USB hubs, printers, Java, and more seemingly broken by macOS 14.4 update • Hacker News Board

Re: USB hubs, printers, Java, and more seemingly broken by macOS 14.4 update

#131

Post by EricE » Tue, Mar 19, 2024, 5:24 PM UTC

nebula8804 wrote: post #94

prirun wrote: post #20

My upgrade to Monterey (MacOS 12.x) broke my Canon D530 printer driver. Re-installing the driver didn't help. Now I have to print to a PDF, copy that to an old Snow Leopard 10.6 machine, and print from there. FYI, Snow Leopard is 11 major OS revisions behind Monterey. Printing worked fine in Mohave, 3 major revisions ago. I also can't write any files to /, even with SIP disabled, and during the Monterey upgrade, Appl…

Sounds like Canon is really bad in supporting driver changes in subsequent OS releases. I recall diagnosing the same issue with a colleagues Mac over 10 years ago. She updated the OS and the printer she bought with the computer 3 OS'es ago stopped working. Turns out something with how Printers were handled changed and Canon refused to release updated drivers for a discontinued machine. I recall that some third party…

Can confirm - Canon is horrible at updating their drivers; one of the reasons I no longer own, use or recommend any of their printers. Which is a shame since I really liked their laser printers :/

Re: USB hubs, printers, Java, and more seemingly broken by macOS 14.4 update

#132

Post by EricE » Tue, Mar 19, 2024, 5:26 PM UTC

boolemancer wrote: post #126

nebula8804 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like Canon is really bad in supporting driver changes in subsequent OS releases. I recall diagnosing the same issue with a colleagues Mac over 10 years ago. She updated the OS and the printer she bought with the computer 3 OS'es ago stopped working. Turns out something with how Printers were handled changed and Canon refused to release updated drivers for a discontinued machine. I recall that some third party…

How on earth is it Canon's fault when Apple releases a breaking change?

Well for starters Canon installers do strict version checks. And they often stop updating their drivers, especially for older printers. I got very good about editing the installer files to either add newer versions of macOS or to just remove the version checks. The drivers always worked after I did so. Thats just one of the continual issues with them and their software that caused me to finally ditch them. HP drivers may be bloated, but they work!

Re: USB hubs, printers, Java, and more seemingly broken by macOS 14.4 update

#133

Post by papruapap » Tue, Mar 19, 2024, 5:26 PM UTC

Rinzler89 wrote: post #108

nebula8804 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like Canon is really bad in supporting driver changes in subsequent OS releases. I recall diagnosing the same issue with a colleagues Mac over 10 years ago. She updated the OS and the printer she bought with the computer 3 OS'es ago stopped working. Turns out something with how Printers were handled changed and Canon refused to release updated drivers for a discontinued machine. I recall that some third party…

Why? Windows has been the one updating itself making sure to not break backwards printer support, not the other way around. You can still use printers from the 90's on modern Windows, meanwhile MacOS seems to break support for recent printers between minor updates. It's not like they're a cash-strapped start-up, if Microsoft can afford to invest in maintaining backwards compatibility, so can Apple. Sounds like Apple…

tbf MS is not the "normal" in the aspect. They are pretty much the backwwrds-compatibility kings.

Re: USB hubs, printers, Java, and more seemingly broken by macOS 14.4 update

#134

Post by flaminHotSpeedo » Tue, Mar 19, 2024, 5:37 PM UTC

Apple updates are a joke. I have a script in my dotfiles to recognize when an apple update overwrites `/etc/zshrc` to run, among other things, a utility that rewrites your path in a nonstandard way (I don't remember the details, I think it was something related to config file load order?)

Nothing I've done so far to stop the overwrite in the first place has worked.

Re: USB hubs, printers, Java, and more seemingly broken by macOS 14.4 update

#135

Post by RedShift1 » Tue, Mar 19, 2024, 5:45 PM UTC

Karellen wrote: post #122

RedShift1 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows updates before MS fired their QA department were uneventful, after they fired their QA department, serious issues started popping up every single month . Including server systems not booting anymore.

That doesn't track for me. One of the reasons MS introduced "patch Tuesday" in 2003 was because Windows updates until then had been notorious for years for causing issues randomly, which their corporate users hated firefighting without warning. By rolling out their updates on a predictable schedule, corporate IT depts could set their calendar to keep a day (or two) per month clear to do post-update firefighting, or (…

Any issues were really minor. I worked for an MSP for most of the Windows XP through Windows 8 era and update problems were anomalies, not par for the course. If there were problems, they were newsworthy events.

Re: USB hubs, printers, Java, and more seemingly broken by macOS 14.4 update

#136

Post by radicality » Tue, Mar 19, 2024, 5:46 PM UTC

FireBeyond wrote: post #111

CoastalCoder wrote: post #30

Honest question: is this evidence of worsening QA at Apple, or a consequence of OS X growing a longer tail of old and varied hardware? E.g., how does this compare to the rate of equivalent problems with large Windows releases?

