I hope Artie will forgive my copying his post in another string, but I think it is pertinent in this thread as well.

Originally Posted by artie505
I'm having a LOT of trouble trying to believe that Apple is going to leave us with no way to create a bootable clone. I'm having a LOT of trouble believing that they'd even think of it.

Their mandating an Internet connection for upgrading was bad enough, but at least it only left us potentially unable to upgrade, which is an option rather than a necessity.

How do they expect us to recover when we NEED to recover and we haven't got Internet accessibility?
I have two observations:
  1. After Apple went to the trouble of creating the very useful clone command in Catalina, that CCC and TinkerTool System made use of, the fact it does not work in Big Sur would lead me to believe either Apple doesn't know how to make it work with the new constraints or doesn't know how to make it work without creating unacceptable security vulnerabilities. That doesn't mean the issue can't or won't be solved, but it may take a lot of blood, sweat, tears, coffee, late nights, cold pizza, and time to do so. I don't envy the engineering team that has this on their todo list. It may not be at, or even near, the top of that todo list either as I suspect the vast majority of Mac users don't even know what a clone is. 😳
  2. You haven't been reading the highway signs marking the road for software updates, upgrades, reinstalls, and application installs. The first obvious road sign was the App Store like iOS. The second, a billboard instead of a sign, was the Recovery Drive. MacOS is tail-end Charlie on this. There are thousands of iPhones and dozens of iPads for every Mac and neither has ever had any way of getting software except the internet or cellular. Bringing MacOS and its distribution channels into line with the other ninety percent of Apple products is inevitable.


If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

— Albert Einstein