I encountered serious problems when I tried to upgrade from the "Free Upgrade Available" offer that my Norton Antivirus presented to me unsolicited.
1. Compatibility checks should be made before uninstalling my old software. I was left with no antivirus and having to use my browser to search Norton and figure out how to resolve the issue.
2. The Upgrade Now popup (and all popups) should have a way to exit, such as the red close button MacOS windows have in the upper-left corner. The Upgrade Now popup had greyed out the close button and offered no way to exit. It persists after restart and only offers "Upgrade Now" which fails due to an unspecified conflict. I was told I had to endure it until Norton provided some remedy and that I should try back in 24-48 hours. (I would like Norton to protect me from persistent unclosable popups, not deliver them)
Tip: I got rid of the popup when I ran the Mac Uninstaller.
3. If an upgrade has a known problem, stop pushing it out to users. I and countless others could have avoided this issue if Norton had stopped pushing the errant upgrade when they first realized it had problems.
4. Please provide a way to learn details about the "Free Upgrade" when you first offer it. I'd like to have seen the name and version of the software upgrade. I'd like to know if it involves an uninstall, a restart, what the system requirements are, and if there's any software I should uninstall first and whether it can reinstall afterwards. It should be clear what the software conflict is, the following was not helpful: "We have detected incompatible security software installed on your computer. Please uninstall and try again".
Note: Later I was able to determine that the "incompatible security software" was Little Snitch. (funny story: I ran Little Snitch uninstaller, it failed to uninstall, but then Norton could then install fine)
This cost me 3 hours to chatting with Norton, trying different recommendations such as download the old version from order history (didn't work), run the trial version until Norton resolves the issue (didn't work), providing me with a Norton AntiVirus for Mac download link for v12.9 and I re-enter my keys (this revealed the "incompatible security software" was Little Snitch which I then resolved), and I was finally able to get Norton AntiVirus installed and working. And this time I did not press "Upgrade Now" when the popup appeared offering the free upgrade.
Norton: Please fix all the above four issues. Let me know when the installer issues are resolved and I can take advantage of a working "Free Upgrade Available".
Thanks.