There's also cases where (shockingly to some) Apple just doesn't care . I'm still more than bitter, after buying some nice 27" 4K HDR 144Hz monitors that Apple actively broke (and may still be broken) Display Stream Compression 1.4 for the Pro Display XDR. When it was released, there were questions about how Apple was managing to drive that display. Well, the answer is because they absolutely nerfed/bastardized DSC 1…

Btw, do you mean you downgraded DP to 1.2? I think there isn’t a DSC 1.4 (only DP 1.4 which has DSC 1.2, and DP1.4a with DSC 1.2a).

Do you have any more info/links about this? I’m curious, since I do have a Pro Display XDR, and I’ve been trying to understand for some time how exactly it’s able to reach its bandwidth, which is definitely a rabbit hole.

Re: USB hubs, printers, Java, and more seemingly broken by macOS 14.4 update

#137

Post by turquoisevar » Tue, Mar 19, 2024, 6:12 PM UTC

papruapap wrote: post #133

Rinzler89 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Windows has been the one updating itself making sure to not break backwards printer support, not the other way around. You can still use printers from the 90's on modern Windows, meanwhile MacOS seems to break support for recent printers between minor updates. It's not like they're a cash-strapped start-up, if Microsoft can afford to invest in maintaining backwards compatibility, so can Apple. Sounds like Apple…

tbf MS is not the "normal" in the aspect. They are pretty much the backwwrds-compatibility kings.

And at a significant cost at that.

Windows has become a hodgepodge of code bases from a variety of time periods and philosophies, some of which leans on some ancient stuff that can’t be touched.

Hell, they had to skip Windows 9, just to prevent breaking 95/98 software from braking.

The average SW engineer here in HN wouldn’t know how fast they’d get to a keyboard to complain if they were to find a codebase like that at their job.

That’s not to say it’s necessarily bad, even if it can be cumbersome, it’s just to highlight the cost of maintaining that compatibility and a difference in philosophy.

Re: USB hubs, printers, Java, and more seemingly broken by macOS 14.4 update

#138

Post by nozzlegear » Tue, Mar 19, 2024, 6:12 PM UTC

Rinzler89 wrote: post #108

nebula8804 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like Canon is really bad in supporting driver changes in subsequent OS releases. I recall diagnosing the same issue with a colleagues Mac over 10 years ago. She updated the OS and the printer she bought with the computer 3 OS'es ago stopped working. Turns out something with how Printers were handled changed and Canon refused to release updated drivers for a discontinued machine. I recall that some third party…

Why? Windows has been the one updating itself making sure to not break backwards printer support, not the other way around. You can still use printers from the 90's on modern Windows, meanwhile MacOS seems to break support for recent printers between minor updates. It's not like they're a cash-strapped start-up, if Microsoft can afford to invest in maintaining backwards compatibility, so can Apple. Sounds like Apple…

It seems like Apple just prefers that companies release software that they will actually maintain, instead of relying on Apple/Microsoft to bend over backwards to maintain backwards compatibility from now until the end of time.

Re: USB hubs, printers, Java, and more seemingly broken by macOS 14.4 update

#139

Post by asyx » Tue, Mar 19, 2024, 6:15 PM UTC

papruapap wrote: post #133

Rinzler89 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Windows has been the one updating itself making sure to not break backwards printer support, not the other way around. You can still use printers from the 90's on modern Windows, meanwhile MacOS seems to break support for recent printers between minor updates. It's not like they're a cash-strapped start-up, if Microsoft can afford to invest in maintaining backwards compatibility, so can Apple. Sounds like Apple…

tbf MS is not the "normal" in the aspect. They are pretty much the backwwrds-compatibility kings.

But nobody is expecting 30 years of backwards compatibility. Just keeping old printer drivers working. It's not like printers are devices we need all too much anymore. It's perfectly reasonable to assume that users will have discontinued printers at home.

Kinda similar to Rosetta 1 and 32 bit binaries on x86. I get their motivation but killing Rosetta 1 basically meant that all old games that came out in the PPC era couldn't be played anymore and killing of 32 bit binaries made the Apple logo in Steam useless. It's not like people expect that this works like how early win32 application still work on Windows. They could totally make the user jump through a bunch of hoops to get support for their old applications. But they didn't.

Re: USB hubs, printers, Java, and more seemingly broken by macOS 14.4 update

#140

Post by turquoisevar » Tue, Mar 19, 2024, 6:16 PM UTC

stingraycharles wrote: post #17

Ok since these types of threads are typically filled with complaints, just to add another data point: I’ve upgraded last week and have not experienced any problems at all. And yes, I’m using USB hubs, printers and even Java.

Same here on two Apple silicon machines.

In fact, I used to get kernel panics from time to time with USB hubs until a couple of major revisions ago.

What I’m running now, in part via monitor USB hub, is so far beyond the scope of what I expect to be part of QA and intended support that I’m surprised it’s not giving me any issues.