Can't update to GarageBand 10.4.1

I found that by deleting the Big Sur Beta app that I had sitting in the application folders, and updating everything else outstanding, I was able to delete the GarageBand app, and then redownload the appropriate version.

I even got a popup saying that the latest version is not supported on Catalina, but it offered me a chance to get the appropriate older version that was compatible.

IronManJFF wrote:

Solution :

Put GarageBand in the Trash

DON'T EMPTY THE THRASH

Restart

Open AppStore (the update for GB will disappear)

Close AppStore

Go to the Trash and right-click on GarageBand and select Put Back.

That's it

Well duh! Brilliant! Worked like a charm. Why didn’t we think of this right away? I wish I could promote you to a higher level.

nino5013 wrote:

It's strange that the message that stops the installation process says "mac os x 10.11 is required" while my mac runs mac os 10.15.7. My understanding is that the system version check is wrong not the Garageband app itself.

The AppStore is currently buggy and I hope it will be fixed soon, so we are no longer pestered with an update alert that is useless. GarageBand 10.4.1 needs macOS 11 Big Sur.

But if you are planning to stay on Catalina for a long time, be sure to make a full backup of your current version of GarageBand, the sounds, the loops, and. keep it safe, so you can reinstall it, if need be. The App Store may not offer the older version ever again, even if the current problem will be fixed. During theist years the AppStore only offered the most recent, current version for download, is users with an older system version could not install GarageBand at all.

Ok. So I deleted the 'Install Big Sur Beta' app ( I had correctly followed the procedure to deregister this device from the beta program months ago, but the app was sitting in the Applications folder still), and then updated all other updates (there was a Safari update waiting) and went back to app store.

This time, when I try to download the Garageband app it says that the latest version is compatible only with Big Sur but would I like to download the last compatible version ? I said yes. App downloaded and dutifully installed.

Bingo problem solved. The Updates tab no longer shows an update.

So I think having that Beta installer sitting around in the Applications folder somehow caused this problem? Or else it was having Safari be a revision behind.

There are several threads about this. If the version offered for updating is truly for Big Sur only then it should NOT have showed up along with the other updates for Catalina users. I hope this is just a glitch that will be corrected so let’s wait a few days before taking this issue further.

I think its even more messed up than that. I deleted the GarageBand app and the update notification went away. But when I try to re-install it, it still tries to install the wrong version.

The only thing I can think of, is that perhaps I downloaded a Big Sur beta on this mac ones to create a virtual machine for testing it. Could it somehow have registered this mac as a Big Sur mac during that process ?

shivio wrote:

Ok. This is crazy, but now, its back!

I had about a day without the update, and now its back in my app store with the same error.

Crazy! So whatever I did to reset it did not work. It only temporarily removed it.

This is not going to go away unless Apple takes action to correct it. No workaround will fix it, no deleting of caches or files will fix things (and if you delete the wrong thing you could wind up in big trouble). We have to just sit and wait until Apple takes action. Apple is not here either. We are just users like yourself trying to help one another.

Ranting, raving, berating, denigrating Apple may let one blow off steam but it accomplishes nothing positive. As annoying as it may be this issue is minor compared to others.

I believe that we can now safely assume that GarageBand is EOL (end of life) for macOS below Big Sur. There will be no more updates for those of us not running Big Sur. Users not running Big Sur can’t download ANY version of GarageBand now. If your GarageBand is doing what you want it to do then accept that this is it for you. Just like my late 2013 iMac cannot install Big Sur the same is apparently true for GarageBand now.

I spoke with Apple support about this and got a rather unsatisfactory response, I will spare you many of the horrors and just provide you with the salient points. They said that if there is an update to an application, Apple send it out regardless of the OS version of your machine. I pointed out that it is ridiculous to notify a user of something that they cannot do anything about and for what it is worth their support representative agreed with me and went ahead to provide feedback to their 'senior team'. I did stress that as an Apple user for many years across various devices I have never seen this before, and I am 100% convinced that the developer dropped the ball, as no developer worth their salt makes code which is not backward-compatible without shouting this from the rooftops. Let's see what happens.

It's strange that the message that stops the installation process says "mac os x 10.11 is required" while my mac runs mac os 10.15.7. My understanding is that the system version check is wrong not the Garageband app itself.

It is certainly an embarrassment. It's a silly coding issue and it is down to Apple to sort it but there will be an easy fix. I would hazard a guess that once the developer who let this slip through the net gets wind of it, it'll be his/her's personal priority to fix it. They'll want to do it quickly, but I suspect we, and they, will need to wait patiently to release the update that'll fix it as part of Apple's regular batch release cycle.

Maybe this is Apple's way of provoking us 2012 machine users to splash out on new hardware.