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Users Complain About Installation Issues With macOS 10.13.4 (theregister.co.uk)
An anonymous reader shares a report: The 10.13.4 update for macOS High Sierra is recommended for all users, and was emitted at the end of March promising to "improve stability, performance, and security of your Mac." But geek support sites have started filling up with people complaining that it had the opposite effect: killing their computer with messages that "the macOS installation couldn't be completed."
The initial install appears to be working fine, but when users go to shutdown or reboot an upgraded system, it goes into recovery mode. According to numerous reports, there doesn't appear to be anything wrong with users' Macs -- internal drives report that they're fine. And the issue is affecting a range of different Apple-branded computers from different years. Some have been successful in getting 10.13.4 to install by launching from Safe Mode, but others haven't and are deciding to roll back and stick with 10.13.3 until Apple puts out a new update that will fix whatever the issue is while claiming it has nothing to do with it.
The initial install appears to be working fine, but when users go to shutdown or reboot an upgraded system, it goes into recovery mode. According to numerous reports, there doesn't appear to be anything wrong with users' Macs -- internal drives report that they're fine. And the issue is affecting a range of different Apple-branded computers from different years. Some have been successful in getting 10.13.4 to install by launching from Safe Mode, but others haven't and are deciding to roll back and stick with 10.13.3 until Apple puts out a new update that will fix whatever the issue is while claiming it has nothing to do with it.
It's always best to let other people be the guinea pigs/beta testers.
Unless it fixes something that is broken that matter to you.
After trying Sierra a couple times, I rolled back to El Capitan - and only recently upgraded my computers to High Sierra 10.13.4. None of the computers I upgraded (2016 MacBook Pro, 2015 MacBook Pro, 2012 MacBook Pro, 2012 Mac Mini, 2017 iMac) had any issues with the upgrade nor with any subsequent updates.
I realize that's just anecdotal, but so are the reports in the story itself.
#DeleteChrome
My housemate uses a Macbook with OSX for work, he's had this exact issue. I run Linux on mine so I avoided it, always annoying when patches break core os functionality.
I keep getting the 'app not optimized for Mac OSX HIgh Sierra. Contact developer.' What's up with that?
10.13.4 also breaks external monitors. We have had to prevent updates on many of the MACs on our network because of this.
with apple it's ATI or intel video only now days.
Looks to me like you don't have the right driver, or the driver hasn't been accepted by the user's system for sign-off reasons. Try this URL if you're talking about DisplayLink.
DisplayLink Support page
For me, even though 10.13.4 installed fine, it has brought nothing but instability and performance degradation:
1. There is 50% chance that if I close the lid on the laptop and then open it, it will crash silently.
2. There is 95% chance that if the laptop entered deep sleep it will not get out of it without crashing. These crashes are not detected
3. The kernel memory leaks are even worse than before. On startup with nothing open the kernel takes in excess of 1.5gb and in 30 minutes of work is up to 3gb of memory. After a couple of days it is taking about 6gb of memory.
4. The purge command is completely broken, it never purges any memory, even if activity monitor says I have more than 3gb of purgeable memory.
5. WindowServer does not reliably pass clicks to applications.
6. Safari memory management is even worse than before. On average it takes 330mb per tab. If you have something like Jira, that tab is easily over 1gb of memory.
Quality is down the drain. Windows 8.1 is my preferred platform these days.
I had an installation problem when installing the macOS 10.13.4 update on my MacBook Air.
After rebooting, my system would crash (requiring a reboot) ad nauseam.
I rebooted in Safe Mode and somehow got the machine out of the annoying reboot cycle. At that point, I rebooted back int 10.13.3 and resolved not to upgrade to 10.13.4 until I heard it was safe to install. When I went to the App Store and checked for updates, the 10.13.4 update disappeared from the list. (It seemed at the time that Apple had pulled it from their servers.) Unfortunately, a week or so later, the update was pushed down and my machine rebooted. But, it seemed to work this time, fortunately.
Reviewing the logs, there was an entry about a file not found which seemed to cause the problem. I didn't save the logs, so I can't report the exact error.
Mac Mini late 2014 version here (with upgraded disk to ssd). All working fine.
Every time I install another MacOS HS security patch, it wipes the boot code for my Linux partition. I'll probably wipe my MacOS partition sooner or later anyway.
to double down on bug fixes and stability yet?
Guess not.
If you follow the link at the top of your linked page, you get to a page that tells you that DisplayLink basically doesn't work at all in 10.13.4 except in a very limited mode where it mirrors the main display. This was discussed on Slashdot a couple of weeks ago.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
As a developer, I have seen multiple times how under the "shiny" surface, Apple isn't really careful about what they are releasing, but the current macOS is one of the worse I've seen. For example, if you have installed it (and you can still boot), try opening the error console. Chances are you'll see that it throws several "signpost_notificationd - 0 is not a valid connection ID" errors every few seconds! It happens on all machines I have checked, a few 2013 Macbook Pros, a 2010 Mac Pro, a 2011 Mac Mini... And there are multiple threads about it, so it is not something in my part of the world :) Sure, it might be benign (although it is reported as an "error" - not warning - and some users claim it is related to excessive fan speeds), but how on earth can they release something that floods the error logs on many configurations, (including on a clean system, installed from scratch)?
