Apple Releases iOS 18.4, macOS 15.4, and Other x.4 OS Updates

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42

I tried to install 15.4 on my new studio yesterday; I was experiencing beach balls and a couple of kernel panics on 15.2, and, as it’s a new piece of hardware and shipped with a special version of 15.2, I was hoping 15.4 would help resolve some of these issues. It. Did. Not. It borked on the third reboot, and then went into a boot loop for at least 8 gongs, and eventually dumped me out into recovery.

I spent the better part of six hours trying to research the symptoms and errors I was having, something about user tokens being missing, so I was unable to reinstall sequoia. It also wiped out my user directory and wiped out my applications in utilities folders. The error said that there was a problem when migrating the data volume during the update. No kidding.

This shouldn’t have been that big of a deal, except I had no bootable clones that I would normally have nightly, as bootable clones have been apparently deprecated or simply forgotten about at Apple. I had all my data, but I had Just bought this new studio couple weeks ago, and migration assistant would not function properly for me to get a good transfer from my beloved 16-year-old Mac Pro so, I had to start from scratch, and take a factory user account and rebuild literally 25 years of customizations, which had traveled with me through several computers via, you guessed it, the glory of bootable clones. Migration Assistant couldn’t even give me what I needed from my up to date Time Machine., either on the first or second rounds.

I’d worked on manually getting it to about 75% rebuilt hitting it every day for two and a half weeks. Yes, I also have a lot of apps that are time-consuming to reinstall and reconfigure and customize, never mind all my scripts, bash files, bin files, chron jobs, and on and on. Then there were all the apps that required contacting the developer to have my installation quotas reset so I could license them to the new machine. And let’s not forget how much effort it takes to safely and reliably and seamlessly relocate user data to external volumes.

It took less than 10 minutes for the update to annihilate all that work. I’ve now been awake for about 26 hours repeating the build process, and, honestly I’m starting to hate Apple. The fact I had to settle for a $5k M3 Ultra, get absolutely gouged on storage and memory, and then spend another ~$2500 in peripherals to replace everything that was once inside my Mac Pro, killed any sense of joy one usually gets with a brand new device. The fact I couldn’t clone or migrate my way back to normal in the first place had me feeling pretty dejected. The update bork just sealed my opinion that I’m out of love with Apple. I’m just not having fun. I feel like a mark for spending what they charge. I like working with computers, not on them. /rant

Thanks for letting me vent.

Cheers

Grumpy Rico

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43

One annoying thing I have discovered with 15.4 is that it refuses to open some of our data acquisition files. These are auto-generated plain ASCII files full of tab separated numbers that end in .dat just as they get spit out by some dedicated legacy detector hardware.

I had previously set up my Mac to default open them in a text editor of my choice. But with 15.4, upon opening such a .dat file, I’m shown a intimidatingly sounding dialog telling me that Apple cannot deem these files safe for my use (well thanks, but I never asked you, Apple, for your advice on what are my files). It then grants me two options: Done and Move to Trash. There are no obvious options how to get around this.

I figured, OK, perhaps I just need to drag the file onto a text editor or open it from one and it’s only double-clicking in Finder that’s now verboten. But no dice with the former and the latter does not solve the issue that a bunch of our scripts are now broken because they rely on opening a file from the CLI. An ln -s data.dat data.txt will not do the trick either, since obviously as soon as that symlink gets resolved we end up with the same Finder warning. So then I head to the Info pane to see if there’s at least some kind of “thanks, but now go away nanny Apple” option to set for this file. But no luck there either. Last chance: I figure maybe this is just an attribute that remains set until I open the file from within a text editor for the first time and/or save to from there again. So I took TextEdit to make sure I’m using Apple’s latest and greatest. But no luck with that either. I just cannot do anything to make that file able to launch from Finder and/or via something like open -e on the CLI.

nanny

By chance, a short while later I’m doing something else and for that I’m in Settings > Privacy & Security. Since I’m looking for something obscure and I can’t remember where it’s hidden away, I scroll all the way to the bottom. And look here! At the very bottom under Security there’s now an entry saying “data.dat” was blocked to protect your Mac. and next to it a button labeled Open Anyway. Hit that button and you are again presented with another doomsday dialog, but this time there is an “Open Anyway” option. Hit that and authenticate, and from then on the file will finally open straight from the Finder again. So success at last.

Still, frankly, it’s annoying that there’s no option to grant permission to a whole set of files. I don’t feel safer, Apple, but I do feel like I’m wasting time and my Mac is getting in the way of my work rather than doing what it was supposed to: make me more efficient at work. I for one am not liking these Windows vibes.

