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Nasty macOS flaw is bricking MacBooks: Don't install this update

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Re: Nasty macOS flaw is bricking MacBooks: Don't install this update

#151

Post by adanto6840 »

aganame wrote: post #89
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just an anecdote but it's been rock solid for me and fixed a number of issues I had with Mojave.

Ditto. My worst problem has been that some games on Steam claim they don’t work on Mojave... but they do.

This is due to Steam adding a new checkbox that requires the game's developer to specifically click an extra checkbox to signify compatibility with Catalina (and optionally, specify if the binary is notarized and/or signed [don't recall which, or is possibly both]).

Steam almost always already knows if the game has a '64-bit macOS depot' configured -- ie ships 64-bit binary for macOS -- though in some cases the 'depot' may be configured as "macOS - All" in which case Steam may not know for sure.

When Catalina released, they defaulted the checkbox to "No" regardless of the game depot configuration. Any remotely recent game that supports macOS almost certainly is shipping a 64-bit binary (been quite a while since OSX was 32-bit only) -- so odds are very good that games supporting macOS will work with macOS Catalina, at least likely for anything in the last 5 years if not longer.

In our case, it took several weeks to find the checkbox to update our store page. In all fairness, Valve sent out an email alerting of the concern ahead of time; we just didn't read it thoroughly enough to realize that the default setting would be "No" even when explicitly having a 64-bit macOS binary configured.

Re: Nasty macOS flaw is bricking MacBooks: Don't install this update

#152

Post by justinclift »

Joeri wrote: post #147
encom wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What OS X and Windows, IOS, Android and probably lots of others need, is Long Term Support releases. I'm so sick and tired of my phone and computer switching up major features and UI every year, because some UX person wants to not get fired. Releasing a new major version of your OS yearly is insane.

On windows you can choose to get feature updates with a 4 month delay if you have windows pro (set updates to "Semi-Annual Channel" instead of "Semi-Annual Channel (Targeted)", and yes microsoft are indeed terrible with naming things). I never had issues with windows updates on that branch. There is also windows enterprise long term servicing branch (LTSB), which gets feature updates every 3 years (but is meant more…

> On macOS you can stay one major release behind.

Wikipedia is indicating two major releases have support, not just one ("End of support date" in the table):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacOS#Release_history

As a data point when doing stuff in a High Sierra macOS VM earlier today, Homebrew still seems to be making binary packages for High Sierra too.

So the "two releases behind" seems right.

Re: Nasty macOS flaw is bricking MacBooks: Don't install this update

#153

Post by trevyn »

andrekandre wrote: post #123
cutler wrote: post #49

Well, that's it for Catalina then. Although I really want full Xcode 11.4/Swift UI/Swift 5.2 and my MacBook Pro a Catalina upgrade is just too much of a risk. On top of all the previous Catalina woes Apple should be hanging their heads in shame.

> Xcode 11.4 your probably not missing much, there are some serious regressings in that release, for example [0] [0] https://forums.swift.org/t/swift-5-2-struct-property-wrapper... (for me, cant make release builds because the compiler crashes... sigh...)

You’re missing the ability to connect to and debug on iOS 13.4 devices, I believe:

https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/130988

So now I’m stuck on 10.14.6 and iOS 13.3.1, one of which is not getting security updates.

Really hoping Fuschia or someone steps up and displaces Apple.

Re: Nasty macOS flaw is bricking MacBooks: Don't install this update

#154

Post by toyg »

C19is20 wrote: post #142
sv9 wrote: post #67

I'm consistently amazed by HN's ability to take the most meaningless, inconsequential part of an article (the scroll behavior, the whitespace, the usage of the word "bricked"), and nitpick it to hell and back instead of actually discussing the article. Bravo.

> I'm consistently amazed by HN's ability to take the most meaningless, inconsequential part of an article (the scroll behavior, the whitespace, the usage of the word "bricked"), and nitpick it to hell and back instead of actually discussing the article. > Bravo. 'Bravi', or 'brave'(f) would be the plural of that.

In English and French, Bravo generically means “congratulations”, “that was great” etc. It’s never pluralised, in the same way foreign words are not pluralised in Italian (from “computer” to “pièce de resistance”...).

This thread is almost as shit as Catalina.

Re: Nasty macOS flaw is bricking MacBooks: Don't install this update

#155

Post by microtonal »

mekster wrote: post #110
saagarjha wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on what you’re looking at, but on the whole Catalina probably has more aggressive changes than Mojave did.

