Since Apple released macOS Sonoma v14.4 on March 7th 2024, not everyone who updated their macOS to this latest version has had a smooth transition. In this article we look at the issues that have caused some people problems.

Our Longstanding Advice Regarding Software Updates

Before we look into the details of this latest release, we want to start this article by reiterating our longstanding advice on software updates.

Never perform software updates on mission-critical systems when in the middle of an important project. For many professionals and major studios, this means their systems are sometimes three or four generations behind the latest version, but they work! Before going all-in with a new release it’s helpful to edge forwards slowly by creating a dual boot machine so you can check your software will work before fully committing. We explain how to do it in this article. 

Another longstanding piece of advice is to turn off the option ‘Automatically keep my Mac up to date’ in the Software Update System Preferences pane.

However, if you recently bought a new Mac with the latest OS, it can be challenging to lag behind the operating system release, as older operating systems often won’t work with them. For example, an M3 Mac won’t find the drivers it needs in Ventura, so you have no choice but to use Sonoma. But even then, our advice is not to implement the latest update but to wait until any issues have been reported.

Let’s explore the problems that have already surfaced after the macOS 14.4 update.

PACE iLok Issues

We reported these issues as soon as they became apparent. In our article Sonoma 14.4 Issue With PACE Protected Products—Don't Upgrade Your OS Yet, we reported that both Sonnox and Liquidsoncis had posted advice that there were problems with macOS 14.4 and PACE iLok products. Since then, Joey Sturgis Tones, Neural DSP, Universal Audio and others have made public statements about the issue.

The problem seems to affect Apple Silicon Macs when using PACE iLok-protected plugins Logic Pro.

Universal Audio recommend temporarily setting both the DAW and the iLok License Manager application to run in Rosetta mode.

1. Quit all music-related applications such as your DAW, UA Connect and iLok License Manager.

2. Navigate to the Applications folder and find your DAW and the iLok License Manager application.

3. Right-click (or Control + Click) the applications and choose Get Info.

4. In the Info window that opens, look for the Open using Rosetta option and enable it.

5. Reboot your computer and launch your DAW to check if the plug-ins still fail validation.

Now that more time has passed, we understand the problem more fully. PACE has indicated that Apple will provide the fix, but the timescale for that is unknown.

USB Hub and Monitor Ports

Some users have been reporting that USB devices are not connecting to their Macs after installing macOS Sonoma 14.4. Reddit threads show users seem to have the problem on Dell, Samsung, and Gigabyte monitors. While the problem seems to primarily affect the monitors' USB hubs, a few users have reported that the update has caused some monitors to become unresponsive.

In terms of what to do, for some people, turning everything off and then back on again seems to work. Other people have had success going to the Privacy & Security page in macOS System Settings and changing the ‘Allow Accessories to Connect’ option to ‘Ask every time’ and then rebooting the computer.

Printers Removed

It appears that the macOS 14.4 update may remove or corrupt some printer drivers. The core CUPS software for printing operations over a network seems to have been removed, with HP printers, in particular, appearing to be affected. Some users have found a workaround by granting Full Disk Access to specific processes in System Settings ➝ Privacy & Security. Despite these attempts, a comprehensive solution has yet to be found. Check this thread on the Apple Community Forums for more information.

Java Processes

There have been reports of a bug in the release version of macOS Sonoma 14.4 that causes Java processes to terminate unexpectedly. Mac users who need to run Java are advised to delay updating to the latest version.

The new issue affects all versions of Java from version 8 on up, including current early access builds. According to Oracle, no workaround is currently available.

According to Oracle Senior Director of Product Management Aurelio Garcia-Ribeyro, the flaw wasn't seen in the betas before the release of 14.4. He noted this in a post warning about the flaw…

"Ahead-of-Time compiled applications created with GraalVM Native Image should not be affected, but your ability to build new images may be."

1Password Moved To Incompatible Folder

There seems to be an issue with some 1Password users, for example…

“I upgraded to the official 14.4 release and never used the beta. The upgrade process automatically moved the 1Password app to a "Relocated Items/Incompatible" folder when I upgraded. I tried restoring a backup copy, but when I launch it, it just puts up a dialog that says ‘1Password isn't able to start because of a problem. Contact support@1password.com for help’.”

