Worth upgrading to macOS 14?

By jim pickens, 4 April, 2024

Forum
macOS and Mac Apps

the subject, are the bugs miner enough to upgrade smoothly?

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By Bruce Harrell on Thursday, April 4, 2024 - 18:14

I hope we get people sharing their opinions here. I'm still on Ventura, and Apple doesn't allow downgrading.

By TheBllindGuy07 on Thursday, April 4, 2024 - 18:14

As a student, the ability of braille representation of mathml content in nemeth code was enough for me to enjoy the worst bugs since 14.0 stable. VO J is not the same on web as it would link all the html region such as main in it to whic hdoesn't make sence, sometimes when downloading a file VO doesn't announce anything when in the column view of folders in the finder popup (think this was on ventura too). The quick nav modification aren't at all stable enough for an upgrade yet if you plan to rely on this, especially useful information for windows users like me guys it's still a mess. Exfat apparently have some problems which is beyond VO but quite present on reddit and elsewhere... Up to you. I don't know much about previous version before the version of ventura last july, so other users can tell you better about the bugs. Oh! Safari not responding bug? Big, big, big! improvements since 14.2. But the not responding bug seems spreading out in other apps but not near as dammaging for productivity than snr was. Like gmail standard view works now in chrome and safari with 100 messages. ...

By Maldalain on Thursday, April 4, 2024 - 18:14

As far as I can tell the upgrade won’t bring features nor bugs.

By PaulMartz on Thursday, April 4, 2024 - 18:14

My first thought is: Do you have a reason to upgrade? Is there some compelling new feature you've got to have? Did you upgrade your iPhone and now need to upgrade your Mac so you can sync them? Or any other reason. Think about it. What's in it for you?

And my second thought is that you don't know what the latest Sonoma is going to break until you've played around with it for a while.

Here's an example. One of the new bugs is sluggishness in Safari. It's mild and unnoticeable on most websites, no problem 99.999% of the time. I found one website, a real corner case, that demonstrates the issue pretty well, but still figured I could live with the bug. Then, today, I ran into a website that made that corner case look like child's play. Just pressing VO+Right arrow causes a 4 or 5 second delay. I'm not kidding. It's going to take me hours to complete this task, and it's not the kind of thing where I can save my work and come back to finish it on another browser. So, a website that has taken me maybe an hour or two to work through is going to take me more than a day to complete, thanks to this bug.

Here's another example. In a few weeks, I'm co-leading a training session on how to use the Wordpress block editor. So, this morning, for the first time since upgrading to Sonoma, I opened the editor to refresh my memory. And all sorts of new stuff is broke since the last time I used it.

Back to the original question. Are the bugs miner enough to upgrade smoothly. If you're asking, will life be problem free after your upgrade, my answer is that it will depend on whether you hit any of these bugs or not. I've used Sonoma for weeks with only minor hassles. But today I am wishing I stayed on Ventura.

By Bruce Harrell on Thursday, April 4, 2024 - 18:14

I can live with Ventura. I'd rather downgrade to Monterey or even Catalina, but we little children aren't allowed to do that, doubtless due to perfectly legitimate technical reasons.

Thanks for your comments, neighbors.

By Zachary on Thursday, April 4, 2024 - 18:14

Quick correction, you can absolutely downgrade macOS at any time. Apple has instructions on how to get older versions, and while the process is a little involved and requires that you erase your drive it can certainly be done if you have time.

By mr grieves on Thursday, April 4, 2024 - 18:14

When I was on Ventura I was pretty unhappy with it, which is why I slightly recklessly upgraded to the first Sonoma. It was nothing short of a disaster for me. Since then they have fixed a couple of the new bugs but my impression is still that Sonoma is the same as Ventura but with more bugs on top. I can't think of anything that was broken in Ventura that is now better in Sonoma.

Now my memory is a little hazy on what is new to Sonoma and what is not. But in Sonoma, I can't navigate properly by heading any more if the heading has a child in it. This is really annoying. Manually switching activity doesn't work properly if you have activities that automatically switch by app. The terminal doesn't seem to speak as reliably as before (given that before it was hardly perfect). I get a lot of Safari Not Responding issues. I can't read tables if they are dynamically filtered in Javascript. And there generally seem to be a few more focus issues than I remember. And VO+J seems to be a lot less useful now. Oh and I can't navigate properly inside text fields any more (pressing left and right in the Subject field in APplevis for example doesn't work, you have to use more workarounds)

It's funny - I think sometimes you get almost so used to these bugs that it's hard to recall them all. Certainly I would say that my experience of Ventura was that I was constantly battling it at every turn. Everything I did needed some kind of workaround - either a bit of mental gymnastics to figure out what I was being told, or having to repeat things over and over again to get it to work, or just frantically trying different ways of moving about to find the magic one that would work. Trying to edit text in any form is still unbearably annoying. My unscientific view of Sonoma is that I get all that plus more bugs and irritation than before.

