[HN Gopher] macOS Sonoma Boot Failures
___________________________________________________________________
macOS Sonoma Boot Failures
Author : ColoursofOSINT
Score : 633 points
Date : 2023-10-31 18:33 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| gcr wrote:
| TL;DR: Recent macOS Sonoma and 13.6 Ventura have upgrade bugs
| that brick some macs and make recoveryOS unusable, causing a
| black screen that requires a DFU revive.
|
| Issues on Sonoma appear most often on dual-booting macs:
| https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208891
|
| Ventura upgrades can also bite you if your display refresh rate
| is set to anything other than ProMotion, for unclear reasons.
|
| The doc is on the Asahi Linux wiki because their developers
| discovered this issue, but it's not unique to Asahi. In fact,
| _running the Asahi Linux installer_ can detect whether your mac
| will be affected by this issue, even if you ultimately choose not
| to install Asahi Linux. See the article for details.
| markmark wrote:
| Erg, I ran into this on my mac twice when I upgraded. I have
| two bootable OSX partitions and it hit on both upgrades. I'm
| not really a mac guy and it took a _lot_ of messing around (and
| learning that DFU exists and what it does) to sort out. Just
| lucky that my daughter has a mac so that I could even use DFU
| without having to take the thing into an apple store.
| neilalexander wrote:
| Interestingly I ran into this exact problem with my work MacBook
| Pro M1 upgrading to Ventura 13.6 and assumed it was a totally
| isolated incident. I don't have a dual-boot setup either, just a
| single macOS install.
|
| The computer was connected to a Thunderbolt Display during the
| update which I assume had the same effect of changing the refresh
| rate to something other-than-ProMotion that the linked article
| mentions. I had to do a DFU restore from another Mac and then run
| the macOS Sonoma installer from USB, which thankfully detected
| the existing install and did an in-place upgrade, preserving all
| of my data. Nothing else worked.
|
| I also wasted far too much time trying to get the DFU restore to
| work before discovering that you cannot use a Thunderbolt cable
| -- it has to be done using a plain USB-C cable, otherwise the
| Apple Configurator simply won't detect the other Mac.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| > I also wasted far too much time trying to get the DFU restore
| to work before discovering that you cannot use a Thunderbolt
| cable -- it has to be done using a plain USB-C cable, otherwise
| the Apple Configurator simply won't detect the other Mac.
|
| I would have expected a Thunderbolt cable to be required, if
| either was. This is quite surprising to me. Usually, the more
| capable (higher bandwidth) cable works if one isn't supported.
| I'll hope to remember this is I ever find myself reviving a
| bricked Mac in the future.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| I restored my Macbook just one hour ago with crappy USB-C
| USB-A cable, god bless the libimobiledevice creator.
| spacedcowboy wrote:
| I am currently restoring an MBP using Configurator and a
| thunderbolt cable. You definitely can use one, perhaps your
| TB cable is buggered ?
| brigade wrote:
| It's done over USB 2.0 largely because that's simpler than
| involving newer and faster specs, and partly because that's
| how the original iPhone did it.
|
| My understanding is that all complaint _USB_ USB-C cables
| should work for USB 2.0, even USB4 /TB4 cables, but active
| TB3 cables might not hook up the USB 2.0 pins.
| phillco wrote:
| I've used a Thunderbolt cable as well successfully, but one
| note is that they're very picky about which port you use. On
| my Mac mini, I had to use the exact port outlined here or it
| did not show up: https://support.apple.com/guide/apple-
| configurator-mac/reviv...
| microtherion wrote:
| Yes, this is absolutely key. Only one of the USB ports per
| machine supports this functionality.
| nnf wrote:
| From Apple's support page on how to revive or restore after a
| failed upgrade [1]:
|
| > A supported USB-C to USB-C charge cable, such as the one
| sold by Apple (may not be available in all countries or
| regions) or a supported USB-A to USB-C cable
|
| > The USB-C cable must support both power and data.
| Thunderbolt 3 cables aren't supported.
|
| [1] https://support.apple.com/guide/apple-configurator-
| mac/reviv...
| JohnMakin wrote:
| Exact same thing happened to me.
| tpmx wrote:
| What kind of HW?
| JohnMakin wrote:
| same specs as OP
| tpmx wrote:
| :(
| tpmx wrote:
| This is depressing. They clearly have they ability ($$$) to do
| the required amount of manual QA, but don't. Or there was QA
| and someone decided that your case still wasn't enough to hold
| up the release.
|
| In my mind, when we pay that ridiculous Apple premium on RAM
| and storage, we pay for excellent quality in SW/HW. They also
| need to deliver that quality.
| mort96 wrote:
| Or they did QA but just happened to miss this issue. Most
| companies would consider "the upgrade sometimes bricks the
| device" to be a release-stopping bug, I'm betting Apple is
| among them.
| tpmx wrote:
| That would be: not delivering while still charging a
| premium.
| krackers wrote:
| Apple still hasn't put up any official page about the issue
| though, nor does it appear they've pulled the update. Even
| if it missed QA, why haven't they made any official
| comment?
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| You clearly don't know Apple as a company. Last most big
| companies, they never EVER publicly admit any faults or
| mistakes with their products (unless forced to by large
| scale fiascos) because that would damage their perfect
| brand image. It's why they have comments disabled on all
| their social media accounts.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _they never EVER publicly admit any faults or mistakes
| with their products_
|
| Of course they do. They're just secretive in general, and
| keep communications edited. Compared to the word salad of
| modern companies on social media, I find it refreshing.
| Just fix the problem, issue replacements for those
| affected and move on quietly.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> Of course they do. _
|
| Where? Do you have any examples?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Where? Do you have any examples?_
|
| The whole battery gate saga. Touch Bar. The 2013 Mac Pro
| [1].
|
| [1] https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/4/15175994/apple-mac-
| pro-fai...
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Yeah but that only proves my original point that Apple
| only admits mistakes when the public scandals are so
| violent it can't possibly deny them anymore as the shit
| pile broomed under the carped has grown so large it makes
| even them trip on it, so then they just enter damage
| control mode and PR recovery but not out of the kindness
| of their heart but because of media backlash.
|
| But they never have the common sense to release
| statements like "hey, the latest MacOS update might brick
| some systems so we're pulling the updated until we can do
| further testing and patching, if you've been affected by
| the bug already go to a Apple store and have it fixed for
| free".
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| They have pulled updates [1]. The one person I know who
| was affected was given a replacement.
|
| I suppose I'm failing to see the need for a public
| statement if you've fixed the problem and provide service
| to those affected. Nobody can pull the faulty update
| anymore. And it's not like someone with a bricked device
| is more likely to see a PR statement than seek out
| support.
|
| [1] https://osxdaily.com/2023/07/11/apple-pulls-rapid-
| response-u...
| pmarreck wrote:
| methinks you're the self-victim of some confirmation bias
| here, sir.
| tpmx wrote:
| It's not "refreshing" to hide problems.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _It 's not "refreshing" to hide problems_
|
| Hiding entails ignoring the problem. They're not doing
| that. Their track record is to fix it. Not every action
| needs an accompanying tweet and blog post.
| tpmx wrote:
| Of course they are not ignoring the problem, internally.
| The issue issue at hand is that they are not being open
| about the problem.
| TylerE wrote:
| It IS refreshing not to be insulted by the usual "You are
| important to us and we're taking this very seriously" PR
| fluff.
| cirrus3 wrote:
| Maybe because it isn't that big of an issue? Have you
| heard about this anywhere besides HN? If it were a big
| deal you know all the websites would be all over it as if
| the Mac were doomed.
| gcr wrote:
| Google this week seems to be going through a similar bug
| on their flagship Android 14 release, affecting users who
| have multiple accounts set up. They also seem to be
| favoring a "minimal" strategy when it comes to PR
| communication surrounding this issue.
| tpmx wrote:
| Okay?
| codr7 wrote:
| Used to be, while Jobs was still around.
|
| These days it's just a bunch of wannabes trying too hard to
| be him.
| rainbowzootsuit wrote:
| "You're updating it wrong." --Steve
| pb7 wrote:
| It's a bug...
| tpmx wrote:
| It's a _device bricking_ bug. For a $2.5-10k device.
| astrange wrote:
| Brick usually means unfixable without an EEPROM
| replacement or data loss.
|
| It's not possible (well, it's very difficult) to do this
| on an Apple Silicon Mac; once there's an update you can
| always apply it from another Mac, like the steps on this
| page do, and your data is still there. With Intel Macs
| it's possible.
| cesarb wrote:
| > Brick usually means unfixable without an EEPROM
| replacement or data loss.
