Are there cautions about new Sequoia 15.4.1 update?

If you are waiting for someone to tell you it’s okay to update you’ll never do it. Ten people may tell you it’s okay but if even one says they have issues you will hesitate. That thinking is your problem to deal with.

Remember, these forums are like a hospital. Only the sick come here while the rest of us are happily healthy using our Macs running Sequoia 15.4.1. If you went into a town’s hospital and saw only sick people would you conclude the entire town is unhealthy and choose not the live there? Think about that.

Finally, macOS Sequoia is nearing the end of its life cycle at 15.4.1 and the next version of macOS will likely be announced at WWDC this June. All major, show stopping issues have long been dealt with and future updates will likely concentrate on security flaws and newly discovered exploits. For this reason alone you should definitely update. Sequoia 15.4.1 fixed two security flaws that Apple thinks were being exploited in the real world. Sequoia 15.4 fixed over fifty.

And by the way, your profile says you are running 15.3. Are you satisfied? Is it performing well for you? Well, the version you are using was declared to be the worst ever update Apple has ever released by some users here. Every release of an update by Apple is declared to be faulty and show stopping by some. What does that tell you about listening to users here in the hospital?

eercolani wrote:

I have a new MacBook Pro with Sequoia 15.3.2. Concerned about doing updates on my new laptop, especially the updates for system and Pages, Keynote, Numbers, GarageBand. Please advise I don't want to lose my documents.

I would not expect to lose documents(?) Never had that as an experience, but I have only been using Mac's OS X since at least 2003. Of course your experience may have been different.

The current stable release of Sequoia including bug fixes, security updates is macOS 15.4.1

Keep your Mac up to date - Apple Support

Keep your Mac up to date - Apple Support

ref: Update macOS on Mac - Apple Support

eercolani wrote:

I have a new MacBook Pro with Sequoia 15.3.2. Concerned about doing updates on my new laptop, especially the updates for system and Pages, Keynote, Numbers, GarageBand. Please advise I don't want to lose my documents.

15.4.1 is mandatory now for all ~ 3000 employees with Macs where I work. No one has lost any documents. I did the update on the Mac I use and it executed in about 15 minutes with no issues. The Mac now stores its operating system in a separate sealed read-only volume Sealed Key Protection (SKP) - Apple Support (CA), so doing a MacOS update does not touch your documents, which are on a different volume. As others indicated, you are always protected if you make a backup before proceeding. I suggest two backups, and verify that they work by restoring a few selected files or folders. Apple's Time Machine comes built in to every Mac and works well for this.

The Other option you may what to explore.

So you No Longer get reply notifications

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Just below you posting and above the posting by @ ikrupp

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Click that Bell as few times until the Bell Appears Light in colour

refer illustration below

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Meaning, you should no longer receive emails to your question

As these forums are for users who have issues you are likely to see posts saying 15.4.1 is bad. Don’t believe that. Sequoia 15.4.1 is well into its current cycle and the vast majority of major bugs have been eliminated. What’s left are annoying glitches for SOME users, not all users.

Sequoia 15.4 patched some 50 security issues to protect users. You should update to 15.4.1 without equivocation.

Before updating it is always recommended by experienced users to BACKUP the files and documents you are concerned about. Better safe than sorry.

Red and Blue wrote:

I just updated to Sequoia 15.4.1, and it's still doing that behavior. The first time I tried it after the MacBook has been updated or restarted, if I highlight a file title text first and click the top edit button, it just says Copy. But as soon as I select a file without highlighting it and click the Edit button it will properly show the full title of the file after Copy. However after that if I double click and highlight another file, I don't even have to have copied the text of a previous file, just the fact that I opened the Edit function on the top bar while a file was selected will cause it to retain that title when I go to copy a double clicked text file of another file. I suggest you try it again--I'm pretty sure it's a universal bug, as several other people could reproduce it last year, including someone in AppleCare customer support I believe, when they correctly followed procedure.

Ok, I followed your steps carefully and I do see the behavior. But I'm not so sure it is a "bug" per se. It seems to be how Apple is retaining information or memory or history of a sequence of actions. I can see how some users (like you) would prefer this not be the behavior of the system, but others might want to see what their last step was in a sequence or series of actions.

Put another way -- it is not a bug because the correct item was indeed copied, as you yourself pointed out. It seems that by showing the last action, the OS is showing some history of what was last done. But the requested action (copy something) does occur correctly. You don't want to see what the previous file was in that menu item but some users might want that.

If this is something that will or should be changed, I would guess it is the lowest possible priority because it causes no harm. Some might consider it simply a feature. I cannot come up with any way that this is a security risk. If someone can access your Mac and click on files and filenames and then click on Edit menu items, they can do anything on that Mac anyway. Someone can always look over your shoulder anytime you use your Mac. I can't fathom how this is a security risk. Just like showing a list of files recently opened in a drop down menu is not a security risk either.

I don't think I would ever have noticed this behavior had I not read your post and I even had trouble reproducing it (but was finally able to). If this is the worst feature of 15.4.1, we're in pretty good shape with Sequoia.

Red and Blue wrote:

I submitted a video recording of the bug behavior to Apple but now I have to follow up and get them to this send it to engineering--thanks for reminding me about that with your comment.

Everyone needs a hobby...

