hoakley September 24, 2018 Macs, Technology

macOS Mojave ships (updated)

Apple released macOS 10.14 Mojave at 1700 UTC on 24 September, as scheduled. Although the App Store didn’t always seem to want to offer it, showing High Sierra as the current macOS available for some time after its release into the Store, it is there and ready for download free of charge.

Apple provides it in a monolithic 6 GB installer app; after last year’s failed experiment with a two-part installer, I’m delighted that this sticks to the proven system.

When it has downloaded, ensure that you make at least one safe copy of the installer, as in previous cases it does remove itself once the upgrade is complete. A copy is essential if you want to make a USB bootable installer, or upgrade other Macs.

If you have an iMac 27-inch Late 2012 with a 3 TB hard disk and a Boot Camp partition, you must remove that partition before you can install Mojave, according to an Apple support note just published. Other models and configurations are not, apparently, affected.

If you are upgrading a ‘cheesegrater’ Mac Pro (Mid 2010 or Mid 2012), Apple provides detailed instructions for those models at this page, which lists compatible graphics cards. This requires turning FileVault off before upgrading, and ensuring that you upgrade only from High Sierra 10.13.6 rather than any earlier version of macOS.

Many users with MacBook Pro 2018 models with the T2 chip are reporting that upgrading fails towards the end of the process. Recommendations which have proved successful for some include resetting the SMC prior to upgrading, and reinstalling High Sierra in Recovery mode before trying the upgrade. If you have problems, you would be wise to contact Apple Support for their latest solution.

I have so far installed it on my MacBook Pro 2017, as an upgrade from High Sierra 10.13.6 (it has been running Mojave betas from an external SSD). On this Mac, the installation sequence took just under half an hour in total, passing through the following stages (elapsed times in minutes:seconds from the start):

installer splash screen – this is the point to ensure you make a copy or three
licence agreement
choice of installation disk
00:00 “About 9 minutes remaining” according to installer window in High Sierra
02:25 restart to black screen, then white Apple logo and progress bar
03:25 grey screen, then black with Apple logo and progress bar “About 36 mins remaining”
17:05 brief black screen, back to progress bar as before
18:00 blink black, back to progress bar
18:20 “About 16 mins remaining”
28:30 complete.

Your times and stages may well, of course, vary, particularly if the installer is converting a large Fusion Drive to APFS. It’s also heartening to see the Installer using the privacy protection system too.

New: I have now checked the EFI firmware updater from the 10.14 installer, and it doesn’t bring any new updates from 10.13.6. So few Macs are likely to undergo any EFI firmware update. I have updated my list of EFI firmware versions accordingly.

You’ll then need your Apple ID password to enter the App Store, and the standard 6-digit code for authentication as if it was a new Mac.

If you need to create a bootable installer, for example on a USB memory stick, then Apple’s official instructions are here, and have been updated for Mojave.

(Updated 29 September 2018 with EFI firmware information.)

17Comments

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1

Ian Weir on September 24, 2018 at 11:51 pm

Not sure who at Apple dreamed up iTunes that installed with Mojave but they had better either do better drugs or get off the crappy drugs they are now. What an abortion. I was running 12.6.2 on High Sierra and even though clunky I still could use it and see what the “f” was going on, but this new version should be thrown out with the bath water. Hopefully, there is a way of reinstalling it to get rid of 12.9.0

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- 2
  
  hoakley on September 25, 2018 at 6:56 am
  
  I wish you success trying to downgrade to the old version.
  Howard.
  
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3

Manoli on September 25, 2018 at 7:55 am

Installed on my MacBook Pro 2017, upgrade process was all ok, now testing features, no major complaints, so far…

But looks like Patrick Wardle have some. (Now spread all over the Internet) https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/09/24/zero-day-vulnerability-in-macos-mojave-bypasses-system-level-privacy-permissions

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- 4
  
  hoakley on September 25, 2018 at 8:34 am
  
  Thanks.
  Unfortunately Patrick isn’t intending providing any further details until next month, by which time I hope that Apple will have fixed this.
  I am preparing a list of known bugs in Mojave which I hope to publish here in the next day or so.
  Howard.
  
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  - 5
    
    Manoli on September 25, 2018 at 6:11 pm
    
    That’s ok, actually, won’t be very good idea to disclose the mechanics of vulnerability which have no fix at the moment, so far it’s just reminder to all of us to be careful with trying apps from unknown sources.
    
    If you are looking for more bugs, than I can confirm the problem inside Mail app with “Unable to verify message signature.” for digitally signed Sent messages which do have some attachment (the problem I was writing you about some weeks ago) is still there. It’s not especially Mojave bug, it’s carried from probably High Sierra 10.13.4 or so.
    
    First Aid in Disk Utility from Recovery Volume (Startup with ⌘+R) works ok on APFS Startup Disk, this I can confirm on pure SSD inside MacBook Pro at least.
    
    Tonight I want to try upgrading from Sierra 10.12.6 on Fusion Drive (which is Core Storage) to Mojave with APFS conversion. I’ll try once again with this final release of Mojave on Virtual Machine and if everything will work well I’ll upgrade my iMac with Fusion Drive than I can post back results. 😉
    
    Have good evening Howard, bye.
    
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    - 6
      
      hoakley on September 25, 2018 at 6:35 pm
      
      Thank you, Manoli. I wish you success with the Fusion Drive: I have mine to look forward to still.
      Howard.
      
