Bug Prevents M3 Ultra Mac Studios From Installing macOS Tahoe

[kagharaht]

iMac M3 user here. It went very well. No lag, stuttering and so far apps are all running really fast. It's a low end Mac and it's so far working well on these. I also update my wife's M2 MBA 15" and it went smooth also and running very well on her little laptop.

 

[Corefile]

Market capitalization ≠ Revenues
Market capitalization ≠ Profit
Market capitalization ≠ Cash available to spend
Market capitalization changes every time there is a trade of AAPL

The point is that a $3T market cap company should be able to hire at least one QA technician to test upgrade paths.

 

[Royksöpp]

They’re not missing out on much anyways. Anyone using a Studio for serious work should not upgrade anyways

 

[sunman42]

How did they not test it? Massive QA fail.

You have to wonder.

Three possible reasons I can think of: (1) the RC on which they tested every "supported" model of Mac had a last-minute "fix" (*cough*) or other modification made before the shipping version went out, (2) the OS group was too cheap or careless to ask for an M3 Ultra Studio (or didn't know the option existed) to test on, or (3) somewhere out there, there are M3 Ultra Studios that did upgrade successfully, unbeknownst to the hive mind.

Possible alternative versions of (2) included the test group lead wanting to play with a real, live M3 Ultra Studio, and forgetting to give it back to the macDrones to test.

 

[Will Co]

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

Right. I’m seeing strange behaviour all over the place. Wonky screen painting and partial refreshes. Also several random crashes by Apple software. Nothing really concerning but boy does this update look and feel bad.

 

[fathergll]

They may have a $3.5T market cap but since that evaluation has little to do with MacOS at this point I wouldn't count on their QA on their most niche stuff considering Mac computers were a little less than 8% of their revenue in 2024 and the bulk of that 8% is Macbooks.

Niche use case 'Pros' are at the bottom of the barrel on their revenue model and have been for many years.

 

[Will Co]

Well since Sequoia is still getting security updates for two more years, it's safe to wait until, say June of next year, to upgrade, if stability is important to you

You say that, but then we have to think about the apps. Pretty soon companies will start updating their SW to work with Tahoe if they have not done so already. Before you know it there are apps that will (unintentionally) only work well on Tahoe. Then you’re potentially stuck between a rock and a hard place.

 

[Ethosik]

It just occured to me that the Mac Pro is still on M2 Ultra...WTH?!?

Agreed. Apple really needs to flip their strategy around. They have neglected their Pro market since the 2013 trash can, and they are keeping up this even through they blamed Intel and AMD for past delays.

 

[Ethosik]

Nothing but quality at apple these days

Everything is starting to crack these days. NVIDIA has non stop driver problems still to this day but the 50 series launch was atrocious. Windows 11 continues to just get worse, AAA gaming sucks these days, not even a 9800X3D and a 5090 can run games well.

I am just sick of all of it. I used to be super into tech but everything is just so broken its not fun anymore.

 

[yaddam205]

Everything is starting to crack these days. NVIDIA has non stop driver problems still to this day but the 50 series launch was atrocious. Windows 11 continues to just get worse, AAA gaming sucks these days, not even a 9800X3D and a 5090 can run games well.

I am just sick of all of it. I used to be super into tech but everything is just so broken its not fun anymore.

Not to mention how expensive PC gaming has become. 3k for a GPU? Ludicrous.

 

[poematik13]

We just got a 512GB model for our business and keeping it on 15.6 lol

 

[eesand]

worked just fine for me.. never ran beta.

 

[midiman]

M3 Ultra Mac Studio here - no problems at all installing. Definitely not universal.

 

[TooSixy]

It's amazing that after 3 months of beta testing they still managed to let this bug slip through

 

[HDFan]

Installed with no problem on my maxed out M3 ultra

 

[falkon-engine]

You’re not missing anything. Me personally I’ve learned to not install the *.0 release for my daily driver Mac. wait until at least *.2

 

[io.kyle]

This happened to my M3 Ultra, I had to put it into DFU mode and recover it that way with macOS 26, then use a Time Machine backup to restore all my files. Huge pain in the ass lol

 

[ApAx]

So Apple simply just didn't encounter this issue when testing installs of Tahoe on M3 Ultra Mac Studio, but every consumer was affected?

 

[Sappharad]

If you click the Tahoe 26.0 in the about dialog box does it definitely change to 26.0 25A354?

I'm just wondering if the update from RC 25A353 to to 25A354 failed silently.

Yes. Also, I believe RC was 25A350, not 353?
Edit: Giant embedded screenshot was an accident, sorry. In this case with the number of people in this thread who seem to think that no one could install it on an M3 Ultra, maybe it'll encourage someone to read the other posts and see that it's related to a different update that anyone who immediately updated to 26 on Monday would not have had yet.

 

[MacATDBB]

Yes. Also, I believe RC was 25A350, not 353?

For me it was 353->354 on my m4 pro and m4 systems which matches the RC in the wikipedia article:

macOS Tahoe - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

but if you went 350->354 and didn't have any issues, that might be quite interesting.

 

[mxrider88]

A useful bug… I’d even call it a feature. If you have a Mac Studio you are probably working with it, so you avoid liquid ass and the plethora of bugs, lucky you!

 

[SmokyT18]

I had no issues upgrading my M3 Ultra Studio and I started using the beta builds around a month ago. After RC release installed I turned off betas and the final release installed just fine. I wonder what is different with the config on mine.

 

[Riot Nrrrd]

I had been considering buying an M3 Ultra Mac Studio (because I have an LG 34" 5K2K with the dreaded "No support for the 3840x1620 default/preferred scaled HiDPI resolution with M4-based Macs" bug), but decided against it because it's complete overkill for my needs. Suddenly glad I didn't get one ... phew

 

[svish]

Hopefully Apple will fix this soon. I am holding out on updating my Macs and other Apple devices for a few more days, just to be safe.

 

[ItsASpider]

I had similar behavior during the beta on my Mac mini M4 where it would reboot and then just start installing again. At one point it seemed to even entirely invalidate the download and it had to download the beta again (I believe it was beta 8, but could be wrong).