Apple pulls buggy macOS Mojave Security Update, Safari 14

AppleInsider · October 1, 2020 8:25PM

Apple appears to have pulled the latest macOS Mojave Security Update, as well as the Safari 14 download for macOS Mojave, after users ran into a slew of problems.

Credit: Apple

According to Mr. Macintosh, some of the issues that users experienced include problems with memory, slow boot and high fan speeds, system sluggishness, and stalls in Finder, among other problems. Apple pulled both updates at around 5 p.m. Eastern on Sept. 30.

Complaints about the update started to surface shortly after it was released on Sept. 24, though the Safari 14 update for Mojave was released on Sept. 16. The exact update for macOS Mojave was Security Update 2020-005, and it addressed a number of security vulnerabilities in Mail, ImageIO, and the Sandbox.

Users who are still running the updates on macOS Mojave machines should expect some type of patch or fix soon. Reports suggest that reinstalling the operating system, reverting to a prior Time Machine backup, or updating to macOS Catalina could also mitigate the issues.

No problems were reported for the Sept. 24 macOS Catalina Security Update or the Safari 14 update for that operating system.

wolke7 · October 1, 2020 8:43PM

AppleInsider said:
No problems were reported for the Sept. 24 macOS Catalina Security Update or the Safari 14 update for that operating system.

Not true for me. Immediately after the Security Update my MacBook Pro 2012 got into a state with high fan speeds and system sluggishness.
The accountsd process was going crazy, eating up all my cpu! Killing the process or rebooting several times did not help. finally I could fix it by resetting the system keychain....

spamsandwich · October 1, 2020 8:46PM

Ugh. Software development while all the teams are working independently must be a total nightmare for the usually collaborative Apple programmers.

surgefilter · October 1, 2020 8:56PM

Safari 14 has been a disaster in the past fortnight as far as the long-promised support by Apple of Google’s amazing .WEBP lossless image format that is finally making inroads against JPEG and PNG... with huge bandwidth savings on file sizes and being pushed heavily by Google for all websites trying to optimize for Lighthouse and Core Web Vitals performance analytics.

Works fine for standard pictures and backgrounds but if the .webp pic has an alpha channel transparency on a Z layer, the Safari v14 browser just doesn’t have a clue, whilst Chrome, Firefox and the others merrily display whatever you throw at them. In general it’s loading websites far slower since v14 than its competitors.

Thankfully I didn’t update my MacPro’s Mojave yet to have the other problems with the OS itself.

edited October 2020

cornchip · October 1, 2020 9:07PM

surgefilter said:

Safari 14 has been a disaster in the past fortnight as far as the long-promised support by Apple of Google’s amazing .WEBP lossless image format that is finally making inroads against JPEG and PNG... with huge bandwidth savings on file sizes and being pushed heavily by Google for all websites trying to optimize for Lighthouse and Core Web Vitals performance analytics.

Works fine for standard pictures and backgrounds but if the .webp pic has an alpha channel transparency on a Z layer, the Safari v14 browser just doesn’t have a clue, whilst Chrome, Firefox and the others merrily display whatever you throw at them. In general it’s loading websites far slower since v14 than its competitors.

Thankfully I didn’t update my MacPro’s Mojave yet to have the other problems with the OS itself.

I don’t trust google with a universal image format, but that’s just me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I've had a gloriously smooth iOS 14 experience so far. The infuriating phone and text bugs which were persistent on my SE Classic from the Jan or Feb update of iOS 13 seem to have been eliminated. And I’m loving all the new features and details, especially the security ones.

However, I’m right there with you as far as updating the MacPro; thank God I’ve been procrastinating on that!

mrmacintoshblog · October 1, 2020 9:43PM

Thanks for the link Mike!

Speaking of problematic updates, the 10.15.7 update has caused a few problems. I wrote about one that is causing problems for some iCloud users. For me, this issue is starting to drive more traffic than the 2020-005 Security update problem article!

https://mrmacintosh.com/catalina-10-15-7-update-accountsd-using-400-if-using-icloud-mail/

surgefilter · October 1, 2020 11:48PM

A 68.9Mb “macOS Supplemental Update” has just dropped there now in my Mojave Software Update.

Who’s brave enough here to try it too?

h2p · October 2, 2020 12:15AM

surgefilter said:

A 68.9Mb “macOS Supplemental Update” has just dropped there now in my Mojave Software Update.

Who’s brave enough here to try it too?

Funny!@hhh. I saw that a bit ago and -- I can wait ("/).

dm3 · October 2, 2020 4:46AM

wolke7 said:

AppleInsider said:
No problems were reported for the Sept. 24 macOS Catalina Security Update or the Safari 14 update for that operating system.

Not true for me. Immediately after the Security Update my MacBook Pro 2012 got into a state with high fan speeds and system sluggishness.
The accountsd process was going crazy, eating up all my cpu! Killing the process or rebooting several times did not help. finally I could fix it by resetting the system keychain....

I’m also having trouble since the update on Catalina. But I don’t see any process to blame. But fan goes full speed and system is frequently but periodically locking up. Like it’s so busy mouse won’t even move. Then a few seconds later it’s better but fan spun up the whole time with only 30% cpu usage.

I tried resetting SMC to see if that helps.

wolke7 · October 2, 2020 6:01AM

dm3 said:
I’m also having trouble since the update on Catalina. But I don’t see any process to blame. But fan goes full speed and system is frequently but periodically locking up. Like it’s so busy mouse won’t even move. Then a few seconds later it’s better but fan spun up the whole time with only 30% cpu usage.
I tried resetting SMC to see if that helps.

For me the hints on this link helped my solving this cpu issues on Catalina: https://appletoolbox.com/what-is-accountsd-and-what-does-it-have-to-do-with-the-mail-app-on-macos-catalina/#Turn_off_Keychain_Auto-Lock. ;

ditechspain · October 2, 2020 1:01PM

I'd assumed that my buggy operation on a 2012 Mac Mini was due to the Catalina update. The machine was constantly showing available RAM in single figure percentages, with very sluggish or frozen response. Dropping use of Safari 14 and closing it restored the lost memory, and using Firefox results in faster results and Ram remaining at 50+ to 76% free.

So for me, no problems with the Catalina update so far, but I can't see a single advantage for me in 14's new features and a major disadvantage with the loss of Top Sites.

dysamoria · October 2, 2020 5:33PM

[facepalm]

cyberzombie · October 2, 2020 10:07PM

wolke7 said:

AppleInsider said:
No problems were reported for the Sept. 24 macOS Catalina Security Update or the Safari 14 update for that operating system.

Not true for me. Immediately after the Security Update my MacBook Pro 2012 got into a state with high fan speeds and system sluggishness.
The accountsd process was going crazy, eating up all my cpu! Killing the process or rebooting several times did not help. finally I could fix it by resetting the system keychain...

Me too - since that patch, I have had almost daily reboots due to "watchdog timeout: no checkins from watchdogd in 90 seconds". Reminds me of Windows

rayz2016 · October 3, 2020 4:55AM

dysamoria said:

[facepalm]

For once, we agree.

Now should we do this first, or do the fix that requires users to wipe their phone and watch before doing this one?

Apple pulls buggy macOS Mojave Security Update, Safari 14

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