Apple Seeds First Public Beta of macOS 14.4

Apple today seeded the first beta of an upcoming macOS Sonoma 14.4 update to public beta testers, allowing non-developers to test the software ahead of its launch. The public beta comes a day after Apple released the developer beta.

macos sonoma 4
Beta testers can opt-in through the Software Update section of the System Settings app. Under Beta updates, simply toggle on the Sonoma Public Beta. Note that you must sign up to participate on Apple's beta testing website.

macOS Sonoma 14.4 introduces some of the features in the iOS 17.4 beta, such as new emoji characters. We don't know what Mac-specific features are included, but nothing new was found in the developer beta.

Related Forum: macOS Sonoma

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Top Rated Comments

masterhiggins Avatar
15 months ago
I wish Apple would stop holding Logic versions hostage to newer OS releases. It's annoying how they arbitrarily decide which version you can install based on which OS release you have. Don't tell me Ventura can't run the latest version of Logic, dude.
Score: 8 Votes (Like | Disagree)
magdogg Avatar
15 months ago
Man I’m sick of hearing about new emojis.
Score: 8 Votes (Like | Disagree)
ChrisA Avatar
15 months ago

I wish Apple would stop holding Logic versions hostage to newer OS releases. It's annoying how they arbitrarily decide which version you can install based on which OS release you have. Don't tell me Ventura can't run the latest version of Logic, dude.
I worked in the software business for a long time. What happens is the Logic developers want to improve their product. Perhaps they are trying to shave a millisecond off of latency in some parts of the system. So they go to the OS developers and beg for some small change and the change is approved then it gets used. This is good but now Logic is tied to the latest OS.

A solution is to look at run-time what OS is being used and then branch the code to take advantage of the new way or not. But this doubles the code size and the check slows it down.

Also what must skew the decision for them is that Logic and Garage Band are almost the same software and GB ships with the OS. They can't let GB and Logic diverge or they would need to maintain two separate code bases.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Realityck Avatar
15 months ago
Reposting to this thread

Comparison of 14.4 beta to previous 14.3 RC

macOS 14.4 beta (23E5180j)

* Safari Version 17.4 (19618.1.11.11.3)
* System Firmware Version: 10151.100.738.0.1 (M1 based Macs)
* Darwin Kernel Version 23.4.0: Fri Jan 12 22:41:06 PST 2024; root:xnu-10063.100.610.0.2~19/RELEASE_ARM64_T8103 arm64

macOS 14.3 RC (23D56)

* Safari Version 17.3 (19617.2.4.11.8)
* System Firmware Version: 10151.81.1 (M1 based Macs)
* Darwin Kernel Version 23.3.0: Wed Dec 20 21:30:27 PST 2023; root:xnu-10002.81.5~7/RELEASE_ARM64_T8103 arm64

* Apple Music/TV now 1.4.4.29 was 1.4.3.27

Note the higher build letter to start "j"

Stability wise so far it's been running fine. I don't think I seen the weird text shifts bug with forum posts yet.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
jayryco Avatar
15 months ago
Uhhh can they hurry up and add karaoke feature to Apple Music on MacOS. lol I wanna have sing alongs while I'm working DAMMIT!!!
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Harry Haller Avatar
15 months ago
And when it's the only feature mentioned.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)