Pages with tag Mac OS X

Installing MacOSX when the installer says: OS X could not be installed on your computer. No packages were eligible for install.

A key step for upgrading the disk on a MacBook Pro is to install a new operating system on the new drive, and then use Migration Assistant to copy over the old data. Depending on how you went about the work, installing Mac OS X on the new system may give you a message: OS X could not be installed on your computer. No packages were eligible for install.

This is what it looks like in the installer. Upon seeing this I went "HUH?" because the installation was from a thumb drive I'd used many times to install Mac OS X (El Capitan) successfully.

Installing macOS High Sierra on a MacBook Pro or other Mac that is not supported by High Sierra

Apple has declared certain older Mac computers unsupported by newer versions of macOS. In my case, I attempted to install macOS High Sierra on a mid-2009 MacBook Pro, but the installer failed in a very strange way. I constructed a USB installer using the normal process to make a macOS installer, then rebooted the computer to run the installation, but instead the screen simply went blank and the computer turned itself off. In other words installing macOS High Sierra on this mid-2009 MacBook Pro failed in a strange way. After a couple dozen macOS installs on different computers under my belt, I'd never seen this behavior. After some duckduckgoing the cause was found to be this screen capture - that the computer was not supported by High Sierra - and fortunately there was a relatively simple solution.
Installing macOS High Sierra on a Windows disk and Disk Utility says 'Couldn't modify partition map' I have installed Mac OS X dozens of times, including a couple dozen times installing it onto a bare drive. You boot the OS X installer thumb drive, then run Disk Utility to format the disk, return to the installer, and have at it. But in this case Disk Utility refused to format the disk saying it "Couldn't modify partition map". The key data point is the disk in question had come from a Windows computer.
MacOS X setup for Node.js development - Installing Node I'm setting up a new Mac, rather, I'm doing a clean install of my Mac Mini as a way to upgrade to Mavericks.  I've had the Mini since 2009 and the disc has some cruft so I thought it would be best to start with a clean slate.  That means reinstalling EVERYTHING including all the stuff I use for Node.js development. Hence, the idea came to mind that this would be a useful starting point for a series of blog posts.  I've always wondered what it would take to set up the Node.js equivalent to the MAMP application.
What is the T2 Security Chip on modern MacBook's At some point Apple designed the MacBook's and MacBook Pros with the T2 Security Chip. It's just there, and supposedly it's a good idea. But like all things, it's useful to know what the chip does, and more importantly why Apple designed this chip into the system. Supposedly it increases security, otherwise why is it called the Security Chip, but is there another purpose. Apple is famously tight-lipped about its roadmap, so what if this is a game of multi-dimensional chess where the T2 chip is a harbinger of something else?