|
| The definition of "bricked" is not set in stone; a lot of
| what a normal person would consider "bricked" (doesn't
| turn on, or turns on to an unresponsive black screen, and
| no magic sequence of button presses can reset it to
| working order) could be fixed by a power user with the
| right equipment, software, and knowledge.
|
| In this case, it requires fairly expensive equipment
| (another $2.5-10k device), somewhat easy to acquire
| software, and the appropriate set of instructions, to
| _overwrite_ the device 's broken firmware with a working
| copy; you don't have to open up the device and plug a
| JTAG adapter, but using the DFU protocol is very similar
| to that, since in both cases you're writing directly to
| the firmware under control of an external device. This is
| not like "BIOS FlashBack" and similar on non-Apple PCs,
| in which the device can rewrite its firmware by itself
| from a common USB stick.
|
| (Also, about data loss: a device with removable storage
| could get bricked without any data loss, and fixed also
| without any data loss, simply because the data storage is
| separated from the firmware and from most of the
| hardware. It's Apple's insistence on non-removable
| storage which risks losing data when something else makes
| the device fail to boot.)
| astrange wrote:
| > In this case, it requires fairly expensive equipment
| (another $2.5-10k device)
|
| A few minutes of access to one, not ownership of it, and
| hardly any system requirements on it.
|
| > It's Apple's insistence on non-removable storage which
| risks losing data when something else makes the device
| fail to boot.
|
| That's actually not the reason. All storage is removable
| if you just desolder it. It's because the storage is
| encrypted and you can't extract the keys.
| Joeri wrote:
| But how would they then keep up their profit margins to keep
| shareholders happy? Their first obligation is to the
| shareholder, not to the customer.
|
| (I think it is ridiculous that the system works in that way,
| especially for a company that hasn't needed investors in over
| a decade, but it is what it is.)
| user9163 wrote:
| ya - I cant update my m1 macbook air without going into DFU
| mode and using configurator to "revive" my macbook. Otherwise
| it just tells me "Failed to personalize the software update".
| Made the mistake of going to the Apple Store where they
| promptly restored my machine deleting all my data - only to
| encounter the exact same issue when the next update is shipped.
| This way you cant even show them that their fix did not
| actually fixed it permanently.
| atregir wrote:
| Also what's with the magic trick of entering DFU mode by
| pressing the buttons at a very specific time for a very
| specific number of seconds? Felt like singing a song to some
| fictional Mac OS gods and hoping for the stars to align for the
| laptop to show up in the second Mac. Ah, also the port you use
| for the USB-C cable matters!! Has to be the first from the
| left? But why?
|
| Anw, I followed a video by Mr. Macintosh and managed to get
| mine up and running, whew.
| adamomada wrote:
| Well it's a mode you really don't want users going into if
| they didn't intend to, so it kind of makes sense to only
| activate if the user has deliberately done an action that
| would not happen randomly.
|
| See Also: entering bootloader mode in android devices
| samcat116 wrote:
| I've done this several times with a TB3 cable. Has to be the
| right port for DFU.
| magicpointer wrote:
| Also with the M1 Pro MacBook, my LG USB-C monitor broke during
| the upgrade. Black screen, same on another connected USB-C
| laptop. Tried different cables, unplugging power from the
| monitor and factory reset on the monitor, no luck. Other inputs
| like HDMI and DisplayPort still work. I don't think the
| breakage during the upgrade is a coincidence.
|
| I would really advise against having anything connected to the
| Macbook during upgrades, except the charger...
| racl101 wrote:
| I am so terrified of this upgrade that I think I'll wait a whole
| year. That's not a good thing.
| hbn wrote:
| I pretty much always wait 6 months or so for Mac upgrades on
| whatever machine is important to me. There seems to pretty
| consistently be regular bugfix updates for the few months
| following a release.
| cramjabsyn wrote:
| Its realistically what you should be doing unless your machine
| is a test host itself.
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| Unless you aren't doing anything important on your Mac that's
| always good advice.
| rangestransform wrote:
| this happened to my work macbook while I was trying to upgrade
| to ventura, a 1 year old macos version
| shever73 wrote:
| That's probably wise. I wish I had waited. Since upgrading to
| Sonoma, I have recurring issues with the system file dialog.
| Sometimes the dialog will open, but not allow me to save, other
| times it will just fail to open altogether.
|
| Any time I start a new video project now, I save it instantly
| because Command+S still works, but if it opens the Save As
| dialog then it frequently won't.
| krackers wrote:
| See also his twitter for some speculation as to how on earth
| simply changing refresh rate would cause boot corruption:
| https://social.treehouse.systems/@marcan/111329614147717090
|
| >Why? I can tell you why: because Apple _hates_ display modeset
| flicker, and switching modes between ProMotion on /off causes a
| modeset flicker, so of _course_ they made it so that is stored in
| nvram somewhere and applied when the screen is turned on during
| early boot, so when macOS boots it doesn 't have to flicker
| again.
|
| >And they didn't test it with older OS bootloaders, so display
| handoff/init just fails catastrophically with those when this
| mode is enabled.
| NavinF wrote:
| Interesting. I wonder why anyone would turn ProMotion off
| considering that 120Hz massively improves responsiveness. I've
| only encountered one app that doesn't work with variable
| refresh rate and that's Genshin on Windows. Even that's
| probably not an issue with newer monitors that can handle VRR
| down to 60Hz without my monitor's frame-doubling flicker as it
| keeps switching been 60Hz and 120Hz
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| > I wonder why anyone would turn ProMotion off considering
| that 120Hz massively improves responsiveness.
|
| The first reason that comes to mind is battery life. That's
| probably the most broadly applicable use case.
|
| But also, if I was still doing e.g. frontend web development,
| I would want to confirm that my css animations looked nice at
| 60 hz.
|
| Edit: My first use case is likely wrong, thank you to replies
| for reminding me Apple uses adaptive refresh down to 1 hz.
| vvillena wrote:
| Isn't battery life a reason to keep it on? The refresh rate
| will be down to 24hz most of the time.
| jwells89 wrote:
| macOS is very good at adaptively reducing refresh rate when
| nothing is happening on screen, with the panel reportedly
| supporting the full range of 1-120hz so barring badly
| engineered apps that are permanently pinned at max refresh,
| the battery impact of keeping ProMotion on is minimal for
| most use cases.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Oops, thank you, I completely forgot they were doing the
| adaptive refresh thing!
| londons_explore wrote:
| Which raises the question even more why the refresh rate
| matters during early bootup - surely you could just start
| with an apple logo and a 1 Hz refresh rate, and then up
| the rate later during boot when it's time to do some
| animation...
| lxgr wrote:
| Changing the refresh rate makes the screen go blank for a
| second or so.
|
| GP of this thread links to a post arguing that Apple is
| going out of their way to avoid just that during the boot
| sequence.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Except it doesn't... because during use the dynamic
| refresh rate changes between 1Hz and 120Hz...
| lxgr wrote:
| Well, I can only tell you what happens when you manually
| change the resolution from 60 Hz to "ProMotion" in macOS.
|
| Presumably ProMotion is a specific mode that the
| display/display controller/... first needs to be set to.
| If you start out in anything other than that and then
| switch to it later in the boot process, you'd get that
| blank screen for a second, and Apple avoids that by
| writing the startup mode to non-volatile memory.
|
| Otherwise they could also just always start out in
| ProMotion mode - but then you'd get flicker every time
| you (re)boot into any other mode, like 60 Hz for people
| who prefer that.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| ...so this is where I'm confused, and where I think GP is
| confused. Why is there a separate 60 Hz mode that
| requires blanking the display? Why not just keep dynamic
| refresh enabled on the panel, and then lock it to
| updating 60 times per second (which it can do, since it's
| dynamic) for people who prefer that for whatever reason?
| What is the difference?
| lxgr wrote:
| No idea, but if I'd had to speculate: Probably ProMotion
| activates a quite different internal rendering mode, and
| fixed 60 Hz mode offers a way to opt out of that?
|
| Many applications have a way of synchronizing their
| drawing loop to the monitor refresh rate, for example;
| ProMotion must be doing something clever to support them,
| or they'd just force the refresh rate to 120 Hz.
|
| macOS also supports variable refresh rate external
| monitors these days (via both DisplayPort and HDMI); I'm
| not sure if that would be labeled "ProMotion" in the
| display settings, but in any case there are things that
| can go wrong there, and having a way to opt out of that
| at the HDMI/DisplayPort signal level (and not just fixing
| the frame rate at the GPU level while driving the
| external link under VRR) seems like a good idea.
