What you need to know
- Apple released macOS 10.15.4 to the public earlier today.
- I've been having issues since, including Finder refusing to work and full system lockups.
- It's not just me and I can't decide if that's good or bad.
Apple released macOS 10.15.4 to the public earlier this week and I've been running it on my 2018 Mac mini and 2015 MacBook Pro ever since. It's largely been fine, too. Except when it hasn't. And when it hasn't, it's really gone to town.
The first time I had a Finder window freeze I put it down to being one of those things. Then it did it again. Then it took an age to open a shared folder. I put it all down to strange little bugs and got on with my life. After all, we've unfortunately come to expect those every-so-often. Especially when it comes to macOS.
Then things got real when my whole machine ground to a halt yesterday. I had a few apps open – no more than usual – when my mouse pointer stopped moving. It eventually moved a bit and then stopped again. That pattern then repeated a few times. Sometimes just working enough for me to try to get everything working again.
It was more than a little irritating because I was in the middle of work that I hadn't saved, obviously But that's on me.
Eventually, the only way I could get anything working again was to restart the whole machine. Force-quitting Finder didn't do enough to wake everything up because it never re-loaded. I was dead in the water after that.
A restart fixed everything, for now. And I assumed it was all just one of those things. And then I spotted this comment from Stephen Hacket – of Relay.fm fame – on Twitter.
https://twitter.com/ismh/status/1243530005965127686
Why yes, Stephen. Since you ask, I am. Not only am I not alone, but there were also plenty of responses to Hacket's tweet, too.
So now I'm handing it over to you. Are you having problems with a Mac doing strange things and just generally being rubbish since updating to macOS 10.15.4? Answers on a postcard, please. Or in the comments below. Whichever you prefer.
Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too.
Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.
