MacOS Catalina: only 64-bit. OS that might ship with 32-bit. software that might brick your Mac

[Thaldor]

Those of us living under a rock MacOS Catalina is out there but you might want to hold your horses and not to upgrade to it.

 

The problem seems to be the great decision from Apple to banish 32-bit. softwares from MacOS and make it to only use 64-bit. softwares. This also concerns drivers, firmwares, the OS itself and everything and the problem becomes when the upgrade doesn't upgrade everything and you are left with 32-bit. Entitlement Database which then can't run. The symptom of this is normal bootloop, the machine doesn't start, it's kaput. It just shows blinking ?-file icon. Those with knowledge from running older software and tinkering around retro stuff might recognize the error message which at least 2018 Mac Minis might give out:

Quote

/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/IMTranscoding.framework/XPCService/IMTranscoderAgent.xpc/Contents/MacOS/IMTrancoderAgent FAILURE TO RETURN KERNEL ADDRESS SPACE

Yeah, trying to run wrong architecture software in the OS and the software tries to fetch stuff from the memory that is wrongly allocated for it.

 

As usual Apples recommendation to fix the problem is to the take the affected machine to the extremely infamous Genius Bar and as usually it is expected that their solution is the usual "you need a new logicboard and it's going to cost you a kidney and a leg, would you rather buy a new MacBook?" (and from personal experience if nothing else they will find water damage, as always). For untrained eye this problem really seems like corrupted UEFI that in case of Macs without backup UEFIs means reflashing the UEFI or for the faster solution, just change the damned logicboard (also more expensive and more profitable for the repairer).

 

I stumbled around this one from who else than Louis Rossmann (also the source) and his friend has a potential solution: Removing the file that causes the problems. This can be done by:

Quote

Having trouble deleting stock applications from your macOS computer after upgrading to Catalina?? Just run these commands:
 

1. dsenableroot (and then enter a password)

2. /sbin/mount -uw /

3. rm -rf <path of the app>

4. dsenableroot disable

 

Catalina requires you to enter the default unmounted system folder in order to delete the files you want. You may have to take this route if you have crashes on boot with system based applications installed with 32-bit helpers.

From the Apple Community Threads I get that if you get this problem, you can't even get to the RecoveryOS-mode, so I'm not sure where you can get to enter the commands, but there might be a way for those unfortunate enough to walk into the Apples 64-bit trap. It also seems that this problem has been in the knowledge of Apple at least since Catalina Beta7 and they haven't fixed it...

 

As a bonus from the Rossmanns video: it seems Apple is doing great job holding the spoon where the mouth is and deleting and even banning users who suggest people with this problem to wait while people who don't work for Apple try to find other solutions apart from paying $400-700 to kidney and leg amounts for a new logicboards and PSUs as Apple suggests, because the problem doesn't seem to be that you fucked up your machine, but because Apple fucked up the upgrade and the solution seems to be to delete one file.

 

Personally I haven't even thought to upgrade my early-2014 MBA to Catalina because I at least remember that I run some 32-bit softwares, but either way I'm not taking the risk. Also there just doesn't seem to be a single upgrade for me as that MBA is my only iDevice and I'm not planning to get a second one. I would suggests people to not upgrade until it's confirmed that we either have a solution (that doesn't require selling your kidney) or Apple fixes their shit. Or if you are too impatient to get the newest iSoftware, wipe everything for clean installation, make a installation media, make sure that you have at least a chance to do something more than hope that some keycombination brings your machine back to life.

[Zando_]

7 hours ago, kelvinhall05 said:

<snip>

Indeed it does. 

Would recommend that curious people not run this in their terminal unless it's a VM. Which I should actually try tbh, would be interesting to see what it does. 

[Kilrah]

27 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

Which I should actually try tbh, would be interesting to see what it does. 

Nowadays most systems handle that as a special case and require an additional CLI argument like --no-preserve-root plus an additional confirmation.

 

A friend of mine got the bootloop and had to wipe and do a clean install. Another had the update hang on the "preparing your computer" (updating user account stuff that normally takes a minute or so at the end), forced power off after a couple of hours and it thankfully was OK. 

 

Seems to be their worst update in a long time.

[Thaldor]

7 hours ago, kelvinhall05 said:

<snip>

Should work too. The only problem seems to be how to get to the point where you can access the terminal. At least here normal ways to get to the RecoveryOS seem to be futile and at least I didn't catch from the Rossmanns video where you actually should input the commands (terminal duh, but how to access it is the problem).

