Apple Seeds Third Public Beta of macOS Sonoma 14.4

Apple today seeded the third 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 third public beta comes a week after Apple released the second public 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 has been found in the developer betas so far.

Related Forum: macOS Sonoma

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Top Rated Comments

Fuzzball84 Avatar
10 months ago

@Fuzzball84 don't get mad at us because you basically own a doorstop and want to feel good about yourself and call it a "2020 Mac mini"


I think you just highlighted what you're really trying to do here... there are people testing Mac OS Sonoma who want to ensure the best experience possible for themselves and others who own both intel and Apple silicon Macs (I also have intel and apple silicon Macs).

Humor and banter is allowed on here.. but people like yourself who appear more concerned with other activities that you'd usually find in the playground.

Going around calling peoples perfectly functional hardware doorstops will not get you many friends in the adult world.

You do realise there are active threads on here for vintage Macs etc?? People who are proud of keeping their old Macs running etc
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Fuzzball84 Avatar
10 months ago
I really hope I get another OS update on my Intel Mac.... Sonoma has been running absolutely brilliantly on it... and it's a base 2020 Mac Mini (i3)!

Whatever they have been doing they have ensured it runs really well on the more recent intel hardware prior to Apple Silicon.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
matt_and_187_like_this Avatar
10 months ago

I really hope I get another OS update on my Intel Mac.... Sonoma has been running absolutely brilliantly on it... and it's a base 2020 Mac Mini (i3)!

Whatever they have been doing they have ensured it runs really well on the more recent intel hardware prior to Apple Silicon.
I’m running Sonoma on a 2012 base iMac with OCLP lol
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Realityck Avatar
10 months ago
The third beta is the charm as they say. Running solidly.

Related yesterday to devs, today to PB testers

* iOS 17.4 beta 3 (21E5200d) - February 13, 2024
* iPadOS 17.4 beta 3 (21E5200d) - February 13, 2024
* macOS 14.4 beta 3 (23E5196e) - February 13, 2024
* tvOS 17.4 beta 3 (21L5212d) - February 13, 2024
* visionOS 1.1 beta 2 (21O5188c) - February 13, 2024
* watchOS 10.4 beta 3 (21T5202e) - February 13, 2024

[SPOILER="macOS Sonoma 14.4 Beta 3 Release Notes"]
[HEADING=2]AppKit ('https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos-release-notes/macos-14_4-release-notes#AppKit')[/HEADING]
[HEADING=3]Resolved Issues ('https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos-release-notes/macos-14_4-release-notes#Resolved-Issues')[/HEADING]

* Fixed an issue where center or right aligned NSTextField appears blurry. (120819010)
* Fixed: Resolves an issue where pointer style does not update when browsing in Safari. (121131986)

[HEADING=2]Core ML ('https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos-release-notes/macos-14_4-release-notes#Core-ML')[/HEADING]
[HEADING=3]New Features ('https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos-release-notes/macos-14_4-release-notes#New-Features')[/HEADING]

* ML Program models that are loaded with MLComputeUnits.cpuOnly will use a new high performance CPU backend that takes advantage of Accelerate framework’s BNNS library. (114037934)

[HEADING=2]CreateML ('https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos-release-notes/macos-14_4-release-notes#CreateML')[/HEADING]
[HEADING=3]Resolved Issues ('https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos-release-notes/macos-14_4-release-notes#Resolved-Issues')[/HEADING]

* Fixed: When using the transfer learning algorithm option, the CreateML app and framework object detection template might fail to converge and cause poor model quality and produce more than expected false positives. (114480994)

[HEADING=2]Finder ('https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos-release-notes/macos-14_4-release-notes#Finder')[/HEADING]
[HEADING=3]Resolved Issues ('https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos-release-notes/macos-14_4-release-notes#Resolved-Issues')[/HEADING]

* Fixed: Resolves an issue where tiling a window causes the desktop picture to turn black. (118044617)

[HEADING=2]Messages ('https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos-release-notes/macos-14_4-release-notes#Messages')[/HEADING]
[HEADING=3]Resolved Issues ('https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos-release-notes/macos-14_4-release-notes#Resolved-Issues')[/HEADING]

* Fixed: Stickers (Memoji and 3rd party) might appear blank. (120994483)

[HEADING=2]Passkeys ('https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos-release-notes/macos-14_4-release-notes#Passkeys')[/HEADING]
[HEADING=3]Resolved Issues ('https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos-release-notes/macos-14_4-release-notes#Resolved-Issues')[/HEADING]