Red and Blue wrote:

And your hobby seems to be making snide remarks on this forum. I did call back and talk to a different senior AppleCare representative. It turns out the previous rep didn't inform me I have to also download their capture data app and run it at the same time or within or 24 hours of making the video, so I'd have to do that again and the main issue is I do not wanna give them all that data. But she did make a report on it. And also I had her go through the steps. She was working on an 2022 iMac M1, and behave properly on her machine, in other words, after selecting a file, then going to another file double clicking to highlight it and then going to the top edit bar, simply said Copy with no title after it. She confirmed that's the proper behavior. I told her that someone on the forum here suggested it was a feature, and she laughed and said it wasn't a feature. So it may just be certain hardware has the bug. So now you continue can with your hobby of making snide remarks.

Much appreciated that you are running this important issue to ground. What are your next steps at this point?

Ha that maybe true re bug fixes, it depends if you value having your brother printer working. I finally figured it out - it's to do with Sequoia forcing the router to switch to 5GhZ, not 2.4GhZ under the wifi7 protocol. So I had to have a guy install a wifi bridge to sort it out - but man was it complicated to figure out.......Brother were useless, Apple too.

eercolani wrote:

Please do not reply anymore to my question. I first backed up with Time Machine. I successfully updated to 15.4.1 and then updated Pages, Numbers, Garage Band, and Keynote. All my documents and programs work! To everyone who replied to my question about the update, thank you.

It's great to hear that you resolved your issue successfully.

What you will be less successful with is getting people to stop replying to the thread. I'd advise just walking away. You don't need to participate any more if you don't want to.

Best of luck.

I updated several Mac's without any issues.

Update macOS on Mac - Apple Support

macOS updates improve stability, performance and compatibility.

What's new in the updates for macOS Sequoia - Apple Support

Regardless you should always have a good backup strategy.

Back up your Mac with Time Machine - Apple Support

I also do backups using CCC https://bombich.com/

I back up my documents daily (ok, hourly) to iCloud and weekly via Time Machine. I am preparing to update to 15.4.1, but have an M1 MBP. Does anyone know if there are any issues with M1s making this update, or as previously mentioned, have all the bugs been worked out? I use daily for school as well as for work, and despite backing up regularly, I just don't have the time for any BS. Any input would be appreciated.

Apple update Sequoia 15.4.1 has messed up my iMac.  For example,  Apple Mail has added back 5,000+ deleted emails into one account, deleted another email account, and restored a mail account that I haven’t used for ten years.  And shows as recent in Excel spreadsheets from 2013!!!

There is a bug I discovered and I have verified with others that was present from the beginning of Sequoia, which has not been corrected in any update up to 15.4.1, to which I'm about to update. The bug is, if in Finder, you highlight the title of a file by double clicking it, and then click the Edit button in the top menu bar, then choose Copy from the drop-down menu, unless you have just restarted your MacBook, "Copy" will be followed by the name of a file, but it will not be the file you have highlighted and are about to copy, it will be a previous file, either directly previously copied or sometimes several copies before. However, if you do copy that way the file title highlighted will be properly copied. The proper function should be that there is no title following the word "Copy", as when you do a right click and copy something from the drop-down menu, or how it has been from the top menu in all previous OS before Sequoia. Showing the title of file should only occur from the top menu bar if you click on the file once to select it with that highlighting the text, after which you can copy the entire file, not just the text of the title. This persistence of a file title in the Copy button from the Edit function of the top menu bar, in my opinion, can be a security issue if someone is using your computer and they see the name of a previous file copied that may have been private (no one else uses my computer so that particular issue is not concerned for me, but it's the principle). I have had titles persist in that copy button even after I deleted the original file it came from. I pointed this out to Apple several times even filing a bug report but they told me they didn't consider it a security issue. Nonetheless, it is a bug that has not been fixed. I hope it will be fixed in the next OS.

Red and Blue wrote:

There is a bug I discovered and I have verified with others that was present from the beginning of Sequoia, which has not been corrected in any update up to 15.4.1, to which I'm about to update. The bug is, if in Finder, you highlight the title of a file by double clicking it, and then click the Edit button in the top menu bar, then choose Copy from the drop-down menu, unless you have just restarted your MacBook, "Copy" will be followed by the name of a file, but it will not be the file you have highlighted and are about to copy, it will be a previous file, either directly previously copied or sometimes several copies before. However, if you do copy that way the file title highlighted will be properly copied. The proper function should be that there is no title following the word "Copy", as when you do a right click and copy something from the drop-down menu, or how it has been from the top menu in all previous OS before Sequoia. Showing the title of file should only occur from the top menu bar if you click on the file once to select it with that highlighting the text, after which you can copy the entire file, not just the text of the title. This persistence of a file title in the Copy button from the Edit function of the top menu bar, in my opinion, can be a security issue if someone is using your computer and they see the name of a previous file copied that may have been private (no one else uses my computer so that particular issue is not concerned for me, but it's the principle). I have had titles persist in that copy button even after I deleted the original file it came from. I pointed this out to Apple several times even filing a bug report but they told me they didn't consider it a security issue. Nonetheless, it is a bug that has not been fixed. I hope it will be fixed in the next OS.

That's interesting but I can't get Mac to exhibit this "bug." I am using a 2019 MacBook Pro (Intel). Is yours an Intel or a Silicon Mac? I will also try this on my M3 MacBook Pro when I get to it later today.