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

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61–70 of 176 posts

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

#61

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.

I feel bad for folks experiencing problems, but the upgrade was uneventful on my Macs as well. Work also rolled out the update company-wide with no apparent ill effects, which is surprising given all of the enterprise-y junk they install.

I wonder if this is some kind of warped A/B testing with "stable" upgrades from Apple

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

#62
post #46
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…

If the printer it's shared over a wifi network, you can just use netcat: nc your_printer_ip 9100

Doesn't that require your printer to support Postscript? Not many printers for mere mortals support such advanced technology.

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

#63
post #46
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…

If the printer it's shared over a wifi network, you can just use netcat: nc your_printer_ip 9100

Assuming your printer supports pdf files…

Maybe .ps would be better, but even that isn't universally accepted.

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

#64
post #25

They keep breaking and + unbreaking my old Samsung Laser Printer (PCL compliant) I think 14.4 fixed it, for what it's worth. Since Linux CUPS and Apple use the same underlying open source drivers, Arch is bug-for-bug compatible. I wish they performed some sort of automatic regression testing on stuff like this.

I have an old Samsung laser printer, and the only machine that can print to it is a macbook. I've got a Windows PC, and it won't install the driver that is supposedly recommended (weirdly enough by HP?), while another version of that driver can't connect to the printer. It's quite bizarre.

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

#65

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?

Alternatively, is this evidence of a changing news cycle that is spending more time on the always-present background noise of social media complaints about updates? Do we perceive the rate of failure to be higher because news these days often takes the form of "let's summarize some reddit threads" and outlets realized that warnings about errors when updating software reliably get clicks?

Yes, I think you have nailed it. I have seen this same phenomenon happen in nearly every niche that I pay attention to. Only thing I would add is that a lot of articles are based on tweets, often from random users where the article author did nothing to verify and just included the tweet as the source

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

#66

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?

Alternatively, is this evidence of a changing news cycle that is spending more time on the always-present background noise of social media complaints about updates? Do we perceive the rate of failure to be higher because news these days often takes the form of "let's summarize some reddit threads" and outlets realized that warnings about errors when updating software reliably get clicks?

To be fair, the media has been doing this for at least 10 years.

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

#67

> Scanning Apple's release notes or security update disclosures for the update doesn't reveal any smoking guns Wait what? So 10 screens of bangers like "An app may be able to execute arbitrary code with kernel privileges" and "An attacker with arbitrary kernel read and write capability may be able to bypass kernel memory protections. Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been exploited." are not conside…

End users typically don’t tolerate security fixes that alter or break existing functionality, so it would be in line with common responses for those ten screens of security concerns to be disregarded. One of the fixes this release is untrainable SIGKILLs programs for illegal memory accesses, which is a perfectly boring and sensible security practice — and also is causing much of the drama everyone’s seeing. Presumably there’s also a new Celebrite attack over USB-C / PCIe / Thunderbolt, and fixing it urgently has uncovered either a USB/TB spec bug, an implementation bug in the OS, or an implementation bug in the devices. It’s usually the devices, but sometimes it’s not.

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

#68

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.

Is that on an M1? Apparently the Java issue only affects Apple silicon for some reason

Using M2 Pro, but mostly using Java through the version installed by MacPorts.

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

#69
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the printer it's shared over a wifi network, you can just use netcat: nc your_printer_ip 9100

Doesn't that require your printer to support Postscript? Not many printers for mere mortals support such advanced technology.

If there's cups running on the remote machine there's a chance it will take care of conversion.

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

#70
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…

Speaking in terms of having “control” over your machine is alarmist and thought-terminating. Your computer didn’t do what you expected it to. Hell, you’re very justified to go beyond that and say that it behaved in a way that it shouldn’t. Removing files from / without notification or backup is bad. Not being able to have files in / is a completely superficial and meaningless indication of “control”. Again, your machine isn’t behaving in a way that you’re expecting it to, or even that you’re used to. macOS is an operating system. Its job is to…be an operating system. It’s going to handle some things for you. That’s why it’s there.
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