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  LittleBITS: Unsubscribe Bug Reversed and Virtualizing Monterey on an Old Mac

   Adam Engst

   I have two quick bits to share this week: the restoration of several
   hundred TidBITS subscribers who were inexplicably unsubscribed on 6
   December 2021 and a tip for how you can run a newer version of macOS
   than your older Mac supports.

Inexplicable Unsubscribe Event Reversed

   It's always something. Last week, Lauri Reinhardt was poking around in
   Sendy while trying to help a reader who wasn't receiving TidBITS issues
   when she happened to notice that on 6 December 2021, a whopping 201
   people unsubscribed from TidBITS. Most days see no unsubscribes at all,
   and when there are some, it's usually one or two at most. So 201 was
   utterly anomalous. Even weirder, they all happened between 6:52 PM and
   7:34 PM, presumably in direct response to the TidBITS issue being sent
   during that time. Subsequent weeks have seen just the usual handful of
   unsubscribes, so whatever happened, it was a one-time event.

   When I checked with a small subset of readers, none had intended to
   unsubscribe or remembered having done anything that would trigger an
   unsubscribe. Although there was a higher proportion of .edu and .gov
   and .org addresses among the list of addresses that were unsubscribed,
   no one I asked'including a consultant friend who's completely aware of
   his technology stack'could think of any common anti-spam or filtering
   tools that might have initiated an unsubscribe action in the
   background.

   I've resubscribed everyone, so if you were among that group, our
   apologies! Everything should work again now. And if you see this on our
   website but haven't been receiving TidBITS in email as you should,
   check with Lauri at [1][email protected], and she'll get you sorted
   out.

Virtualize a Newer macOS Version on an Older Mac

   Let's say you have an older Mac that can't be upgraded to macOS 12
   Monterey'like a 2014 27-inch iMac with 5K Retina display'but you would
   still like to run Monterey for testing or documentation purposes.
   You're seemingly stuck. Or are you?

   On TidBITS Talk, user jk2gs shared a workaround that took me by
   surprise'you can [2]use VMware Fusion to virtualize Monterey even on
   Macs that don't support Monterey. This trick presumably also works with
   any other virtualization app that's compatible with your Mac's current
   version of macOS. Once you have VMware Fusion, which you can [3]get for
   free after creating an account, you can install Monterey or [4]an older
   version of macOS.

   I haven't tried using VMware Fusion in this way, and I'll bet there are
   various gotchas, but it's worth investigating if you want to run a
   newer version of macOS than will install on your Mac.

References

   Visible links
   1. file://localhost/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection#f88b8d8888978a8cb88c919c9a918c8bd69b9795
   2. https://talk.tidbits.com/t/explanation-for-some-big-sur-upgrade-problems/17151/38?u=ace
   3. https://customerconnect.vmware.com/web/vmware/evalcenter?p=fusion-player-personal
   4. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211683

   Hidden links:
   5. https://tidbits.com/wp/../uploads/2018/09/VMware-Fusion-11-icon.png

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