| pmarreck wrote:
| > Why is there a separate 60 Hz mode that requires
| blanking the display?
|
| I'm guessing it probably has to do with compliance with
| the original VESA standard, or whatever the completely
| basic support of multiple resolutions and refresh rates
| in all monitors is called.
|
| The bootstrap of booting a system always ends up relying
| on the most basic supported things to start with (such as
| 640x480@60Hz using the VESA standard) and then upping it
| from there.
| bscphil wrote:
| If I understand correctly, ProMotion is the feature that
| allows dynamically changing the refresh rate without
| screen blanking. So the reason refresh rate matters in
| early bootup is that if ProMotion is _not_ enabled, you
| get brief screen blanking. Setting the screen to 1 Hz in
| early bootup and then changing it to the user setting
| later would require screen blanking.
| TylerE wrote:
| That's not a modeset though, that's just the display
| working as intended. Basically a VSYNC that runs at a
| variable clock rather than a fixed refresh.
| lxgr wrote:
| Pretty sure VRR is a mode as far as the display
| (controller) is concerned.
|
| There's very likely still a scan out rate determined by
| the maximum refresh rate, just that the source can delay
| the next frame if it's not ready yet.
|
| In other words, e.g. 120 Hz and 144 Hz of VRR aren't the
| same even when displaying a 60 Hz signal at the moment -
| the faster signal would have more pauses and a higher
| signal rate.
| TylerE wrote:
| VRR is a property, node a mode. A VRR display showing
| 60hz will be running at 60hz. They can typically clock
| down in 1hz intervals.
| lxgr wrote:
| As far as I understand it, nothing "clocks down"; rather,
| frames are delayed as required to achieve the frame rate
| desired (or reachable, in the case of gaming) by the
| source, down to 1 Hz.
|
| So, yes, fixed 120 Hz and 120 Hz with VRR and without any
| skipped frames might well be the same mode to a GPU, but
| it also might be a different one, requiring a mode
| switch. I don't know how Apple has implemented it.
|
| But in any case, for the bug at hand it's irrelevant:
| Apple's ProMotion uses a refresh rate of 120 Hz, so
| switching between that and 60 Hz is definitely a mode
| switch.
| beebeepka wrote:
| Why would 60 FPS CSS animations look bad on high refresh
| displays?
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Well the CSS transition wouldn't run at 60 fps, it would
| run at 120 fps, no?
|
| An animation that looks slick at 120 fps might look too
| fast/slow/complex/whatever on a common 60 hz screen. So
| if I was still doing this sort of development, I'd prefer
| to be working on a 60 hz monitor.
| beebeepka wrote:
| Aren't CSS animations capped at 60, same as
| requestAnimationFrame?
|
| I've been advocating (and using) high refresh displays
| for over two decades and I find your reasoning
| preposterous. Downgrading to crappy 60 Hz monitor for
| nothing.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| > Aren't CSS animations capped at 60, same as
| requestAnimationFrame?
|
| Did some quick Googling to make sure I wasn't just out of
| the loop on this, as far as I can tell they are not the
| same: https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/5025
| beebeepka wrote:
| Can you point me to the part confirming your claim? If
| anything, it's confirming mine that they both are stuck
| at 60 Hz.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| The link says:
|
| > As such, on their 120hz devices, requestAnimationFrame
| is throttled to 60hz, whereas CSS animations run at
| 120hz.
|
| Please let me know if I am misunderstanding, it has been
| a few years since I've done this type of work.
| fulafel wrote:
| CSS transitions and animations seem to be declared using
| expressions that are continuous over time so it would
| make sense that they are just quantized down to whatever
| refresh rate the system supports.
| mmis1000 wrote:
| I am pretty sure they are synchronized to refresh rate
| (at least on windows).
|
| I made a small experiment about raf
| https://codepen.io/mmis1000/pen/qBxqgLr and it always
| looks uniform regardless I am on a 60, 120, 160 fps
| screen. (It would blink crazily if you put it in the
| middle of two screen with different refresh rate, because
| it can't be in two refresh rate at same time)
|
| Erit: okay, it looks non uniform only in safari. Clap,
| clap, clap, Apple...
| c-hendricks wrote:
| I'm not even sure CSS animations can go above 60fps, and
| am unsure why you'd think it would be faster / slower on
| a different refresh rate screen: CSS transitions are
| defined by time, not frames.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Sorry, I meant the animation might _look_ too fast,
| psychologically. The frame rate changes how we perceive
| movement.
| MagerValp wrote:
| To run x64sc at a buttery smooth 50 fps.
|
| Admittedly rather niche use case.
| zippergz wrote:
| I turn it off because I can't tell the difference and if it
| doesn't improve anything for me, I might as well not have the
| system wasting battery and other resources on it.
| pb7 wrote:
| It does the opposite: it goes well below 60Hz when there is
| no motion on screen.
| NavinF wrote:
| VRR displays run at 1Hz to save battery when the display is
| static. Reasoning like yours is why every OS's settings
| page gets neutered with every update.
| userbinator wrote:
| _I wonder why anyone would turn ProMotion off considering
| that 120Hz massively improves responsiveness._
|
| ...and I bet that 's exactly the attitude Apple had when
| implementing things, which lead to this mess.
| stcg wrote:
| Well then don't allow turning it off in the first place.
| apwoefjwepoo wrote:
| I turned it off. The primary reason is that I use ctrl+arrow
| keys to move between workspaces frequently.
|
| These might seem unrelated, but:
|
| * There's a `defaults set` setting that allows you to speed
| up the transition animation length from 1 second to 0.5
| second, which is huge because that transition is extremely
| poorly implemented (it leaves the windows on the workspace
| that you're leaving activated until the transition is
| complete, so you start typing and it's on the other screen
| you can't even see any more) and VERY SLOW
|
| * That setting only works if the refresh rate is 60Hz, and it
| completely fails to do anything if ProMotion is on, because
| for some reason the animation length isn't programmed to
| handle the different refresh rates.
|
| So having ProMotion off relieves frustration.
| gassi wrote:
| This is exactly the reason why I disabled it when I
| upgraded to my current M1, and I'm relieved to hear I'm not
| the only one experiencing this.
| kccqzy wrote:
| Surely I'm not the only one that simply cannot perceive any
| difference between 60Hz and 120Hz?
| NavinF wrote:
| Have you done an eye exam recently? With 20/20 vision and
| no practice you should be able to see input lag up to
| 1000Hz by dragging any UI element around like the presenter
| does in this video: https://youtu.be/vOvQCPLkPt4
| kccqzy wrote:
| I definitely see it in the video. But no my computer
| (like all Macs) does not have a touch screen. So without
| the aid of directly comparing my finger and the object
| being manipulated on the screen, I cannot perceive the
| difference.
| bluescrn wrote:
| Emulation is one case where specific refresh rates are
| desirable.
|
| Would be nice if I could force my MBP to run at 100Hz for PAL
| Amiga/C64 emulation - or even better if emulators could/would
| change the refresh rate at least when running full-screen.
|
| (Actually, since Sonoma, I can manually set it to 50Hz, but
| there's no fixed refresh rate options above 60Hz, just 'Pro
| Motion'. Previously, the refresh rate setting seemed missing
| entirely on my M1 MBP)
| Audiophilip wrote:
| Interesting, that could be a limitation to the internal
| screen of the MBP.
|
| On Sonoma I can select 24, 25, 30, 50, 60, 100, 120 Hz, in
| addition to "Variable (40-120 Hz) refresh rates for my LG
| C2 display. When selecting 50 or 100 Hz, scrolling in (PAL)
| C64 emulation in VICE becomes much smoother, but not
| perfect. However, when I enable variable refresh rate and
| switch to fullscreen mode, VICE can perfectly synchronize
| the refresh rate and scrolling/animations become butter
| smooth.
| jwells89 wrote:
| The messiness of resolutions during boot always annoyed me on
| PCs. It was understandable back in the days of BIOS, but ith
| the advent of UEFI it seems like it should be possible to run
| EFI config screens and the like at monitor native rez (or at
| minimum, native aspect ratio) but I've never seen this... it's
| always 1024x768 or somesuch stretched to fit a 16:9 monitor
| which looks awful.
| wmf wrote:
| Good UEFI like Surface devices is native resolution so you
| can have flicker-free boot. My Gigabyte motherboard recently
| got native resolution with a UEFI update.
| jwells89 wrote:
| Nice to hear that good implementations exist somewhere out
| in the wild. I hope my AM4 and LGA1700 boards by Asus get
| similar updates at some point.
| ddalex wrote:
| I don't understand why modeset causes flicker - fade to
| black, turn off screen, change resolution, turn on screen,
| fade to image.
