hoakley Macs, Technology

What has changed in macOS Sequoia 15.5?

The update to macOS Sequoia 15.5 is likely to be the last to include remaining enhancements and fixes before engineers are more committed to the beta-releases of macOS 16.0 from early June onwards. It’s therefore unfortunate that Apple chose to provide only limited information about what it addresses.

Correlating the general release notes with those for Enterprise results in a short list of:

  • one new feature, that parents now receive a notification from a child’s device when its Screen Time passcode is used;
  • large network shares should enumerate correctly in the Finder;
  • the Pro Display Calibrator utility should work properly on M4 MacBook Pros, without causing a kernel panic;
  • apps registering helper executables should now do so correctly.

Most important for many is that AFP is now deprecated and “will be removed in a future version of macOS”, according to notes for Enterprise.

Security release notes for Sequoia 15.5 are here, and list 46 vulnerabilities fixed, none of which are believed to have been exploited already. Eight of those vulnerabilities are in WebKit.

The macOS build number is 24F74. Firmware in Apple silicon Macs is updated to iBoot version 11881.121.1, while that in T2 Macs is updated to 2075.120.2.0.0 (iBridge 22.16.15072.0.0,0).

Version changes seen in bundled applications include:

  • Books to version 7.5
  • Freeform to version 3.5
  • Music to version 1.5.5
  • News to version 10.4
  • Notes to version 4.12.6
  • Passwords to version 1.5
  • Safari to version 18.5 (20621.2.5.11.8)
  • Stocks to version 7.3
  • TV to 1.5.5
  • Tips to 15.5
  • Weather to version 5.1.

Those in /System/Library are more extensive, and include:

  • Audio Plug-Ins HAL MacAudio driver to version 550.4
  • In CoreServices, there’s a new Apple Diagnostics app at version 1.0, which currently doesn’t appear functional
  • The XboxGamepad driver extension has a build increment
  • AGX kernel extensions all have version increments
  • AppleUSBAudio kernel extension has a version increment
  • AudioDMAController kernel extensions have version increments
  • APFS is updated to version 2332.120.31
  • Most of the major public frameworks have build increments, with SwiftUI at version 6.5.4
  • Many Private Frameworks are updated.
  • A new Private Framework CodableSwiftUI has been added at version 1.0
  • New Private Frameworks NDOAPI, NDOUI, SUDocAssets and SensorAccess have also been added at version 1.0.

The new Apple Diagnostics app looks particularly interesting, but appears to attempt a remote connection that is denied, so reports the error and does nothing else.

Overall, this appears to be a substantial update with many fixes included. It’s a pity that Apple hasn’t been prepared to tell us more in its haste to move on to 16.0.