[Kilrah]

Basically you need to already have, or have access to another mac (usually not an issue since pretty much all Mac owners I know have multiple in the family) to make a USB install drive to boot from...

[vanished]

11 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

Basically you need to already have, or have access to another mac (usually not an issue since pretty much all Mac owners I know have multiple in the family) to make a USB install drive to boot from...

This is an important consideration for all users of any OS.  I would strongly recommend having multiple devices, or at the very least, use the device you do have to make some bootable recovery media when you have the chance because one day you will need one, and if you don't have any you will be sorry.  It's amazing how many serious problems are a trivial fix if you can just boot another system, but are literally impossible to fix if you lack that ability.

[Bacon soup]

16 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

if you lack that ability

the old single system syndrome

[Thaldor]

17 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

Basically you need to already have, or have access to another mac (usually not an issue since pretty much all Mac owners I know have multiple in the family) to make a USB install drive to boot from...

I don't know which one is more common, but the problem at least for that one (and probably couple others) is that they can't access even the most primal boot options (probably total EFI/UEFI corruption) with the keycombos (command+R, command+R+option etc.). As the problem seems to be in Macs from 2012 to 2017 there is also the possibility to move the SSD to another machine (preferably with USB-, M.2-, SATA-adapter) and do the fix and hope that it's just that and not corrupted EFI/UEFI. But if the problem is also in newer Macs with the design flaw called T2-chip, then that's a 100% fucked up situation.

 

If the boot options are available through keycombos, then the whole problem is trivial since probably even the RecoveryOS-mode is available or, as you said, USB-boot is available.

[Zando_]

46 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

Nowadays most systems handle that as a special case and require an additional CLI argument like --no-preserve-root plus an additional confirmation.

 

A friend of mine got the bootloop and had to wipe and do a clean install. Another had the update hang on the "preparing your computer" (updating user account stuff that normally takes a minute or so at the end), forced power off after a couple of hours and it thankfully was OK. 

 

Seems to be their worst update in a long time.

Oooh I did get the preparing your mac thing, just hard shut down (I googled it and it worked fine for others) and restarted then it behaved. That was on my mid-2012 MacBook Pro 13", the 2019 13" I was updating to test how it went (right now it's a spare, no user for it yet) did it perfectly.

[Bacon soup]

lol remember those Mac Brick (late 2019) models?

[bcredeur97]

I remember when I learned that 32 bit applications don't run natively even though it seems like they do. it was honestly kinda shocking how good it works. It's so transparent you can't tell if you don't know....

Every OS has separate libraries for it. Apple I guess decided to remove those libraries.

I honestly don't know why we are in such a rush to do this though... it wasn't really holding back anything afaik

[mr moose]

1 hour ago, bcredeur97 said:

I remember when I learned that 32 bit applications don't run natively even though it seems like they do. it was honestly kinda shocking how good it works. It's so transparent you can't tell if you don't know....

Every OS has separate libraries for it. Apple I guess decided to remove those libraries.

I honestly don't know why we are in such a rush to do this though... it wasn't really holding back anything afaik

 

Same old story with current apple corporate direction, disable the old stuff and force customers to buy new everything.  Ratchet industries IRL.

[DrMacintosh]

23 hours ago, VegetableStu said:

i don't get why macOS has to drop 32-bit emulation/support ._. are they trying to make the OS smaller or what

Yes. Removing the 32Bit libraries not only reduces the size of the OS, but it also streamlined development as the macOS teams don’t have to keep supporting antique code. 
 

Further it also slaps developers in the face who have no valid reason to still be developing 32bit software. As for edge case abandonware (often found in the academic sector), users can simply not update their Mac. 

 

22 hours ago, bcredeur97 said:

honestly don't know why we are in such a rush to do this though... it wasn't really holding back anything afaik

32Bit libraries probably threw a lot of reaches in the new SIP system for Catalina. Removing the libraries also has the upside of making the overall OS size smaller. 
 

32Bit does hold back the performance and security of applications, there’s also no real reason to still be using such outdated libraries for modern programs. 

 

Months before updating my MacBook Pro to Catalina, I went through my programs and removed everything that was 32Bit. There were only a few programs, and an odd game (like Papers Please). 
 

Now I realize that being this proactive is beyond most users, but the upside of that is most users stick to the Mac App Store and trusted developers who have been 64Bit for a long time. 
 

