macOS Sonoma Forced Installs | Hacker News Reader

macOS Sonoma Forced Installs

macintouch.com

Just an anecdote to the contrary... running up-to-date Ventura on my M1 MBA, got a pop-up about upgrading to Sonoma a couple days ago, clicked X and it didn't install (or even download). Working correctly.

So everything's normal for me. If this were happening to everyone it would be widespread and huge news.

So assuming it's some kind of possibly-obscure bug, if it's only a handful of people?

> if it's only a handful of people?

It's not only a handful of people. There are already a handful of people verifying the issue in these very comments here, in addition to the people who have verified it in various other linked forums.

This whole thing definitely looks highly anecdotal, rather rare, and basically 100% certain to be a bug. No way is Apple quietly forcing Sonoma upgrades on purpose; this wasn't intentional. Apple Support's responses to some affected users appear to confirm this.

It happened to me.

I noticed a few people on forums posting that this happened to them a few days ago. That suggests to me it's more than a handful of people because I've never seen anyone post this before.

Apple as far as I know has always respected your update settings, so at this point I don't think it's intentional. But obviously this shouldn't be happening.

I run Sonoma on my Official Macs, but I also have a Hackintosh on Ventura that has not upgraded.

yes I got the popup after months of not getting it 2 days ago as well. clicked X and no forced update for now. must be a bug that manifests in some conditions.

Curious if this is because of the various different settings under Software Update, Automatic Updates?

It has an option to Install macOS updates automatically.

Another option could be about "Security Responses and system files". Maybe delayed a security patch for Ventura for a long time, so macOS decides to install Sonoma with the last update?

I got the same pop up a couple of days ago and I dismissed it by clicking on the “x” on the top left. I immediately went to Settings to confirm that my update settings were not changed to automatic updates (they weren’t).

Now I’m worried that this may pop up again and perhaps download and install the upgrade sneakily. I’m going through online posts and comments here to see how I can prevent it.

It's been popping up for me daily or so for about the last week. Hitting "X" makes it go away without installing. Still on Ventura on my 2019 27" Intel iMac. (Maybe Intel/Apple Silicon is the bug? Already updated 2023 MBP to Sonoma, can't easily test.)

1. Automatic updates set to "on" (because automatic updates only installs point releases, not major revisions).

2. "Updates are going to be installed tonight. Install now?", or words to that affect. That's the usual message for point release/bug fix releases. Oddly, when I click "Details", there is no point release and just the Sonoma upgrade. This seems to be a bug, IMO. The "upgrade to $LATEST!" should be a different dialog with different wording.

3. System Settings still shows "software update available", with the red "1" badge, when Sonoma is the only update. This seems to be a bug as well.

IMO, some state-dependent $THING got hosed, and now things are just a little off on my machine. this manifests as an unwanted OS upgrade for some, and just general "that's not...the way it used to work" others like myself but no forced upgrade.

By the way, I highly recommend Little Snitch, which can block these downloads: https://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/

I personally do all of my macOS updates manually using the command-line softwareupdate tool in Terminal app.

That Tidbits article was useful. Thanks for that.

I use Little Snitch, but what rules are to be set to block these downloads?

I think the key is actually to disable the macOS Services rule group. They seem to exempt apple.com connections by default, probably so that new users aren't overwhelmed with connection dialogs, but in this case you want to stop the Mac from phoning home.

The aptly name softwareupdated process performs software updates.

I'm pretty sure I've avoided this because the Sonoma update is 13GB, and my 128GB MBP only has 5-6GBs free at any time.

Now, if Apple would only let me delete those useless HEIC wallpaper images. Each of those are over 1GB in size and can't be deleted without command-line tomfoolery.

We should also have the ability to delete included Apps I don't use. Chess, Freeform, News, Stickies, Stocks, Podcasts, Etc. I have never used these Apps yet I must have them installed on my machine.

it's a bit strange since you can remove these from iOS. I assume this is a SIP thing.

I think they can be deleted. But they are 10-50MB apps anyways, won't make a dent. Chess is 8MB on my machine.

"I think they can be deleted."

No they can not be deleted. And I am not trying to be rude, but can I ask why you would reply to a comment, and argue against it, when you yourself are unsure of the answer?

