macOS Sequoia 15.4 Beta 1 - Bug fixes, changes, and more

[brsilb]

The 15.4 b1 borked my M4 Pro mini.

After updating I selected Restart and mini repeatedly rebooted about 6 times in quick succession with the white power light going on and off. The mini then started to flash an orange light repeatedly instead of white.

I then tried to enter Recovery mode and the same flashing white followed by the flashing orange light persisted.

I assumed a firmware issue so established pronto an appointment at my local Apple Store to have them perform the DFU.

At the Apple Store the DFU->Revive failed. I requested they try again because otherwise the next step would be to Restore and that wipes the internal SSD which obviously I don’t want. If the Restore fails then it’s off to the repair shop and a new logic board will have to be installed.

The 2nd attempt to Revive failed……bugger, as did the DFU->Restore. Apple Store said logic board needs to be replaced and will take a week (that is Mar 2nd).

In order to further understand why my M4 Pro mini suffered in such a catastrophic way I will detail how it was configured at the time I performed the latest beta build.

My mini is setup for dual booting using two volumes groups (Production and Test) in a single container on the mini’s internal 512 GB SSD. The issue arose after or during unattended update to 15.4 b1. I estimated it was some 90 minutes from starting the build’s download to when I returned to the mini to find the issue that has caused the DFU process to be needed.

My M4 Pro mini has 512 GB internal SSD and 64 GB of memory. It was considered by Apple to be a CTO purchase.

1) My mini’s power connector is connected directly to my house’s electrical outlet.
2) I have an OWC TB5 Hub directly connected to one of the TB5 ports on backside on the mini.
3) The OWC TB5 Hub which is powered is used for allowing my 27” Studio Display and my ancient Apple TB 27” Display to be connected to it. I use the Apple USB-C to TB2 adapter for the ancient TB 27” Display connection.
4) I have a TB5 OWC Envoy Ultra (4TB in capacity) connected directly to the mini’s backside TB5 port.
5) The 3rd TB5 port on the backside of the mini is open/unused.
6) All of my other external storage devices are connected via running a TB4 cable from the OWC TB5 Hub to an OWC TB4 Hub from which all further external storage devices are connected.
7) The OWC TB5 Hub has 4 TB ports, one USB port, and one TB port is left unused.
8) The OWC TB5 Hub has its own white light built-in power on/off push button which is unusual for a Hub, but find it useful when leaving JUST the mini powered on with NO devices attached to it except for any device connected directly to the mini backside and/or frontside ports.

For the past 3 months since installing my mini last November, it has been heavily used with many TBs of data being moved around, its System Settings > Energy Setting set to ‘High Performance’, and its processor cores quite likely all being used for long stretches of time. The GPU is not heavily used when running my Production workload that is CPU, Memory, and I/O intensive.

There are 3 Admin user accounts configured. I use only one of these as the other two are for backup and testing different user accounts etc.

Prior to the issue arising from doing the beta update I had been pounding on Photos for several days. My Photos library is located on the connected TB5 OWC Envoy Ultra and is some 400 GB in size.

OMG, I had the same issue with my mini, M4, Pro. I used my MBP with Apple Configurator in DFU to RESTORE the mini to 15.3.1. I also had a dual boot setup on the 1TB SSD. Was able to restore both boots using Time bMachine migration. Up and running but a harrowing experience.

 

[bxs]

OMG, I had the same issue with my mini, M4, Pro. I used my MBP with Apple Configurator in DFU to RESTORE the mini to 15.3.1. I also had a dual boot setup on the 1TB SSD. Was able to restore both boots using Time bMachine migration. Up and running but a harrowing experience.

Thanks for responding…. It’s in some ways always comforting if another person has encountered the same problem.

I’m guessing I was simply unlucky compared to your luck where the DFU>Revive and DFU>Restore both failed for my case when performed at my local Apple Store. Apple Stored claimed my problem was hardware related and will be replacing my logic board.

Your experience in many ways now makes me think my problem was not hardware related but was an issue with the 15.4 b1 install software, and that also maybe the DFU itself was unable to recover my mini due to the state my mini was left in by the 15.4 b1 install, or that the local Apple Store use of DFU was possibly faulty in some way.