So 14.0 was much, much worse than Ventura. 14.4.1 is just a fair bit worse.

In terms of new features, it's hard to think of anything much. The Safari web apps are quite good if they work. The indentation noise is certainly less sluggish but also a tad harder to make out but probably better on balance. The context switching activity feature could be helpful if it applied to any apps I used and if it explained itself properly. If you use Eloquence you may find the new options good for you.

If you are used to single key navigation on Windows you may find the experience is a lot better for you. This is something I don't use but I understand it has been decoupled from quick nav now.

None of that is particularly compelling to me.

I would say if it's not broke, don't fix it. But we know that's not how it works on the Mac. Ventura was badly broken which makes this kind of decision harder.

But as has been said before, your mileage may vary.

By jim pickens on Thursday, April 4, 2024 - 18:14

just read the macos 14.4.1 release thread, and this seams like public beta 1 for macos14.0

By mr grieves on Thursday, April 4, 2024 - 18:14

I didn't suffer from it too badly on Ventura, in Sonoma it became much worse. Then after it was announced to be fixed it did seem better but that didn't last long for me. I now get it all the time.

That's not to say it might not be better for some, but the "surely it can't be any worse" feeling is what made me make the mistake of upgrading to 14.0 in the first place.

By Siobhan on Thursday, April 4, 2024 - 18:14

It makes no sense why these posts come up version after version. I'm not you, the nine comments before this, aren't either. we can't control how you use a mac. some people get the safari not responding and it is a large issue. Some, such as myself, do not. Yet that's no reason for me to discredit their anger at a bug long held that hasn't been fixed. Does your Mac decide randomly not to arrow through email? If it didn't and mine does, would that stop me from upgrading? No, because my use case is different. You have to rely on your ability to use tech and decide on your own if upgrading is worth it. If you choose not to, and want to wait until a later release, that's up to you. However you'll probably have things you might want to try and your comp might not be able to handle it if you wait a long time. I can't decide, only you can and should. Whatever your decision, it's based on your use case, not what others tell anyone.

By mr grieves on Thursday, April 4, 2024 - 18:14

I both agree and disagree.

When I upgraded to Sonoma 14.0, the release thread looked really innocuous. There was nothing major reported and it seemed like a pretty safe bet to me. And I was totally unprepared for the horrors that lay ahead. I don't know if it's because I'm using my Mac in an unusual way, or if I just have significantly less patience than others or what it is. So in that case, I agree.

However, I don't think there is anything wrong about asking the question and trying to get a general consensus of whether most people think it is better than worse than Ventura. Upgrading the mac feels like a big calculated risk, so how else are we going to make any kind of informed decision about it?

When macos 15 comes out I don't really know what I will do. The only place I know I can get even any feel for it at all is here.

It's a shame that the downgrade process is so convoluted. I think I will have to learn how it works properly before I go anywhere near macos 15.

By Siobhan on Thursday, April 4, 2024 - 18:14

I guess I'll disagree again. I just don't understand how it's a calculated risk, no one can predict what your Mac will do, not even you. I'm not discounting the "horrors" you've had, but how can anyone tell you it's safe, or other words of encouragement to do so? You took the chance, and sadly you're having issues that are annoying for you. I don't assume anything but you are using the computer in the best way you know how. Now, if I or any one else on here can help maybe give you a shorter way of doing things, I'm sure your inbox would be filled with suggestions and tips. In the end, it's your choice and only yours. I just won't understand these questions being asked because, no one can decide except you. You thought you were getting an easy upgrade. for myself, it was, you it was not and that's just how the tech gods play I guess? I just won't ever understand so put me in the corner with the dunce cap on facing the wall. :)

By mr grieves on Thursday, April 4, 2024 - 18:14

I don't think anyone is arguing that it is a personal decision. But I think it's a perfectly sensible question to ask, but what you do with the responses should be entirely up to you. I think most people have qualified their replies as such.