And what has users gained by that? For the past 5 years or so, I don't exactly know anything worth it from users' perspective. Getting third party app updates are enough to increase productivity.

One of the high-impact changes (which broke Nix as the grand-grand parent mentioned) was moving / to a read-only volume:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210650

Although this change may not be immediately visible it does increase security a fair bit (malware cannot embed themselves or replace system files) and also prevents accidental deletion.

Apple made large strides in the last few years improving security, e.g. by introducing SIP, but also by offering fine-grained permissions for camera, mic, etc. access. APFS created its own road bumps, but was a long overdue replacement of HFS+.

IMO there were also some nice user-visible changes, such as dark mode, replacing iTunes by several separate applications, and dynamic desktop.

I agree that there are also superfluous changes or steps back, I am still grumpy that they replaced Spaces by Mission Control. I don't care for all the deep iCloud Drive integration and think it is unfair to the competition.

I strongly disagree that there are no useful new features the last five years. The problem is more the lack of quality control. That said, I started using macOS when 10.5 came out, which also had its fair share of ugly bugs (e.g. serious problems with maintaining WiFi connections).

Re: Nasty macOS flaw is bricking MacBooks: Don't install this update

#156

Post by toyg »

mekster wrote: post #110
saagarjha wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on what you’re looking at, but on the whole Catalina probably has more aggressive changes than Mojave did.

And what has users gained by that? For the past 5 years or so, I don't exactly know anything worth it from users' perspective. Getting third party app updates are enough to increase productivity.

MacOS doesn’t exist for users these days, it’s only there to let you debug iOS programs.

Re: Nasty macOS flaw is bricking MacBooks: Don't install this update

#157

Post by microtonal »

wuunderbar wrote: post #19
ravenstine wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would I want to wake up in the morning to find my laptop not working? This issue is exactly why I only occasionally install updates, and if I do I wait a while for the canaries to leave the coal mine. I've been a user of macOS, distros of Linux, and Windows for years, and in every one of them there was the inevitable update that made the OS unusable. It happens rarely but, when it does, it's a miserable experienc…

Interested in hearing about a Linux update that made the system unusable.

The Linux 5.4 (LTS!) and 5.5 releases had consistent hangs on many Intel GPUs that use the i915 driver. I had to revert back to 4.19.x on my Linux machine.

https://linuxreviews.org/Linux_Kernel_5.5_Will_Not_Fix_The_F...

They should be fixed by now, but basically the latest LTS kernel was broken for 3-4 months on many Intel GPUs.

Re: Nasty macOS flaw is bricking MacBooks: Don't install this update

#158

Post by toyg »

adanto6840 wrote: post #151
aganame wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ditto. My worst problem has been that some games on Steam claim they don’t work on Mojave... but they do.

This is due to Steam adding a new checkbox that requires the game's developer to specifically click an extra checkbox to signify compatibility with Catalina (and optionally, specify if the binary is notarized and/or signed [don't recall which, or is possibly both]). Steam almost always already knows if the game has a '64-bit macOS depot' configured -- ie ships 64-bit binary for macOS -- though in some cases the 'depo…

You clearly over-estimate your competitors. Plenty of games I have, will not work on Catalina - they are 32bit apps and devs have long moved on.

Re: Nasty macOS flaw is bricking MacBooks: Don't install this update

#159

Post by janpot »

gregmac wrote: post #45
ObsoleteNerd wrote: post #4

It's not "bricked" if you can fix it in Recovery Mode. Still bad that it's happening, but the term "bricked" is thrown around so flippantly these days. If a piece of tech is bricked, it's not recoverable at all.

"Bricked" is relative, depending on your skill level. For some consumers, if recovery mode doesn't work that might be the end of line. However, there are more advanced users that can access the storage via another system and fix it there, hook up via serial port or JTAG and flash new firmware, or even desolder and replace chips. On the far other end of the spectrum, there's going to be people that consider "doesn't s…

They are "users", not "consumers".

Re: Nasty macOS flaw is bricking MacBooks: Don't install this update

#160

Post by davidweir »

d99kris wrote: post #52

I have a MacBook 12" 2017 and have not encountered any serious issue with 10.15.4 supplemental update, yet.. I do however note that when adjusting volume in the status bar the UI dragbar position is very jumpy, which gives a rather unpolished impression.

> when adjusting volume in the status bar the UI dragbar position is very jumpy

I've noticed this as well. Qualitatively, it seems to be worse when external audio output devices are selected, than for the Internal Speakers.

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