About the OS X Yosemite v10.10.4 Update | Hacker News Reader

About the OS X Yosemite v10.10.4 Update

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90 pointstachion75 comments

Here's hoping "Addresses an issue that prevented some external displays from functioning properly" means what I think it means.

Ever since Mavericks, plugging in HDMI would randomly send audio either to the display or through the laptop, shuffling whenever the laptop was opened/closed, with no ability to switch it in the OS. This meant using it as a desktop machine was always preceded by a minute of rage-filled un-plugging/re-plugging until it worked.

Observed with every Apple laptop I've owned since (two Airs and a Retina Pro) and two different displays (one ViewSonic, one Dell), so not a hardware issue. Don't understand how this was broken for so long or why I've never seen anyone complain about it.

edit: came up 3 times below: changing the output device in the OS does not work. it would always either result in no output at all, or continuing to output to the laptop (can't remember which, might be a mix of both).

Hold Option/Alt while clicking the speaker icon on the menu bar, and it'll give you a list of output devices to choose from

I've had a similar problem where it would sometimes think my lineout speakers also have a microphone. This trick doesn't work because it completely removes the "Internal microphone" option, replacing it with a nonfunctional "External microphone" option.

that's useful.

Also buried in System Preferences -> Sound -> Output (or Input), along with some additional controls like balance and a preview of the input level.

/Applications/Utilities/Audio MIDI Setup.app

replied here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9806321 - switching audio to the hdmi device had no effect

Unless I'm misunderstanding your audio problem, you can choose the output device by option clicking the volume in the menu bar. You'll get this: http://i.imgur.com/tvkWjqW.png

The same setting is also available through the Sound pane in the System Preferences.

Tried that every time, and it had no effect. Both devices would show up but it'd send audio through the laptop regardless.

I've found a fast way to 'reset' the audio ins/outs is with `sudo pkill coreaudiod`-- stops audio for 1 second but I can always get the right device selected afterwards.

the crappy audio is a yosemite bug

On my MBP (original 2012 Retina), when an HDMI display is plugged in, HDMI audio and the internal speakers show up as separate audio devices; I haven't had any problems with this on Mavericks or Yosemite. At the risk of impertinence, are you sure you don't see multiple audio devices? What is the working one named when using HDMI audio vs. the speakers?

They'd both show up, and one (the HDMI option) would not function; it'd always send audio through the laptop. Can't play with it now as it's across the country.

oh! I see, having this issue, sometimes my skype rings on my external display while using headphones, was quite annoying.

also don't know if my mbp retina hardware or software, but sometimes my display blinks, it also happen with my old mbp (2010) but was not till updated to mountain lion, so maybe is a software issue too? (din't check it, will wait to read some feedback about the update)

I'd be suspicious about the display blinking; I used to get that and it ended up being a faulty power source (no ground, in my case).

Skype issue might just be Skype configuration; they may have their own settings for which device to use, which tends to get out of sync with OS configuration.

oh! will add ground then to my laptop

don't know about the skype, maybe, but this happen sometimes only, seems to be random

I've experienced similar issues using DisplayPort. I resorted to using Soundflower to properly route the audio - except that the problem persists in such a way that soundflower crashes at least once an hour. People experience zero problems on the same hardware running windows, so it is definitely a software issue.

For those thinking that it is as simple as picking the audio from the output list - that is the desired behavior. When you select your monitor as the output, the selector successfully switches, but your audio output is lost in limbo, or continues to play through the built-in-speakers of your laptop.

Good to know I'm not alone there; sounds like exactly the same issue. For me it would happen with both Mini DisplayPort -> HDMI and HDMI -> HDMI (on the Pro).

Maybe this is similar to my issue when I connect to my HDMI TV: If I plug in my audio output (1/8" cable) before connecting the HDMI, I'll briefly see a "NO" symbol with the audio (something like this: https://josephhall.org/nqb2/media/blogs/nqb2/stuck-on-mute.j...).

The workaround I've been using is to disconnect the audio cable, wait a second or two, and reconnect the audio cable. After that, I can send audio to my receiver and video to the HDMI.

I recently bought a new MBP which requires a reboot if you wake from sleep with an HDMI monitor attached.

Odd, I ran into a completely different display bug with Yosemite: when I upgraded, my MBP stopped outputting video above 1024x640 to the 27" Dell display I had been previously using at work. I looked around online and found that it was a fairly common (and unresolved) problem, so I ended up switching to two smaller monitors instead.

Glad to see discoveryd is toast. That's a big win and hopefully it's a symptom that some manager on the OS X team is starting to notice how sloppy development has gotten in the last few years.

On a related note, how insane is it that a minor patch like preventing JS `alert()`s from clobbering the browser has to be rolled into a full OS update? When will Safari auto-update like a regular app?

The odd thing is that Safari usually does update separately from OS X. (Unlike Safari on iOS.)

It sounded like a pretty major bug to me. Essentially a website could hijack the entire browser before now, presumably forcing the user to restart the app. For quite some time, Chrome and Firefox have had that little checkbox on alerts, stopping the site sending any more.

