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Comparison of 14.2 RC2 to previous 14.2 RC

macOS 14.2 RC (23C64)
  • Safari Version 17.2 (19617.1.17.11.9)
  • System Firmware Version: 10151.61.4 (M1 based Macs)
  • Darwin Kernel Version 23.2.0: Wed Nov 15 21:53:34 PST 2023; root:xnu-10002.61.3~2/RELEASE_ARM64_T8103 arm64
macOS 14.2 RC (23C63)
  • Safari Version 17.2 (19617.1.17.11.9)
  • System Firmware Version: 10151.61.4 (M1 based Macs)
  • Darwin Kernel Version 23.2.0: Wed Nov 15 21:53:18 PST 2023; root:xnu-10002.61.3~2/RELEASE_ARM64_T6000 arm64
Fixed managedappdistributionagent crashes.
 
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I don't know why but it's so funny to me that they still didn't release the music widget for Sonoma. They even showed it in the keynote back in June(!) it was never in any of the betas. Widgets in general are messy on Mac OS, especially the ones from the iPhone.
Are you talking about seeing iPhone widgets on MacOS if the iPhone is close by as shown at 1:19 keynote? That isn't an Apple Music widget if I am looking at keynote when MacOS 14 discussion. The Apple Music has a miniplayer that you can change to if you don't want the full screen player.
 

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When Sonoma was launched I had read here that it was a pretty stable ‘.0’ release, the best in years since the iconic Snow Leopard or something. People did speak too fast then…?
 
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Sonoma works fine for me. Not a single problem.

I have a few issues, but nothing massive.

  • networked Time Machine seems more prone to disconnects. I'm not sure if this is due to Sonoma.
  • as of a few builds ago, I often see a purple icon in full screen apps; Control Center says this is Dictation and/or Siri.
  • there are some weird window management glitches. Things like… I have a full-screen app, the Mac goes to sleep, I wake it up again, and the app suddenly shows up… twice.
 
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When Sonoma was launched I had read here that it was a pretty stable ‘.0’ release, the best in years since the iconic Snow Leopard or something. People did speak too fast then…?
It depends on one's usage and software config. The very first beta from WWDC of MacOS14 was pretty solid, until the next few betas where Apple stared to change/implement more features. Of course there is some intel platform related issues compared to people running AS Macs also. For the most part what is almost out the door with this RC2 is fairly solid for the majority of users.
 
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For Ventura and Monterey there is a new Safari 17.2 beta 5

For Ventura it is build 617C30

For Monterey it is build 617C28
 
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Better a RC, then shipping it to consumers, where many would complain that there is a new update, a week later 😂🤔😬
A second RC means either QA failed their beta testing, or a major regression has slipped in at the last minute. Neither is good from Apple's perspective.
 
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Good!

Hopefully this fixes the dreaded “managedappdistributionagent unexpectedly quit” error I’ve been having since beta 4.
 
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What many of you overlook in terms of bugs is incompatibility issues with your apps and third party software products. Also old files and such. It’s not always just the OS. That’s why it’s critical that you update everything often. My father had an Apple software and VAR from 20plus years. So many customers were against upgrading software in fear of new features and changes. They would bitch and complain about bugs or crashes. But when they would get everything cleaned up and updated most issues would be resolved. Yes OS has become very complicated now. But give the people who create it a break. They are humans. Nothing can be 100% perfect.
 
I really wish Apple would address known problems. I am not sure if they are unable or unwilling to address them. Software is always complex and nothing is bug free, but some issues in macOS are surprising.

Exibit a: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254451757 This crash in Apples Calendar app has been going on since macOS 13.0. Apple hasn't bothered to even try to fix this for a year now. The crash is 100 % reproducible. It requires a CalDAV account so without that hard or impossible to reproduce. But Apple development surely is capable of creating a test environment with a CalDAV account in Calendar app, right?

Exibit b: probably very niche but when using an Extension in Mail app, it crashes. The reports were sent, can't imagine I am the only user affected by this. The crashes stopped when junk filtering was disabled. What the ...?!

