New Mac Studio - can’t install Adobe products, can’t boot into safe mode

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Level 1

11 points

New Mac Studio - can’t install Adobe products, can’t boot into safe mode

Received my $3000 Mac Studio yesterday and have so far spent hours just moving data and simple settings from my backups. This is turning into a Microsoft PC experience at this point…

Took hours of grinding to move my old Mac Mini system and over. Took more hours and research to get my RME hardware to run (partially their stupid software, partially new hidden menus in MacOS). After solving audio I moved over to reinstalling Adobe products. Which worked. Until I tried renaming some folders and needed a second admin account for that. Which deleted everything. Did I have a backup? No. Because Time Machine is refusing to make one while iCloud is pointlessly grinding away. So complete do-over. Now Adobe won’t install anything at all. And I can’t boot into safe mode no matter which of the AI generated suggestions I follow. Just won’t do it.

Seriously considering sending it all back and live with my 10 year old Mac Mini. At least it was stable and reliable if a bit underpowered at this point.

Posted on Apr 19, 2025 4:19 PM

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Answer 1

Apr 19, 2025 5:05 PM in response to 7enderbender

Most of this I can't really speak to, and I don't know what AI guidance you have followed for booting into safe mode.

But here is Apple's direct guidance for booting your Mac in safe mode:

Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support

1- Turn off the Mac.

2- Press and hold the power button to see "Loading startup options"

3- Select your startup volume - Macintosh HD

4- Press and hold the Shift key, click "Continue in Safe Mode".

If that does not work, please post back and tell us where the process fails.

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Answer 2

Apr 19, 2025 5:40 PM in response to 7enderbender

AI is a statistical tool used for guessing the next word in a sequence, based on the previous word and a corpora of words, and a prompt. AI is most definitely not a viable reference source. It’s all to also prone to generating outdated info, and incorrect info. AI is good for generating walls of text that other people and other AI tools can then need to wade through, compounding the “fun”.

Here is how to transfer using Migration Assistant, which can run during the initial setup:

Transfer to a new Mac with Migration Assistant - Apple Support

Here is the factory reset for the new Mac, so you can start over, and re-perform the transfer:

Erase your Mac and reset it to factory settings - Apple Support

You will want to get a current backup of the existing Mac here, too. Backups are about the only way to mark information as being valuable. The Mac setup assistant or migration assistant file transfer will not alter the source of the transfer, but having no current backups is inherently a scary situation.

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Answer 3

7enderbender Author

Level 1

11 points

Apr 19, 2025 7:37 PM in response to 7enderbender

Other updates at this point: got Adobe (Lightroom classic and Photoshop desktop) installed without being able to get into safe mode. Long story short: forced me to install Rosetta first before actually installing the new versions. This may well be an Adobe issue.

And I was finally be able to run a fresh time machine backup after “iCloud” finally stopped grinding away after hours - no idea what it did. I have photos and message excluded on this machine and really only a handful of documents stored in iCloud (I really just use it for iPhone backups). So still no idea what that was all about.

So assuming I won’t need “safe mode” right now, I guess I have a running system for Logic Pro X and everything back in place for photo editing. Which is what this machine is designated for. Shocking that this was a two day task (and with open questions left).

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Answer 4

Old Toad

Level 10

215,382 points

Apr 19, 2025 7:52 PM in response to 7enderbender

How did you get your old data, system settings, applications, etc. from your old Mac to your new Studio? Did you use Migration Assistant? If you have Time Machine backups of your old Mac it's the quickest and most reliable way to migrate the data: connect the Time Machine drive to the Studio and when asked from where you want to get your data select Mac or Time Machine. I just did it with a Mac Mini M4 from a 2017 27" iMac's TM drive.

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Answer 5

7enderbender Author

Level 1

11 points

Apr 20, 2025 5:54 AM in response to Old Toad

I had to do it twice because of the hi up with the admin account. First time I used a Time Machine backup. Second I used migration assistant via a network cable. That second one was significantly faster than the first. About two hours vs a good 8 with Time Machine.

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Answer 6

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,144 points

Apr 20, 2025 6:05 AM in response to 7enderbender

That second one was significantly faster than the first. About two hours vs a good 8 with Time Machine.

That makes little sense unless your backup drive was somehow corrupted which might explain the problems you had.

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Answer 7

7enderbender Author

Level 1

11 points

Apr 19, 2025 7:28 PM in response to D.I. Johnson

That’s also what I found. Doesn’t work. I get to 4, it does indeed show as “continue in safe mode”. I click that (with the shift key down) - and it boots normally. No safe mode.

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