Mission : Upgrade macOS

The machine I got has macOS Sonoma. This is from 2023 - almost 2 years old. There was Sequoia - in 2024 and now there is Tahoe - in 2025

I wanted to upgrade to the latest.

But quick check on the internet suggested that I may be better off staying on Sequoia. Tahoe seems unstable ¯_(ツ)_/¯

So I decided to make USB bootable for Sequoia. When installing via the app store, it directly starts the install (I think) So I decided to stick to the terminal (a good thing too IMO)

softwareupdate --fetch-full-installer --full-installer-version 15.7

This failed with inexplicable error.

ChatGPT was helpful in pointing out following command : softwareupdate --list-full-installers

Turns out there is no 15.7 instead there is 15.7.1

Fixing the command, finally got me downloaded version 😌

Now to make installable disk.

The external disk I have, has PikaOS live ISO.

So I tested that on the new machine.

First it won’t boot due to security.

Removed the security (Apple error message was very helpful in explaining what to do)

Booted into live PikaOS

Turns out Wireless card is NOT recognised 😢 Anyway, I’ll be using macOS for the foreseable future, so it was just curiosity.

But I couldn’t do anything to this USB drive. So I attached it to Linux Mint, and formatted it with FAT32

Still no luck.

Disk Utility kept giving error.

Once again, ChatGPT to the rescue.

diskutil eraseDisk JHFS+ VOLUMENAME GPT /dev/disk2 ¹

Finally

sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Sequoia.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume

🎉