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Comment by rtpg

8 days ago

Kinda funny how this is true but there's a line of Mac OSes that can't connect to the App Store anymore so you can't upgrade the OS without manually downloading it off of an Apple help page.

It's not the end of the world, but I've had to help more than one person walk through this process cuz they're like "I can't update the OS????"

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rtpg

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wpm  8 days ago

I was a Mac admin when they pushed the change to move Updates into the Mac App Store and I hated it then. It didn't even make sense from an ill-advised "must match iOS" way, since OS updates happened in Settings.app on that platform. Just bone-headed "this will boost eNgAgEmEnT" BS.

  • wtallis  8 days ago

    I never got the impression that it was any kind of attempt to match iOS or "boost engagement". It's simply that the Mac App Store was brand new, and it was time to phase out DVDs as the primary distribution mechanism.

    They did sell USB flash drives with 10.7, but it didn't make sense for that to be the primary distribution method.

    • wpm  7 days ago

      Sure, but I get my OS upgrades from the System Settings app now, what was stopping me from doing that in the early 2010s?

      And yes, the Mac App Store was brand new, what better way to boost engagement than to move a fairly standard and typical function into it even though it was unrelated? Sounds like a good way to trick people into using your new thing. Like a boost, to engagement, one could say.

      1 reply →

rconti  8 days ago

And it's hard to even find the download links, and a lot of them don't work.

eleveriven  8 days ago

Yeah, it creates this weird dead zone where the machine is perfectly capable of running the newer OS, but the built-in path to get there is broken