Even if they are small apps, the ~200-500mb gained might be worth it for the user above with a 128GB SSD who can't upgrade his OS due to lack of storage space. Also, I can see in Activity monitor the News App, and Podcasts app have processes running consuming my RAM, even tho I have never opened them.

it's basically an HN trope at this point. Multiple times I've posted an accurate, factual statement only to have some goober say "*akshually* I think that's wrong." At which point i have to come back and comment again, and say, "no, I'm not wrong."

and the goobers themselves could just take a few seconds to verify their claims, but yet they don’t. slinging inaccuracies as fast as possible here, seems to be their only optimization function.

i don’t get it!

Maybe you guys think so highly of yourselves? I stand by my point, it is your computer and they can be deleted. Not as easily as any other application (because they rest on the protected system volume), but you can do it nevertheless. And there can be systemwide consequences for messing with the system volume. I said "I think" because I know how macOS works. I have not personally tried it because it is a pointless exercise, they are small utilities, and you won't be able to utilize the space you gain from deleting those anyways. They reside on a read-only partition, a space that is signed for system integrity, and if they were not there, it would just be empty space that you can't use. There is no point. But YES, you can delete them. You won't gain anything by doing so, you'll just lose.

> Now, if Apple would only let me delete those useless HEIC wallpaper images

Or upgrade the hardware you -gasp- bought.

It would make no business sense to them. They sell entry level devices with tiny disk space that is practically unusable so in the end you give up and end up paying twice as much to get your work done.

I remember buying MBP 2019 for app development and not being able to upgrade Xcode which was the only app I installed on it. With every upgrade, I had to go the manual route otherwise the whole process would fail for lack of disk space. Why call the machine "Pro" at this point?

This would be very divergent from Apple's past practice. Assuming its a bug at this point in the authorization steps.

Considering it's somehow skipping the password authorization prompt for this... "special" upgrade in particular, even though it requires password authorization to update Safari or the normal security releases (including today's macOS 12.7.3 security and Safari updates) it seems less likely to me that this is a bug. My guess is it's meant to make a bunch of users get on the newest version, even though they didn't want to, and make them second-guess themselves about whether they made a mistake and brought it upon themselves.

I am assuming this is a bug, otherwise it would be a very weird move on apple's part. While they're usually pushy about updates etc. for anyone who uses defaults they usually respect user decisions.

I've dealt with the apple auth chain quite a bit and from the reports it looks like the earliest this started happening was Jan 10th with this notification "macOSInstallerNotification_RC" getting pushed to everyone on Ventura. Very likely the bug then make this appear as a required security update and auto installs it despite user input (I am not sure how many people without the install security updates toggle have also been upgraded).

Also if you have a firmware password on that is still needed for security upgrades so that's probably why there's a difference between password less updates and non-passwordless upgrades but that's just a guess.

This also happened to people on Monterey. Knowing how it skips password authorization, and also treats an 'X' click on the notification as "accept" (basically, there is no way to deny it, since the only other option in the dialog is to accept it) I would be surprised if it's a bug.

it is a bug. apple does not do updates this way. there is no reason for them to surprise users like this.

I don't know about that. They've grown more and more pushy over time, including upgrade badges you can't get rid of normally, notifications to upgrade at random times, requiring clicks on underlined small blue text to install security updates instead of upgrading to the newest major release, and more.

From what you've said, Microsoft also has no reason to force or trick users into upgrading. Yet, they clearly do trick and force users into upgrading.

Incase the site goes down (as someone has noted once already).

Backup Mirror Archive

https://archive.is/gPxwR

Well this is worrying. I also have no interest in upgrading from Monterey. I have all automatic updates disabled except security patches enabled as well.

I'm super glad now that I've gotten into the habit of disabling wifi when I'm not using the machine.

I absolutely cannot stand computers doing things without my say so.

Years ago my Windows machine forcibly did a restart and patch installation while I was working. It just exited every app I had running and rebooted. Cost me several hours of work. Talk about being instantly livid.

I am in the same situation as you, including disabling Wifi when putting the machine to sleep. I only noticed the automatic upgrade was happening when I woke the machine up and it suddenly started slurping down lots of bandwidth, and I could see it in my network activity indicator blinker. I was able to stop it before the download finished. Really unsettling.