| beebeepka wrote:
| Fancy fade in/out effects this early?
| mjg59 wrote:
| "Fade to black, turn off screen, turn on screen, fade to
| image" is just slower flicker.
| kelnos wrote:
| True, but that does look nicer than normal-speed flicker?
| mjg59 wrote:
| And slows boot down by a couple of seconds. As long as
| the firmware sets a native mode, modern OSes can just
| inherit that rather than performing a modeset and we just
| ignore the entire problem anyway.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| This summer I went into an apple store, and there was
| this 2019 Intel Mac Pro tower hooked up to the shiny 6k
| XDR display. I brought up the System Settings, and set
| the resolution one notch towards "More Space". It faded
| to black and never came back.
| astrange wrote:
| Because most modeset protocols/implementations aren't
| atomic, so some frames are drawn halfway through setting
| the mode.
|
| Turning off the screen can take a long time, but it is
| possible that putting up a "hot black" screen would be
| better than flicker if you had to do it.
| wannacboatmovie wrote:
| EFI config screens should be text mode only, full-stop. So
| they can easily be used over serial console redirection.
|
| Ran into one recently that was high-rez graphical. It needed
| a USB mouse to change critical settings because the tab order
| for the onscreen widgets didn't work.
|
| Anyone responsible for creating graphical EFI config screens
| should stop writing software for the good of humanity.
| jwells89 wrote:
| Even for text-only I'd prefer native rez if possible to
| reduce scrolling, label truncation, etc.
|
| That said yes, there's no reason why there shouldn't be a
| low rez textual fallback.
| secondcoming wrote:
| Then you'd need scaling and all that. Seems a bit
| overkill for something people rarely use.
| xp84 wrote:
| scaling? nah, I'd say to just choose at runtime a sane
| text size (only to avoid using the same pixel size on a
| 1024x768 as a 5k screen) and set the number of rows and
| columns to fit the screen. Even if there isn't enough to
| fill the screen that's fine.
|
| > Seems a bit overkill for something people rarely use.
|
| Okay, but a _lot_ less so than a full GUI with mouse and
| thousands of colors, like many motherboards have gone to.
| userbinator wrote:
| The "sane text size" is naturally going to be the 80x25
| text mode (720x400) which is what those config screens
| were originally defined for. Monitors will usually
| upscale lower resolutions anyway.
| userbinator wrote:
| Text-only BIOS setup was the norm for a long time before
| the stupidly bloated EFI graphical stuff became common.
| Even then, there were the better full-featured TUIs:
|
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/05/Award_B
| I...
|
| https://liveusb.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/awardbios-
| firstb...
|
| And the simplified crap with tabs that often came with
| prebuilt PCs but later seems to have spread to others too:
|
| https://cdn.staticneo.com/a/Intel_Sandy_Bridge_Z68_P67/S%20
| B...
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| > Text-only BIOS setup was the norm for a long time
|
| Long-time Thinkpad users scoff at that ... while the
| figure of a duck suddenly enters their minds..
|
| (Yes: I clearly remember my pre-USB thinkpad having a
| graphical BIOS with windows, icons, and a duck-shaped
| mouse cursor).
| userbinator wrote:
| For those who haven't seen it:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTaNi6uL41s
|
| BIOSes of the time were all written in highly-optimised
| Asm, and I suspect those little "easter eggs" they added
| were because the programmers knew they had enough space
| left over to put some more fun stuff in.
|
| There was also AMI WinBIOS that provided a GUI, but I
| remember it being much less featureful than other BIOSes
| of the time with a TUI and didn't like mobos that used
| it, so in that case they may have sacrificed
| functionality for appearance.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| A 90's TUI that will forever be more productive than
| Windows 11.
| pjmlp wrote:
| As someone with experience in Turbo Vision and Clipper, I
| don't miss them, beyond some nostalgia from simpler
| times.
| ojbyrne wrote:
| Somebody missed the memo:
| https://bwiggs.com/notebook/queens-duck/
| dsm9000 wrote:
| I miss Openboot firmware that was on SunOS servers and
| workstations. It was IIRC mostly written in FORTH and we
| could write forth snippets at the serial console to make
| mods / query the pre boot environment. I also found the
| SGI boot firmware similarly functional. Both allowed
| changing boot settings and allowed to boot from network
| without any trouble at all. Graphical BIOS that came with
| the x86 systems was such a downgrade for us especially
| since you could not interact over serial/remotely with a
| simple terminal connection. IMHO
| larvaetron wrote:
| > Text-only BIOS setup was the norm for a long time
|
| I've had a GUI BIOS setup on almost every PC I've owned
| since the first 486 I built back in 1993.
| xcv123 wrote:
| The GUI was rendered in text mode. It's called a TUI
| (Text-based User Interface)
| mratsim wrote:
| TIL, I thought TUI meant Terminal UI
| einr wrote:
| Plenty of 486 era machines had the AMI "WinBIOS" whose
| setup utility kinda-sorta emulated a Win 3.x look and ran
| in (EGA 640x350 4bpp?) graphics mode, with mouse support:
|
| https://media.moddb.com/images/groups/1/4/3107/winbios.gi
| f
| jasonjayr wrote:
| To my horror, I recently had to visit the UEFI firmware
| setup of a Lenovo tablet.... That was touch enabled.
| lights0123 wrote:
| I did enjoy my Dell touchscreen-supported firmware setup
| when there was a menu 15 items long and an incredibly
| slow mouse speed.
| Ayesh wrote:
| Most gaming laptops' UEFI screens are so "gamer" it's
| cringe. Dell XPS series have UEFI GUIs that are quite
| neat and absolutely an improvement over the text screens.
| minedwiz wrote:
| I'm also partial to the Surface devices'. MS put a
| surprising amount of effort into making them look
| Windows-y.
| alexvoda wrote:
| And it is to be expected to be able to configure a
| touchscreen device using the touchscreen.
| postmodest wrote:
| Real boot loaders have embedded Forth interpreters!
| pmarreck wrote:
| Do Macs still have this?
| MBCook wrote:
| No, it stopped for the Intel switch, I believe.
| sneak wrote:
| Yeah, the Open Firmware preboot Forth console was a
| PowerPC only thing.
|
| Now Apple's bootloader is actually a tiny macOS. As much
| as I don't like the complexity this brings, I do strongly
| approve of a boot environment that supports proper input
| devices and video. My iMac Pro's (intel, non-macOS-based
| bootloader) bootloader drops keyboard inputs when typing
| my long passphrase because I type too fast for it. The Mx
| macs no longer have this problem.
| jyrkesh wrote:
| Upside though? I was helping a more software-oriented buddy
| get a PC build up and running that'd been half-finished by
| some kid he paid to put it together. The GUI on the EFI
| config was so intense, it was slowing down and completely
| locking up.
|
| Got into the temps, realized that the CPU fan had been
| plugged into an AUX fan header instead of the CPU header.
|
| Fan was spinning, wouldn't have thought to check if the EFI
| wasn't crashing.
|
| I'm completely joking of course. I completely agree with
| you, I miss text-only mode. The modern Dell one stinks, the
| Asus one stinks...I have no data, but I'd be shocked if
| Gigabyte or ASRock were any good... :(
| Reason077 wrote:
| Text UIs don't actually require different resolution and
| refresh rates. Even Macs can boot into a text mode, but
| there's no jarring mode-change flicker when it switches in
| and out of it!
|
| Besides, there's nothing to prevent you having a nice
| graphical boot configuration while still having a text
| version as a fallback (which is exactly what Intel Macs do)
| p_l wrote:
| You know what's funny?
|
| UEFI actually lets you provide both touchscreen-capable
| bells&whistles gui, and a text UI for the frankenstein VT-
| UTF8 standard (essentially, VT-220 compatible with UTF-8,
| kinda like linux console) - all in mostly one codebase.
|
| There's a standard UI description language which is used to
| specify menus, options and values (and how they are written
| into nvram), which is then interpreted by text mode
| interface driver (enabled when you connect over serial
| port) and graphic mode interface driver (where you can drop
| all sorts of graphical bells & whistles).
|
| It's also how you can integrate menus from add-on cards
| into firmware setup.
| sneak wrote:
| Text mode on my 8K monitor at any time, even in boot, is
| dumb and annoying and anachronistic. It's 2023.
| tripdout wrote:
| My old AM3+ motherboard has an option for full screen boot
| logo, and it starts in full HD, continuing with systemd boot,
| all in 1080p.
|
| I thought this wasn't really a problem anymore.
| JasonSage wrote:
| This is fine if you have a 1080p monitor. I was impressed
| when this first happened to me, now on an ultrawide monitor
| it's back to being not great.