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7

cade on September 26, 2018 at 2:22 am

Howard thanks for all this info on Mojave etc — will wait a bit to upgrade from Sierra, but will eventually.

Meanwhile wondering if Mojave & Safari will protect us/provide privacy from the issue described here:
Amazon is seeking to unmask and block the operators of what it describes as a “sophisticated and widespread” scheme to deceive consumers into interacting with malicious ads and sites purporting to be affiliated with the tech giant. It’s an unusual suit that reflects Amazon’s increasingly aggressive stance against fraudsters who take advantage of its sites and brands. Read the full story on GeekWire.
http://www.geekwire.com/2018/amazon-files-suit-malvertising-campaign-alleging-sophisticated-widespread-scheme-deceive-consumers/

I encountered a similar type of ad popup this very day, but purporting to be for microsoft prizes — and for people who don’t know better, these things are probably convincing — but, legal issues aside, why would Safari allow it in the first place? And will the new system prevent it? (I’ve already added a block to my hosts file.)

You might want to delete this link shortened from the orig [hxxp://goo.gl/MsKcyF] — it happened today at a site that is, I thought, legit [makeuseof.com] and it really ticked me off.

Anyway, will this stuff keep happening on Apple’s new OS X and new Safari?

Thanks again — great site — really appreciate it.

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- 8
  
  hoakley on September 26, 2018 at 7:20 am
  
  Thanks.
  Have you updated to Safari 12? If so, you can turn popup windows off in Preferences > Websites > Pop-up Windows. They should by default be set to Block and Notify, but you can always select Block for a given site if you wish.
  I also have Better, the tracker blocker. That seems to eliminate most of the annoying ads and I can’t ever recall seeing that type of malicious popup.
  Howard.
  
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9

Manoli on September 26, 2018 at 1:26 pm

Good morning Howard and everyone,

I can confirm an Upgrade from High Sierra to Mojave on my iMac 27-inch, Late 2015 with Fusion Drive (which consists of 120 GB SSD and 2 TB HDD) went through all OK. Mojave Installer made automatic conversion from Core Storage Fusion Drive to APFS Container with no complaints.

Now I have APFS Container called disk2 (Fusion), which consists of 2 Physical Store Disks, disk0s2 (Main) Size of 121.1 GB and disk1s2 (Secondary, Designated Aux Use) Size of 2.0 TB and it contains now standard APFS Volumes “Macintosh HD”, Preboot, Recovery and VM.

Also ‘First Aid’ in Disk Utility from Recovery mode ⌘+R run on Mojave’s Startup Disk “Macintosh HD” works OK.

So far no problems found with Upgrade, also no problems with Fusion Drive APFS conversion.

Happy Upgrading 🙂 Bye bye.

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- 10
  
  hoakley on September 26, 2018 at 1:51 pm
  
  Wonderful! Congratulations, and thanks for letting us know, Manoli.
  Enjoy!
  Howard.
  
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11

Ian Weir on September 26, 2018 at 9:33 pm

An interesting thing happened since installing Mojave. Not that is really a concern but App Store couldn’t or wouldn’t show any of the apps that I have either purchased or downloaded for free no matter what I did. My last resort was to reboot and use Command+R just to make sure there weren’t any errors and an interesting item in First Aid appeared “Deferred Repairs”. What are Deferred Repairs? If it was that or just the reboot once back and running and logged back in the App Store was functioning correctly.

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- 12
  
  hoakley on September 26, 2018 at 10:27 pm
  
  Thanks.
  Because this is a ‘new’ App Store, it is more likely to have glitches when it first sets up. Most users have to authenticate into it before it shows any purchase history.
  I don’t know what ‘deferred repairs’ are. Is that on an SSD running APFS already, or was this after conversion during the install process?
  Howard.
  
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13

Ian Weir on September 27, 2018 at 2:28 pm

I have an MBP that ran APFS for the past year and I don’t remember seeing the deferred repairs on that when running in command+R. My only thinking is that if errors crop up when a user is running the OS, the system must create a file someplace that when your running first aid that it queries and fixes anything that might be wrong with the file system.

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- 14
  
  Manoli on September 28, 2018 at 12:37 pm
  
  Hi guys, mine First Aid from Disk Utility in ⌘+R is also doing ‘Deferred Repairs’ every time. (Even if you run First Aid twice in a row.) Unfortunately have no idea what it means??? And if there might be something wrong, but the repairs are always completed ok.
  
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  - 15
    
    hoakley on September 28, 2018 at 12:40 pm
    
    How odd.
    I didn’t ever run First Aid during the beta programme, so I don’t know whether this is new or not.
    Howard.
    
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    - 16
      
      hoakley on September 28, 2018 at 12:47 pm
      
      Just tried it, and yes, there is a line
      Performing deferred repairs
      in the output. However, it doesn’t list any repairs which it has performed: my guess is that this is a stage report, saying that it is looking for any repairs which it needs to make and have been deferred. If it makes any, it should report those immediately afterwards. As it doesn’t, we can only conclude that there weren’t any to make.
      Does that make sense?
      Howard.
      
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- 17
  
  Manoli on September 28, 2018 at 12:59 pm
  
  Yes, it makes sense. My other iMac with APFS Fusion does exactly same thing. I would believe, it doesn’t mean any problems.
  
  LikeLiked by 1 person

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