Bug Prevents M3 Ultra Mac Studios From Installing macOS Tahoe

[MacRumors]

If you have a Mac Studio with an M3 Ultra chip and can't get macOS Tahoe to install, you're not alone. There is a bug that is preventing the update from installing properly on machines that have the M3 Ultra.

Affected users go to install macOS Tahoe, wait through the installation process and see the Mac Studio reboot, and then end up with macOS Sequoia 15.7 still running instead of macOS Tahoe. The macOS Tahoe update fails again and again.

A discussion thread on the Apple Support Communities suggests that the bug is impacting all Mac Studios with an M3 Ultra chip, and we have a Mac Studio that is unable to be upgraded. A Mac user who dug into the error messages suggests that the installer loads the macOS Tahoe driver for the Apple Neural Engine, but then a hardware check fails, and the installation process is aborted.

Mac Studio owners say that attempting to install via standard software update, safe mode, and recovery mode have all failed. There is no known fix right now, and M3 Ultra Mac Studio users will need to wait for Apple to release a fix to solve the issue.

Apple is aware of the problem, so hopefully the problem will be resolved shortly.

Article Link: Bug Prevents M3 Ultra Mac Studios From Installing macOS Tahoe

 

[surfzen21]

The fasted EOL ever!!! 😂

 

[goodcow]

It's a feature to keep people safe from the horrible new UI.

 

[anshuvorty]

So, uh, the Beta and RC didn't catch this bug?!??!? What is even the point of doing betas and RCs if these kinds of bugs persists to release? LOL...

 

[macbookj0e]

Lucky studio ultra owners!

 

[S.B.G]

Some might consider that a feature!

 

[BigJohno]

Yeah not upgrading for 2-3 months. My m3 ultra is a photo production machine. Can't have any issues. You should never upgrade to first release on machines that make you Money

 

[masotime]

How did they not test it? Massive QA fail.

 

[platinumaqua]

x.0 feels like another beta these days (instead of a stable release)

 

[TaxiZaphod]

How did they not test it? Massive QA fail.

I'm sure some developer wrote an automated test case for that.

(Yes, I work in QA.)

 

[BreuerEditor]

What in the what?? How was that not tested. I'm glad that I have a M4 Max Mac Studio that I was able to install Tahoe on but I created a separate volume to test it out before I decide to upgrade the main system since it's my production video editing machine. Needless to say, I'll be waiting until at least 26.0.3 or 26.1 until they iron out things. Plus I can't seem to connect to my Promise Pegasus2 R8 (TB2>TB3) but I haven't tried installing their DEXT driver yet so that may be the culprit. Staying on 15.4.1 for now.

 

[Acidsplat]

I think the bug is from trying to upgrade from 15.7 and the system firmware from that update that it installs, because I've been running the Tahoe developer beta all summer on my M3 Ultra.

If you're coming from 15.6, then you should be good.

 

[ort888]

I wish a bug had preve3nted me from installing iOS 26 on my iPad, this is the buggiest apple software I've ever seen, and I've been a Mac user since before Steve Jobs came back with NeXt.

 

[Sappharad]

So, uh, the Beta and RC didn't catch this bug?!??!? What is even the point of doing betas and RCs if these kinds of bugs persists to release? LOL...

This definitely did not affect RC and probably does not affect ALL M3 Ultra Mac Studio's like the article claims.

I did not run any betas, and I upgraded to RC on Friday, then disabled betas and upgraded to the final on Monday. RC and final did not have the same build number, I ran into this on my iOS devices as well, they all were on RC and when I disabled beta updates I was prompted to upgrade. I was up to date on Sequoia before updating to 26 Tahoe.

 

[vegetassj4]

M3 Ultra heard about liquid glass and was like:

 

[dannyyankou]

Pretty inexcusable bug. This means no one at Apple even tested upgrading from Sequoia to Tahoe on M3 Ultra. Because if they did, they would’ve run into this issue.

 

[bmark]

That's Apple innovation there!!

 

[masotime]

I'm sure some developer wrote an automated test case for that.

(Yes, I work in QA.)

As in, they should have actually tried upgrading a physical M3 Ultra to macOS Tahoe 26.

Apple has so many resources, how much effort would it be to take every supported macOS device and verify the install works? It's just amazing how they missed this.

 

[bmark]

Pretty inexcusable bug. This means no one at Apple even tested upgrading from Sequoia to Tahoe on M3 Ultra. Because if they did, they would’ve run into this issue.

What do you expect from the horrible software team that designed iOS 26?

 

[frou]

QA Lab was closed for.... uh, refurbishment

 

[dannyyankou]

What do you expect from the horrible software team that designed iOS 26?

I expected better, because I really like the design of iOS 26.

 

[ThatGuyInLa]

"How many own this thing? 14? Just USA though, right? Okay, yeah it's fine. We'll fix it later."

 

[q64ceo]

Simple reason why Apple failed to catch this bug: they don't read their feedback submitted via Feedback Assistant. Dunno why Apple does public betas if they refuse to consider feedback from those who test it.

 

[ultratiem]

Awww man, lucky! My M1 “upgraded” without issue 😡

 

[Rychiar]

that's what you get for buying an m3 in the age of m4