|
| I do recall my last motherboard had an option for a splash
| which was centered in a black screen, so you could
| basically display it at native resolution with no
| stretching and it would look great and seamless. I wish
| every motherboard had that splash option now.
| vondur wrote:
| Ha, back in the day when I was a student assistant in a
| campus computer lab, we flashed the BIOS boot screen with a
| full screen image of Darth Maul. The staff person who
| oversaw us was not amused. (This was in the Pentium 3 era
| IIRC)
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| By the time my Dell monitor finally wakes from sleep,
| finishes negotiating whatever crap DisplayPort has to
| negotiate these days, and starts actually displaying frames,
| the computer has long since finished booting and is already
| idling at the desktop.
| dm319 wrote:
| My Amiga in the 1990s seemed to do a pretty good job at boot.
| tpmx wrote:
| As did pretty much any PC motherboard/CPU/GPU combination
| from the past 25 years.
| tomxor wrote:
| At least it works. I find low-res bios screens reassuring...
| something I can depend on.
| shawnz wrote:
| Maybe instead of spending effort providing low res fallback
| options, we should be spending more effort making high res
| GUI-based options more dependable?
| tomxor wrote:
| No effort was spent.
| doubloon wrote:
| i heard these new fangled jibjabs don't even have audible
| POST beeps.
| tomxor wrote:
| Ah yes, I almost forgot about the POST bleep bloops, and
| the clickedy click of the HDD actuator... or if you go
| back far enough the crunching of a 3.5in floppy - though
| to be fair that was sometimes more anxiety inducing (not
| the most reliable medium).
| m463 wrote:
| There's a lot going on there. To prevent flicker, you not
| only have to preserve the screen resolution, but also all the
| graphics card memory and state and hand it off through stages
| of boot from efi to the os.
|
| As an analogy this would be sort of like rebooting the OS in
| place while preserving all the running apps, network state
| and USB connections without resetting anything.
|
| These kinds of things are possible, but have lots of corner
| cases.
| lvncelot wrote:
| It's somewhat endearing that a trillion dollar company goes
| through something similar as I did - fiddling around with
| rEFInd, my BIOS splash image, plymouth-git & plymout-sddm,
| "quiet splash" and god knows what else to get a "smooth" boot
| experience - not only adding several seconds to the boot
| process but also having to rescue the system multiple times
| with a boot stick.
|
| I've come to embrace the flicker and the systemd messages. It's
| just a boot, it's in the order of seconds in this day and age,
| I can't even tell you what the initial reason for my obsession
| was.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| >Why? I can tell you why: because Apple hates display modeset
| flicker,
|
| Thank god someone does. Hate how jank plugging monitors in just
| because some engineers thought "meh, good enough".
|
| Don't think I should be seeing things flicker anywhere in my
| life with the computing power we have today and yet many
| consider visual nails on a chalkboard as acceptable.
| mattchamb wrote:
| Not sure if related, but my 2020 M1 macbook air bricked a week or
| so after upgrading to Sonoma. I was suspicious if this was
| related to the update. Luckily the logic board was replaced for
| free under warranty laws here, though it put me off switching to
| iphone which I was a day away from doing.
| bscphil wrote:
| Upgrades bricking hardware seems to be a common failure mode
| for macOS. For example Big Sur bricked a bunch of 2013 and 2014
| MBPs: https://www.macrumors.com/2020/11/15/macos-big-sur-
| update-br...
|
| I was affected by this and like many users the problem was
| fixed after replacing the I/O board. In my case, I did it
| myself using a $10 part from Ebay since the machine was well
| out of warranty at that point.
| miles wrote:
| From comments #736 and #747 attached to the forum post you
| kindly shared, it sounds like simply disconnecting and
| reconnecting the I/O board may be sufficient (found those
| comments linked in #831):
|
| https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macos-big-sur-update-
| br...
|
| https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macos-big-sur-update-
| br...
|
| https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macos-big-sur-update-
| br...
| fifteen1506 wrote:
| And this is why there will never be a Year of the Linux
| Desktop -- no-one wants to have to depend on forum posts to
| fix these kind of issues.
|
| /troll
| coldtea wrote:
| Why the "/troll"? You're 100% right non-ironically: the
| problem being that on Linux the need to consult forum
| posts to fix these kind of issues is way more frequent
| than in macOS.
| fsflover wrote:
| On Linux it's as rare as on MacOS, _if you buy
| preinstalled_.
| coldtea wrote:
| As long as you don't do anything with it on your own.
| kelnos wrote:
| So essentially, the situation you'd have if you'd bought
| a Mac?
|
| If we want to compare apples to apples, then we compare:
|
| Mac with macOS updates installed regularly, and only
| those provided by Apple. Non-Apple apps get dropped in
| /Applications like they should be. If there's an
| installer that asks for root access, you might get boned.
|
| Linux preinstalled with OS updates installed regularly,
| and only those provided by the vendor. Apps that don't
| come with the OS's package manager should be installed
| somewhere under $HOME, and never installed systemwide as
| root.
|
| Sure, if you have a Mac and disable SIP (or whatever it's
| called nowadays) and start mucking around with files in
| /System or whatever, because you want to install some mod
| that does something cool, you might have a bad time. Same
| as if you decide that screwing around in /lib on a Linux
| machine is a good idea.
|
| But if we actually compare these two apples, I suspect
| the Linux one would have fewer problems.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _So essentially, the situation you 'd have if you'd
| bought a Mac?_
|
| No, worse, with more device incompatibilities, manual
| fiddling, arcane settings, and so on to make things work.
|
| > _Sure, if you have a Mac and disable SIP (or whatever
| it 's called nowadays) and start mucking around with
| files in /System or whatever, because you want to install
| some mod that does something cool, you might have a bad
| time._
|
| Sure, but I'm not talking about that. With Linux you
| often have a bad time trying to make basic, but not
| distro configured, functionality to work.
| fsflover wrote:
| > with more device incompatibilities, manual fiddling
|
| Did you read what I wrote above? " _if you buy
| preinstalled_ "
|
| If you install Linux on an ordinary "Windows-certified"
| computer, you will have problems. If you install an
| alternative OS on a Macbook, you will have exactly the
| same problems.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Did you read what I wrote above? "if you buy
| preinstalled"_
|
| And did you understand my point? Buying preinstalled
| isn't a cure-all, only ensures that the bundled hardware
| drivers are compatible and configured. That's a pretty
| low bar.
|
| It doesn't cover doing stuff with third party devices
| (which on the Mac 99% of the time it works every time).
|
| Not to mention even the bundled-hardware doesn't always
| work even if you buy pre-installed (like the laptop not
| sleeping properly for example).
| fsflover wrote:
| > Not to mention even the bundled-hardware doesn't always
| work even if you buy pre-installed (like the laptop not
| sleeping properly for example).
|
| I agree that this is not tolerable. However my devices
| from Purism have a reliable sleep and other functionality
| out of the box.
|
| > third party devices
|
| Check Linux compatibility before buying and they will
| work reliably. Works for me.
| bscphil wrote:
| By the standard of "do you ever need to consult forum
| posts to solve a problem", sure, Linux is worse than
| macOS. By the standard of "do you ever need to consult
| forum posts to fix hardware that has apparently been
| bricked by a software update", macOS seems to be
| considerably worse. At least, that's my experience. I've
| never had hardware damaged by Linux, which I've run
| almost exclusively. On the other hand the one Apple
| device I've ever owned got bricked by their software
| update.
|
| I can't say I've heard of that happening to people on
| Linux at all other than maybe early days of Xorg. Damage
| (reversible or otherwise) to hardware is extraordinarily
| rare on Linux, I can only think of it happening during
| the very early days of EFI and only under very specific
| conditions.
| cesarb wrote:
| > I've never had hardware damaged by Linux, which I've
| run almost exclusively. [...] I can't say I've heard of
| that happening to people on Linux at all other than maybe
| early days of Xorg.
|
| There was that LG CD-ROM drive which treated a CD-RW
| command (which it should ignore or reject since it's not
| a CD-RW drive) as a firmware upload command. When a newer
| Linux kernel started using that command, these drives got
| bricked (source: https://lwn.net/Articles/55537/ and http
| s://web.archive.org/web/20041204072839/http://www.mandra.
| ..).
| gpm wrote:
| More recently there was "rm -rf /" wiping efivars and
| bricking some motherboards with shitty uefi
| implementations thanks to systemd mounting efivars rw by
| default (and shitty motherboard firmware). The kernel
| "fixed" this by mounting unknown efivars as (mostly)
| immutable.
