Tag Archive for ‘Dave Nanian’

Dave Nanian, writing in Shirt Pocket Watch:

As such, we can finally release a Beta that works as expected on both Intel Macs (now) and M1 Macs (assuming you have installed 11.4 Beta 1 or later).

To be clear, this is only possible because Apple made it possible in macOS 11.4. I’m certain it required changes to the M1’s startup process and to asr to finally make it happen. Without those changes, we couldn’t have done this in a supported way.

I’m really happy the teams involved made the effort.

I can start thinking about upgrading to Big Sur once 11.4 and this version of SuperDuper! officially ships.

➝ Source: shirtpocket.com

Dave Nanian, writing about SuperDuper! on Big Sur:

At present, it’s not possible to make bootable copies of Big Sur, even with asr, Apple’s own built-in replication utility. As such, we haven’t released a Beta, or even an internal Alpha, because it wouldn’t meet our own requirements.

So, for the moment, we’re holding back, hoping that Apple will fix the issues and allow 3rd party (or even 1st party, given asr) bootable backups. While asr was failing completely in previous builds, in the most recent one it isn’t able to back up because the system volume isn’t properly ‘sealed’ (which is ominous, since why wouldn’t a standard install be sealed, and if it’s not, why wouldn’t you be able to back it up anyway).

So, while progress is being made, we’re kind of stuck waiting for the king.

This is from about a month ago at this point, but I haven’t seen any new information that shows bootable backups are possible with newer betas.

Over the past few years I’ve been much more hesitant to upgrade macOS immediately after major version are released. My machine is far too essential to risk breaking anything. So I’ve been waiting several months before I upgrade.

Even if that wasn’t the case, though, this news about the inability to create bootable backups would give me pause. Although, Time Machine and Backblaze are my primary, everyday backup systems, SuperDuper! is essential to me. When I travel or send in my machine for repair, albeit rare, I always do a SuperDuper! backup so I can get up and running quickly if anything happens.

If I upgrade to Big Sur and bootable backups aren’t even possible, I’d always have a little bit of worry in the back of my mind that I would want or need to create one and wouldn’t be able to.

➝ Source: shirtpocket.com

Dave Nanian, developer at Shirt Pocket:

This means that, for those using El Capitan, we can’t hint obliquely that we’re compatible, as we have in the past, where our current version worked even though we couldn’t declare that compatibility until the final build. This time, the current version of SuperDuper is dead in the water on El Capitan. It just won’t work.

But don’t dismay: we’ve worked to change that. I’m happy to say, to those of you who are on the Beta (and those who are going to join the public beta today), we’ve developed and tested a Beta version of SuperDuper that makes bootable copies of El Capitan.

It’s a clever workaround that only requires the user to reinstall the OS from the App Store after booting from a backup. This means you’ll have an extra step before becoming fully functional, but without that additional step you’re vulnerable to certain types of malware (although, I’m not aware of this kind of malware existing in the wild). And as an added benefit, the OS reinstall builds certain caches which will speed up boot time.