I used to think Apple Support was pretty darn good, until this happened

If you have Apple store where you are, schedule a meeting with genius bar technician. I believe Apple support has moved overseas and you may have difficulty understanding their language.

I’ve always seen research as more helpful than support, because they’re so darn incompetent 99.5% of the time. That being said, if you go to your local Apple Store if you have one, the experience is pretty amazing, I’ve never seen such a good customer experience ever, that being said, Our customer experience is more like, oh, you want a refund? I don’t know, I’m not feeling it today, I’ll just say it’s not covered or something. So maybe my standards are real low

I don't know if you can avoid data loss, with time machine probably, but apple support have articles on how to install multiple versions of macos and we can easily downgrade that way.
https://support.apple.com/en-ca/118282

Did you try grabbing the installer package directly from Apple bypassing the App Store, I’m not sure if you can do it with an IPSW, but it might work.

Sorry, I have no answer. Just this warning. I downgraded once and found that my iTunes library still behaved as if it had the more recent version. That is, the downgraded Music app could not access my music files. Beware.

As we’ve discussed before, I think it’s a better idea to visit an Apple Store to help with software issues. The main reason I say this is that it’s more one-on-one, and you can get them to understand your problem better than trying to explain it over the phone.

I have the 15.4 and it is fine. Try to see what might be causing your problems with the current version of your MacoS. Downgrading might not solve your problems.

I advise the cleanest and quickest solution, which is to put your MBP in DFU mode and blast it with another Mac. Using a USB stick works but it's not really the same procedure as on Intel Macs, you need to carefully delete the old volume group from Recovery before you install, as the Mac technically now boots from an internal partition rather than the USB as such, which just contains the installer.

Also, and this may not be apparent, but try using another port for your USB stick. Yes I know it's crazy, but Apple has documented that booting USB from the DFU port will not work. So you need to identify which port is your DFU port, and then *not* use that port for the USB stick.

Again though, remember that as Paul said, downgrading may not actually be the best option here if you have data that is no longer compatible with an older version, such as your Apple Music library.

As your problem is related to having issues with VoiceOver, would Apple's accessibility team be able to help you?

With Apple Silicon, things around booting, installing and cloning have got really hairy, to the point that it's best to always take the path of least resistance and do your best with your existing backups, just like on iOS really. It's crazy, but you're not supposed to think of Macs and macOS as an open system, because it's not; you instead work within the confines allowed you.

Good luck with it.

I very rarely use support of any type because of issues like this. I've never used Apple support in my life, the people here on Applevis are likely to know more anyway. In the past, I've found some subreddits with people far more knowledgeable about general Microsoft stuff than the people on the Microsoft community forums. I wonder if there are any good Apple subreddits, there might be people there who could give you a clear yes or no on how to downgrade. But you've received some possibilities in this very same thread anyway. At Brad, I agree, there should be disabled people in these types of accessibility support roles. As for VoiceOver specific stuff and YouTube, it might be worth giving a public shout-out to Google on Twitter or another social media platform. Far less hassle than staying on the phone for ages. But if you were talking to an accessibility department, then that's truly shocking. If you tell them publicly on Twitter you can't do x or y with VoiceOver, the issue might gain some traction.

But I can't anymore. Put this in the Re: just about *every* tech support is bad file, and having blind people won't necessarily fix it.

Internet Explorer updates, to version five, if that tells you how far back this goes. I was running JFW, of course it stopped working. SO I went into the JFW script for IE and changed the version number to 5 or 5.5 or whatever the new one was. It sort of worked. So I called tech support.

After explaining what was going on, JFW tech support dude, this was back when they were Freedom Scientific and nobody else, tells me I'm not running IE five. I tell him I absolutely *am* running it. He says that's impossible. I ask him why. He says, and I'm quoting here, "because JFW doesn't work with it". So I turn on the external speakers, crank them up, hold the phone up to them, and get JFW to read the IE version number. He insisted that couldn't be right.

At that point, I ended the call, and I believe that was the first time I seriously started using Firefox, JFW's support for it had just gotten to the point where it was really usable, for the most part. I'm not necessarily trying to slam JFW's tech support, well OK a bit, because that's pretty bad, essentially telling me I'm lying. But I mean, maybe the dude had a bad day or something, I dunno. And to be fair, I'm pretty sure they got new IE working fairly quickly, I remember a couple weeks to a month, but it was a good while back, so that could be wrong.