No matter I’m thinking my issue was most likely caused by a faulty 15.4 b1 install leaving my mini in a ‘borked’ state. My mini should be repaired in a few days and after I pick it up will be configuring it as I had it before, and then will apply the 15.4 b1 again and hope all goes well…. If not I would think the initial problem I encountered on Feb 21st performing the 15.4 b1 install leaving my mini ‘borked’ was software related and not hardware related.

 

[brsilb]

Thanks for responding…. It’s in some ways always comforting if another person has encountered the same problem.

I’m guessing I was simply unlucky compared to your luck where the DFU>Revive and DFU>Restore both failed for my case when performed at my local Apple Store. Apple Stored claimed my problem was hardware related and will be replacing my logic board.

Your experience in many ways now makes me think my problem was not hardware related but was an issue with the 15.4 b1 install software, and that also maybe the DFU itself was unable to recover my mini due to the state my mini was left in by the 15.4 b1 install, or that the local Apple Store use of DFU was possibly faulty in some way.

No matter I’m thinking my issue was most likely caused by a faulty 15.4 b1 install leaving my mini in a ‘borked’ state. My mini should be repaired in a few days and after I pick it up will be configuring it as I had it before, and then will apply the 15.4 b1 again and hope all goes well…. If not I would think the initial problem I encountered on Feb 21st performing the 15.4 b1 install leaving my mini ‘borked’ was software related and not hardware relies,

its is nice to know u are not alone.

Thanks for responding…. It’s in some ways always comforting if another person has encountered the same problem.

I’m guessing I was simply unlucky compared to your luck where the DFU>Revive and DFU>Restore both failed for my case when performed at my local Apple Store. Apple Stored claimed my problem was hardware related and will be replacing my logic board.

Your experience in many ways now makes me think my problem was not hardware related but was an issue with the 15.4 b1 install software, and that also maybe the DFU itself was unable to recover my mini due to the state my mini was left in by the 15.4 b1 install, or that the local Apple Store use of DFU was possibly faulty in some way.

No matter I’m thinking my issue was most likely caused by a faulty 15.4 b1 install leaving my mini in a ‘borked’ state. My mini should be repaired in a few days and after I pick it up will be configuring it as I had it before, and then will apply the 15.4 b1 again and hope all goes well…. If not I would think the initial problem I encountered on Feb 21st performing the 15.4 b1 install leaving my mini ‘borked’ was software related and not hardware related.

Yes, always nice to know it's not just you. I think this is a M4 issue of compatibility that keeps popping up. I will try again in b2

 

[ssh]

I am getting iCloud Private Relay failures with 15.4 beta 1. Anyone else seeing this? Essentially, Safari is completely unusable, and the settings for Private Relay are greyed out and unselectable. They show as "Unknown." I have tried them on multiple networks.

 

[fisherking]

I am getting iCloud Private Relay failures with 15.4 beta 1. Anyone else seeing this? Essentially, Safari is completely unusable, and the settings for Private Relay are greyed out and unselectable. They show as "Unknown." I have tried them on multiple networks.

working fine here. reboot? running any 3rd-party extensions in logic? (anyway, sure others here might have suggestions...)

 

[zacharee]

Apple's suggestion to boot into Safe Mode to disable any virtualization apps that run on login wasn't very helpful for me, since Parallels apparently still starts automatically. For anyone else getting crashes in Safe Mode, you can use Recovery to manually remove the `.app`s for all virtualization software to get you booting again.

1. Boot into Recovery.
2. Choose "Restore from a Time Machine backup".
3. Choose your Macintosh HD and enter your user credentials to unlock it.
4. Exit the Time Machine wizard.
5. In the menu bar, choose Utilities and then Terminal.
6. Use rm -rf /Volumes/[Drive Name]/Applications/[App].app for all virtualization apps that you think might be starting on boot, where [Drive Name] is probably Macintosh\ HD and [App] is the app name.
7. Reboot.

