macOS Tahoe 26.3 is Broken

https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2026/02/18/1230

by rcarmo • 5 months ago

40 20 5 months ago

taoofmac.com

drcongo• 5 months ago

I bet it's Slack, that's what keeps freezing my Mac.

ssgodderidge• 5 months ago

everything looks normal until the crash happens

I’m guessing slack would be an obvious red flag on ActivityMonitor if slack was the problem

embedding-shape• 5 months ago

I’ve tried keeping ActivityMonitor open to see if I can spot any process that is consuming too much CPU or memory (the obvious suspect would be WindowServer), but everything looks normal until the crash happens, and there is only so much attention one can spare while, you know, doing productive stuff.

I had a Linux box that suddenly dies, with no logs indicating what. Turns out that there was some segmentation fault in a service, which killed the computer before it had a chance to write to logs or before the logs were written to disk, somehow, not sure exactly how.

Not until I started sending the logs out to my desktop computer as they happened, could I finally figure out what service was crashing it.

Now macOS is absolutely horrible for headless operations (ask me, just set up one yesterday for signing purposes and it's just... No comment.), but surely there must be some way of macOS to send logs somewhere else, maybe you could try that instead of trying to see it as it happens.

cr3ative• 5 months ago

This headline has annoyed me. macOS Tahoe 26.3 has been working absolutely fine for me, and probably millions of others.

It isn't working for _you_, and you don't know why yet. This isn't yet useful information and doesn't indicate that the entire OS is broken (universally).

gregoriol3• 5 months ago

Yeah the title is annoying because it doesn't say what is broken. The user has a quite specific problem and the title should reflect that.

However overall the title has some truth: Tahoe of all versions fits the most the description of broken. It's the Windows Vista of macOs versions.

rock_artist• 5 months ago

I totally agree. As HN is focused on developers. I think author should report and investigate of course. But, currently there’s one report with nothing informative except the pink (which from my knowledge is related to metal).

But nothing (yet) useful for broader discussion.

hipsterstal1n• 5 months ago

But the author wouldn't get clicks if they wrote a more truthful and less clickbaity headline, such as "My computer doesn't work since I upgraded to 26.3 and I have no idea why".

kcplate• 5 months ago

I tend to view these reports through 2 user lenses. User 1 - the user who generally uses signed, safe software, using the device for non-engineering productivity, content consumption, and creative uses.

Then there is the user 2s. Thats the user with the unsigned software. That download and compiles the random “Show HN” without deep examination. That is experimenting at the lower levels, and might have written some home brewed scripts and apps running on their device.

Generally the user 1s aren’t complaining about updates unless there is an controversial UI or UX change. These are the more reliable reference group for the overall success or failure of an OS update.

User 2s contain all the edge cases configurations that the OS publisher can never fully test for, and generally just aren't reliable evaluators of OS updates.

nutjob2• 5 months ago

I've never understood people rushing into upgrading to the latest OS. They always have bugs, sometimes serious or hard disk erasing. Some people get excited by the "latest and greatest" but for me most macOS upgrades seem like a regression, especially with the serious memory bloat and misfeatures.

I can understand upgrading for testing purposes, but on my personal machine I've always put it off as long as possible.

exegete• 5 months ago

This is the third point release for the 26 series. Aren’t these primarily bugfixes? Or does Apple use a different versioning system?

gregoriol3• 5 months ago

They do x.y.z versionning where x is often a marketing version so they have to say something at the WWDC. Here on 26 it's more than marketing, but that's not always the case. y versions often contain bug fixes but also new features.

worksonmine• 5 months ago

Some people get excited by the "latest and greatest"

I'm going to get down-voted for this, but doesn't this describe Apples' target audience? Every year big live streamed events showing the "latest and greatest".

willis936• 5 months ago

I can help. It's security. There were multiple exploits patched in 26.3. Part of what users are paying the apple premium for is maintenance of exploits.

ndiddy• 5 months ago

You can stay on Sequoia and still get security patches. They released 15.7.4 a few days ago. https://support.apple.com/en-us/126349

gregoriol3• 5 months ago

That's usually true with Apple for .0 releases: never install those if you need to work with macOs, iOS, ... but this Tahoe version has revealed itself as being in a sad state even after the .1 .2 and now .3 It's not unfair for it to have earned the title of Windows Vista of macOs, something has become really wrong with the management of that release.

schmookeeg• 5 months ago

I just don't like red badges on icons.

burnt-resistor2• 5 months ago

Pioneers get slaughtered.

It's something to test out in a VM first rather than on real hardware that may actively, permanently thwart downgrading.

Living on the ragged edge for critical personal devices is generally unwise and unnecessary. And I don't think widespread proliferation of accessible betas for consumers is wise from a support perspective.

k310• 5 months ago

Well, safari on ios just vaporized 10 or more tabs (and typing)

Folks, linux is more stable than any Apple software. I'm going back.

And it feels great.

bmn__• 5 months ago

FTA:

I filed it [on Radar] as FB21983519 in case anyone cares.

rcarmo, please submit a copy to https://openradar.appspot.com

macOS Tahoe 26.3 is Broken

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