|
| https://www.phoronix.com/news/UEFI-rm-root-directory
|
| https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/filesystems/efivar
| fs....
| cesarb wrote:
| There were also some motherboards with shitty UEFI
| implementations which got bricked when the efivars
| storage did not have enough free space to do the garbage
| collection. The kernel "fixed" this by not allowing more
| than half of the efivars storage to be used (https://git.
| kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin...).
| bscphil wrote:
| Right, this is what I meant by the EFI brick in my
| comment. And in my comment "I can't say I've heard of
| that happening", I meant bricking a device on a system
| update. That's the specific thing which seems to happen
| on occasion with macOS, but that I've not seen with
| Linux. I do grant that there have been some (very rare)
| instances like this where hardware can be bricked by a
| command run on a Linux system.
| umanwizard wrote:
| > macOS seems to be considerably worse
|
| Most users will just take their machine in to the Apple
| Store when this kind of thing happens, rather than try to
| fix it themselves.
| m45t3r wrote:
| Sure, doesn't make this any less inconvenient though. I
| would much prefer to finish whatever I want to finish
| today (even if I spend a few hours trying to fix an
| issue) than wait whatever amount of days waiting until my
| hardware is fixed.
| umanwizard wrote:
| > doesn't make this any less inconvenient though
|
| You're right that it's not ideal, but it certainly makes
| it a lot _less_ inconvenient than being completely stuck
| forever (as most non-highly-technical people would be if
| they had to follow instructions on forums to fix Linux).
| bscphil wrote:
| Sure, but that's when they get told "you need to replace
| the logic board, that'll be $500 since it's out of
| warranty". That's not a theoretical problem either,
| people were literally told to do this back when the Big
| Sur brick happened to my model (2014 MBP). Eventually
| users figured out _on their own_ that you could just
| replace the I /O board (not the mainboard / "logic
| board"). Apparently (going by that forum thread)
| disconnecting and then reconnecting the I/O board fixes
| it as well for some people (I don't remember whether I
| tested this), but this isn't something that Apple happily
| figured out and did for everyone who walked into one of
| their stores. We had to fix it ourselves.
| jonhohle wrote:
| This is anecdotal, but my last "corporate job" was the
| closest to thing to shrink-wrapped software, even though
| it was a SaaS. Every release was meticulously documented.
| Any public facing UI or API change was approved the
| appropriate teams.
|
| This is similar to macOS, Windows, or even FreeBSD
| releases. I haven't seen any Linux distribution that has
| such comprehensively coordinated releases. Between
| systemd and the Linux kernel, I'm not sure it would be
| possible.
|
| Many distros have good documentation, but, in my
| experience, far too often the bulk of it is in out of
| date wikis or forums. Perhaps this is out of date
| thinking and I've missed the train in the past 10 years.
|
| As a counterpoint, OpenWRT has been good, but their main
| "product", imho, is LuCI. Lower level issues often
| require vendor specific forums.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| This issue in GP is unrelated to Linux, it happens on
| single-boot macOS.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| That's the point, I think - Linux gets derided because
| people say it just breaks at random and you have to wade
| through forums to find arcane incantations to fix it,
| either implying or outright stating that their favorite
| proprietary OS would _never_ just blow up in your face
| and force you to resort to exotic troubleshooting steps.
| So when macos, the poster child for "user friendly",
| proceeds to brick the machine and require elaborate
| rituals to fix, it invites a certain level of snark from
| users pointing out that the high and mighty proprietary
| OSs might be just as bad as Linux after all.
|
| Of course, whether that's _valid_ is at minimum a
| question of actual frequency of problems and relative
| impact and effort to fix, but from a perspective of
| optics and emotions I understand the reaction.
| m45t3r wrote:
| I concur, the amount of times I had to Google dozens of
| minutes for issues happening in my work-issued Macbook
| Pro, and never finding answers because things are
| supposed to "just work" is maddening.
|
| For one example on top of my head, sometimes I can't
| adjust the brightness of the monitor in the Macbook using
| the Notification Center (it is grayed out), but if I open
| the "Settings -> Displays" I can do it. Never found a
| solution for it after searching for a while, so I just
| gave up.
|
| Or the fact that I can't enable retina or font smoothing
| in my 1440p monitor, so the fonts looks ugly (I got used
| eventually, but they still looks worse than Windows or
| Linux in the same monitor). I used a workaround in the
| past using "Better Display" to create a 4k framebuffer
| that was downscaled to 1440p, but this was so slow and
| also prone of other issues so eventually I just got used
| to the ugly fonts.
|
| Another one: I have a TouchBar Macbook (again, this is a
| work-issued laptop), but I just want it to work as a
| normal keyboard: show the Function keys, if I press Fn
| show the shortcuts. Yep, doesn't work: while you can do
| this, pressing Fn while pressing some of the shortcuts in
| the TouchBar doesn't work. This is especially infuriating
| because one of the shortcuts that doesn't work is the
| brightness one. Go back to the first issue and you can
| see why this drive me mad sometimes.
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| Seems like a weird rationale. Any manufacturer is going to have
| its share of software and hardware issues.
| windowsrookie wrote:
| The logic Board failed in my 2020 M1 Air as well. Opened the
| lid one day, and it wouldn't power on. I have AppleCare on it,
| otherwise it would have been a $500 repair.
|
| About two weeks ago I'm sitting in a hotel room with the air on
| bed with the lid open. I grab it by the screen to slide it
| closer to me and the screen shatters from the light pressure of
| my finger.
|
| There are instances of both these things happening to the Air
| all over the internet. At first I really liked the M1 Air, but
| it has now proven too unreliable for me.
| theodric wrote:
| My 2020 M1 Air generally requires a hard reboot if left
| closed and on a charger overnight, but that's been the worst
| of it until now (besides the rapidly degrading battery that
| seems calibrated to hit 79% a month after my AppleCare+
| expires, while my 2015 Air's is still going strong).
|
| Premium(tm)
| VagabundoP wrote:
| My wife is still rocking a 2012 Mac air and uses it
| regularly. Apart from never rebooting it - WHAT ABUT MY TABS
| - its a sturdy little fellow.
|
| Shame to hear the build quality in the latest is so poor.
| aetherspawn wrote:
| FWIW I have been using iPhones for 10+ years and not once has
| an update ever failed or had any issues.
|
| But my Google Pixel phone used to brick itself all the time, I
| think twice in the two years I had it.
| Kuinox wrote:
| In the same period, 10-12 years ago, both androids and
| iPhones bricked themselves if there was no storage left on
| the device. Both needed somes bytes on boot and if they
| couldn't write on disk, they failed to boot.
| kelnos wrote:
| I've never had an Android phone brick itself in 13 years of
| owning them. I have friends whose iPhones have gotten bad
| updates. Not sure if they were bricked, though, or if they
| "only" needed a factory reset to get things going again.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Phones are Apple's main business. At this point, Macs are
| second-tier. With Google, I suspect it's their engineering
| practice. Google doesn't like to make engineering mistakes.
| bitigchi wrote:
| I am somewhat glad that there is a 3rd party that actively helps
| finding macOS issues.
| jiripospisil wrote:
| > Do not let them charge you any money for it. This is a problem
| Apple caused, and purely a software issue. If the technicians
| claim there is hardware damage, they are wrong.
|
| Good luck with that.
| crazygringo wrote:
| The Apple Store is usually great with this stuff.
|
| If there's a documented problem that affects your hardware
| model and the given software versions, they're extremely
| unlikely to try to charge you for anything.
| baz00 wrote:
| If it's not documented and you have a problem then you are
| usually shit out of luck. The early days of butterfly
| keyboards was hell for a lot of people. I managed to get mine
| back to them for a full refund 3 days after I got it thank
| fuck.
| somehnguy wrote:
| I got a full MacBook Pro replacement when my MBP had
| something wrong causing it to charge extremely slowly -
| completely on Apple's dime. They first sent me an overnight
| shipping box to send in my MBP, where they then replaced
| the top case assembly. After that didn't work they
| overnighted me a brand new in box MBP.
|
| I had to spend 6+ hours on the phone over multiple days
| with a senior tech support staff to make it happen, but at
| least it was eventually resolved and I didn't pay anything
| for it. Obviously it wasn't a documented problem because we
| troubleshooted _everything_ possible before replacement.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Documented by whom? Are you going to show a marcan post to
| them and claim it's an Apple issue?
| gpm wrote:
| Marcan's post contains apple ticket numbers... presumably
| you show them those.
| krackers wrote:
| Apple store employees probably may not have access to bug
| reports that their engineers would be able to access?