* Fixed: Registering passkeys might not work on certain websites. (122217903)

[HEADING=2]Software Updates ('https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos-release-notes/macos-14_4-release-notes#Software-Updates')[/HEADING]
[HEADING=3]Resolved Issues ('https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos-release-notes/macos-14_4-release-notes#Resolved-Issues')[/HEADING]

* Fixed: Updates to macOS 14.4 starting from macOS 11.0–12.3.1 will not work. (120548971)

[HEADING=2]StoreKit ('https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos-release-notes/macos-14_4-release-notes#StoreKit')[/HEADING]
[HEADING=3]New Features ('https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos-release-notes/macos-14_4-release-notes#New-Features')[/HEADING]

* productDescriptionHidden(_:) API can be used to configure the visibility of product descriptions in ProductView, StoreView and SubscriptionStoreView instances within a view hierarchy. When building with Xcode 15.3, the view modifier can be used even if your app is running on iOS 17.0, iPadOS 17.0, macOS 14.0, tvOS 17.0, watchOS 10.0, visionOS 1.0, or later.
When implementing a product view style, it can support this new view modifier by checking the descriptionVisibility property on the configuration value. (110414819) (FB12261973)
* You can use SubscriptionStoreView ('https://developer.apple.com/documentation/storekit/subscriptionstoreview') to present promotional offers by adding the subscriptionPromotionalOffer(offer:signature:) modifier.
If you’re already using inAppPurchaseOptions(_:) ('https://developer.apple.com/documentation/swiftui/view/inapppurchaseoptions(_:)') modifier to support promotional offers for StoreKit views, you should adopt the new API instead when your app is running on iOS 17.4, iPadOS 17.4, macOS 14.4, tvOS 17.4, watchOS 10.4, visionOS 1.1 or later. Do not use both APIs to apply a promotional offer for the same view. (115358806)

[HEADING=3]Resolved Issues ('https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos-release-notes/macos-14_4-release-notes#Resolved-Issues')[/HEADING]

* Fixed: The isEligibleForIntroOffer ('https://developer.apple.com/documentation/storekit/product/subscriptioninfo/3803203-iseligibleforintrooffer') property and isEligibleForIntroOffer(for:) ('https://developer.apple.com/documentation/storekit/product/subscriptioninfo/3791958-iseligibleforintrooffer')method now reflect ineligibility in cases where a customer would otherwise be eligible for the offer if they weren’t actively subscribed. This means a customer which is not currently eligible for an introductory offer may become eligible in the future.
Customers who redeem an introductory offer for a given subscription group will continue to never be eligible for another introductory offer in that subscription group. You can detect this case this by checking if any one transaction with a matching subscriptionGroupID ('https://developer.apple.com/documentation/storekit/transaction/3749718-subscriptiongroupid') has the type ('https://developer.apple.com/documentation/storekit/transaction/offer/4307073-type') property on offer ('https://developer.apple.com/documentation/storekit/transaction/4307076-offer') set to introductory ('https://developer.apple.com/documentation/storekit/transaction/offertype/3822309-introductory'). (103604770) (FB11889732)

[HEADING=2]SwiftUI ('https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos-release-notes/macos-14_4-release-notes#SwiftUI')[/HEADING]
[HEADING=3]New Features ('https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos-release-notes/macos-14_4-release-notes#New-Features')[/HEADING]

* Table now supports dynamic numbers of columns with the new TableColumnForEach. (79492167) (FB9189673)

[HEADING=3]Resolved Issues ('https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos-release-notes/macos-14_4-release-notes#Resolved-Issues')[/HEADING]

* Fixed: DatePicker in macOS reset focus to the first date component when its bound date changes and timeZone is overriden in the environment. (97376561)



[/SPOILER]
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Realityck Avatar
10 months ago

Is Anyone got any inside info on MacOs 15? Pretty sure it will be Apple Silicon Only.

Bored of macOS in its current form. And when I ditch Intel Macs for Apple Silicon I want to know where Apple is headed with macOS . Could be changes none of us like.

On A Windows machine you can Stay on Windows 10 or 11 if Windows 12 gets kinda scary.

Sonoma is pretty much fully baked. no new things on the horizon.

The New Windows 11 24H2 will not run now on Machines older than 10 years old. even with hacks.

And you can easily upgrade your motherboard to get the new Thunderbolt 5 and WIFI 7.
There really doesn't need to be any immediate abandonment of supporting intel Macs. Apple like Next Computer has always had its NextStep-> MacOS X -> MacOS running on multiple platforms in the lab for as long as we can remember.
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)