 

[Adora]

is system setting supposed to take over 15 minutes
to equate storage?
the spinning on photos (iCloud off, no photos)
& my bestest friend system data this long?
strange....
View attachment 2485620

I hope you don't use your MBA 2010 still for 15.4. That reminds me of my 2010 white plastic MacBook I once bought used. I really loved it and wonder if it still would work. I gave it an SSD and 16GB RAM. But my brother destroyed it.

What Mac with what disk size do you use now and how full is it?

This took about 5 seconds on an M4 Pro mini:

But I think it is depending somehow on what is installed. I think my M3 iMac had this problem too.

 

[Adora]

These betas are designed for developers.

A developer would (a) know how to roll back and/or re-install, and would probably keep the beta and use any required virtualisation on another computer.

Not long and we will start with macOS 16 Beta already. Can't believe the time is running that fast.

 

[Adora]

I am getting iCloud Private Relay failures with 15.4 beta 1. Anyone else seeing this? Essentially, Safari is completely unusable, and the settings for Private Relay are greyed out and unselectable. They show as "Unknown." I have tried them on multiple networks.

I got those failures permanently every day. But because I mostly use Firefox it didn't really matter. There were always those notifications "Private Relay not available..." and a little later "Private Relay available.." for weeks.

Somehow it just disappeared maybe I few days ago and I think I just found out why:

I enabled it again. Let's see if it comes back. There is somehow a conflict between those two. Also I never disabled "Limit IP address tracking" myself. It was just switched off automatically not for the first time now.

These problems with "Private Relay" and "Limit IP address tracking" were already there in 15.3.1 and maybe even 15.3.

Do you also use Ethernet? I turned on WiFi for a few days to use Continuity features with my iPhone. I think it's gone since then and it also turned of that switch in Ethernet settings. But now the switch is on again and WiFi is off already since shortly before I went to sleep.

I am using Safari at the moment and until now nothing happened.

 

[Adora]

Not working in Germany (15.4 Beta (24E5206s))
View attachment 2485547

You only need to login a US App Store account on both sides. But I think on the phone side it's a little annoying to switch permanently for updates. At least it has nothing to do with the system location and language settings or the iCloud-ID.

I tried it once in an earlier version. Just created an account with fake data.

 

[MBAir2010]

I hope you don't use your MBA 2010 still for 15.4.

nope, that stays on Snow Leopard only, I still love that OSX!
surprisingly everything works great but no airdrop or scrolling upwards.
that MBA excelled at a project I performed were
I needed to design over 4,000 photographs late last and early this year!

What Mac with what disk size do you use now and how full is it?

both 265 with system data of 13GB MBA20 and still calculating on the mini.....

 

[S/\V/\GE]

Thanks for responding…. It’s in some ways always comforting if another person has encountered the same problem.

I’m guessing I was simply unlucky compared to your luck where the DFU>Revive and DFU>Restore both failed for my case when performed at my local Apple Store. Apple Stored claimed my problem was hardware related and will be replacing my logic board.

Your experience in many ways now makes me think my problem was not hardware related but was an issue with the 15.4 b1 install software, and that also maybe the DFU itself was unable to recover my mini due to the state my mini was left in by the 15.4 b1 install, or that the local Apple Store use of DFU was possibly faulty in some way.

No matter I’m thinking my issue was most likely caused by a faulty 15.4 b1 install leaving my mini in a ‘borked’ state. My mini should be repaired in a few days and after I pick it up will be configuring it as I had it before, and then will apply the 15.4 b1 again and hope all goes well…. If not I would think the initial problem I encountered on Feb 21st performing the 15.4 b1 install leaving my mini ‘borked’ was software related and not hardware related.

Same here. Tried to revert back to old OS and it bricked.

Took it to the Apple store and they came back to me with the same diagnoses after trying to Revive it themselves - replace logic board.

15.4 b1 is crap.

 

[Adora]

nope, that stays on Snow Leopard only, I still love that OSX!
surprisingly everything works great but no airdrop or scrolling upwards.
that MBA excelled at a project I performed were
I needed to design over 4,000 photographs late last and early this year!

