Originally published at: https://tidbits.com/2020/03/24/apple-releases-macos-10-15-4-catalina-watchos-6-2-tvos-13-4-and-ios-13-4-for-homepod/
Although Apple focused most of its operating system update work on iOS 13.4 and iPadOS 13.4, the integration of the company’s platforms means that everything else received updates as well. Here’s the rundown.
Warning: I am feeling grumpy…
iCloud Folder sharing
Sounds like a feature similar to MobileMe many years ago. A pity Apple seems to be restricting this “new” feature to Catalina. Surely it can be easily implemented for earlier macOS.
Catalina 32-bit extensions
This is insidious. It looks like you need to “upgrade” to Catalina in order to get warnings that precious apps (despite being 64-bit) have 32-bit extensions. Although I think there has been talk on this forum, about Mojave apps that will search for these problems.
One more reason to stick with Mojave!
For now I think I will hold off on the other OS updates (iOS, Watch & ATV) and see if they cause problems for others.
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I might be blind, but in 10.15.4, when I type command+F to perform a search, I don’t see a box into which I type the search term.
This seems different than all previous versions of 10.15 and 10.14.
Does anybody have a fix?
Of course I can change the default “kind” to “name” and the default “matches” to “contains” then type my search term in the search box, but that’s user unfriendly.
Are you saying the Finder window toolbar can no longer be configured to show a search field? I have had my OS X Finder set up that way for as long as I can remember.
The warning you get with 10.15.4 about Extensions is not related to their being 32-bit, rather all Kernel Extensions will trigger that warning every 30-days.
But there are a few 32-bit Extensions around that Go64 will identify for you.
Yes, iCloud Drive Folder Sharing is limited to iOS 13.4, iPadOS 13.4, and macOS 10.15.4. But Apple has never had anything like it before—it’s most equivalent to Dropbox sharing among different people, albeit only within the Apple ecosystem.
The remaining Mail data loss bugs are not limited to local “On My Mac” mailboxes. The most common issue I’m hearing about with macOS 10.15.4 is dragging and dropping a message to a mailbox on an iCloud server. More info here and here.
Bad Apple! Thanks for the details, @mjtsai. It’s mind-boggling that bugs that are getting as much play as these aren’t being addressed.
Ah - I was thinking about file sharing (not folders):
Ah, yes, that feature sort of morphed into the Mail Drop feature in iCloud.
The missing Finder “Search for:” line in the “Searching ‘This Mac’” window of 10.15.4 persists.
However a one-step workaround is to change the height or width of the “Searching ‘This Mac’” window, and then the “Search for:” line (with “Search” box) ‘magically’ appears at the top.
I upgraded to 10.15.4 (I have a new 16-inch MBP, so I’ve been running Catalina since I got it), and now I can’t send images via iMessage. I’ve tried logging out of iMessage and restarting, then logging back in, but that did not solve the problem I had this problem before with Catalina, and as I recall the fix involved deleting my entire message history. Not an ideal solution! Still working on solving the problem, but I’m curious to know if others have run into this.
@matt3 and I have been chatting about the legacy system extensions separately, in the sense of “how in heck is anyone supposed to know who to contact, if the developer name is seemingly unrelated to any particular app.”
What we discovered is that third-party kernel extensions tend to be in one of two places (any others?):
/Library/Extensions
/Library/Application Support
So if you’re trying to figure out what software is associated with a developer name in one of those Legacy System Extension dialogs, open Terminal, navigate to one of those directories
cd /Library/Extensions
cd "/Library/Application Support"
and then use a command like this to search all the files inside, recurring through folders as necessary:
grep -r "Developer Name" *
For my two examples in the article, Ludovic Leger and Steven Yan, that approach revealed their involvement with TripMode and the Keyspan USB adapter driver.
Binary file TripMode/TripModeNKE.kext/Contents/MacOS/TripModeNKE matches
Binary file KeyspanUSAdriver.kext/Contents/MacOS/KeyspanUSAdriver matchesI have downloaded the new Mac OS X. 15.4 seven times. It downloads the 2.97 GB and then just sits there until finally I get a message that said download failed — any suggestions?
I’ve also tried auto update and selected all the possible options so it does it on its own and it still fails each time. I did check and my computer is eligible for the upgrade. I am currently running to Catalina 10.15.3 with no issues.
If you downloaded it from System Preference->Software Update try downloading the standalone from https://support.apple.com/kb/DL2036
or better yet, the Combo Updater from Download macOS Catalina 10.15.4 Combo Update.
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A caveat if you use the 10.15.4 Combo Updater. Perhaps you won’t have this happen, but for me the update took 2 hours or more to complete, so don’t abort thinking it’s hung up - give it a good long wait. Fortunately I did give it a good long wait, and it seems to work fine after the lengthy update.
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Adam
I am still using macOS Mojave 10.14.6 and consider updating to macOS Catalina 10.15.4, but do not dare to do so because of the Apple Mail problems mentioned by you and others. What actually are these problems?
Would you advise me to update now, or should I rather wait?
Best regards.
— nef
@mjtsai’s post above links to the specifics. It seems to be related to moving messages between mailboxes. And to be clear, not everyone is experiencing these problems, so there’s no guarantee in either direction.