About that "clean system". Last week I decided to install a bigger SSD on my 2010 Mac Pro (the last type that was upgradeable - still hanging on with a 6-core 3.46GHz Xeon, 32GB RAM, USB3 and eSATA cards). I had a Mavericks install usb, did a clean install and upgraded directly to 10.13.4. The "clean" system was pretty unusable, there was an obvious lag on most UI things. E.g. hovering over each section of the top menu would open it after at least half a second (depended on the app - some faster, some slower). Activity monitor showed nothing in CPU or Disk usage. I actually thought there was something wrong with my new SSD, until I cloned the old disk with Mavericks to the new disk, booted and everything was snappy again. Not upgrading the old mac to High Sierra any time soon... Well, I can afford to as I have XCode on the laptop...
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
I've seen a couple variants of it.
1)
The computer is stuck in a reboot cycle. The update apparently sets the recovery partition on the local drive as the bootable device at some point, gets into that recovery mode, then fails to start the update for some reason.
The solution to this has simply been to hold the boot-select key at power up (option / alt), select the actual OS X boot volume, boot back into the OS, and then start the update again from the App Store. The second attempt has so far always worked.. the comptuer reboots and then applies the update correctly.
2)
Antivirus causes the update to fail.
Use the boot option select at power on ( option / alt ) to select the recovery partition, or simply boot into anything that has the ability to read the HFS / APFS system. Go into the OS X partition and move any startup files relating to the antivirus software.
So, like in /Library/LaunchAgents /Library/LaunchDaemons /Library/StartupItems
move out files like com.Symantec.* , Avast, Sophos, bitdefender, so forth.
Then reboot and let the computer attempt the update again. Seems to work fine after that. Don't just put he startup items back afterward, actually re-install the AV, and ideally, verify that the AV still works win 10.13.4
You can understand more issues with Windows that has a ton of devices and software running on them. Of course any Windows updates will see its share of isolated issues. But Apple has little excuse given it has only its own hardware that it upgrades and its Mac OS is supposedly beta tested on much of that base of hardware. Why even do beta testing if you can't weed out stuff better?
We've been seeing this at work where I help manage ~1100 Macs. Fortunately, we're in a position to netboot to the full 10.13.4 installer which seems to resolve it with a full install on top of the existing botched install.
Their macOS updates seem to have become less stable and more prone to bugs since 10.13.0. But, I guess, when you're driven by iPhone and iPad sales, your desktop OS gets a backseat.
Controlled hardware platform and yet they still cock it up.
Have they fixed that yet?
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
The issue lies with the auto conversion to APFS. It is based on CoreStorage which has always had problems. The problem with it is it converts the partition table to the new format and is supposed to work just fine converting JHFS+ file-systems but it fails frequently so the computer boots into recovery and the only solution is to back up the files, Erase the drive and reinstall the OS. With a clean install of 10.13.4 with APFS everything is smooth sailing. It has been a boon for us repair guys, 3 customers a day dumping cash into recovering data and formatting the computer. Before updating have a backup. Apple should warn users before updating the OS that they should have a Time Machine backup first. One thing I hate too is they got rid of imaging partitions with APFS so it makes it harder to back data up when the computer wont boot. Its all so poorly planned.
I just had this problem when installing Sierra (not High Sierra) on a MacBook Pro. This problem may be more wide spread than they think.
When I upgraded to 10.13.4 my machine went into safe mode upon reboot. It said the OS failed to install. A look at the error logged showed complaints about some file missing from the installer directory. Sent me into quite a panic for a while. I finally did a fresh, complete install.
Got two Macbook Pro 2012 and both work better than the day I bought them.
Quoting The Register about software updates? Might as well quote Fox News about Mexicans. If you bother to look at their link to forums "filling up" with queries, you'll note that it has all of 11 responses. And the rest of the article is a lot of unsubstantiated ranting about not much in particular. Total waste of energy reading their articles.
So glad I stuck with the Apple branded lightning video adapters instead of buying cheap USB video adapters.
Had this same problem with my wifeâ(TM)s MacBook. Called my AASP buddy and he let me know that if you hold option key on bootup when it jacks up like this, you will see an additional new partition selection (it will show two duplicates for the primary partition, 3 total counting if you have a recovery partition) and that if you select the âoeotherâ duplicate... it will properly boot and remove the original non-booting partition option (the one going to the error install). Best of luck all.
My Macbook Pro early 2011 with El Capitan (currently 10.11.6) went straight to unusable on after security update in December 2017. I've upgraded the SSD to 1TB Samsung and replaced the battery, given it was possible with the Macbook Pros of that time. When the system was not opertive, using istats I saw I had lost few sensors, and the system lowered clock and went full throttle. The sensors were on SMBus behind the SMC management engine, seems something went wrong with kernel/SMC intergration. Using internet workaround I was able to get my system back to usable, even the fan occasionally failed (the workaround disabled the throttling mechanism). Now after the March update the system seems back to more or less stable. Currently I am planning to migrate away from the Apple ecosystem. The current portfolio Macbooks have bad connectivity on ports and the High Sierra has received much criticism. For a reason, it seems. Sierra is not anymore a real option for me as XCode would not be available. At time, it was great to see decent integration between hardware and software. But it would seem the quality that was once there is no more. :(