I had every update option available turned off, including the supposedly-all-powerful "Check for updates".

Hmmm this has me wondering if there are some underlying terminal defaults or system level startup daemons that could be modified/disabled. Might need to look at this after breakfast.

When you buy a race car designed for a race track, the assumption is you know how to use it. You don't get any driver aids or idiot lights or dummy alarms or traction control or ABS. You are expected to know how to operate the race car effectively.

When you buy a subcompact economy car, you are not expected to be capable of much of anything, so you get a bunch of features to protect you from yourself.

You're driving the pedestrian economy car and complaining about it's pedestrian economy features. If you know what you're doing, get a race car. Otherwise, you're probably driving the right machine.

I assure you, if my subcompact economy car decided to drive itself to a service center regardless of whether I was using it at the moment I would have feelings about that.

It's also a bad analogy because MS makes the "I know what I'm doing car" but refuses to sell it to anyone who isn't a business.

Windows updates are awful, I had a similar thing happen. I was transcoding a large amount of videos overnight and expected it to be finished the next morning. But, I discovered the machine updated and rebooted instead.

The plus side of Windows being so awful is that I have transitioned away from using it as much as I can.

This happened to me last weekend. I have a 2013 iMac that was running Ventura with the Opencore patch. It came up with an update, Opencore got confused (or maybe I did?), and when I rebooted like an idiot it was bricked.

Perma-bricked bricked, or “needs a new OS installed” bricked?

Needed a new OS installed. Couldn't revert to Ventura, it won't let you downgrade. Also, it wouldn't even let me reinstall the same point release. Ended up having to install Sonoma (or wait who knows how long for a newer point release of Ventura... weeks, months?).

Similar setup here (albeit Monterey on a 2013 from an external SSD) - under Software Updates it says Sonoma is available, although presumably this would fail if I went ahead

I'm guessing updating via OpenCore would work, but switching from the unofficial to the official way makes it go haywire?

In the past I made a partition and loaded the newer OS onto that, in the hope that if it failed or ran badly I could just boot from the old working one

Well, Apple is in control of your system. Same story with Microsoft software.

Maybe yet another nudge to think about the core values of Free Software?

At least Apple doesn't change my settings, re-install apps I have deleted and send me advertising in the OS to use their AI, cloud, and Search products.

I was recently using a Windows 11 PC, a popup ad displayed suggesting I connect to OneDrive. The options to choose were do it now or "Remind me" in 3 days or 30 days. There was no option to never remind me. So If you don't use OneDrive, Microsoft is going to send you popups forever until you use it.

I can't understand how anyone thinks that is acceptable.

Apple does force you to create an apple ID if you want to use your iPhone with more than just a few built-in apps though. At least on windows you can still make a local account if you don't connect to internet.

I just set up a MacBook Pro for my mother. Updated to latest macOS Sonoma 14.whatever. No Apple ID. Local account.

Didn’t have to disconnect the internet either, for that matter.

I’m fairly sure but not certain the exact same thing can be done on iPhone - the Apple ID is required for the store, not the device.

Why compare apples (ha) to oranges, that is iPhone to Windows?

> I’m fairly sure but not certain the exact same thing can be done on iPhone - the Apple ID is required for the store, not the device

I know, but an iPhone is not very useful with just the standard apps, most of which also require an Apple ID by the way.

At least on Android you can sideload everything you need (which is what I do actually - I never log in to a Google account on my Androids)

> Why compare apples (ha) to oranges, that is iPhone to Windows?

Because this model is what both Apple and Microsoft want to go towards. The chance to skim 30% off the top of every app purchase is something they deeply want. The only reason it's not enforced on macOS and Windows is that users will feel like something is being taken away from them.

On Windows it's now necessary to disconnect from the internet to make the local account option appear, and macOS is constantly reminding you with nags and red dots on the configuration panel ("Finish set-up of your new mac") to create an Apple ID.

Got me a week or two ago. 2018 Intel Mac mini on Monterey. Also did me the lovely convenience of changing my iCloud settings, my desktop background, and turned on screensavers.

