hoakley Macs, Technology, Updates

What has changed in macOS Ventura 13.4?

The update to macOS Ventura 13.4 is relatively small, and brings several improvements and fixes, including the following listed by Apple:

  • a Sports feed in Apple News, with score and fixture cards,
  • fixes an issue using Auto Unlock with Apple Watch,
  • faster connection of Bluetooth keyboards after restarting,
  • fixes a problem with VoiceOver navigating to landmarks on webpages,
  • fixes syncing of Screen Time settings across devices.

Apple’s list of security fixes for 13.4 is here, and confirms that two vulnerabilities in WebKit were fixed in RSR (a). Those are believed to have been actively exploited, and are included in the fixes for 13.4, together with those for 47 other vulnerabilities, of which four are in the kernel. A third actively exploited WebKit vulnerability has been fixed in 13.4, but wasn’t addressed in the RSR.

There are firmware updates for Apple silicon Macs, bringing iBoot to 8422.121.1, and Intel T2 models are updated to 1968.120.12.0.0 (iBridge 20.16.5058.0.0,0).

Significant version changes seen among bundled apps include:

  • Books, significant build increment
  • Disk Utility, version increment to 22.6
  • Music, version increment to 1.3.5
  • News, version increment to 8.4
  • Photos, significant build increment
  • Safari, updated to version 16.5 (18615.2.9.11.4)
  • Stocks, version increment to 5.3.1
  • TV, version increment to 1.3.5
  • Weather, version increment to 3.3.1.

It will be interesting to see whether this new version of Disk Utility addresses long-standing errors when using First Aid.

Significant changes in /System/Library include:

  • Screen Time.app in CoreServices, build increment
  • Siri in CoreServices, build increment
  • AGX kexts, build increments
  • AMDRadeon kexts, build increments
  • AppleStorageDrivers kext, build increment
  • AppleVirtIO kext (lightweight virtualisation), build increment
  • VirtualScanner.app has been removed from /System/Library/Image Capture/Devices, leaving only AirScanScanner.app
  • addition of PrivateSearchCore and PrivateSearchProtocols to private frameworks
  • APFS is updated to version 2142.120.7.

Although there are many minor changes in build numbers, particularly in private frameworks, the overall picture is of small improvements rather than substantial change.