| p_l wrote:
| In many countries Apple stores aren't run by Apple and
| won't have access to bug reports.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Uh, what? You mean the _actual_ Apple Stores (which are
| only available in select countries) are _not run by
| Apple_? That would be new.
|
| If you mean various third party resellers then of course,
| it's just a run of the mill shop that happens to sell
| Apple products, a completely different experience.
| p_l wrote:
| These are licensed shops that serve as effectively local
| Apple Store (as they are primary contact with Apple for
| majority of clientele) and then completely 3rd party
| stores which do not carry Apple branding.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Authorized resellers aren't your "contact with Apple",
| you can simply buy genuine apple products there.
| Authorized repair centers can do repair and have access
| to genuine parts. That's all it is.
|
| Apple Store is a totally different shebang, if those are
| not owned by Apple it would be a major news story for
| lots of people.
|
| And if they are owned by apple I don't see why their
| employees can not see bug reports.
| fragmede wrote:
| If you are familiar with Apple, you may have heard about
| their obsession with secrecy. If you haven't, they are
| obsessive about secrecy. Apple store employees don't get
| unrestricted access to Radar, their bug tracker, because
| they don't want their secrets getting out. The text in a
| bug could accidentally hint at a new feature on there
| next iphone, and Apple can't have that happening.
| rollcat wrote:
| Yep, my experience has usually been the opposite. "We
| normally charge for fixing this, but we're a little
| embarrassed that this happened so it's free".
| SpaceManNabs wrote:
| I didn't have much trouble. When MacbooksAir 2011 version had
| those SSD hardware failures, I told multiple classmates of mine
| about the hardware failure page and they got the repairs for
| free instead of spending $800.
| asylteltine wrote:
| I'm an apple fanboy and let me be the first to say their SDLC
| since the pandemic has been AWFUL. I have never had so many bugs
| with apple devices. And I'm not talking about giant catastrophic
| bugs you would expect with windows or Linux. I mean little
| things, like random phone reboots, overheating, my mac restarting
| when I wake up from sleep, internet issues, etc. They need a
| shake up and to stop focusing on all these features NO ONE uses.
| Can one person tell me they use the features they just announced?
| Nobody even knows you can edit an iMessage still.
| aetherspawn wrote:
| I agree, I started buying some Macbooks for work and was
| horrified when the Launchpad just wouldn't open on a brand new
| Mac.
|
| Like, you press Launchpad, and it just ... doesn't open.
| sometimes. This kind of rancid stuff you would expect on
| Windows (i.e. after upgrade to Windows 11, half our laptops
| can't right click on the desktop sometimes) but it never used
| to happen on OS X.
| doubloon wrote:
| " . . . The new version - it's not there to fix bugs. That's
| not the reason we come up with a new version. " - Bill Gates
|
| http://www.cantrip.org/nobugs.html
| vbezhenar wrote:
| Today I had to DFU restore my macbook because I wanted to
| reinstall it, but built-in restore over the web did not work. My
| base system was 13.2, it downloads all the files for 13.6, it
| filled bar to 100% and then spewed error.
|
| It's obvious that it's some incompatibility between 13.2 base
| system and 13.6 install. Apple quality is atrocious these days.
| One would have thought they would test the most basic scenarios
| before releasing their x.6 software.
|
| And worse of all, there's no official (or even unofficial, at
| least I wasn't able to find one) way to create USB boot installer
| without another Mac or to DFU restore Mac without another Mac. Do
| they think I live in Apple Store? I don't have other Mac. I was
| able to DFU restore with libimobiledevice, god bless its creator,
| but it really should not happen. Windows or Linux are so much
| more transparent compared to macOS.
| baz00 wrote:
| Yeah the Apple bootloader and restore stuff scares the shit out
| of me. The network access requirement, firmware on SSD and
| hardware lock are always lurking waiting for the most
| inconvenient time to go wonky when I hose something.
|
| Conversely windows, just got a USB stick in the drawer I can
| boot off.
| EstesPark wrote:
| As a lifelong Mac user, it just now hit me how inconvenient
| locked down the restore process is.
| cesarb wrote:
| > Conversely windows, just got a USB stick in the drawer I
| can boot off.
|
| It goes further than that, on many motherboards even a failed
| firmware update can be fixed through a random USB stick from
| the drawer, you just need the right BIOS file to put in it.
| Clamchop wrote:
| And some motherboards even have a backup BIOS if one of
| them becomes deranged. Now that's luxury.
| acheong08 wrote:
| > Conversely windows, just got a USB stick in the drawer I
| can boot off.
|
| Linux as well. Will probably work better than windows on
| older hardware
| jonhohle wrote:
| In the FireWire days, you could firmware boot a Mac into
| target disk mode and plug it into another mac where it would
| show up as a disk.
|
| How far we've fallen.
| jamesfmilne wrote:
| Yes same here. I did install then uninstall Avahi Linux a year
| or so ago, but now I can't upgrade past 12.6.
|
| I'll need to get an external drive, back everything up, then do
| a DFU restore on my M1 Max MBP to get it upgraded to Sonoma.
| acheong08 wrote:
| I deleted the MacOS installation on my (older) Mac. Linux
| works well enough
| alberth wrote:
| Abstraction Layers.
|
| We've gotten to point with the huge number of abstraction layers
| (and now AI as well) that troubleshooting what causes system to
| do what it did, has become so unwieldily difficult to diagnosis.
| jahewson wrote:
| This doesn't seem to be the problem here? It's an issue of
| having a combinatorial number of versions to test when
| upgrading software and firmware.
| mstep wrote:
| does anyone have info if this is fixed in ventura 13.6.1?
| https://support.apple.com/de-at/HT213985
| kppullin wrote:
| I just installed 13.6.1 on an M1 MacBook Pro and am now facing
| the boot issue, so I'm guessing it's not fixed :). To make
| matters worse, the specific USB port required for the DFU
| revive fix is broken as well, which was never an issue as the
| other two worked... oof.
| cramjabsyn wrote:
| This is exactly why I lag one major version behind the latest.
| als0 wrote:
| Well, this also affects the previous major version, macOS
| Ventura 13.6
| supportengineer wrote:
| This is exactly why I lag two or three versions behind the
| latest.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| This is why I'm still using RHEL 7.
| silverwind wrote:
| Just don't upgrade to any version ending in 0.
| lynguist wrote:
| 13.6.1 is also affected.
| cromka wrote:
| Need to wait for 13.6.1.1
| cirrus3 wrote:
| If that is the case, why does the OP label it as a Sonoma
| issue?
| theodric wrote:
| This is why I'm still on Big Sur-- it mostly works!
| Apocryphon wrote:
| One of my machines is still on Mojave- my 32-bit games still
| work!
| pseingatl wrote:
| Picasa will only run on 32 bit as well.
| nusaru wrote:
| > macOS Ventura 13.6
|
| Well dang, I just upgraded yesterday, too. Fingers crossed that
| nothing breaks...
| cleansingfire wrote:
| Only affects Apple silicon chips (intel unaffected) with
| ProMotion display. Just a quick Exit clause for people with older
| machines.
| meithecatte wrote:
| Only one of the two bugs listed requires a ProMotion display.
| The other one can occur on all Apple silicon machines.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| Lost a workstation to this last week. infuriating.
| KingLancelot wrote:
| I think my 2014 MacBook on MacOS 12.5 was affected by this too.
|
| I had Ubuntu installed in a second partition and it refuses to
| boot ever since I installed 12.5.1 on it.
| tempodox wrote:
| Holy fuck, thanks for the warning! I'm just glad I didn't upgrade
| to 13.6 yet. And installing Sonoma on a second volume to try it
| out is also out of the picture for the foreseeable future.
| Apple's OSs seem to get worse with every turn. Maybe I shouldn't
| touch Sonoma at all. What's the point on an Intel Mac anyway?
| SpaceManNabs wrote:
| This seems like a very unusual bug by Apple standards. Makes me
| consider upgrading to new macbooks...
| dgellow wrote:
| At this point it's kind of common knowledge to wait a while
| before upgrading macOS to latest major version. I don't
| remember a major update that didn't come with its own set of
| problems.
| cromka wrote:
| I don't know, it's pretty high there on the list of their
| complete fuckups, like allowing anyone to log in as root from
| the login dialog...
| da768 wrote:
| Can something be done using VoiceOver boot mode? I've already
| recovered macs stuck on 0 brightness after an upgrade with
| that... Can't find the documentation now, but it definitely
| exists.
| jug wrote:
| I wonder if this is behind a failed Sonoma upgrade I saw on eBay
| today; Mac Mini M2 Pro sold as-is for a very decent price, about
| $300-$400 off despite from this year. :) Seller didn't know what
| was wrong with the Mac, only that it happened during Sonoma
| upgrade and this sounds mighty suspicious for such a new machine
| if it's widespread.