Dave from 1Password replied saying…

“You can read more about the behaviour here: If a Relocated Items folder appears on your Mac after upgrading macOS - Apple Support (CA). Unfortunately, there don't appear to be clear rules about when or why something is moved to that folder. You can resolve the issue by downloading and reinstalling 1Password from our website: Download 1Password.”

Do Developers Not Check Their Software With The Beta Releases From Apple?

We asked one developer who has been working on the PACE iLok issue to give us the back story…

“There’s a fine line between a reason and an excuse, so make of our perspective what you will, but we can explain how we missed it and why we did not warn people about it in advance.

We tested the first few 14.4 betas that Apple issued, we have come to expect problems so usually do. We generally test on an M1 Max laptop, an M1 Mac mini, an Intel Mac mini and if problems show up there are a few older Macs that can be pulled out of storage. Everything seemed fine, basically no change – all of the plug-ins were working in all versions on Intel and Apple Silicon so we were not seeing this as a particularly significant point release. By the time the RC was released on Monday we were confident enough in what was on show in the betas to give it a pass.

On Wednesday a client contacted support to say all of the plug-ins in the portfolio crashed with the 14.4 RC on his M3 Pro laptop. Within a few hours we had established this was affecting multiple iLok protected plug-ins on his system, we symbolicated one of his crash logs (identified the specific area of the crash), and were fairly confident it was a protection issue based on the symbols in the crash and the specific plug- ins affected. The client had tried under Rosetta, and the problem went away – since Rosetta is so good it was another indicator that it only affected Apple Silicon processors running natively.

We wanted to investigate further before alerting clients or PACE to a potential problem that had only one problem report on one system so far. Cry wolf too often and people stop listening. We install software all the time that developers have warned us off and it’s fine, or the issues are pretty insignificant, so we take a fairly cautious line on this if we are going to issue a warning because when we do we want people to take it seriously.

Likewise we don’t believe in sounding an alarm with other developers until we have a reproducible problem that we have sufficient confidence in. We can blow years of goodwill with bogus reports that waste time and lead to nothing pretty quickly. The first thing PACE will do is ask for a test case they can reproduce locally. That’s fair enough. We didn’t have one but wanted to make one. Since the protection was likely involved we had to do that locally and couldn’t easily lean on beta testers to help out. Apple’s RC release notes contained nothing to indicate there would be an issue or help pin down the problem so we figured that meant using an M2 or M3 system and trying to reproduce it there, then make a reproducible test case there. We thought we had time over the weekend to do it because Apple often releases software on a Tuesday and usually leaves a bit more time between an RC and a final issue.

Not this time.

Apple released 14.4 to the general public on Thursday (in many parts of the world after office hours). Of course – the new M3 MacBook Air laptops were landing with clients on Friday and this was an essential day-one patch. Perhaps we should have foreseen that this might trigger a release earlier than usual. By Friday morning support inboxes had plenty of support requests from M2 and M3 clients confirming the issue was not isolated and was indeed going to become widespread, so we sent out a newsletter to try and stem the tide and an email to Pace with all of the investigation data to date.

This was too late of course. Plenty of clients are now stuck with systems that don’t work properly, and more are upgrading every day having not caught the news. Of course it’s not especially easy to revert an OS update.”

Conclusion

There you have it. It seems Apple slipped some ‘fixes’ into macOS 14.4 at the last minute, which caused these issues. These late changes prevented developers and beta testers from catching them before the final release.

Unfortunately, we are sure this won’t be the last time this kind of thing happens, and it reiterates our longstanding advice…

“Never perform software updates on mission-critical systems when in the middle of an important project. For many professionals and major studios, this means their systems are sometimes three or four generations behind the latest version, but they work!”

Update Monday 25th March 2024 - macOS 14.4.1 Is Released

Today, we learned that Apple has released macOS 14.4.1, which we understand contains numerous bug fixes. Apple is usually pretty tight-lipped about bug fixes, especially when related to security updates, but in the release notes, they state that the following bugs have been addressed in the update…

1. USB hubs connected to external displays may not be recognized.

2. Copy-protected Audio Unit plug-ins designed for professional music apps may not open or pass validation.

3. Apps that include Java may quit unexpectedly.

They have also stated that macOS 14.4.1 contains a couple of security updates affecting CoreMedia and WebRTC.

You can learn more in our article Apple Releases macOS Sonoma 14.4.1 With Fixes To Key Issues.