Major bug and minor patch can go together. Often a problem has big consequences but a small fix, and that's likely the case here.

That is the parent poster’s point. If Safari were patched independently of the operating system, issues like this could be addressed independently of monolithic system updates.

Safari _is_ updated independently in OS-X.

Maybe this update coincided close enough to the roll out of the OS update that it was included in this release.

Security patches don't count.

For quite some time, Chrome and Firefox have had that little checkbox on alerts, stopping the site sending any more.

For quite some time, Safari has had this option (though I don't know for how long). Too bad it doesn't work.

So happy to see discoveryd gone and replaced with good old mDNSResponder. No more crazy hangs in DNS resolving and hopefully no more random hung IMAP connections in Mail.app.

The quality of Mail.app in last months was so poor that after years of swithing from webmail to Mail.app, I've went back to webmail to have a usable mail client again. And hey, lower interruption noise comes free! ;)

Microsoft's new Outlook client is excellent on both iOS and Mac.

Does the iOS client still send all of your email through Microsoft?

That's probably the only way they are able to deliver push notifications.

I have the new Outlook for Mac. On the first day I tried it it would crash instantly because of an email in my mail account without a sender or receiver or body or subject. After a few days of having a useless Microsoft support tech rebuilding the Outlook index 10-15 times and disabling the built in firewall I finally stumbled upon someone online telling me to search for empty emails in my webmail.

After I got Outlook to work again it would only crash 3-5 times a day (logs for one of the days: http://fluffyelephant.com/2015/02/outlook-for-mac-v15-6-is-u... ). It was like that for a few months, now it only crashes a couple of times a week.

And I'm the lucky one. My boss had his Outlook crash on launch after 3 months of using it. Microsoft couldn't even get the data out (calendar, contacts, sent messages) and he had to go back to the old Outlook and Microsoft even messed that up so bad that he could only use the calendar in day mode (not week of month) for a few weeks.

So my suggestions. Apple has started to make shoddy software as of late, they still have a long way down though until they reach the Microsoft level. Even if they hired the shittiest developers for 5 years, I would still choose Apple over Microsoft.

Interesting. Mine has crashed a few times since it came out late last year (6-8 months) but I think that's pretty consistent with what's technically still a preview build for Office 2016.

My morning commute involves 2-3 minutes before my train enters a tunnel for 5-10 minutes. I'd like to check my morning emails in that time, but I never manage to get my laptop to connect to the Amtrak WiFi by then. I had always blamed Amtrak for the problem, until I brought my work Thinkpad one day and it connected immediately.

I'm beginning to suspect the DNS redirection used for the Amtrak WiFi splash page confuses discoveryd.

I've been super disappointed with Yosemite's networking. It takes forever to connect to an access point, and Instant Hotspot works maybe 30% of the time between my rMBP and iPhone 6+.

The instant hotspot thing stopped behaving for me and the fix has been to click on the bluetooth menu and mouse over the phone connection over and over. I have no idea why this works or if it even does anything, but so far I've had no problem connecting when I do it and when I don't it times out.

I currently have to cycle my wifi several times/day. This better fix that.

Yes, I have the same problem. Not only with my MBP though, with my iPad as well so I'm not sure we're going to get the fix :-/

Ouch. Looks like I'm going to continue running Mavericks for now.

I wrote an Automator script to toggle my wifi on and off and set it to run every time my MBP wakes from sleep. You can download it here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/35wywi0v53a29kn/Twiddle%20Wifi.app... (It's just the Automator script saved as a .app file)

I had an issue where every page request resulted in 'Resolving host...' for about 10-30 seconds before the page would begin loading. Also, songs took forever to start in Spotify. At first I attributed the problem to a hung Time Machine backup. But, turns out it was caused by Boom 2 for Mac:

http://www.globaldelight.com/globaldelightforum/discussion/1...

As soon as I disabled Boom 2 Remote, which was enabled by default, the problem went away. They acknowledged it in an email to customers:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/spa/w9y331nq8d0g5zi/m29dyu...

It's weird they haven't included iTunes 12.2 which appears to be required to listen to the Beats1 launch (which started broadcasting like 3 minutes ago) and Apple Music.

...12.2 also nowhere to be found to download...weird timing Apple

Doesn't iTunes always get pushed separately as it supports old versions of OS X ?

It still seems like they would have it available somewhere when they have giant "Try Now" buttons all of the Apple Music site.

iOS 8.4 is out too.

It has not fixed the issue I've had recently with audio playback randomly pausing for no discernable reason.

I haven't played with it enough to know if it fixes the problems with the podcast app crashing (and taking Springboard down with it) or the random audio pops from buffer under-runs when the iPhone is under load (switching apps, etc.)

Any chance you have either the 64GB iPhone 6 or the 128GB iPhone 6 Plus? Apple initially manufactured those using TLC NAND flash but stopped because it caused stability issues. I've had a lot of problems with mine although the iOS updates seem to be improving things.

I have a 128GB iPhone 6. But I don't have stability issues with any other apps, only Podcasts seems to do it. I also don't remember it being a problem around 8.0 or maybe 8.1. It didn't start until later.