Exibit c: This is slightly funny, not a crash and more of an anecdote: Monal is an xmpp client and in version 6 they added audio and video calling. Awesome, but on macOS calls don't exist because they are not supported in the Catalyst variant or the framework has limitations on macOS? 😮

Exibit d: if you are using MOTU hardware make sure to read their Sonoma post with details to keep in mind: https://motu.com/en-us/news/motu-and-macos-sonoma/

Exibit e: CERN collection of known issues in Sonoma. E.g. for the Calendar app they write: "Notifications about upcoming events sometimes don't show. Synchronization of events can be unstable. We recommend to use Microsoft Outlook as mail and calendar client - available in Self Service.app also separately from Office 365 suite."
If I am reading this right, they outright suggest to use a different mail and calendar client, since they found the Apple applications not reliable enough.

Curious whether macOS 14.2 will resolve those issues.
 
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A second RC means either QA failed their beta testing, or a major regression has slipped in at the last minute. Neither is good from Apple's perspective.
From Apple’s perspective, I agree. Personally, as a user, I don’t mind weekly updates, if need be, especially if they are rear facing/back facing however you say it… that don’t interrupt my daily workflow. A glitch in Calendar for example, or the phone app. I want that fixed immediately or found / fixed in an RC or a beta before it got to me.
 
That's a very lovely straw man you set up to knock down there. You must be very proud.


It's buggy, plain and simple. I complain about it because I want Apple to improve. Most of the time I'm fine with the occasional hiccup, but iOS 17 and Sonoma are easily the worst pairing since iOS 8 and Yosemite. iOS 17 has mostly gotten to a tolerable state; Sonoma has not.

I have multiple Macs that throw kernel panics because of Apple-caused issues, I have Messages bugs where it just decides I don't need notifications anymore, I have bugs where it acts like it tried to update in sleep while not doing anything, there's the sporadic Safari 17 bugs with text entry...it's a bad release, plain and simple.

Screaming "if you don't like it LEAVE" is pointless.
You must be using it wrong 🤣.

It’s good to hear your negative comments, it’s also is good to hear all the positive ones too. Here’s mine…
I run a busy print repro department with 10 macs, many are in constant use all day every day. Most are on Sonoma including a couple on the dev betas. Yes, there are bugs, as there are in every single OS past and present, but nothing that stops production. Not a single kernel panic on any of the macs so far. 🤞
 
I'm honestly not trying to stir when I say this but for everyone that says Sonoma doesn't have problems for them, maybe try using your Mac as something other than a glorified Facebook machine and see what happens. Sonoma is absolutely riddled with problems. To name just a few:

Countless reported issues relating to sleep.
Multi monitors, esp if HDR is involved, has all sorts of issues including kernel panics if you use certain accessibility functions at the same time. Also random HDCP issues in safari.
Audio over hdmi, esp multi channel loaded with issues like audio channels assigned to the wrong label in speaker config, and the whole Audio Midi Setup app literally crashes every time you simply click on a speaker in the 3D viewer.
The serious issue with clicks registering on underlying windows(tho seems fixed now?).

These are deeply embarrassing bugs that tell me Apples current testing process is pretty lacking at best. Please stop saying Sonoma is fine. It's a terrible release. Terrible. Just terrible.
 
Next year we get a much better system software. With no bugs. Works on less machines, but no bugs at all. The best software ever. Is it a dejavu?
 
I'm honestly not trying to stir when I say this but for everyone that says Sonoma doesn't have problems for them, maybe try using your Mac as something other than a glorified Facebook machine and see what happens.

I use it to run VMs and Docker containers. Is that hardcore enough for you?

Sonoma is absolutely riddled with problems. To name just a few:

Countless reported issues relating to sleep.

Yeah, I've seen some windowing issues with sleep.

Please stop saying Sonoma is fine. It's a terrible release. Terrible. Just terrible.

Consider, just for a moment, that your experience doesn't mirror everyone's, and you don't need to insult other people's use of a Mac.
 