It’s only these edge cases where users are using deprecated software that macOS can’t handle during the heavy modifications to the file system that come with Catalina. 

[williamcll]

Seems like this is hitting macs harder than it is on iOS when they made the switch.

[Salv8 (sam)]

6 hours ago, Thaldor said:

-snip-

i've seen stupid things...

but this tops them all...

you push an update to get rid of 32-bit support when most of the system still runs on 32-bit...

we give Microsoft a hard time with windows update but they have to support countless configs of hardware.

apple has NO excuse for doing this, they knew it would happen, and they still did it!

apple devs rn:

 

[NumLock21]

rm -rf <path of the app>

 

What is the <path of the app>?
Is it
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/IMTranscoding.framework/XPCService/IMTranscoderAgent.xpc/Contents/MacOS/IMTrancoderAgent FAILURE TO RETURN KERNEL ADDRESS SPACE

 

Where does the path of the app end, because I doubt the file name is the entire thing.

So is it

rm -rf </System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/IMTranscoding.framework/XPCService/IMTranscoderAgent.xpc/Contents/MacOS/IMTrancoderAgent>

[suicidalfranco]

funny how the usual bunch that leave cheeky remarks on Windows Update borking an install for the nth time whilst praising how it never happens on MacOS are relatively quiet here.

45 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

32Bit does hold back the performance and security of applications, there’s also no real reason to still be using such outdated libraries for modern programs. 

A Lawlz like to say: Citation needed

[DrMacintosh]

1 minute ago, suicidalfranco said:

funny how the usual bunch that leave cheeky remarks on Windows Update borking an install for the nth time whilst praising how it never happens on MacOS are relatively quiet here.

The difference is that in macOS you have the power to refuse an update. You aren’t forced unlike with Windows 10. Further, if anything does happen, a simple TimeMachine restore fixes everything. 
 

[S w a t s o n]

9 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

The difference is that in macOS you have the power to refuse an update. You aren’t forced unlike with Windows 10. Further, if anything does happen, a simple TimeMachine restore fixes everything. 
 

I mean you can easily defer updates on Win and if anything does happen a System Restore fixes everything

[DrMacintosh]

15 minutes ago, S w a t s o n said:

defer

defer != refuse

 

In macOS you can refuse all updates, forever. 

[Kisai]

1 hour ago, DrMacintosh said:

Yes. Removing the 32Bit libraries not only reduces the size of the OS, but it also streamlined development as the macOS teams don’t have to keep supporting antique code. 
 

Further it also slaps developers in the face who have no valid reason to still be developing 32bit software. As for edge case abandonware (often found in the academic sector), users can simply not update their Mac. 

 

There are valid reasons to keep having 32-bit support, but really this is kick to the stomach for people who want to keep using 32-bit parts of Adobe CS5 or CS6 on an Intel mac.

 

I'm sure there's a lot of old software that doesn't run on the 64-bit mode and the developers have long since stopped caring.

 

But it is the "right" thing to do ultimately. Good luck seeing Microsoft do this though, as it would render every application going back to 1993 (Win32s subsystem and Windows NT 3.1) unusable. So 26 years gets dumped down the toilet vs Apple's 2005 (14 years ago) Apple supported PPC emulation up until 10.7 though (8 years ago), which is also the same time they switched to the 64-bit kernel. So yeah Developers have had 8 years to fix their stuff to fat-binaries. 

 

Expect more Linux distros to start doing the same as well. 

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

i updated to Catalina the day of release, and aside from a bug in mission control i haven't had any problems.

[S w a t s o n]

1 hour ago, DrMacintosh said:

defer != refuse

 

In macOS you can refuse all updates, forever. 

because keeping years old bugs is a good idea..

 

and you can block the updates if you really want to it's just not exposed

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

1 hour ago, Kisai said:

I'm sure there's a lot of old software that doesn't run on the 64-bit mode and the developers have long since stopped caring.

the main thing i noticed doesn't work anymore is old games. plague inc is the only game i've tried that ran. Call of Duty 2 will install, steam lets me download it, but i can't run it.

[DrMacintosh]

4 minutes ago, S w a t s o n said:

because keeping years old bugs is a good idea..

Apple gives you the power to make that choice for yourself. 

 

4 minutes ago, S w a t s o n said:

and you can block the updates if you really want to it's just not exposed