Received a 2023 Mac Professional (M2 Extremely) earlier this yr, which compelled me to improve my OS from Monterey to Ventura (and now Sonoma).
It began as quickly as I acquired the 2023 Mac Professional and migrated all my stuff from my earlier Mac, which was nonetheless working Monterey. The Mac Professional buy successfully compelled me to improve to Ventura, for the reason that 2023 Mac Professional can’t run Monterey. Upgrading to Sonoma (at Apple’s request) has solely made the issue worse
Ever since then, have been experiencing a recurring downside that begins taking place after a number of hours of uptime.
There’s a complete cluster of signs, however the obvious and customary ones are the next:
It turns into not possible to edit photos (HEIC, PNG, JPEG) in Preview. For instance, I open a full dimension HEIC pic from my iPhone and I am going to resize it right down to 1000 pixels large. Generally I get visible artefacts whereas the Resize dialog is open (be aware the gray containers right here):
After which after I press OK both I get a clean (as an alternative of a small image):
Or the image is resized, however then it’s not possible to reserve it. I get an error that claims “The doc couldn’t be autosaved”:
And even when I attempt to revert the change, I get "The operation couldn’t be accomplished”:
This doesn’t simply have an effect on Preview. On this state, I discover that after I open photos in a third-party picture editor like Pixelmator Professional or Affinity Picture 2, the app shows a clean (empty artboard) immediately as an alternative of the particular image, even earlier than I attempt to resize it.
Crucially, in Affinity Picture 2, there’s a setting to disable {Hardware} Acceleration (beneath Efficiency).
If I disable it, stop and relaunch the app after which attempt to open an image file, it really works high-quality. Therefore my suspicion that it is a bug involving {hardware} acceleration.
One other quite common symptom in macOS when the cluster of signs begins taking place is that, in numerous apps, buttons in dialog containers develop into invisible which makes them not possible to learn. This occurs, for instance, within the Notifications dialog field within the Podcasts app:
This impacts common buttons and likewise checkboxes, which disappear altogether when they’re checked and reappear when they’re unchecked. If I go away the dialog field open and change to one thing else, the buttons reappear of their background kind. They disappear once more after I convey the dialog again to the foreground.
There are various, many different signs that begin occurring on the similar time, as soon as the Mac is on this state. For instance, display recording stops working altogether. The Maps utility additionally begins performing up. Zooming out and in not works, issues begin flickering like loopy, or going utterly black.
I’ve, rather more not often, additionally seen video corruption in Firefox or Google Chrome, which will be alleviated by turning {hardware} acceleration off in these apps and relaunching them. In any other case, quitting and relaunch the affected app doesn’t assist in any respect.
Nonetheless, I’ve discovered that:
- Quitting a “massive” app like Safari briefly alleviates a few of the signs. However after I relaunch Safari the issue begins taking place once more.
- If I stop all working apps, the issue disappears for an extended whereas. However after I relaunch issues, the issue comes again after some time.
- If I reboot the Mac utterly, then I’m OK for just a few hours, after which finally the issues begin reoccurring.
I’ve been in touch with AppleCare and have needed to strive all types of issues. Not one of the issues they’ve made me do have helped thus far:
- I did a 100% clear set up of macOS on a brand new quantity. I want about 20 third-party apps simply to have the ability to operate for my work. However I did solely reinstall the important ones, and even that was sufficient to trigger the issue to begin taking place once more (inside lower than 48 hours).
- And, due to the Affinity Picture 2 situation, and likewise the rarer video corruption in Google Chrome and Firefox, that are the one apps I do know the place {hardware} acceleration will be turned off, normally with dramatic enchancment, evidently it’s a bug that entails {hardware} acceleration.
- I’ve run the {hardware} diagnostic on the Mac Professional and there are not any reported points.
That mentioned, if it’s not a {hardware} defect, I’ve but to return throughout a single report of some other Mac person experiencing the identical factor. I had been working the identical software program on a 2020 Mac Professional for years earlier than this new buy with none such downside.
Like I mentioned, Apple has been unhelpful thus far. Their requirement to utterly get rid of third-party software program and attempt to reproduce the issue is sort of unrealistic.
I normally (efficiently) assist different Mac customers repair their issues. However I’m at a loss right here. Is there actually no hope? So I’m now turning to this group of skilled Mac customers. Perhaps somebody has some concepts.