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44

Have you tried the xattr command?

As with @doug2 's experience earlier in this thread, something like this on the command line should work:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine <path to your dat file or a directory of dat files>

Howard Oakley also has a few xattr utilities that might be useful:

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45

I’ve also found (at least with Sequoia) that if you go to System Settings → Prvacy & Security and scroll down, you will sometimes see a button just below the “Allow application from” setting, where you can authorize a blocked app. You’ll need to provide admin-account authorization, but afterward, it will launch.

I’ve used this several times this week on unsigned applications. I don’t know if it will also work for data files but it’s worth a try, and easier than directly calling xattr to remove an attribute.

46

Are those Terminal utilities, or do they run as apps in MacOS?

47

@mjtsai writes about an issue sending email with Mail in 15.4 to.

https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/09/unable-to-send-messages-with-apple-mail-on-macos-15-4/

48

Some are Terminal commands, while others are graphical apps.

Given your earlier quarantine issue, the following graphical apps from Howard’s page may be of particular interest to you:

  • Pratique - remove quarantine attribute from a particular file
  • Sandstrip - remove quarantine attributes from all files within a particular folder

Neither has a fancy interface. For example, Sandstrip has only a single “Strip Quarantine Flags” button. If you click it, it will prompt you to choose a folder to process. Once you do that, it will provide the number of files scanned and the number of files that were stripped of the quarantine flag. As is normally the case with Howard’s apps, he includes good documentation for both.

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49

I’m guessing that this is because of the extension. Is it possible for you to simply use a different extension when creating the files? That might bypass the need to use the other solutions mentioned above.

50

After upgrading to macOS 15.4, I’ve noticed that the Messages app vanishes periodically. It doesn’t crash - there’s no crash notification - but it just disappears from the screen and has to be restarted. Not a huge problem, but annoying.

There’s a thread on the Apple Support Community about this, without any resolutions or workarounds.

51

That just happened to me with Preview. I used command-tab to get to Preview, released the keys, and Preview was no longer running. But this was on macOS 15.1, so the issue might predate 15.4.

52

I’m also not appreciative that Apple has decided to change OS updates now to “Download and Install Automatically” on all devices. I have to go through and change all the preferences again. I don’t remember this happening in the past.

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53

Same with me but it’s Mail and I do get a crash report. I normally read a Smart Mailbox that’s set to All Unread, haven’t noticed one way or the other whether going to All Inboxes or an individual mailbox also crashes but I will try that for a day or three and report back.

Well…selected All Inboxes and it crashed when I deleted the 3rd message reading from the latest unread.

I will try just a single inbox and see if. that makes any difference.

54

3 posts were merged into an existing topic: Apple’s x.4.1 OS Updates Patch Exploited Security Vulnerabilities

57

macOS 15.4.1 Sequoia resolves the issue with Wallpaper custom colour.

58

I just updated my M2 Mac Studio from 15.3.2 to 15.4.1 and it did not go as expected. As soon as the download started I noticed it also included an update for the Studio Display. I was worried that it might not work – and it didn’t. I came back a short time later and there was an error message on the display

support.apple.com/display/restore

That Apple support page had too little information to help.

I was able to Screen Share the Mac Studio to my MacBookPro (Mojave) to confirm that the Mac had updated and restarted. Next, I dragged my legacy Apple Cinema Display off the shelf and hooked it up to the Mac. The Mac could only see the old display; the Studio Display was not available.

So after reading several threads I tried removing all connections to the display – which was a USB cable to my keyboard and mouse. Within a few seconds there was some additional information on the display indicating the update was starting. Starting? Had it not already done that and failed? Or maybe it was doing it again. A few minutes later, it updated and the Apple Studio Display was active.

TL;DR when updating an Apple Studio Display do not have anything connected to it except the TB cable and power cable.

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59

I’m glad the update worked for you eventually, and I’m disappointed that Apple didn’t anticipate your setup (which does not sound esoteric at all).

Thank you for this warning. I’ll ask for clarification.

My setup satisfies your literal warning, in that nothing is connected to my Studio Display except the TB cable and power cable. But the other end of that TB cable is connected to a TB dock (which is connected to my MBA M3). Does this violate the intent of your warning?

Also, if I connect the Mac directly to the Studio Display but leave the TB dock connected to the other TB port on the Mac, does this violate the intent of your warning?

60

Will…

Good questions but I don’t have any answers for your setup. As noted, as soon as I disconnected the USB cable for my keyboard and mouse the install (re)started. Once that happened there was nothing else to investigate.

Good luck.

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