I've seen this on old headphones, where the contact isn't good, causing the device to think the headphones have been removed, thus pausing the music.

That makes sense, but I've also had it happen while nothing was plugged into my iPhone.

I can't help but think some background process is crashing and so the iPhone is pausing the music as a result.

I have a 128g 6+, for whatever reason on just one wifi network when I activate the vpn, I can reliably blue screen the phone.

Note I'm not joking its a giant screen of blue then boom restart. I assume that is a kernel panic of sorts. But this one wifi network has "enterprise" level wpa. Just annoying to no end.

I was having the same issue with my iPhone 5s a couple of days ago.

Apparently, it's specific to a T-Mobile update and using calling over Wi-Fi.

[0] http://americasmarkets.usatoday.com/2015/06/25/iphones-hit-w...

Interesting, will see if anything there helps thanks for the heads up!

I have a 16gb 4S (Q_Q) that has the exact same stability problems with Podcasts. It drives me nuts, it crashes frustratingly often while I'm driving to work in the morning.

I have the exact opposite problem; while paused or idle after completing a playlist the audio playback will randomly start playing some time later. It's infuriating.

Does the random pausing happen when using headphones? I've had this happen occasionally when using non-Apple headphones. I think what was happening for me is that the input jack would "wobble" in and out a bit and I think iOS interpreted that to be the pause button being pressed on Apple headphones.

Update: No, I can still cause buffer under-runs during podcasts by opening lots of Safari tabs and app-switching fast.

Finally.

I've had a new macbook for a month and had a linux laptop previously. I just couldn't believe people were using this thing with such an instable network connection.

The thing is, for a ton of people it's not really an issue. I use a Mac (and various gizmos) at home and one at work and other than the occasional "(2)" showing up on computers and more AirPlay flakiness with AppleTV it hasn't effected me.

It's one of those thing that, for whatever reason, is never noticed by most people. But some people (like you it seems) get bit HARD and it becomes a huge hurdle to using the computer.

I've been in exactly the same boat, and am really glad a fix is here now!

I hope there's a secret fix here to my problem where the mouse and keyboard won't wake the sleeping iMac. I've had to switch to a different wireless keyboard and mouse which don't use Bluetooth for this to work. Yosemite is fine on my MacBook Air, but in my 2.5 year old iMac its performance is awful - I've never seen so many spinning beach balls.

I have a similar problem. When I unplug my keyboard and monitors from my MBP, my hardware keyboard/trackpad stop working. Sometimes I can get it to work by locking the screen (using bluetooth trackpad) and "switching users" and when on that screen my hardware will start working again. But that's about 50/50. The other half of the time I have to reboot.

I have this problem too. For me, it'll start working again if I just plug in a USB cable and then unplug it. It's really weird but it always works.

Every morning I do the bluetooth dance to connect my MacBook and use iMac as display:

1. turn off bluetooth on MacBook

2. remote login to iMac from MacBook via ssh

3. turn on bluetooth on iMac using blueutil (http://www.frederikseiffert.de/blueutil/)

4. login to iMac

5. press Cmd+F2 to project MacBook to iMac

6. turn off bluetooth on iMac using blueutil

7. turn on bluetooth on MacBook and I have a working dual monitor setup

I have to turn off sleep mode else another dance is needed!

Bluetooth is a nightmare for me because my household has two people using the same devices. You have to do a crazy shuffle to actually use the device you want to, and stop using devices you don't want to.

It wasn't designed with multiple users in mind at all.

Was anyone else's update through the App Store going really slow? The time left was fluctuating between 1 hour and 6 hours.

I finally got fed up, did a google search and found this: https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1819?viewlocale=en_US&locale=... Started that download, and it finished within a couple minutes (I have 1 Gbps internet).

Similar (if not the same) file size as the App Store download: ~1GB. Does the App Store intentionally slow down downloads so as to not use up all my bandwidth? If so, seems like a sloppy implementation. I'd rather get that 1GB download done with than have to worry for hours about closing my laptop or losing my wifi connection.

Interesting that they seems to be bundling UEFI firmware updates with it too.

The current version has a _very_ serious vulnerability, where when the system wakes from suspend on pre-mid-2014 models the entire UEFI BIOS is writable [0]. This could lead to wipe-proof rootkits. It initially appeared that their advice was going to be "buy a new macbook", so I'm very happy to see they bundled firmware updates along with this :)

[0] https://reverse.put.as/2015/05/29/the-empire-strikes-back-ap...

Now, what about things like accessing boot services memory after ExitBootServices?

Doesn't appear to fix the issue with randomly sending blasts of full volume static to bluetooth audio devices... Thanks Apple.

I used to have that actually. For what it's worth (probably not much), it appears to be fixed in El Capitan

"Improves ... Improves ... Improves .. Addresses."

What the fuck is in the actual update?

Nice with the downvotes, but the announcement does not actually say what software is included. Totally valid question.

Clearly they are dancing around the fact that fucking up DNS broke all of their applications, I just would like an actual changelog.

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