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macOS Sonoma Boot Failures

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Re: macOS Sonoma Boot Failures

#41

Post by Wowfunhappy »

NavinF wrote: post #38
krackers wrote: post #5

See also his twitter for some speculation as to how on earth simply changing refresh rate would cause boot corruption: https://social.treehouse.systems/@marcan/111329614147717090 >Why? I can tell you why: because Apple hates display modeset flicker, and switching modes between ProMotion on/off causes a modeset flicker, so of course they made it so that is stored in nvram somewhere and applied when the screen is turne…

Interesting. I wonder why anyone would turn ProMotion off considering that 120Hz massively improves responsiveness. I've only encountered one app that doesn't work with variable refresh rate and that's Genshin on Windows. Even that's probably not an issue with newer monitors that can handle VRR down to 60Hz without my monitor's frame-doubling flicker as it keeps switching been 60Hz and 120Hz

> I wonder why anyone would turn ProMotion off considering that 120Hz massively improves responsiveness.

The first reason that comes to mind is battery life. That's probably the most broadly applicable use case.

But also, if I was still doing e.g. frontend web development, I would want to confirm that my css animations looked nice at 60 hz.

Edit: My first use case is likely wrong, thank you to replies for reminding me Apple uses adaptive refresh down to 1 hz.

Re: macOS Sonoma Boot Failures

#42

Post by tempodox »

Holy fuck, thanks for the warning! I'm just glad I didn't upgrade to 13.6 yet. And installing Sonoma on a second volume to try it out is also out of the picture for the foreseeable future. Apple's OSs seem to get worse with every turn. Maybe I shouldn't touch Sonoma at all. What's the point on an Intel Mac anyway?

Re: macOS Sonoma Boot Failures

#43

Post by jwells89 »

krackers wrote: post #5

See also his twitter for some speculation as to how on earth simply changing refresh rate would cause boot corruption: https://social.treehouse.systems/@marcan/111329614147717090 >Why? I can tell you why: because Apple hates display modeset flicker, and switching modes between ProMotion on/off causes a modeset flicker, so of course they made it so that is stored in nvram somewhere and applied when the screen is turne…

The messiness of resolutions during boot always annoyed me on PCs. It was understandable back in the days of BIOS, but ith the advent of UEFI it seems like it should be possible to run EFI config screens and the like at monitor native rez (or at minimum, native aspect ratio) but I’ve never seen this… it’s always 1024x768 or somesuch stretched to fit a 16:9 monitor which looks awful.

Re: macOS Sonoma Boot Failures

#44

Post by vvillena »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #41
NavinF wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. I wonder why anyone would turn ProMotion off considering that 120Hz massively improves responsiveness. I've only encountered one app that doesn't work with variable refresh rate and that's Genshin on Windows. Even that's probably not an issue with newer monitors that can handle VRR down to 60Hz without my monitor's frame-doubling flicker as it keeps switching been 60Hz and 120Hz

> I wonder why anyone would turn ProMotion off considering that 120Hz massively improves responsiveness. The first reason that comes to mind is battery life. That's probably the most broadly applicable use case. But also, if I was still doing e.g. frontend web development, I would want to confirm that my css animations looked nice at 60 hz. Edit: My first use case is likely wrong, thank you to replies for reminding m…

Isn't battery life a reason to keep it on? The refresh rate will be down to 24hz most of the time.

Re: macOS Sonoma Boot Failures

#45

Post by jwells89 »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #41
NavinF wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. I wonder why anyone would turn ProMotion off considering that 120Hz massively improves responsiveness. I've only encountered one app that doesn't work with variable refresh rate and that's Genshin on Windows. Even that's probably not an issue with newer monitors that can handle VRR down to 60Hz without my monitor's frame-doubling flicker as it keeps switching been 60Hz and 120Hz

> I wonder why anyone would turn ProMotion off considering that 120Hz massively improves responsiveness. The first reason that comes to mind is battery life. That's probably the most broadly applicable use case. But also, if I was still doing e.g. frontend web development, I would want to confirm that my css animations looked nice at 60 hz. Edit: My first use case is likely wrong, thank you to replies for reminding m…

macOS is very good at adaptively reducing refresh rate when nothing is happening on screen, with the panel reportedly supporting the full range of 1-120hz so barring badly engineered apps that are permanently pinned at max refresh, the battery impact of keeping ProMotion on is minimal for most use cases.

Re: macOS Sonoma Boot Failures

#46

Post by tpmx »

neilalexander wrote: post #3

Interestingly I ran into this exact problem with my work MacBook Pro M1 upgrading to Ventura 13.6 and assumed it was a totally isolated incident. I don't have a dual-boot setup either, just a single macOS install. The computer was connected to a Thunderbolt Display during the update which I assume had the same effect of changing the refresh rate to something other-than-ProMotion that the linked article mentions. I ha…

This is depressing. They clearly have they ability ($$$) to do the required amount of manual QA, but don't. Or there was QA and someone decided that your case still wasn't enough to hold up the release.

In my mind, when we pay that ridiculous Apple premium on RAM and storage, we pay for excellent quality in SW/HW. They also need to deliver that quality.

Re: macOS Sonoma Boot Failures

#47

Post by fifteen1506 »

miles wrote: post #30
bscphil wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upgrades bricking hardware seems to be a common failure mode for macOS. For example Big Sur bricked a bunch of 2013 and 2014 MBPs: https://www.macrumors.com/2020/11/15/macos-big-sur-update-br... I was affected by this and like many users the problem was fixed after replacing the I/O board. In my case, I did it myself using a $10 part from Ebay since the machine was well out of warranty at that point.

From comments #736 and #747 attached to the forum post you kindly shared, it sounds like simply disconnecting and reconnecting the I/O board may be sufficient (found those comments linked in #831): https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macos-big-sur-update-br... https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macos-big-sur-update-br... https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macos-big-sur-update-br...

And this is why there will never be a Year of the Linux Desktop -- no-one wants to have to depend on forum posts to fix these kind of issues.

/troll

Re: macOS Sonoma Boot Failures

#49

Post by SpaceManNabs »

frankjr wrote: post #11

> Do not let them charge you any money for it. This is a problem Apple caused, and purely a software issue. If the technicians claim there is hardware damage, they are wrong. Good luck with that.

I didn't have much trouble. When MacbooksAir 2011 version had those SSD hardware failures, I told multiple classmates of mine about the hardware failure page and they got the repairs for free instead of spending $800.

Re: macOS Sonoma Boot Failures

#50

Post by wmf »

jwells89 wrote: post #43
krackers wrote: post #5

See also his twitter for some speculation as to how on earth simply changing refresh rate would cause boot corruption: https://social.treehouse.systems/@marcan/111329614147717090 >Why? I can tell you why: because Apple hates display modeset flicker, and switching modes between ProMotion on/off causes a modeset flicker, so of course they made it so that is stored in nvram somewhere and applied when the screen is turne…

The messiness of resolutions during boot always annoyed me on PCs. It was understandable back in the days of BIOS, but ith the advent of UEFI it seems like it should be possible to run EFI config screens and the like at monitor native rez (or at minimum, native aspect ratio) but I’ve never seen this… it’s always 1024x768 or somesuch stretched to fit a 16:9 monitor which looks awful.

Good UEFI like Surface devices is native resolution so you can have flicker-free boot. My Gigabyte motherboard recently got native resolution with a UEFI update.
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