Can’t access any Recovery on MBA2020-intel Catalina OS. Can I use 2022 MBA - m2 for Bootable installer?

Servant of Cats wrote:

However, the M2 MacBook Airs have Apple Silicon processors, and your 2020 MacBook Air has an Intel one. At a machine code level, they speak very different machine code languages. A bootable installer is extremely likely to work only for a particular machine code language. So if you prepared a bootable installer on the M2 MacBook Air and tried to use it on the 2020 MacBook Air, it wouldn't work.

Unfortunately, there is still that machine language difference, and the likelihood that a bootable installer created on an Apple Silicon Mac would only be useful on another Apple Silicon Mac. There would be the same considerations with just creating a bootable external drive (not a bootable installer) on the M2 machine, then transferring it to the old machine and trying to boot from it to give you something from which to do recovery.

FYI, you can create a bootable macOS 11.x+ USB installer with either an Intel or M-series Mac which will work on both systems. The macOS USB installers for 11.x - 15.x support both platforms regardless of which platform was used to create it. The only restriction is the host machine creating the USB installer must be compatible with that OS....same as it has been for the Intel Macs.

This is only regarding the macOS USB installers for 11.x - 15.x, but you cannot use the same full macOS external boot drive between Intel & M-series Macs.

Sansa123 wrote:

4 Days of trying to fix my 2020 MBA with Catalina after sitting in its box untouched for 6+ months.

A 2020 MacBook Air that could run Catalina would be an Intel-based MacBook Air. The versions of Catalina that Apple released to the public only ran on Intel-based Macs.

I used my sons computer MBA M2 running sequoia to try and revive which didn’t work then full Recover. After recovery ran it just went back to Mac OS Internet Recovery- it stays at trying to connect to wifi. I tried house wifi, Ethernet connection to Bell Modem, then iPhone hotspot. Nothing worked. Last step was using his MBA to create thumb drive with Mac OS sequoia which support chat said would be ok since my model is compatible. I think it probably needs to be Catalina and maybe needs a full boot installer process.

I don't know if I would believe Apple Support in this case. The MacBook Air (Retina, 13-inch, 2020) is compatible with Sequoia, as are both the 13" and 15" versions of the M2 MacBook Air.

However, the M2 MacBook Airs have Apple Silicon processors, and your 2020 MacBook Air has an Intel one. At a machine code level, they speak very different machine code languages. A bootable installer is extremely likely to work only for a particular machine code language. So if you prepared a bootable installer on the M2 MacBook Air and tried to use it on the 2020 MacBook Air, it wouldn't work.

It would be as if a tour guide who lives in Japan had written a long and informative "Guide to Touring Japan" book and had handed it to a visitor. With the book being written entirely in Japanese … and the visitor being somebody who knew English or Spanish or French or German – but not a single word of Japanese.

I’ve read creating a bootable installer requires an OS compatibility computer. Not sure if I can use his computer? Does my installer need to setup for Catalina? Can I use a newer OS for creating a startup.

You can't create a bootable installer for Catalina on the M2 MacBook Air. Catalna is Intel-only and not compatible with any. Apple Silicon Mac.

The question would be whether you could create a bootable installer for one of the versions of macOS which both the old MacBook Air and the new MacBook Air can run. The 13" M2 MacBook Air can run macOS 12.4 (Monterey) and up; the 15" M2 MacBook Air can run macOS 13.4 (Ventura) and up. Your 2020 MacBook Air can run anything up to Sequoia, although it will not be able to run macOS 26 (Tahoe).

Unfortunately, there is still that machine language difference, and the likelihood that a bootable installer created on an Apple Silicon Mac would only be useful on another Apple Silicon Mac. There would be the same considerations with just creating a bootable external drive (not a bootable installer) on the M2 machine, then transferring it to the old machine and trying to boot from it to give you something from which to do recovery.

Sansa123 wrote:

The ssd was not being recognized that first day. it wasn’t showing up under Disk utility / First Aid (only macintosh HD)

Keep in mind that Apple uses the name "Macintosh HD" for the internal startup drive whether your internal startup drive is a mechanical hard disk (HD) – as it was in the old days – or a solid state drive (SSD) – as in your 2020 MBA and your son's M2 MBA. If you were seeing an entry for "Macintosh HD", you probably were seeing an entry for the internal SSD. (Apple should perhaps change the default name to "Macintosh SSD" now that all new Macs boot off SSDs, not off mechanical hard drives or Fusion Drives.)

In Big Sur and later, the internal structure of the Finder's "Macintosh HD" gets a bit "interesting". Some of the core system files are now in an area where it's almost impossible for malware to modify them (and where, if it does, the system will detect this on the next startup, and refuse to boot the compromised code). So Disk Utility on your son's M2 MacBook Air is probably showing you something like this:

Most of this is being addressed in your duplicate post here: Help with Mac Recovery and several issues - Apple Community

Posting the same problem more than once in the Community is unnecessary and confusing.