I have some software that hasn’t been updated for Sonoma so I’ll have to wait at least 6mo-1 year :( I’m talking you Nikon Studio NX.

That's because the software is awful, and every new release fixes one bug and crates another, the software usually crashes out on export. I have tried it with RC2 so may give it a go.
 
Well thats good news. Can confirm that stopped with update to RC2 from beta4/RC time in use looking at console crash log on my two AS Macs. :)
Hello,

Any workaround to skip the annoying synchronization stuck on step 2 between Macs and iPhones? It has gone worse with iOS 17.2 and Sonoma 14.2. I submitted several tickets, but nothing fixed yet.

It would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.
 
Two RCs just means they still haven't fixed the bugs. :rolleyes:

Normally I don't have too many problems, but Sonoma's been the biggest pile since Yosemite.
While I'm not sure about the whole “two RCs” thing, I do agree, Sonoma's been a complete flustercuck for me. Ventura was already bad enough, with that entire breaking externally-stored user accounts mid-cycle thing (they still work, if created in a really convoluted fashion, but then iCloud breaks to a certain extent), but Sonoma's CloudStorage implementation and its interaction with Microsoft OneDrive borking my Time Machine setup was… interesting, to say the least. As is Safari's text field bug, which is manifesting itself AS I WRITE THIS COMMENT, quite a few updates in… 🤦‍♂️

Oh, and what about the fact that if I need to share files from my Mac Studio after some time (sleep-wake cycles, I believe?), I must ALWAYS turn sharing off, reboot the machine and turn it on again, otherwise my other machines won't connect to it? This has been going on since Ventura, and still hasn't been fixed (yes, I've seen networking bugs on Mac OS X/OS X/macOS before, but they'd never lingered on for this long), and I'll be sure to use my brand-spanking-new external hard drive setup with the latest Public Beta (which doesn't even automatically update, alas; I must always manually download the latest full installer to my internal drive with OCLP, and then manually mount the drive and run it from the Terminal in Recovery Mode, because USB-connected SATA SSDs are just too cheap for Apple Silicon Macs, despite macOS Betas then booting and running just fine from them 🙄) to send them direct feedback if I manage to reproduce that behaviour (and I'll likely be able to, as I'm also daily-driving my Studio off of an external Thunderbolt drive, so the beta config isn't that different).

As for Apple deciding to nerf Music.app's “Recently Added” view to a useless “last 60 albums added” deal instead of a Photos.app-like endless chronological view, that's just the icing on the cake. I had to partake in a campaign across three different places (Apple's own Discussions, Reddit and this very website), just so we could all send them a barrage of direct feedback and strong-arm them into fixing a dumbfounding, conscious UX regression, STAT. Yes, I had AppleCare representatives tell me, on the phone and on record, that they did that on purpose, leaving us no choice other than naming and shaming them both in public and in private. The gall of these people, to purposely nerf a product on their most professional and expensive platform and affect their most valuable customers. 🤬

Oh, okay, they're going back to a functional Music.app, but only after months of waiting and public outcry, which are the markers of a positively abusive developer/provider-user/client relationship, if you ask me… It's not the first time we've all been through this (can you say… butterfly keyboards? Stupid, non-standard Safari tabs? 🙄 It's almost as if they're not properly attracting the right beta testers or hiring the proper focus groups to warn them of these things in advance). Also, during my exploration of workarounds for Apple's disastrous decision, I ran into a myriad little but ridiculous bugs in Music.app that I had never noticed before, and it really made my perception of their software team that much worse than it had ever been. It all just looked… extra sloppy, and we're talking about a dog of an app that has been a Carbon-based mess for decades, on account of its Mac OS 9/Classic heritage (heck, that thing still hasn't gotten a proper, unified title/toolbar in Fullscreen Mode, which is a Mavericks feature from TEN years ago!), so… with such low expectations from the get-go, that is already saying a lot.

