hoakley February 8, 2024 Macs, Technology, Updates

Apple has released an update for Sonoma to version 14.3.1

Apple has just released an update to bring macOS Sonoma to version 14.3.1. This “fixes bugs”, the most notable of which results in confusion of text when composing messages in Mail. Although that didn’t cause any change their content, it has been widely reported and for some apparently made Mail almost unusable.

The download is around 1.21 GB for Apple silicon Macs, and around 530 MB for Intel Macs.

Apple reports no fixes to security vulnerabilities with this update.

Looking through key System folders, Safari is updated to version 17.3.1 (19617.2.4.11.12). In /System/Library, there are minor build increments in some Keychain components, and in the Security framework. There are no changes in version or build numbers of Mail.app or any of its recognisable components.

Last updated 2000 GMT 8 February 2024.

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1

artiste212 on February 8, 2024 at 10:49 pm
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I saw this and had to compose an email in Pages, then paste it in. I thought maybe I needed to restart my Mac — had no idea this was a bug. It’s not the worst but glad they’re fixing it.

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- 2
  
  hoakley on February 9, 2024 at 11:52 am
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  I believe that it has been fixed in 14.3.1. Although ‘only’ a cosmetic bug in that it changed what you see rather than the underlying text data, it must be the worst such cosmetic bug for many years.
  Howard.
  
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  - 3
    
    artiste212 on February 9, 2024 at 9:23 pm
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    Technically this bug is “only” cosmetic, but when composing a critical email, the inability to know exactly what is going to be sent is very concerning. I have to agree that this was the worst cosmetic bug I’ve seen in quite some time.
    
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  - 4
    
    pjh on February 10, 2024 at 1:10 pm
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    I don’t think describing it as “cosmetic” is appropriate. In some applications typed characters got lost and I have even seen the order of characters become confused. This was
    
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    - 5
      
      hoakley on February 10, 2024 at 1:57 pm
      
      Thank you. You seem to incurred data loss in your comment!
      AFAIK this bug didn’t result in any change in the data, but that its rendering to the display was disastrously confused. If you have evidence that the content of the message was altered by it, then that would be more serious still. But no matter how confused the rendering might have been, if it didn’t alter the underlying data, then it would normally be referred to using the word ‘cosmetic’. But I’m open to evidence on data corruption if you have it.
      Howard.
      
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6

gc on February 9, 2024 at 12:16 am
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” Text may unexpectedly duplicate or overlap while typing.”

well this sure as heck has been happening and annoying the crap out of me / screwing up emails big time! Ididn’t know if it was mail, sonoma or the dang wired keyboard. magic mouse has been horrible/unresponsive too. wonder if it fixes that.

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- 7
  
  hoakley on February 9, 2024 at 11:54 am
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  Sorry, but I don’t think this explains your Magic Mouse problems, nor are they fixed in this update. Have you tried unpairing and pairing it again, plus all the usual Bluetooth fixes?
  Howard.
  
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- 8
  
  jerryfrit on February 9, 2024 at 2:02 pm
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  I took care of my stuttering Magic Mouse, just a couple of weeks ago, with a couple of shots of canned air on the sensor.
  
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  - 9
    
    hoakley on February 9, 2024 at 2:49 pm
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    Thank you. At least it’s simpler than the monthly cleaning required for opto-mechanical mice.
    Howard.
    
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10

thymine02rising on February 9, 2024 at 4:37 am
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Hi Howard! I’m back! I returned the refurbished MBP I wrote you about a couple of weeks ago (in your art column). Just wrote you another book here and can’t send. (embarrassingly wordy) I wonder how many people have experienced what I have in the last month. (constant uphill learning curve about MDM coming on an Apple Refurbished MBP- and it spreading to my other devices-MBP 12.7.1 then .3 and hell broke loose)

Your articles have given me grounding and steps to take before jumping into “support” that makes things way way worse!

You give solace, I hope you know that! You are a treasure, I have tears in my eyes as I write this to you because you are a rare find! Thank you for now…. until I find a way to get the written version of my recent experiences (possibly) shortened for palatablitly.

>

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- 11
  
  hoakley on February 9, 2024 at 11:56 am
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  Thank you – it’s great to have you back.
  MDM can’t ‘spread’, though; but if a refurb is supplied with it enabled, then you should take it back for the supplier to fix that. That’s a serious error on their part.
  Howard.
  
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12

Duncan on February 9, 2024 at 2:42 pm
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I know this isn’t a Sonoma problem itself and is a little off-topic here, but has the ‘unwanted upgrade’ problem from previous MacOS releases been solved by Apple? Was there a silent fix that made into earlier versions, or was it an Apple upgrade-server problem, or something else?

I’m curious if there are still reports of people accidentally upgrading against their will. Thank you.

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- 13
  
  hoakley on February 9, 2024 at 2:47 pm
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  No problems, Duncan.
  I haven’t heard of any ‘forced upgrades’ that have happened for several weeks now, and my own experience in a VM is that whatever went wrong then now works as expected.
  That said, I still don’t know what the cause was, and Apple of course hasn’t said a word about it. But I think it’s safe to come out from under the bed now 🙂
  Howard.
  
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  - 14
    
    Duncan on February 9, 2024 at 4:01 pm
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    Thank you. Does that imply that Apple’s servers were driving this? Unless there was a silent update I don’t know how the MacOS client side could change its behavior on its own.
    
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    - 15
      
      hoakley on February 9, 2024 at 4:04 pm
      
      I see no evidence that anything has changed in client macOS, so must presume the error was occurring at the server end. But I simply don’t know for certain.
      Howard
      
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16

mleiphamellis on February 9, 2024 at 2:59 pm
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I use the excellent Mimestream for macOS and began encountering the same text composing issue others associated with Mail.app. The bug existed in the system WebKit framework rather than in Mail, which explains why no updates to Mail were required to address it.

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- 17
  
  hoakley on February 9, 2024 at 3:04 pm
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  Thank you. That’s interesting, as there are no changes in versions or build numbers for WebKit components in the SSV. What I don’t check are its components in Cryptexes, alongside Safari. But if only those had changed, I’m puzzled that Apple didn’t use an RSR for delivery.
  So maybe there’s more here than meets the eye.
  Howard
  
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18

joethewalrus on February 10, 2024 at 7:32 am
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I think there was a bug* in 14.3 that is now fixed in 14.3.1. In 14.3, when I tried to connect a brand new user account to iCloud from the user account wizard (I guess that’s what you’d call it), it would hang on the 2FA step and not log into iCloud. This happened both on creating the initial admin account after a system reset, and on creating a new secondary account. The workaround both times was to skip iCloud until the Finder loaded, then open System Settings and connect to iCloud from there.

*It’s possible this was a server issue which has since resolved, and not a bug, but Apple’s status page didn’t show any issues at the time. So if anyone is having trouble logging into iCloud from 14.3, try updating to 14.3.1 🙂
It didn’t occur to me to keep a Mac running 14.3.0 so I could test it.

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- 19
  
  hoakley on February 10, 2024 at 9:27 am
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  Thank you. I suspect that you’re right – and the evidence that I see in changed versions supports that.
  Howard.
  
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