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Not too happy with Sequoia (15.5)
- Thread starter Levina
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@Adora, this is an INCREDIBLY helpful post - thank you so much! I will check my machines using the Terminal commands you have listed and see what shows up.
No matter what however, if I go to System Preferences and click Time Machine "Off", I expect it to be off. No one will ever convince me that it is a marvel of modern software design to have it stay on and run snapshots anyway, in direct violation of a user's expressed wishes!
No matter what however, if I go to System Preferences and click Time Machine "Off", I expect it to be off. No one will ever convince me that it is a marvel of modern software design to have it stay on and run snapshots anyway, in direct violation of a user's expressed wishes!
Are you always this unpleasant when somebody doesn't know something?
And no, I didn't know because until now when I deleted something from any disk, it would immediately show in the Finder. I only recently switched to APFS after 15 years of working on a classic Mac Pro 2009 with Mac OS Extended (Journaled), so excuse me if I am not up to date on matters.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who never saw this behaviour before. It only started after I upgraded to Sequoia.
Yeah, I hate it too. Who needs a big brother, right?
No doubt, but I like to have at least some agency over my own computer and all the externals and on how I manage storage and back-ups. Apple used to understand this but the last couple of years they seem to have become more and more paternalistic with a number of warnings, notifications, explanations and protective measures that are annoyingly obtrusive and very much unnecessary.
Yes! Fishrrman recommended it to me and after trying it out I bought it. It's pretty brilliant.
Yes, very much so. If I knew how as the "Anywhere" is gone now. You know a command I could use in Terminal?
Re adora's advice in reply 31:
After executing this terminal command, you may need to quit system settings, and then RE-open it, and then go to privacy & security and set "allow applications from" to "anywhere".
Found this out from experience...
After executing this terminal command, you may need to quit system settings, and then RE-open it, and then go to privacy & security and set "allow applications from" to "anywhere".
Found this out from experience...
I have to say, I agree wholeheartedly with this. Had many of the bugs and issues with Sequoia been resolved by now (15.6) I would probably be less concerned, but with Sequoia I feel that Apple really hasn't maintained the quality of software that I've come to love over the years. It
I regularly find myself wishing Apple would do another 'Snow Leopard' release with 100% focus on polishing the OS to its absolute best. I also keep telling myself this would likely happen when they phase out Rosetta 2 and stop supporting Intel app builds altogether, which I vaguely (perhaps incorrectly) recall was the time when OSX Snow Leopard got the polish treatment (when the Power PC to Intel transition was done and dusted and they striped Rosetta 1 and all universal app support from the OS too? - My memory may not be serving me well there, though 🤔). Either way 🤞🏼 for a Snow Leopard'esque release on Apple's Radar at some point in the not too distant future.
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... and THIS is why always staying up with the latest thing in not always a good idea. In the end, your Mac is a tool for you. If it does what you need it to do, stop there. All those latest releases come with all the latest bugs... not worth it... unless you really need one of those new features.
In general, find something stable that does what you need it to do and stay put. Don't move up until you need to.
I completely agree. Though don't mistake my post as a complaint born from of a lack of understanding, nor a lack of skills or ability to work around the many bugs and issues which still reside in Sequoia. I was simply stating that I agreed with CrushRoller about this particular OS release cycle, in addition to adding a few thoughts of my own. Your statement definitely aligns with the advice I give to others.
I think it's fair to say that the OP hasn't made a hasty decision to jump on the 'latest and greatest' OS release though!
...me, I'm happy to be in at the deep end of testing beta, or even alpha versions of software, I actively contribute to the testing & reporting of bugs etc, but I honestly can't remember a .6 release of an Apple OS where there are still so many 'obvious' and 'visible' bugs that haven't been addressed by Apple, either by way of an actual bug fix release, or a support document / workaround for the issue on their website (and by 'obvious' and 'visible' I mean surface level bugs that the average non-technical user will likely still notice in day to day use, rather than edge or corner case bugs).
As Gregg2 said:
With regards to unaddressed Sequoia bugs, I am hopeful this is the case too, but I'm not sure that some of the bugs in Sequoia won't carry over to Tahoe. I can't fully test whether some of them are resolved in Tahoe yet as I'm only running the beta in a VM due to one of the 'Six Macs' not yet being available to do a full standalone OS install on. Sadly...'Six Mac Abs' isn't a fun Apple-like reference to my rippling torso 😬, it's reference to having too much Apple (and the ever-fading dream of a rippling torso)...and I think it's fair to say that I have mitigations against the risk of using the 'latest and greatest' macOS versions, which the OP's post isn't really referencing anyway.
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I completely missed this question at the end of your post.
The Ventura ipsw (13.6) download
Details on reverting to an older OS available here (apple insider), here (Apple Configurator) or here (eclectic light).
** Note **
I didn't thoroughly check these sites for accuracy as of today (7th Aug 25) so you would need to exercise some due diligence there. The 2 sites other than Apple's own are both reputable sites though, in case you are not familiar with them.