I've also noticed that clicking on "x" means "Install now", but in my case it asks for my password first and I can deny that, preventing the install.

It didn’t ask me for my password and it somehow was able to try to do it, anyway. I managed to stop it in time through sheer luck.

That has never happened for me. I click X whenever I get a "New software available" notification and it has never once downloaded or installed anything.

While clicking on the notification itself (not the X) brings you to the Software Update section in System Preferences.

But I've never once triggered an install from the notification directly. (I have auto-install and auto-download both off in case that affects it.)

I've had both happen unfortunately too.

Click the X, it instantly asks you for your password to update.

Click the X, it for some reason decides that means it needs to open the Software Update settings screen. (and no, I'm not accidentally misclicking. This happens daily in an OSX VM I have on my M1)

I think there's sometimes a bug with the X. I totally believe you're not misclicking.

The X button has always been weird because it's not visible until you hover, it has a weird fade in, it's way too tiny, and it seems like sometimes the notification registers a click rather than the X. It's bad all around, and I don't understand why they still haven't improved it.

I have an x86 mac mini (last top spec hardware) running Catalina. It offers me the upgrade of course but to date has not forced me to upgrade.

Same here, so far so good, no forced upgrade.

Have you tried rebooting your Mac? Because on both of my Macs (a MBP 2020 and a Mac mini 2018, both running Ventura), the involuntary Sonoma upgrade only started once I manually rebooted the machine. Before the reboot, everything seemed normal and there was nothing indicating that the upgrade would take place.

After experiencing the issue on my MBP, I actually waited a couple days before I rebooted my Mac mini, and before I did so, I checked whether there was an "Install macOS Sonoma" app in the Applications folder (there was not). My (now proven incorrect) assumption was that the Sonoma installer would always come in form of such an app, like it did for previous versions of macOS.

For the past 5+ years, I've always waited at least 6-9 months before upgrading to a new major macOS version, and I am generally very careful about not upgrading accidentally. There is zero chance that I twice missed a notification or accidentally initiated the Sonoma upgrade myself.

Got a 2017 macbook, please force me to ugprade

Either this is an error on Apples part, or they have some motive for forcing Sonoma. My guess is that it's most likely an error, as I can see the motive for force installing an upgrade.

It's bad either way and a forced upgrade can mess with peoples production workflows. Sadly Apple is notoriously silent on these types of issues.

At least since the switch to streaming filesystem images, the Installer.app being a broken mess prone to infinitely attempting to install the same PKG forever and ever is no longer an update risk (personal record - non-hackintosh update taking a week till one reboot was lucky)

OPs log screenshot clearly shows that they _did_ in fact, authorize the installation _non-interactively_.

I wonder if it was a sudo permission thing and they were within the elevation timeout so it just automatically accepted for them in the background? That's what the log suggests to me.

This happened to me and I definitely had not authorized anything recently. I also looked at the logs on my machine and saw similar stuff. Even if I had, it still shouldn't have tried to upgrade me, because installing security point release updates requires a password authorization prompt every time. (It won't even accept Touch ID for it!) I ranted about it on Mastodon. Infuriating.

Yeah, it's probably just some user experience thing, like the keyring is unlocked because you're logged in so it's trying to be helpful by not making you enter a password again, but it's a little sketchy when the user has clearly toggled all of the update switches off.

Happened to me, but only on an unsupported iMac running Opencore patcher.

Hasn't happened to me on my daily drive MacBook Pro, which is running on Ventura just fine.

The site is dead

The site lives!

Mirror: https://archive.is/gPxwR

This also happened to me. Except I got lucky and noticed it was happening due to sudden inexplicable increase in local network traffic (thank you blinkenlights) and managed to stop it in time.

Here’s my story: https://merveilles.town/@cancel/111746895947244237

I only use my Mac for music production and compatibility testing, but honestly, between this and the overall shoddy and janky state of macOS, I’m reconsidering my future use of Macs at all.

Damn... if that's really the case then Apple should offer a written apology to those affected.

Either due to the very serious bug they somehow pushed out, and/or the existence of some seriously corrupt folks within their software team.

> I’m reconsidering my future use of Macs

Just FYI, this is a valid reason to switch to Linux, but absolutely not a valid reason to switch to Windows.

