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

arstechnica.com

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

#91

Post by grodriguez100 »

LeFantome wrote: post #55
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?

Apple does not accumulate a trail of old hardware. They deprecate their own hardware after about 5 years. Their “tail” is always about the same length. I use EndeavourOS on all my old Mac hardware and update without fear literally every couple of days. It “just works”. So, a “long tail” of hardware is no excuse anyway. Apple is in the middle off a platform transition from Intel to their own silicon. Some of these pro…

> Some of these problems could be a de-emphasis on the Intel experience.

Unlikely since several of the issues seem to happen only on Apple Silicon.

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

#92

Post by acdha »

shagie wrote: post #45
mike_hearn wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

From 2020 https://www.securemac.com/news/arm-macs-faq > Write XOR execute (W^X) > Apple Silicon Macs will enforce a restriction called “write XOR execute” (W^X). This means that chunks of memory will be designated as writable, or as executable, but never as both at the same time. Many macOS apps contain performance optimization programs that require memory to be both writable and executable, but this can lead to seri…

Java has worked great on Apple Silicon since release and it’s still working great now for most users. The linked post explains that Java is already using the W^X modes but there’s an edge case involving page faults while the JIT is updating pages, which to me seems suspiciously like an attempted security improvement which needed better testing:

https://bugs.java.com/bugdatabase/view_bug?bug_id=8327860

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

#93

Post by pdimitar »

freedomben wrote: post #73
contingencies wrote: post #47

For me OSX updates have broken, over the past few years, my USB C ethernet dongle and firmware upload connectivity to specific hardware chipsets. This caused me to buy a non-Apple laptop. Now my Apple laptop refuses to update at all (top of line 4 year old laptop with max spec) so the upgrade driven failures problem category has effectively gone away, but OSX is becoming increasingly unusable. As a result I won't be…

What brand and model of laptop hardware do you buy now? I have been extremely happy with framework laptops, although my big complaint is that the trackpad on my 3rd gen is worse than on my first gen, so they might be trending the wrong direction on track pads. But otherwise, my experience with Fedora on framework hardware has been remarkable

Not your parent poster. I know libre everything is an important cause to fight for but I didn't want to beta-test new products so I bought a refurbished HP 15s about two years ago. Full AMD configuration (I was specifically looking for that) and the CPU (5500U) is surprisingly fast. I have put 32GB RAM and 2TB SSD with high durability value and just recently provisioned the machine with Manjaro + XFCE. Works amazingly quickly and everything was fine out of the box (used my Airpods Max as well).

Apart from me not liking XFCE (and X11 in general) and that I'll re-provision it with KDE instead, I am very happy with the result. This laptop puts my iMac Pro to shame.

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

#94

Post by nebula8804 »

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 hobbyist had developed a method to make the printer work but it took hours to try and get it working until we just gave up....also her dog accidentally yanked on the printer cord and it went flying off the table. That was also motivation to stop trying. I am more inclined to blame Canon than Apple here.

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

#95

Post by grodriguez100 »

altairprime wrote: post #67
actualwitch wrote: post #49

> 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. Presumabl…

> One of the fixes this release is untrainable SIGKILLs programs for illegal memory accesses, which is a perfectly boring and sensible security practice

The signal raised for page faults should be (and actually was, before 14.4) SIGSEGV, and not SIGKILL. This behaviour is even defined by POSIX.

There is no reason why this should change, specially not in the final release instead of in the public betas and early access releases (where the change was not present).

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

#96

Post by acdha »

asdajksah2123 wrote: post #81
lolinder wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, because Apple can do no wrong. You ask any long time macOS/OSX user and they will point to Apple software quality worsening well before anything comes up in the news media. Heck, I'm in the camp that thinks Apple OSX software quality peaked at Snow Leopard and it has been all downhill since then, and this camp is massive. I doubt we're being influenced by the "media".

Nobody is saying Apple doesn’t make mistakes but you don’t have to be an especially knowledgeable follower of the online media world to know that sites live and die by social media clicks driving ad revenue, and recycling a few tweets and Reddit posts into an article is one way to provide the constant churn of attention-grabbing posts which sites like Twitter demand.

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

#97

Post by acdha »

Centigonal wrote: post #2

Ever since updating last week, one of my two monitors (connected through a CalDigit USB-C dock) won't turn back on after inactivity. I have to open up System Settings, change the resolution for the monitor, and change it back every time I leave my macbook and come back.

Have you checked for firmware updates on the dock? I had a problem like that years ago where it basically turned out that the dock was doing something dodgy and an updated macOS stopped tolerating it, but fortunately they had a firmware update available which brought it into compliance.

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

#98

Post by dylan604 »

cqqxo4zV46cp wrote: post #70
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…

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 mach…

WTF is this nonsense? The OS updated deleted files that it had no business deleting. It's my computer. If I want to put files in the Apple approved locations or if I want to put files in / or even if I wanted to put files in C:\, it's none of Apple's damn business. If placing files in / is a security threat, then I'd suggest your not doing security right.

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

#99

Post by lolinder »

asdajksah2123 wrote: post #81
lolinder wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, because Apple can do no wrong. You ask any long time macOS/OSX user and they will point to Apple software quality worsening well before anything comes up in the news media. Heck, I'm in the camp that thinks Apple OSX software quality peaked at Snow Leopard and it has been all downhill since then, and this camp is massive. I doubt we're being influenced by the "media".

People always assume that anyone defending Apple is a fanboy of some kind or other. I'm not. I personally can't stand their products and wish that I didn't have to use a Mac for work.

What I am is skeptical that subjective pulse checks of social media threads are a good way to measure software quality. They're a decent way to measure public sentiment, not actual error rates.

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

#100

Post by djkoolaide »

LeFantome wrote: post #71
VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just saw an update come through on my Ubuntu 22.04 machine for CUPS. I know that Apple is the steward/owner of CUPS now, so I wonder if it's a related update.

I don’t think that Apple uses CUPS anymore.

I believe it's still used. Whenever I print anything (Sonoma 14.4) I have to allow connections for 'cupsd'.
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