Apple, we fixed some issues: from Sonoma to Sequoia

– Image generated by Microsoft Designer AI.

In the past few months, I have written four posts about macOS Sonoma bugs (a complete list is at the end of this post) because I found it unbelievable that this macOS version was released with such glaring issues in the Finder and in disk management.

In the latest Sonoma versions, some reported bugs – such as the erratic emptying of the Trash, the default file name when virtually printing a web page to PDF, or the failure to display a new file or folder in Snap to Grid mode — have been fixed, but the most annoying ones remained untouched.

A couple of days ago, after testing macOS Sequoia on a spare machine, I decided to upgrade my home Mac Mini M1 to Sequoia 15.3. To my great satisfaction, I can say that all, or almost all, of the major bugs reported in my previous posts have disappeared.

Bug #1: If we have a folder full of files and drag icons below the bottom of the window while holding down the CMD (⌘) key, the bottom of the window now correctly expands to show the lower icons without making them look like they have disappeared. The only exception is when the folder does not have an active scrollbar because it contains too few files. In this case, the icons still disappear, just like in Sonoma, but now you can simply click the < icon in the upper left corner of the toolbar and return to the original folder to restore full file visibility.

Bug #2: If we have two overlapping Finder windows in a Space and use the CTRL(⌃)-1, CTRL–2 (and so on) shortcuts to move the top window from one Space to another, upon returning to the original Space the traveling window now appears on top of the one that stayed put, as it should. The same applies when more than two overlapping windows are present.

Bug #3: The flickering issue that was highly visible in Sonoma when dragging a Finder window from one Space to another has now disappeared. Seeing such a thing was simply outrageous, not only because it was happening on machines powered by the powerful Apple Silicon processors, but also because before Sonoma such flickering had never been seen on much, much less powerful machines, like the Intel-based MacBook Air.

Bug #4: Sequoia has also fixed the bug related to the popup window that disappeared faster than a Formula 1 car when connecting a USB stick to a laptop, but I had already written about that.

Bug #5: Finder has finally returned to normal when displaying folders on an external USB drive containing hundreds of files. The sluggishness (to put it mildly) experienced in Sonoma was truly frustrating, and I was fed up with having to wait dozens of seconds every time I accessed a somewhat full external folder.

Bug #6: But the real highlight of Sequoia, the one that earns it a solid B at the end of the first term, is that, for the first time in years, the macOS update did not mess up the arrangement of icons in the Applications folder.¹ There will be very few people, like me, who prefer to keep installed applications organized visually rather than alphabetically. But I still want to represent these few users and sincerely thank Apple developers for a fix we had been waiting for through countless macOS versions.

What else can I say? I am really pleased that Apple has managed to fix so many embarrassing Sonoma bugs with Sequoia. Especially because the ones I reported were not related to exotic features of the operating system or of the file system, but rather easily visible issues for anyone using the graphical user interface of macOS.

I doubt that someone in Cupertino is avidly reading Melabit. But this also means that the issues reported in my previous posts were real and evident to other users and Apple developers alike, not just the imaginary concerns of an overly meticulous user.

The core problem remains: it makes no sense to continue with this policy of annual macOS (and iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, etc.) releases, each packed with shiny, but mostly useless new features that are inevitably under-tested and may introduce new bugs into the core of the system, without allowing enough time to fix existing bugs.

An annual release cycle may be great for marketing, but is it really what users really need?

For those interested in my saga about macOS Sonoma’s bugs (and more), here are links to previous installments:

It seems clear to me that there was no technical reason behind this issue (such as the strict separation between the default macOS applications and those installed by the user), but simply a lack of attention to a detail that may be minor, yet is quite annoying for those who rely on it. ↩

Apple, we fixed some issues: from Sonoma to Sequoia

Written by Sabino Maggi Follow

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