OS rollback

A couple of days ago, the 'update system settings' icon on my macbook really frickin' pissed me off. Enough to consider that damn update and just get the icon out of the way. So I installed Ventura and did the full upgrade. Took about 15 minutes, and then the laptop was back on. 

The first half an hour was good, where I explored the new iconography, colors, features, etc. Then I started Ableton to do some Kontakt work. It ran well for about 5 - 10 minutes, while I was working on some light patches, but then as soon as the load got heavier, the damn thing began to lag. 

Now, it wasn't so bad that I couldn't run the instrument at all. But it was bad enough so that whenever I would add more instruments to the track, the whole thing would lag like crazy. 

The laptop was also overheating like crazy. So, for the first time in my life, I decided to do a Mac OS rollback. Here's how to do it, for future purposes: 

 

• Make sure you're not skipping more than 2 OS versions. 1 is ideal. 2 is the most you should go. 
  
  
• Use the App Store to download whichever OS version you want to install 
  
  
• Take an empty USB drive that can hold more than the size of the OS installer 
  
  
• Go to Disk Utility and erase the USB. Name it USB and format it in the style of MAC OS Extended (Journaled) 
  
  
• Once it's erased, go to Terminal and run this command: sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Monterey.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/USB --nointeraction 
  
  
• Enter your password 
  
  
• Take another empty hard drive that can hold more than the size of your Mac's hard drive. 
  
  
• Go to Time Machine, follow the instructions there and back up all your data to the current moment 
  
  
• Restart the laptop. Hold down Cmd + R to boot in recovery mode 
  
  
• When it throws up options on the main screen, choose to Erase the MAC OS HDD (takes about a couple of minutes at best) 
  
  
• Restart the laptop. Hold down Option while the laptop boots up 
  
  
• When the options pop up, click 'Install Mac OS *name*' 
  
  
• Enter your password, click continue, and click on the Mac OS internal HDD
  
  
• After installation, it'll ask you whether you want to continue with the blank HDD or migrate data using Time Machine. Click on the Time Machine option 
  
  
• This takes about 45 minutes or so, and when done, your laptop is like the older version of itself but with the OS you want

So yes, I'm running Monterey for now, which is higher up than Big Sur but not significantly better than it. The laptop's still heating up, so don't know how that will pan out.   

But if this doesn't work, I'm going to go back to Big Sur. Have used that on the office Mac computer and it works like a breeze. 

Edit: 2 days later - Did this. Went back to Big Sur cuz Monterey sucks too. Laptop's not heating up with Big Sur. Not yet at least. Also, made the bootable drive a bit differently today- dragged the location addresses and files over to Terminal and found out that it puts in the command by itself. Also- the process was much longer today, but went as smoothly as ever. 

Edit: All right, f this. Sitting in August and the office machine has still not adjusted to Monterey. So screw it, rolling back to Big Sur 11.7.7. 

Edit: Rolled back to 11.7.7 but it just wasn't going past the login screen. Figured it was an issue with my Time Machine, so erased the HDD and reinstalled Big Sur 11.7.9 without loading up a TM backup this time. 

Which basically meant I sat and spent my whole evening (Aug 21) installing back apps and plug-ins. On the plus side, the machine is super fast now, so the editors will thank me.  

Here's a video to come back to: 

No more installing updates. 

Edit Sep 16 '24: 

Power off the laptop without the USB stick

Cmd + R

Select Utilities in the mini bar

Click Startup Security Utility

Click ‘Medium Security’

Click ‘Allow booting from external or removable media’

Shut down

Insert USB stick

Hold ‘Option’ while powering on MacBook