Yeah. I have a special installation of Windows that I keep locked down and prevent automatic upgrades. I don't recommend it unless you really need Windows. I also boot Linux and prefer it overall, but some things are not good experiences there (game graphics development)

I've used all 3 OSs since the 90s.

> I have a special installation of Windows that I keep locked down and prevent automatic upgrades.

Could you share more? I have an old MacBook with Windows that I use for games and I’d like to have it as locked down as possible with as little effort as possible.

There are a bunch of ways to do it. If you have a standard version of Windows like Home or Pro, there are scripts and config files on GitHub repos, with directions.

I know there are a lot of ways to do it and used one of them myself. But it hasn’t stopped nagging for updates and at one point didn’t even allow shutting off without an update.

I already trudged through a bunch of them, each with their own specific set of features. What I was looking for was a specific recommendation to compare to what I already know.

I'm sure it is possible, but I have spent so much time with it already without a consistent success, that I gave up.

I have come to terms with Windows doing this and I will keep complaining any time the topic comes up.

Because your MacBook does not support TPM, you never have to worry about it upgrading to Windows 11.

But it still upgrades to different versions of Windows 10, and as far as I know those tend to turn on things you turned off, such as different kinds of telemetry.

> Just FYI, this is a valid reason to switch to Linux, but absolutely not a valid reason to switch to Windows.

I have been bitten by bad Linux upgrades many, many times.

OpenBSD has been the most consistent OS I have used upgrade-wise, but might not support all the tools the original comment needs for music production.

> this is a valid reason to switch to Linux

Not if it's a flavour that uses snaps.

Yeah I am having to downgrade to Ventura. There is a nasty external monitor bug where I can’t use HDMI to my TV anymore over a USB-C adapter. Ventura it works just fine though. But, I upgraded to fix a preview bug in Ventura where Preview will make edited PDFs password protected randomly.

Ugh, maybe I will give Asahi a try one of these days. Love Apple hardware but software, which used to be rock solid, is definitely janky these days.

Mac is just a tiny $30B/yr unit, probably didn't even get space in the spaceship. Thought of dressing up as a beggar on Tantau with a trashcan pro change can labeled "Will fix MacOS bugs for money".

>> s it possible you accidentally authorized it when you thought you were authorizing something else?

You can see in the logs screenshot what the request for EULA and the 'acceptance' has the same timestamp. Marvelous.

This is unusual and I hope it stays to be unusual. I prefer to update my Macs when I decide it is the right time.

Meanwhile, my Windows machine updates itself whenever, often even in the middle of overnight computing tasks.

> Meanwhile, my Windows machine updates itself whenever, often even in the middle of overnight computing tasks.

This pushed me to Mac. Being more Unix-like, it's vastly better in terms of the control I have over the system. But I'm still not a 100% owner of my platform, so I now use an actual Linux server to run compute tasks.

There's a nice synergy between using Mac and Linux - many of the same scripts, commands, and concepts work identically.

> There's a nice synergy between using Mac and Linux - many of the same scripts, commands, and concepts work identically.

I switched to a Mac a few months ago from Windows and I kinda hate the small differences with Linux, I like WSL much better. On top of my head,

- No systemd

- No native docker

- No valgrind (there is https://github.com/LouisBrunner/valgrind-macos though)

I basically have to install a Linux VM on Mac just for this, at which point WSL on Windows is a much better tradeoff IMO.

I'm not super familiar with WSL; does it allow you full access to all your files, or is it a fenced-off environment?

On my Mac I have various cronjobs and scripts running that work copy-paste the same as on a real server. I even have Nginx serving static files for local development!

Easily. Your Windows C: drive is in /mnt/c in WSL.

And your WSL root (/) is in e.g. \\wsl.localhost\Ubuntu on Windows.

It’s too late for me, but that’s quite nice actually.

I recall the forced update on windows 10 booted some anti poaching rangers off their machines used for gps coordination for like 12hrs in the African bush where they had already poor internet connection and potentially lost some endangered animals.

Due to a forced software update, the rhino is now a bit closer to extinction. Windows must be stopped!

Reading this on my MacBook Pro running Linux

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