Their tech support is really great for basic stuff, i.e. getting your stuff activated if there's an issue. But that's true of a lot of companies really. Once you get past the basics, it's really hard to find somebody who really knows what they're doing.

Like I bought a router once that kept dropping telnet connections. I had to go through like four or five people before I found somebody who A. knew what a telnet connection and keepalive were, B. why I wanted to set keepalive, and then told me that it wasn't something I could and he had no idea when or if they'd ever change that, needless to say I returned the router and bought one that didn't drop connections.

Apple support has worked pretty well for me. But yeah as the above comment I said, once you start getting into the more difficult stuff, that’s when you might hit a few brick walls, or maybe more.

They're there to keep the plebes well away from the engineers. Don't be too hard on them. The real issue is finding someone who is at least humble enough to recognise that you've got a problem and pass you on if necessary. The trouble is that, often, sadly, usually for reasons of job security, this does not happen and management rewards incentives that aren't good for the customer. Glorious capitalism!

This summarizes it pretty well.

Hi there, I have had nothing but good experiences with Apple support. Yesterday I called them because my health app on my iPhone wasn’t working. We went through the steps. First, we checked a few things in the settings app, then we when a hardware diagnostic. It turned out, The accelerometer and gyroscope sensors both were broken. I think without Apple support, I wouldn’t have known this

I’ve generally had good experiences with tech support, be it Apple or otherwise, and I think there’s one good reason for that.

Have any of you complaining about the quality of tech support actually done tech support? I have and failed spectacularly at it, but it gave me a whole new perspective. How many people have you run across in life who say something like “now that I’m disabled myself, I understand what you’re going through.” I had a similar reaction to dealing with tech support; I know how the sausage is made, so to speak.

It takes a certain type of person and skill set to do that kind of work, and I wasn’t it. For one thing, people don’t call tech support unless something is not working, so people are already upset, and a lot of time people think that just means they can be rude. The rep has to take a (sometimes) vague and oddly worded description of a problem and try to figure out what’s going on; looking up information to try to resolve the issue, talking to the customer, and documenting everything, all while under a time crunch. The comp I would make is that it’s like when you go to your doctor and tell them you have a stomach ache and the in-take nurse starts asking you all kinds of questions so the doc can hopefully get a better idea of what is wrong. It takes skill to do that well.

Maybe the support rep is new and still learning on the job because they didn’t get as much training as they need. Maybe the rep just finished a difficult call and didn’t have time to mentally regroup, because the calls just keep coming and you get dinged if you take too long between them. Maybe while trying to troubleshoot with someone, the rep had their supervisor in their ear seeing something they didn’t like. And that’s without considering the accessibility and usability of the software for a blind person.

I called Apple support the other day because I wanted to see if they could tell me why all the fitness awards I’ve earned don’t show up on my iPhone. Before the automated system transferred me to a person, it said something like “our support reps are busy. Please treat them with kindness.” They shouldn't have had to, but having done tech support myself I was glad they put that in.

I’ve read similar stories from people who have worked retail. If one person walks in and is super demanding and won’t leave without getting what they want, but another person is more willing to listen and is more patient, guess who is going to get the better service?

I have huge respect for people who can do tech support well, because I sure couldn’t. Whenever I have to call any tech support, I always tell them I will be their “good” call for the day and laugh about it, and I don’t try to rush them. When I’m done I always thank the rep for their time and use their name if I remember it. And I try to do the customer service satisfaction surveys they send later and give as much feedback in them as I can because I know how much those surveys impact the reps in any kind of customer service.

I stayed at a hotel in 2022 while my apartment was being remodeled , and they treated me like a king! The staff were super friendly and helpful, so when I filled out the online survey, I shouted out specific staff members for their helpfulness . I stopped in there on my way to work a few days later and they told me they saw what I’d said about them and were grateful for it.

Hi Brian,
Of course politeness goes along way, whoever you are. But it's frustrating when support people just don't understand your issue and they should be able to. This is what was happening with the original poster. Providing articles about reinstalling and updating to the latest version isn't giving the user the possibility to downgrade. I understand this, and I'm not even a Mac user. Upgrading and downgrading isn't even a VoiceOver specific issue, a sighted user might want to downgrade for whatever reason. And sending over articles about not shutting down a computer properly leading to data loss is again, not going to help. In my experience, it really depends who you're dealing with, the issue, and the person's knowledge who's helping you. If Mert Ozer had had someone else helping, their results might have been very different. I've had two vastly different experiences with my energy supplier when dealing with customer service, one great, the other really bad.