macOS Big Sur 11.6.2 and Security Update 2021-008 Catalina

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Originally published at: macOS Big Sur 11.6.2 and Security Update 2021-008 Catalina - TidBITS

Patches security vulnerabilities in Big Sur and Catalina. (Free, various sizes, macOS 11 and 10.15)

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Dear all

Good news from Apple, which has fixed the bugs introduced with the previous SecUpdate for Catalina 2021-007 with version 2021-008. It took six weeks (and hundreds of complaints) to be able to use Google Earth and other third-party software again. The driver for the Intel HD4000 graphics card is functional again with Open GL. It is possible to use Firefox again to open pages that require OpenGL.
As usual, Apple has not acknowledged the damage caused to its users by its programming errors. Nor has it fixed the problems introduced with SecUpdate 2021-007.
Many lessons could be learned from this new adventure: Apple’s quality assurance is once again flawed; communication with users is clearly insufficient or even contemptuous; security updates that can break your system at any time and prevent you from using your favorite software cannot be trusted.
My personal advice: if you have space on your hard disk, make a 30 GB partition on which you install MacOS in order to test each update. This way you will avoid wasting a lot of time and you will be able to protect yourself against bad surprises…

Have a great day
Denis

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Earlier today I installed the update to Big Sur on my 2019 iMac. No problems installing, and no problems found so far.

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Updated two iMacs ( 2019 Big Sur & 2017 Catalina ) yesterday without any visible problems during the update or afterwards.

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Me too, all’s good so far on my iMac (Retina 4K, 21.5-inch, 2017)
As a bonus, there was an update to Safari Version 15.2 as well

When I first installed Big Sur, I was a bit dismayed Apple deprecated the Network Utility app. I’ve used it for many years to ping-check the ‘space weather’ since I have a satellite based ISP with a limited bandwidth, and it was bandwidth-cheaper than SpeedTest. Soooo, after installing Big Sur I copied the app from my Mojave backup into Big Sur Apps>Utilities and it works fine

Doncha know, after the 11.6.2 update it was deprecated once again… (rinse and repeat)

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@Jeff_Swart you can run ping in Terminal using control-c to stop the pings.

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@MaltbyEarl - sweet! Thanks very much Earl - just what the doctor ordered
… I keep thinking I should become more savvy about using terminal - in my copious spare time :smirk:

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I installed Security Update 2021-008 for Catalina on my 2020 iMac and since then the available space provided in Finder’s Status Bar as well as from  > About This Mac > Storage is completely out of whack.

I created 2 partitions of 1TB each on my 2TB internal SSD.
Big Sur is running on the first partition called Macintosh HD.
On the second partition, I’ve created two APFS containers, one for Catalina (called Catalina SSD) and the other one for data I want to backup separately (Called Data HD).

Since the second partition shares two APFS containers, both should provide me with the exact same available space, but it’s not the case anymore since installing the latest Catalina update.

Here’s what Finder’s Status Bar tells me:

  • Catalina SSD : 151,47 GB available
  • Data HD: 82,99 GB available

And  > About This Mac > Storage

  • Catalina SSD: 96,54 GB available
  • Data HD: 82,99 GB available

Has anyone else noticed a similar issue?