Just got a Sony camera and noticed that firmware updates on Mac were an issue in the community. Found a little work around and wanted to share.

I got a RX100M2 in the mail today from the Japan and noticed the language was stuck in Japanese. After some research I found out I had to update it before I can tweak the settings to English. Saw that other people in this subreddit had a similar issue.

After browsing around the internet I found something called Parallels Desktop, a “Virtual Machine” that came out in 2020 when Apple moved away from Intel chips.

https://www.parallels.com/blogs/parallels-desktop-apple-silicon-mac/

This installs the latest version of Windows onto your Mac (mine was a MacBook Air M1) and it runs alongside the MacOS. It’s an application that launches windows and you can even access the system files on your Mac in a windows explorer page, download windows apps, log into a microsoft account, and other stuff while still being able to access MacOS. Genuinely cool system. It let me download the firmware update to update the software and then I downloaded some .exe files to them change the language from Japanese to English.

It is a paid service and requested I put in my password before accessing windows (assuming someone gives you a password when purchasing online) but I logged in with a Google account and it led me to a 14 day trial.

From there I went to Sony, downloaded the firmware update, the .exe file, did what I had to do, and then erased the software.

I had to watch some videos to figure out how to do it but this GitHub link lays out the steps.

https://github.com/ma1co/Sony-PMCA-RE

Warnings: 1: I’m not a tech or coding guy or anything like that, but since my MacBook was running windows and macOS, when plugging in the camera it asked me whether I wanted to connect the camera to the macOS or to the windows. Select windows. Every. Time.

2: Since Apple is finicky with their hardware, you’re going to have to use some kind of adapter to connect the camera to the computer. I used an Anker adapter and after a lot of fiddling I got it to work. It wasn’t an issue with the camera, the usb cable, or the Anker port, but rather the Anker port connecting to macOS and the camera to windows, or vice versa without my knowledge. I got many errors saying “this xxx cannot be connected at the moment, try again later” or “camera not found. Check usb cable”. It felt a lot like trying to play with a Yo-Yo that has two strings instead of one. There was a lot of unplugging and plugging back in and reaffirming my previous selection. At one point, I just got it. And I was so happy bro I can’t even tell you.

3: The previous issue may have occurred because I haphazardly opted for a setting called coherence when setting up windows, and couldn’t figure out how to undo it. It mentioned something about running windows and mac at the same time. It could’ve saved me the trouble but I don’t remember enough about it to truly say.

But yeah, that’s that. Updated the firmware and language setting from a Mac.

Now, if anyone can help me figure out why the flash on the RX100M2 won’t stay down, that would be really, really helpful.