What Mac with what disk size do you use now and how full is it?

both 265 with system data of 13GB MBA20 and still calculating on the mini.....

I think I would have put Snow Leopard on my 2010 MacBook too after not really needing it anymore. I even put it on my 17" Late 2011 MBP. It worked somehow and without any problems when you installed it with all updates on a drive before and put it in. Official minimum is Mac OS X 10.7.2 (11C74).

My Mac is a M4 Pro mini with 4TB, only 652GB used at the moment. I haven't migrated everything yet. Just installed three times Windows 11 in a VM at the same time. That didn't change anything. It's still about 4-5 seconds to show all storage data.
System Data is 250GB.

VMs is what I bought this Mac for. It has 64GB RAM. But I want to use several Linux distributions. Windows was just the easiest way to try if it works.

 

[MBAir2010]

I was streaming the Tour de France last year in a MacBook Pro 2012 running mountain lion and sealion web borowser.
since the MacBook Air 2020 Monterey could not keep up with the intrusions and let ads stop the event.
last year I boxed my MBA2020 for several months since the Intels worked better somehow.
hopefully this summer I can watch on the MBA 202o but who knows?

 

[NC_Bulldog]

OMG, I had the same issue with my mini, M4, Pro. I used my MBP with Apple Configurator in DFU to RESTORE the mini to 15.3.1. I also had a dual boot setup on the 1TB SSD. Was able to restore both boots using Time bMachine migration. Up and running but a harrowing experience.

I had exactly the same experience -- TWICE -- with my Mac mini M4 Pro as you and others have reported here. I also had to do a DFU Restore as I had a good Time Machine backup. The first "bricking" happened when I tried to install 15.4 on a cloned Container with 15.3.1 on my mini's 1TB internal drive. The install worked fine, but on rebooting went into the dreaded boot loop.

I did the DFU Restore to "un-brick," and a Time Machine restore. Dumb me thought maybe if I used an external drive it would work properly. WRONG! Exactly the same thing happened with a boot loop. Fortunately again a DFU Restore worked for me.

I was confident it wasn't something with my setup that was causing the problem. At that time I didn't know others were having the same experience. I did report this issue to Apple via "Feedback Assistant," which reports that "Resolution: Open," and "Recent Similar Reports: None." I hope others with the same experience report it to Apple.

Perhaps it's confined to the Mac mini M4 Pro based on the couple reports here.

 

[Adora]

I was streaming the Tour de France last year in a MacBook Pro 2012 running mountain lion and sealion web borowser.
since the MacBook Air 2020 Monterey could not keep up with the intrusions and let ads stop the event.
last year I boxed my MBA2020 for several months since the Intels worked better somehow.
hopefully this summer I can watch on the MBA 202o but who knows?

I used my 17" MBP Late-2011 from Summer 2022 to February 2023 again, because my 2017 MBP got unusable, it had several damages.

The 2011 was still very good usable with SSD and 16GB and High Sierra. But it got very loud when playing videos.

Sadly it got the famous GPU damage in February 2023 and I needed something new as soon as possible. An Air with 15" wasn't out there and I needed a screen as big as possible, so I bought one of the just released 16" M2 Pro MBP.

Sorry for Off Topic.

---

Here is a direct download link for the full installer of Beta 2:

https://swcdn.apple.com/content/downloads/29/56/072-90270-A_921DQOPTRF/pbl4gmyhrbc0s6qn2kv62wp352xwgpgdvm/InstallAssistant.pkg

 

[MBAir2010]

I used my 17" MBP Late-2011 from Summer 2022 to February 2023 again, because my 2017 MBP got unusable, it had several damages.

The 2011 was still very good usable with SSD and 16GB and High Sierra. But it got very loud when playing videos.

Sadly it got the famous GPU damage in February 2023 and I needed something new as soon as possible. An Air with 15" wasn't out there and I needed a screen as big as possible, so I bought one of the just released 16" M2 Pro MBP.

Sorry for Off Topic.

nothing about a Mac and one's experience will ever be off topic!
I enjoyed your post!