Updating Anaconda After a Year of Use

First, I forgot that my blogger account was associated with my older Google account linked ti jeffreypark00@gmail.com.  I had to log out of the other account to post this info.

On 4/9/2026 I upgraded my Anaconda on my M4 Macbook Pro from 2.6.6 to 2.7.0, while running MacOS Sequoia.  Here in the relocated Items folder, I kept copies of the /opt/anaconda3 directory and an alias of the Anaconda-Navigator App.  One curious thing is that my 2.6.6 version of Anaconda Navigator in my Applications Folder was dated Feb 2025, but the same App in the old anaconda3 directory was August 2025.  This discrepancy did not prevent me from running Anaconda Navigator nor prevent me from updating it via the GUI interface. 

In contrast, on my M3 iMac in my Yale office, running MacOS Sonoma, not Sequoia, the GUI-update failed, and I recall that the Anaconda-Navigator icon in the Applications folder was an alias of the App in the /opt/anaconda3 directory.  I tried to update the Anaconda Navigator on the iMac M3 with command-line use of "conda", but the updated package failed to complete its start.  So the iMac M3 still has Anaconda-Navigator version 2.6.6.

Subsequently, I discovered that the Intel iMac at home was running Anaconda-Navigator version 2.6.5.  Here was a different problem, because the Anaconda installation appeared to be split across "/opt/anaconda3" and "/Users/jjpark/opt/anaconda3" directories, with another directory alias at /Users/jjpark/anaconda that pointed to /opt/anaconda3.  I tried to upgrade the Navigator to 2.7.0, but was rebuffed by the Anaconda website that informs me that Anaconda installers and software packages for the Intel-chip Macs are no longer getting updated.  Apple is sunsetting the architecture in its forthcoming MacOS-27 releases, so that I will eventually need to upgrade to Apple Silicon to stay with a supported MacOS.  A couple of years, maybe, before I will need to buy an M5 or M6 iMac for home.  The setup files for terminals on my Intel iMac had not all pointed to the same anaconda file, and I verified that upgrading the Navigator to 2.6.6 and refreshing the environments wrote information to both Anaconda locations.  I tried to alter the alias files to force them to a single copy of Navigator, but succeeded in disabling the software.  I returned to the last Time Machine backup, restored the altered files, copied the anaconda envs directories from /opt/anaconda3 to /Users/jjpark/opt/anaconda3 and restored the functionality of Navigator.  I also verified that software and binary updates under Navigator make changes in only one of the locations now, in /Users/jjpark/opt/anaconda3.  This is the proper location for Intel Mac systems.  Apple Silicon systems install anaconda into /opt/anaconda3.   I checked that I could update packages in the environments and run a Jupyter notebook for several steps with ObsPy commands.