud, and the world of computers becomes your access point to your data.

TL;DR everyone move your crap online and quit using external drives.

That’s a terrible hill to die on. Some of the very worst advice ever.

Let’s start with a minor but still meaningful point - I have about 30TB of material (mostly media... video, music, photos etc.). Where do you have affordable cloud storage for 30TB of material? And regarding cost, even if it were affordable, that’s an ongoing cost I prefer not to have. My external drives are paid for and any further maintenance cost is minimal. Advantage - external drives, massively. Frankly this is already disqualifying in my book.

But we’re just getting started. A very big deal - online means requiring to always have access to the internet. This simply isn’t always possible, not to mention that no service has 100% uptime (and I’ve had a plethora of providers over the decades - that’s the nature of technology). Having everything on external drives means never being subject to availability problems. I like to stream my movies and music without worrying about what the internet is doing at the moment. Advantage - external drives.

And now for the critical issues. My external drives content, and my access to it, is under my control. You trust online storage that’s under some provider’s control. I don’t. It’s like that saying about secrets - the only safe one is the one you don’t share with anyone. Period. No amount of promises by providers can overcome that simple reality, definitionally. I can access, change, add, subtract and manipulate the files on my external drives in any way and at any time I wish. Online I am by definition 100% at the mercy of the provider and the exigencies of circumstances beyond my or even their control (including bankruptcy, crime, accidents, force majeure etc., etc., etc.,).

With factors of cost, security, control, convenience and privacy, external drives have insurmountable advantages over online storage for fundamental and unalterable reasons.

To hear someone claim as their most certain conviction that we should all move our storage online tells me that this is a person whose judgment is comically flawed.

 

[CheesePuff]

Wow. Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, I feel like Sisyphus. I want to boot from intel and Arm with the same drive.

You will NOT be able to do that. They are entirely different architectures running a different edition of macOS. You have been told this multiple times but do not seem to understand this...

 

[deeddawg]

I already own an Intel iMac. I purchased a Mac Mini M1 for two specific reasons one of which was to provide my 13-year-old with a new computer. The other issue was a backup system that I could easily switch to should my main iMac need repair.

I was booting from a high-speed external SSD instead of the internal Fusion Drive. I wanted to be able to immediately boot the M1 Mini from my external drive in case of failure of my iMac or having it not available for repair.

This does not work. I am now finding that a bootable external drive created on either the M1 (if you are successful) or the iMac are not bootable on the other.

I don't consider this to be a desirable feature. It has negated my original plan for the M1 Mini.

I got no warning from Apple, and I got plenty of misinformation from Apple tier 2 support people who told me many things about the M1 that have turned out to be entirely false.

I am beyond the 2-week return window.

I think Apple is derelict in their testing of the M1 and in their information giving for the new chip.

Next time, test out must-have capabilities before the return timeframe expires, and return it if doesn't do what you require it to do.

 

[robco74]

Rather than be open to alternate solutions, OP is fixated on one that is suboptimal and won't consider alternatives. Storing data on external drives, NAS, etc. is fine. Just remember that it is only as secure as its physical location. Offsite backups are useful if drives fail, are stolen, destroyed in a fire, etc.

Constantly booting from an external drive in case another machine fails, something that should be a rare occurrence, is a suboptimal solution. As others have pointed out, creating a user account on both machines and storing data externally is a much better option. If you don't require blazing fast speeds, NAS is becoming more affordable and can be shared by all devices on your network.

 

[Zazoh]

That’s a terrible hill to die on. Some of the very worst advice ever.

Don't eat yellow snow. That better?

Let’s start with a minor but still meaningful point - I have about 30TB of material

In the days of iTunes, I realized if I hit shuffle, I could listen for 47 days without repeating a song. Except iTunes did repeat, but that is another story ...

I had become a music archiver, not a listener. If you are a videographer and that is your active library, cloud is probably not for you. If you are archiving and storing at your house, that is a dangerous endeavor, as drives fail, theft, natural disaster etc.

Hopefully you have off site recovery options.

But we’re just getting started. A very big deal - online means requiring to always have access to the internet.

I and many millions have access to Internet, not an issue for me. But there is the concept of have working documents local in case of outage, through storage optimization and other techniques.

There is no way you have a computer that stores 30TB and has battery access to consume that, so if power goes out, you are same boat as if internet goes out.

And now for the critical issues. My external drives content, and my access to it, is under my control. You trust online storage that’s under some provider’s control. I don’t.

My most precious secrets are already out there.
IRS, TurboTax, Banking, Health Records, Credit Cards, they are all already in the Cloud because I can access them 24x7 from the internet. I didn't put them there, the Companies did. You don't opt in or out, your data is out there. Way more people have your data already.

This is another myth that only you can protect your data at home. Your data is out there my friend.

With factors of cost, security, control, convenience and privacy, external drives have insurmountable advantages over online storage for fundamental and unalterable reasons.

Disagree. Travel to Hawaii, need access to something. Where is it, oh, in the Safe at home. Security another myth, you home is less secure than a data center.

Also, consumer grade hardware is prone to fail more than enterprise grade.

To hear someone claim as their most certain conviction that we should all move our storage online tells me that this is a person whose judgment is comically flawed.

Disagree. I'm not even that funny.
But this discussion is about data, not me.

Computers are used to create and consume. I'm a programer, I create more than I consume. I have need to have access to what I'm creating prior to releasing to a server where others can consume.

Sounds like you use computers to consume media, different use case, but your logic in saving at home around security, peace of mind, etc, is not congruent with the advances in technology that have occurred over the last decade.

Your practices are not modern, in that you can not access your 30TB from anywhere but within 6 feet of a spinning disk.

I don't find that comical at all. I only wonder why you are not taking advantage of advancements made in this space.

 

[jbachandouris]

No issues here, but I'm a casual user and really come nowhere near the workload that some of you experience.

 

[Toutou]

When MacOS Big Sur is being installed, it detects whether it's an ARM system or x86, then it installs the appropriate files and features.

The binaries generated at the time of code compilation are entirely different for different processor architectures.

Okay, all jokes aside, does anyone have a really in-depth source on this? Because poking around on my M1, I see lots of universal binaries and universal kernel extensions (even the x86_64 kernel..?). None of that should be necessary on a M1-only installation.

 

[theSeb]

Likelihood is that some stuff has not been converted and some stuff is required for Rosetta2

 

[jeanlain]

It's not entirely impossible that Apple engineers have told the OP that an M1 Mac and an intel Mac can boot the same system, and that it is the official response from Apple.
I see that many of you say that it is not possible, but what is your evidence? Universal Binaries do exist, and again, Intel Macs and PPC Macs were able to boot from the same 10.5 system.
The fact that Big Sur on an M1 Mac contains all the system extensions that are only relevant to intel Macs leads me to think that Apple wants the same system to work on both architectures.