Why is rebooting to a different partition so difficult on M1 macs?

[!!!]

I don't get it. Why can't I just hold Option like I used to?

Now I can't even hit restart, no, I need to hold down the power button until it shuts off, hold it down until it turns back on again, keep holding it forever, until finally it gives me the menu. Then of course we can't just be done, need to let it restart *again*.

Why does this need to be so labourous? Surely Apple of all places would be encountering this the most often, since I'd assume they're constantly testing on different versions.

 

[russell_314]

Probably because it’s something much less than 1% of people do so Apple doesn’t put any effort into it. That would be my guess

 

[Mike Boreham]

I don't get it. Why can't I just hold Option like I used to?

Now I can't even hit restart, no, I need to hold down the power button until it shuts off, hold it down until it turns back on again, keep holding it forever, until finally it gives me the menu. Then of course we can't just be done, need to let it restart *again*.

Why does this need to be so labourous? Surely Apple of all places would be encountering this the most often, since I'd assume they're constantly testing on different versions.

I use System Settings > General > Startup Disk. This is the way Apple intends.

 

[FreakinEurekan]

I actually boot to different volumes on a pretty regular basis. But holding the power button doesn’t bother me as much as it seems to for you.

Send Apple some feedback about it - but don’t hold your breath waiting for it to change. Https://www.apple.com/feedback

 

[haralds]

It could be a security issue. A Bluetooth keyboard can be distant from the computer, which might be locked. The power button cannot be remoted.

 

[mr_roboto]

I don't get it. Why can't I just hold Option like I used to?

Now I can't even hit restart, no, I need to hold down the power button until it shuts off, hold it down until it turns back on again, keep holding it forever, until finally it gives me the menu. Then of course we can't just be done, need to let it restart *again*.

Why does this need to be so labourous? Surely Apple of all places would be encountering this the most often, since I'd assume they're constantly testing on different versions.

This answer may or may not satisfy you, but it wasn't an arbitrary choice. Apple gave up on implementing certain features directly in firmware in order to improve overall boot security.

Intel Macs used UEFI to boot. UEFI is a firmware standard that Intel invented to replace the ancient PC BIOS. UEFI is essentially a mini operating system, complete with network, graphics, and file system drivers. You can easily write significant amounts of user interface in the UEFI environment, and that's what Apple did when they were using Intel processors - when you pressed the 'option' key, that was running a UEFI boot picker application which Apple bundled into the Mac's UEFI firmware image.

Unfortunately, UEFI suffers from a number of flaws from a security perspective. One of the biggest is simply that it is so sophisticated and complicated. If you exclude drivers from each project, it's literally about as many lines of source code as the Linux kernel. Complex software is always more likely to contain bugs than simple software. This is relevant to security because every undiscovered, unpatched bug is potentially exploitable as a security flaw.

When Apple started building Apple Silicon for iPhones, they came up with their own secure boot design. In order to minimize the chance of bugs, their design is extremely minimalist - they cut out literally every feature not absolutely required to make the machine function at all. Apple Silicon firmware is kinda like a fixed-gear bike: brutally simple and uncompromising.

For Apple Silicon Macs, they retained the essence of the iPhone secure boot design but added just enough to enable Mac features. However, they prioritized security over convenience. Your complaint is an example of this philosophy in action. Everything that requires a UI, such as the boot picker, is now a macOS application which runs after booting recoveryOS, a cut-down hidden macOS installation which lives side by side with your main macOS installation. This lets the pre-macOS boot firmware still be extremely minimal. The only UI it has is detecting whether you used the power button in the special way to tell it to boot into recoveryOS rather than the current blessed macOS installation.

 

[novagamer]

-

 

[madmin]

Is there a straightforward way to install the same OS on 2 volumes fo complete isolation? I am likely getting an M4 Mac and had a hell of a time even getting dual booting working on my Intel MBP recently.

<snip>

Isn't it possible to create two volumes on your internal drive, install on one, enable Filevault on it, then install another system on the other volume with different user/password and enable Filevault on that ? When you cold boot it should go to the last volume used. Then use sys prefs to select the other boot volume when required. I haven't tried this but if it works then by default the other non-booted volume would be unavailable due to encryption. If needed you can mount it by hand using the user password. Just make sure you don't save it in the keychain so it won't open automatically.

 

[mr_roboto]

Is there a straightforward way to install the same OS on 2 volumes fo complete isolation? I am likely getting an M4 Mac and had a hell of a time even getting dual booting working on my Intel MBP recently.

I have searched and haven’t found much. I want a small volume / partition for development and devtools and I don’t want that to touch my production workflows which are not developer-centric. I believe I have to have total isolation to achieve this, I know I can switch users but that’s not what I want to do if I can avoid it, cruft can bleed over.

Open to suggestions or guidance, I think this is a niche use case now and nobody is doing it outside of installing betas, but the M4 won’t have a new OS available until next summer and I need to do this straight away when I get the computer. I do not want to use an external drive or disable SIP but I am OK with a slow boot process for changing “contexts“ since I would do it fairly sparingly.

I have an odd combination of workflows that are essentially “modes“ I operate under and I very much don’t want to buy 2 Macs to do some personal/hobby development occasionally. Dual booting solves this problem for me neatly but it seems like an enormous pain on Apple Silicon.

I don't understand why you can't do this with a single OS install and single user account, to be honest. What exactly is the cruft you're so afraid of? Dev tools don't do anything while you aren't running them.

In any case, sure, you can install two OS versions on the same computer, and they can be the same version if you like.

 

[pshufd]

I've not had any problems doing this though I haven't done it since last year and it was on an M1 mini. I used that system to test software on different operating systems so it was nice to be able to boot into more than one version of macOS. I usually had other versions on separate external SSDs.