> “As a developer of macOS security tools, it’s incredibly frustrating to time and time again have to deal with (understandably) upset users (understandably) blaming your tools for breaking their Macs, when in reality it was Apple’s fault all along,”
I would like to understand this better. Were there not any beta releases that these companies could have tested with in advance? Or were changes made between the beta and the release that broke things? Or something else?
Per Patrick Wardle, this was well reported to Apple during beta.
Thank you, this makes the frustration in the above quote more understandable. For anyone wanting to avoid the x click:
> Worth stressing this was reported to Apple before the GA was released (by multiple people, to multiple teams/orgs within Apple) so Apple 100% knew about this, and shipped macOS 15 anyways
Apple, or at least their teams responsible for answering feedback, rarely ever give substantial responses nowadays, regardless of how well documented the submission was. So it compounds the frustration.
And this isn’t even the most egregious case, sometimes the bugs are so obvious that they generate multiple hard faults, per hour, logged in Console, on a fresh installation with only the default apps running.
Please sir, can I have 30% of your revenue?
This is the part I'm missing too. Major versions are the time to ship braking changes, did none of these companies bother to test their software that mucks deep in the plumbing of the OS?
It is very typical to file bugs against even the first beta and not see them fixed before GM, or even ever.
They did, reported it, nothing changed.
It's an OS bug, you can't make it look good by invoking some generic "time to break" principle
Is there even an equivalent to WSUS on macOS that lets admins block an update until it's tested?
Yeah. There’s Jamf and similar tools. Companies often block major updates until their 100 agents all officially support it. Oh, and do cool things like not letting you change your background or whatever random settings some admin decides are good.
Yep, a lot of these policies seem to come from some random person scrolling through a list of supported options and arbitrarily making up values that are enforced on people.
One of our policies enforce that screen savers must start after 20 minutes, and it’s not possible to reduce it (I have my personal on 3 minutes). Or the fact that it will constantly reset the UI notification volume to 100% and speaker output, even though have headphones almost always.
Infuriating.
There is a configuration profile payload that can stop updates like major version changes for up to 90 days. You cannot stop them indefinitely from appearing in Software Update.
Yes, it's called MDM (Mobile Device Management) and lets admins set all kinds of policy on apple devices. There are several vendors out there that implement it.
all my wireguard tunnels could not connect upon upgrade. disabling the macos firewall allowed me to use my tunnels again, fyi.
I read somewhere about old ESET rules being in the macOS firewall blocked various udp traffic. Quick Google might get you more information.
Tailscale affected?
It is for me. I've had to disable it on my mbp and ios devices; otherwise DNS lookups choke.
> At this point, it’s unclear exactly what is the issue
So, is this a bug in Sequoia or a change that affects these low-level tools? If the latter, they may not like it, but that’s par for the game on MacOS.
These cybersecurity tools are like posting a contracted armed security guard to an airport departure lounge.
> And, somehow, the software update has broken the functionality of several security tools made by CrowdStrike, ...
What terrible news – whatever shall we do?
Please look past the fact that CrowdStrike is today’s, or yesterday’s, cultural whipping boy. They make software, and its users would like it to work. It’s not a good thing.
> “As a developer of macOS security tools, it’s incredibly frustrating to time and time again have to deal with (understandably) upset users (understandably) blaming your tools for breaking their Macs, when in reality it was Apple’s fault all along,”
I would like to understand this better. Were there not any beta releases that these companies could have tested with in advance? Or were changes made between the beta and the release that broke things? Or something else?
Per Patrick Wardle, this was well reported to Apple during beta.
https://x.com/patrickwardle/status/1836862900654461270
Thank you, this makes the frustration in the above quote more understandable. For anyone wanting to avoid the x click:
> Worth stressing this was reported to Apple before the GA was released (by multiple people, to multiple teams/orgs within Apple) so Apple 100% knew about this, and shipped macOS 15 anyways
Apple, or at least their teams responsible for answering feedback, rarely ever give substantial responses nowadays, regardless of how well documented the submission was. So it compounds the frustration.
And this isn’t even the most egregious case, sometimes the bugs are so obvious that they generate multiple hard faults, per hour, logged in Console, on a fresh installation with only the default apps running.
Please sir, can I have 30% of your revenue?
This is the part I'm missing too. Major versions are the time to ship braking changes, did none of these companies bother to test their software that mucks deep in the plumbing of the OS?
It is very typical to file bugs against even the first beta and not see them fixed before GM, or even ever.
They did, reported it, nothing changed.
It's an OS bug, you can't make it look good by invoking some generic "time to break" principle
Is there even an equivalent to WSUS on macOS that lets admins block an update until it's tested?
Yeah. There’s Jamf and similar tools. Companies often block major updates until their 100 agents all officially support it. Oh, and do cool things like not letting you change your background or whatever random settings some admin decides are good.
Yep, a lot of these policies seem to come from some random person scrolling through a list of supported options and arbitrarily making up values that are enforced on people.
One of our policies enforce that screen savers must start after 20 minutes, and it’s not possible to reduce it (I have my personal on 3 minutes). Or the fact that it will constantly reset the UI notification volume to 100% and speaker output, even though have headphones almost always.
Infuriating.
There is a configuration profile payload that can stop updates like major version changes for up to 90 days. You cannot stop them indefinitely from appearing in Software Update.
Yes, it's called MDM (Mobile Device Management) and lets admins set all kinds of policy on apple devices. There are several vendors out there that implement it.
all my wireguard tunnels could not connect upon upgrade. disabling the macos firewall allowed me to use my tunnels again, fyi.
I read somewhere about old ESET rules being in the macOS firewall blocked various udp traffic. Quick Google might get you more information.
Tailscale affected?
It is for me. I've had to disable it on my mbp and ios devices; otherwise DNS lookups choke.
> At this point, it’s unclear exactly what is the issue
So, is this a bug in Sequoia or a change that affects these low-level tools? If the latter, they may not like it, but that’s par for the game on MacOS.
(Tried reading https://x.com/patrickwardle/status/1836862900654461270, referenced by sephamorr, but that link isn’t working for me)
These cybersecurity tools are like posting a contracted armed security guard to an airport departure lounge.
> And, somehow, the software update has broken the functionality of several security tools made by CrowdStrike, ...
What terrible news – whatever shall we do?
Please look past the fact that CrowdStrike is today’s, or yesterday’s, cultural whipping boy. They make software, and its users would like it to work. It’s not a good thing.