It was a novel idea: a Hallowe’en Event, timed when most of Europe had already gone to bed, announcing three-quarters of the new M3 chip range that would previously have taken place in stages. They are scary fast, but seemingly launched in scary haste, leaving Apple to fix their problems in macOS updates last week, just as the first owners of M3 Macs were in the midst of unboxing.

Meanwhile, the rest of us were left puzzled. Sonoma 14.1.1 apparently contains “important bug fixes and security updates”, but Apple wouldn’t tell us what they are. Ventura 13.6.2 is only available for a limited range of models, and Apple again refuses to explain what it’s for.

The best answer that I can offer is that those two macOS updates fix at least three separate problems, each of Apple’s own making.

M3 muddle

It took Apple a full eleven months to progress from the original M1 chip to M1 Pro and Max, and seven months from the first M2 to M2 Pro and Max, yet those three variants of the M3 were released on the same day. It looks now as if basic M3 models were being built well before the release of macOS Sonoma on 26 September 2023, most probably back in July when macOS 13.5 was released. Whether Apple had ever intended