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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.
32-bit programs, maybe. Apple wants to move fully to 64-bit.
Circumcision is child abuse.
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.
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.
Doesn't work. If you read the very top of that page, it says that the page applies up through 10.13.3, and there's a link to info about 10.13.4 that basically says, "It doesn't work in any mode that's actually useful. Don't upgrade."
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
32-bit Intel apps are really, really rare on OS X.
I'd be careful with those qualifies if I were you.
Some significant software packages on macOS 10.13.4 are only available in 32-bit versions, including some of the software that ships with macOS. These include:
As such, I wouldn't say that 32-bit Intel apps are "really, really rare". Unless you've removed them manually, you have the DVD player and InkServer installed on your Mac. If you use a corporate Mac, you probably require McAfee Endpoint Security and/or Cisco Anyconnect. Hopefully these developers get with the programme and release 64-bit updates in the near future.
Yaz
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...
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