| dharma1 wrote:
| Had another weird refresh rate bug with 14.1 - external display
| doesn't have a HDR option in settings at 120hz anymore - only
| works with HDR if I change the refresh rate 100hz or lower. Was
| fine in earlier MacOS
| doubloon wrote:
| in 30 years we have gone from the idea that your computer could
| accidentally brick your monitor, to the idea that your monitor
| could accidentally brick your computer.
|
| https://trixter.oldskool.org/2006/02/02/computing-myth-1-sof...
| iudqnolq wrote:
| On a much more minor note the .0 version of the upgrade also has
| a big that pops up a contacts window every few minutes and steals
| keyboard focus.
| sameg14 wrote:
| I had this exact thing happen to me when I tried to reset a Mac
| and wipe it clean. Would not start up and went into this doom
| loop when booting with the apple logo and a black screen. No
| amount of key combinations worked. I had to drop into DFU, which
| is a huge pain to get into to begin with and then use another Mac
| to recover.
| cirrus3 wrote:
| First I've heard of any issues.. I have done a couple upgrades
| already with no issue. I'm sure there are some scenarios where it
| fails, but Sonoma has been out a while with millions of users
| being prompted constantly to upgrade. Feels like less than a
| "you're holding it wrong" problem. HN is obv going to bring out
| the edge cases, but it doesn't seem like the world is on fire
| with "Sonoma Bricks" by any means.
| markmark wrote:
| Do you dual boot? I've got two bootable OSX partitions on my
| mac and this hit me when I updated.
| bigDinosaur wrote:
| I use a lot of Apple products but this attitude you're
| expressing has always annoyed me (because I see it most
| frequently when it comes to Apple's software and hardware
| quality). These bugs affect people all the time and are
| indicative of poor QA. 5 users at a company we provide some
| software support for (note: we don't control their machines)
| decided to upgrade their machines and somehow became unbootable
| just yesterday. Please don't be in denial about Apple's
| increasingly worse QA. An intern with a checklist could have
| uncovered these issues.
| codingpanic wrote:
| We have a fleet of several hundred Macs, most are M1/2 at this
| point. I heard reports of several Macs coming in for support
| that booted to a black screen after Sonoma's .0 landed. So many
| that the JAMF team blocked Sonoma until the .1 landed.
|
| Definitely shoddy QA on Apple's part. Also, your sample size is
| too small. Everyone works differently and it takes a certain
| set of settings/workflows to trigger this compatibility issue.
| keepamovin wrote:
| When I saw the upgrade to Sonoma appear in my Settings I had a
| feeling the first version of this new OS would be buggy so I held
| off on it. Now extra glad I did! Gonna stick with Ventura for a
| while! Haha ! :)
| ch13_ wrote:
| Agreed
| ShadowBanThis01 wrote:
| The Sonoma update bricked my M1 MBP and Apple had to wipe the
| whole thing.
|
| Something stinks in this thing.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| Man, I had a rough week last week. Shipped two regressions.
| Seeing this story, as awful as it must be for the responsible
| eng, has really made me feel much better. Not schadenfreude. Just
| commiseration.
| RadixDLT wrote:
| there's something fundamentally wrong at apple theses days, macos
| just doesn't work like it used to
| wizzard0 wrote:
| FYI the Asahi Linux installer says "please upgrade that should
| help" but bumping 13.6 -> Sonoma 14.1 did not help, the
| SystemRecovery still shows up as 13.5
|
| Or does that mean wait for 14.2?
| Alifatisk wrote:
| This is why I am not so quick with upgrading to next major
| version anymore.
| benreesman wrote:
| I don't know what's going on with Apple lately. They've built one
| of the world's best brands after a near-death experience via a
| ruthless focus on and fanatical commitment to providing a
| holistically premium experience (for the people who want their
| version of that) to justify their premium pricing and huge
| margins. If you like what they do, it Just Works from purchase
| on. Or did until recently.
|
| Just today I had an experience that was so Kafkaesque it felt
| like a mean spirited prank, and because they never fuck up this
| badly, I had no contingency plan for one of the times it matters
| a lot.
|
| Any advice on how to get the "we fix things for loyal customers
| by doing what's required" people on the phone would be
| appreciated, but based on the runaround, infinite hold Ferris
| wheel the primary support line apparently is now, I'm not getting
| my hopes up.
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| The Apple today is very different from the Apple of 20 years
| ago. The brand is the same, yes, but the people are all largely
| different. You see this all the time in the video game
| industry, ie Blizzard, Bungie, 343 industries.
|
| Maybe the newest group of programmers and engineers are dealing
| with a very complicated code base? Maybe no one fully
| understands everything involved until something breaks?
| benreesman wrote:
| Just my N=1 anectdote, but I've been having almost
| universally great experiences until maybe 2 or 3 months ago.
|
| On the software side, I tend to tolerate more security risk
| (within reason) to delay updates until a consensus emerges
| that they're robust, because I'm not a high value target to
| anyone north of "script kiddy" and run a tight ship on the
| easy stuff, so the EV of an abruptly unusable work machine
| vs. getting pwned weighs heavily relative to winding up in
| the crosshairs of anyone sophisticated enough to exploit a
| recent CVE. My online banking is properly 2-fac'd, if anyone
| wants to read my browser history or email and cares enough to
| go ti that trouble, I'll want them that I'm not important
| enough for it to be worth the trouble.
|
| This would clearly change if my work went back to having
| demanding security requirements, but it doesn't just now.
|
| It's really the customer service, fulfillment, Apple Store
| experience (it used to feel like stepping into the least
| stressful room in the mall and now it's a zoo).
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| It's likely not a single person understands the entire MacOS
| stack anymore, at least since Mavericks, all the pre-1985 old
| guard engineers having retired by then.
| Clamchop wrote:
| Interesting take given that a Mac today has virtually
| nothing in common with a Mac of the late 1990s, let alone
| 1984.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Says who?
| Kwpolska wrote:
| Mac OS X is a descendant of NeXTStep. It shares no code
| in common with classic Mac OS.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| How is Mac OS Classic sharing lines of code, or not, even
| relevant to the question?
| user3939382 wrote:
| Tangentially related, ever since upgrading to Sonoma my computer
| reboots when I put it to sleep. I've heard the same from other
| users.
| ehutch79 wrote:
| Reading many of the comments here... I wonder if a lot of hacker
| news commenters have actually met real, everyday users of
| technology. Not other nerds and grognards, but like, the lady
| sitting over in a cubical, who only knows enough about computers
| to do their job.
|
| Do you really think users want graphic mode selection on boot?
| What percent of Mac users have alternate bootloaders or even know
| what that means.
|
| A lot of commenters need to do some time in the proverbial
| trenches and support a fleet of devices at a large company. See
| if users really care about the things you think they do.
| OJFord wrote:
| From the submission:
|
| > Once System Firmware is updated to the macOS Sonoma version,
| if the display is configured to a refresh rate other than
| ProMotion, that system will no longer be able to boot into
| older macOS installs nor Asahi Linux correctly. This includes
| recovery mode when those systems are set as the default boot
| OS, and also System Recovery at least until the next subsequent
| OS upgrade.
|
| That can and will absolutely affect regular users, even if they
| don't 'care' about it or 'know what it means'.
| eddieroger wrote:
| > that system will no longer be able to boot into older macOS
| installs
|
| No, that seems pretty super-user to me. The average user goes
| forward in versions, not back, and rarely has two at the same
| time.
| OJFord wrote:
| On the contrary _all_ normal users have two at the same
| time, that 's the system recovery one mentioned.
|
| Normal people don't care about it, talk about it, or think
| about it, but may come to rely on it - or have it used by a
| 'Genius' when something stops working. It affects them.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| If you met an everyday user of technology you'd see that he/she
| is completely fine simply remembering what to click on a
| cryptic screen which no one understands or has time to spend
| looking up. Just think of all the notifications and alerts
| about various security stuff while you need to get things done.
| Muscle memory. Except unlike security warnings, dismissing
| which can pwn you, in this case it could one day save your
| system/work so I don't see how it's not worthwhile.
|
| This issue can occur to any user who wants to have two macOS
| versions for whatever reason. Not that extraordinary especially
| between creative professionals
| jcul wrote:
| I'm not a Mac or Asahi user (though I think it is an amazing
| project).
|
| However, this is such a great write up, very thorough with root
| cause, mitigations etc.
|
| Keep up the good work!
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-11-01 23:02 UTC)