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As someone already mentioned, it may just be better to get onboard with the new OS 'features' rather than downgrade as these changes aren't going away anytime soon. If you plan on staying on Ventura until you have no choice, then the above links should get you to where you want to be.
If you do decide to downgrade, ensure you have a tested and working backup before you start, so you can restore from that if anything goes wonky. Unlikely, but still not a risk worth taking without a solid backup / escape plan.
Yeah, I occasionally skip a year. Big Sur was the last one. I have a feeling Tahoe might be the next. I'll certainly not be installing for a good six months.
And as I've mentioned elsewhere, I have an iPad stuck on iOS 12. It's fine. Well more than fine: the battery lasts for weeks. The only thing that's been lost so far is Reminders. Most paid apps have stopped updating on it, but everything still works.
You will love Sequoia when you used Tahoe only for a few weeks. The downgrade was such a relief after going through four Betas.
I don't have any more downgrade options. I skipped everything after High Sierra, because of my 17" Late 2011 MBP that I had to use until early 2022. There was a 2017 in the meantime but I never installed a new version.
Before I always did the Developer Betas on my main Mac. But I stopped after High Sierra because I got sick and couldn't concentrate on anything.
I wasn't even able to send in the 2017 to the service program for the faulty keyboard it had from the beginning. At the end it got Staingate and Flexgate and the battery is dead, ports got distorted and weren't usable anymore. Worst Mac ever. That's why I used the 2011 again for about a year. It got the famous GPU damage right in time when the M2 MBPs had been released.
Then I got a M2 Pro MBP that came with Ventura. I can't even remember that version because I was very sick. Then I needed a larger display and shortly after buying an M3 iMac I upgraded to the first Sequoia Beta, can't remember any differences to before. But there was this new Passwords app and I loved it. So I got through all betas and compared to Tahoe it was perfect from Beta 1.
Now I have a Mac mini M4 Pro with a huge LED display. The oldest macOS version I could install is 15.3.1. So now downgrade option anymore. I wish I could run anything before APFS on it, with the old System Settings and even the old Disk Utility.
If someone likes to try 15.7, here is the full installer for the RC and maybe final build 24G207, can be used to update:
The standard update was a little strange. I wrote about it in the news thread. Full Installer might work better. Maybe I even "update" again with it.
But I haven't noticed any problems with that version since the update. Strangely there are still no Release Notes. I even thought they pulled it, because it's nowhere listed in the Developer Portal and the update wasn't there hours after it had been released.
But now it's listed here. So it should be safe.
Code:
~ % softwareupdate --list-full-installers
Finding available software
Software Update found the following full installers:
* Title: macOS Tahoe Beta, Version: 26.0, Size: 16305385KiB, Build: 25A5327h, Deferred: NO
* Title: macOS Sequoia, Version: 15.7, Size: 15287964KiB, Build: 24G207, Deferred: NO
* Title: macOS Sequoia, Version: 15.6, Size: 15290929KiB, Build: 24G84, Deferred: NO
* Title: macOS Sequoia, Version: 15.5, Size: 15283299KiB, Build: 24F74, Deferred: NO
* Title: macOS Sequoia, Version: 15.4.1, Size: 15244333KiB, Build: 24E263, Deferred: NO
* Title: macOS Sequoia, Version: 15.4, Size: 15243957KiB, Build: 24E248, Deferred: NO
* Title: macOS Sequoia, Version: 15.3.2, Size: 14890483KiB, Build: 24D81, Deferred: NO
* Title: macOS Sequoia, Version: 15.3.1, Size: 14891477KiB, Build: 24D70, Deferred: NOI completely missed this question at the end of your post.
The Ventura ipsw (13.6) download
Details on reverting to an older OS available here (apple insider), here (Apple Configurator) or here (eclectic light).
** Note **
I didn't thoroughly check these sites for accuracy as of today (7th Aug 25) so you would need to exercise some due diligence there. The 2 sites other than Apple's own are both reputable sites though, in case you are not familiar with them.
----------
As someone already mentioned, it may just be better to get onboard with the new OS 'features' rather than downgrade as these changes aren't going away anytime soon. If you plan on staying on Ventura until you have no choice, then the above links should get you to where you want to be.
If you do decide to downgrade, ensure you have a tested and working backup before you start, so you can restore from that if anything goes wonky. Unlikely, but still not a risk worth taking without a solid backup / escape plan.
I just divided my main drive into three partitions for downgrading from Tahoe Beta 4 to Sequoia 15.6.
I made a small bootable one (Mac OS Extended Journaled) for the Sequoia installer and the rest of free space for Sequoia. I deleted that one after the installation because I have for both macOS versions it's own recovery partition now.
So I still had Tahoe on my other partition and nothing could get lost. I was able to just copy everything I need over to the fresh Sequoia install and I am still keeping the Tahoe partition until I am sure nothing is missing.
I also cloned the Tahoe partition with CCC to a bootable external drive with the legacy backup option and there are TimeMachine backups. So I don't even need to keep it on the internal drive. It's only still there for the case I might want to try it again and I have enough free space.