And before you start going all condescending on me, and telling me that my setups are non-standard or some other BS, please look at my profile page. I've been a Mac user for more than twenty years (I bought my first iMac on Dec. 1st, 2003, so that makes it twenty years and one week), and started out on Jaguar, which came preinstalled with that machine, and quickly moved on to Panther, which had been released shortly after its manufacture and came bundled with it. Yes, I've seen a fair share of really nasty bugs, such as the one that caused data loss on external FireWire drives during OS upgrades (which ranks among the worst kind of bug). But the number and frequency of such bugs, and especially those affecting me (silently borking Time Machine backups, of all things, ranks right behind active data loss), even in machines that shouldn't be affected because they get such a light usage, is getting alarmingly high by comparison, and reminds me of my PC user days. No joke. And yes, I also run the latest version of macOS in pretty non-standard machines (such as the venerable and upgraded up the wazoo Mid 2012 13'' MacBook Pro) with OCLP but, funnily enough, it's more stable in some regards than even on my very much recent and cutting edge Mac Studio… Go figure!

I should also remind you all that this yearly release schedule has taken Apple off of their long tradition of tick-tock-like releases, wherein you'd get a feature-rich version (such as, say, Leopard or Lion), shortly followed by a mainly bug fix one (such as the corresponding Snow Leopard and Mountain Lion, both widely regarded as being much more solid than their predecessors, and with good reason). macOS is a completely mature product at this point, and iOS and iPadOS are quickly heading in that direction, so there's absolutely no reason why Apple couldn't go back to that scheme even with a yearly release, and add only the bare essentials to support new hardware drivers and features (or maybe some Apple services, sure, but if they had to put something minor on hold because they were on a bug fix cycle, so be it). In fact, there have been some reports that iOS/iPadOS 17 and macOS 15 may, indeed, fit into that kind of release, something which I would very much welcome. Please, PLEASE hit pause and fix this mess for a change, I beg them.

As for the nonchalant attitude from Apple engineers and AppleCare representatives alike, that's just adding further salt on the wound. Apple, as a corporate entity and as a whole, is every bit as arrogant as their greenwashing, smug-looking execs. To say that I've never been as close to switching back to the “evil” empire (because, sadly, FOSS offerings aren't really an option in my field of work) as I am right now, twenty years in and with a huge investment in the platform, is a bit of an understatement. If I have to deal with the same s****y bugs as I did back during my PC user days anyway, I might as well go back to them and at least get myself a bit more freedom, serviceability and upgradeability, the works.

I'm already off of the iMac bandwagon, with my Mac Studio, so it wouldn't be that big of a deal. Heck, seeing how all my displays have both USB-C and HDMI inputs, I might even get myself a gaming PC and a smart KVM switch/app solution, and start exploring that option on the side right now… You see, the whole Mac Studio (and, to a certain extent, the higher-end Mac Mini range) thing goes both ways, and may end up biting Apple in the rear; it can work as a trojan horse for people to switch back to the PC. VMs already do a lot in that regard, and I've been noticing lately that while I feel that Windows veered off in a really bad direction UX-wise lately (it looks like macOS, but it's even less “Windows-like”, if you will, and looks kind of alien to someone who stopped using it as a daily driver back in the W98SE days and as a secondary OS in the Vista days, which is kind of sad if you consider that I still feel right at home with OSes as old as System 7.5.5 when playing with emulators), I could still very much work with it on a daily basis even in its current state.

I don't know why but it's so funny to me that they still didn't release the music widget for Sonoma. They even showed it in the keynote back in June(!) it was never in any of the betas. Widgets in general are messy on Mac OS, especially the ones from the iPhone.
Heh, see above. Music.app is a complete mess, and the fact of the matter is that that team has had their hands full lately, all with the new Classical app, this “Recently Added” debacle, these new features, etc. But it's still weird; if it was shown on the keynote, shouldn't it have been ready by now, as you aptly put? Unless, of course, the widget is tied in to some feature that's still coming, but it doesn't really make much sense, really (they could always launch a version that worked with whatever features we have now, and then update it accordingly).
 
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