Need Troubleshooting Help - Mac/iOS

[Bgeeoz]

Need someone with a Mac and an iOS device they are willing to restore to help troubleshoot a problem. The help I need is described first, the ongoing saga follows:

I have been trying to restore an iOS device using a Macbook Air for 2 months, working with Apple Support, and getting no where. Every time I do a restore, I get the following:

Need someone else to attempt to restore an iOS device using a Mac.

If Mac is on High Sierra, you use iTunes to restore the iOS device.

If on a later MacOS, you plug iOS device into Mac, go to Finder, and click on the device.

You need to place the iOS device into restore mode. Just pressing the Restore button on iTunes or Finder without putting the device in restore mode does not accomplish what I need to test.

For devices with a Home button, you plug iOS device into Mac, open iTunes or Finder (select device in Finder). You then press the Home button and power buttons down until Apple appears, and continue holding both until screen goes black, then shows Restore Mode screen.

For newer iOS devices without Home button, plug iOS device into Mac, open iTunes or Finder. You then quickly press Up volume (release), Down volume (release), then hold the power button until Apple comes up and continue holding until screen goes black, then shows Restore Mode.

You then follow directions that pop up on Mac, pressing “Restore”. Mac will download the required files, and should install them on the iOS device, clean installing the latest iOS version available for the device.

Now for the saga. An update to my iPhone 11 running iOS 14.4 Beta in January resulted in most 3rd party apps crashing upon opening. Went through procedures recommended by Apple Support to return the iPhone to the non-beta version. This required restoring the iPhone. Result was the message shown above. After 4 calls to Apple, providing diagnostic logs from iPhone and Mac, and trying all their suggestions, I gave up calling them. This was all done on my new Macbook Air 2020 M1.

I finally got my iPhone back to useful condition by remotely wiping the phone, downloading the apps and most data. But it is still on the Beta. According to Apple, only way to get off Beta is to restore phone.

I then tried to restore an old iPhone 6s never on the beta. Same error.

Lightbulb went on, I have a 2011 Macbook Air running High Sierra. Tried to restore both iPhones, and 2 iPads. Same result.

Another lightbulb moment. Installed Windows 10 using Bootcamp on 2011 MBA, then tried restoring using iTunes on PC. Success.

Here we are in March. Finally got up the nerve to re-install High Sierra on 2011 MBA. Same authorization error.

Reset NVRAM, SMC. Tried restore with iPhone 6s in DFU mode. Same error.

Out of ideas. Need to know if this is common to MacOS, because someday I’m not going to have access to the Bootcamp Windows, plus I need to be able to tell Apple it is their problem, not mine.

Apple Store is 8 hours away. And posting an iPhone that has all my data on it is not an option.

[Leo]

Looks like Apple’s Activation Lock. This is to discourage iPhone theft.

Make sure you’ve removed that phone from Find My iPhone.

If you can’t do that you’ll have to bring it into an Apple store with proof of purchase to get the lock removed.

[Bgeeoz]

iTunes and Finder both tell you to turn off Find My before they let you start the process. Same thing on Windows version. And, all one has to do to get around the problem is find a Windows machine and restore the device.

At this point, the iPhone is restored. This now is strictly an issue of what happens in the future when I don’t have access to Windows because I can’t put it on the M1 MBA, and is this a common bug to all MacOS users?

I clean installed High Sierra again, restored iPhone on Windows, never logged either into any AppleID, and still couldn’t get the MBA to run the restore process.

Probably just me. I literally made a career out of causing software to fail when I touch it.

[Bgeeoz]

So you tell me I am not a jinx on tech stuff.

Still could not get either MBA’s to restore the 2 iPhones I have been trying to restore for another 3 days. Got someone else to verify restore worked on their devices.

Got an update to Big Sur 11.2.3 on 2020 MBA last night, so decided to try restore again. And I decided to try using Apple Configurator 2 if it didn’t work. Downloaded on 2020 M1 MBA, ran it with iPhone 11. Being my usual patient self, also was still downloading iOS via Finder as part of another try restoring with it. Got a message from Configurator 2 that it could not restore the iPhone. But, I could see the iPhone had been restored because it displayed “HELLO” screen.

So, doing nothing else, I have been able to run the normal restore function on both the iPhone 11 and iPhone 6s on both the 2020 MBA, and the 2011 MBA (I never put Apple Configurator 2 on 2011 MBA). I don’t even want to think about where the problem (s) actually were.

BUT, now Terminal on 2020 MBA won’t run. Crash dump after message that the account doesn’t have permission to run it. Tried alternate admin account, same thing. Tried Safeboot, same thing.

The moral is, be very careful of who you let drive or play with your MachE. If I ever got in it, you would have a very heavy, very expensive brick.

[Bgeeoz]

I really don’t expect a reply, but I need a forum to vent my frustration.

Got the stupid problem with restoring the iPhone 11 fixed a while ago, wiped it, and sold it. Even got more than Apple offered on trade in. Only had to put up with 7 online trolls trying to rip me off to get there.

Then got my new iPhone SE. Of course, I could not set it up by recovering the backup, because the 11 had been on the Beta. So went through and manually got the SE restored after several days work. Using icloud, dropbox, and files I manually backed up got most back.

Found I had missed some important files today, so found them on my MBA 2020 backup where I had downloaded them.

All I have to do is plug in the iPhone, open Finder, go to Files, and upload the missing files to the Good Reader App, right? Duck Soup.

CRAP… MBA does not registar when I plugged in the iPhone. Reboot everything, no joy. Force restart iPhone, no joy. Put iPhone in recovery mode, which usually gets an immediate response from Finder. No joy. Throw my hands up, bang my head on bench, fill in Feedback Assistant App.

Well, this stupid piece of silicon is not defeating me (yet). Finally remember I can access Good Reader via iCloud. Why didn’t I just do that first?

Either Big Sur or M1 has big problems, as Leo has mentioned on radio.

After several weeks, really happy going from 11 to SE.

See, just taking the time to write this calmed me down.