Apple Releases iOS 18.5, macOS 15.5, and Other x.5 OS Updates

Did a clean installation of macOS 15.5 earlier today on both of my Macs, and all seems fine. Had a SuperDuper! backup done on Saturday for both machines, and used that for migration. Not really seeing much change, but given that 46 security issues were addressed, that alone is a good reason for the installation.

Macrumours has an update on tvOS 18.5:

There is another article about remote control of iPhone camera without an Apple Watch. The trick is to use voice control and, bizarrely, say “Turn up the volume,”!

And Apple’s tvOS release note now says that, too.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/106336

Weird, but it probably works because pressing the volume up button while using the camera takes a photo, as if it was a shutter button. I can’t remember but volume down may be the same, but I’ve always used volume up.

Now they’re just bugging me—I wish Apple would update its pages in a timely fashion for those of us covering the releases.

To add insult to injury, their macOS release notes apparently don’t contain all the changes. As Howard Oakley points out, you need to combine their release notes with the enterprise notes to get an accurate picture of what was touched through an update. Note, this is for the regular vanilla consumer release version of the update, not just dev releases or some kind of enterprise software.

Thanks for reminding me of those separate notes, @Simon. I have been tracking the macOS enterprise release notes, but I’ve now made pinned tabs in Arc for:

• macOS Developer Release Notes
• iOS & iPadOS Developer Release Notes
• iOS 18 Enterprise Release Notes
• iPadOS 18 Enterprise Release Notes

The iOS and iPadOS enterprise release notes are quite interesting—some of the listed items sound like they’d be of interest to anyone:

iOS and iPadOS 18.5

• Shared iPads now have screen recording available in Control Center. (iPadOS only)
• Emails sent over poor or no network connection will no longer be purged from the device.
• Fixed an issue where enabling Apple Intelligence could cause threads in Mail to only show the most recent message.
• Resolved an issue where some supported paper sizes were not displaying as options for printing.
• Enterprise apps will no longer fail to launch.
• The wallpaper MDM command no longer hangs and will not disrupt further communication with affected devices.

I installed macOS 15.5 today. Apple did not turn on Apple Intelligence, but it did change my settings for future updates by selecting both Download new updates when available and Install macOS updates. It also enabled storing my desktop and documents on iCloud, contrary to the previous settings.

Apple released Safari 18.5 for Ventura and Sonoma a day or so after the rest of these updates. I almost wrote that it was probably coming out, but decided I’d look silly if it didn’t. Instead, I get to look slightly silly for not covering it, but it’s so minor that this is all the enthusiasm I can muster.

When I installed 15.5 my MacPro7,1 became so unstable as to be unusable. After a day or two of crashes and kernel panics, reinstalling macOS in online Recovery mode let it recover. Mostly. The crashes and panics stopped, but I discovered my Promise Pegasus R4i RAID had become read-only. The R4i system consists of four spinning HFS±formatted HDs in a hardware controlled RAID5, which mounts as SAS storage. Checking the Promise web site I found the R4i hardware controller firmware and the Promise utility software that creates a user interface for the controller both had had updates available a long time. During the time updates were available I believe I had checked the Promise software and been reassured “You have the most current version.” It seems the Promise notification system had not worked. I updated the R4i controller firmware and Promise software to current versions. My R4i remained read-only. I discussed the problem extensively with Level 2 Promise tech support. They couldn’t replicate my issue, but are still searching for a solution. The issue seems to be that on startup macOS cannot validate the R4i and so mounts it as read-only, recommending I copy all data off and reformat the disk. Meanwhile, I turned on an external USB drive which has two (HFS+) disks. Both of those fail to mount, with the same error message as the R4i. An Apple software RAID of four SSDs on a PCIe card continues to mount and run with no problem. This last system had not reliably mounted for years, until bug fixes from Apple and OWC were released in macOS 15.1.

Howard Oakley reports many changes in bundled applications, and more changes in library components. In Apple Discussions many report ongoing issues with external USB drives failing to mount reliably. A software update will fix the problem, then in the next update the problem returns. The problems for me described here, which began on updating to macOS 15.5, seem to fit this pattern.

I suspect the overall source of these issues is Apple’s trying to merge iOS and macOS, while debugging the neglected macOS, and keeping Intel macOS in the picture.

Let’s not get into anything about how Apple is “merging” macOS and iOS, which Apple has repeatedly and vociferously denied.

Thank you for pointing out Apple’s stated intention. I am relieved to hear it.

Trying to understand my problems described above led me to Apple’s recently updated statement on security, which can be downloaded as a 300 page pdf.
Apple Platform Security
Reading, or more accurately glancing over it leads me to believe I will not find a simple solution to security issues. Only Apple approved procedures will be able to thread this maze. As Apple probably intends.

My guess is that ongoing addition of such security measures is one function of the many changes noted by Howard Oakley, as well as those mentioned by Apple. Such complex heightened security measures add many potential points for failure, where legitimate uses such as mine accidentally become blocked. I hope Apple figures this out soon.

FWIW, this didn’t happen for me (Mac mini m4). It asked me (yet again) if I wanted to enable Apple Intelligence. I clicked the “Later” button, since there is no “no” button. I assume this means it will ask me again at the next update.

My iCloud and auto-download settings seem to have been left unchanged.

I wonder why changes like this affect some people and not others. The only thing I can think of is that the installer detected a problem in a configuration file and replaced that file with a factory-default.

I noticed that (as has been the case with every update), a new /Users/Shared/Relocated Items folder was created, but (unlike in the past when I was on an Intel Mac), it did not create a shortcut to it on my desktop - I had to explicitly look for it.

The relocated items folder contained system-default configuration files for the Apache2 web server and SSH. It looks like the installer did not alter the working files, but provided the (new? updated?) defaults so I can compare the two and apply any changes that might be appropriate.

After comparing them:

• The changes to Apache2 (enable user-directories and the Apache manual) are my configurations, which I’ve kept.

• The changes to SSH look like Apple reconfigured the default configuration files at some point (I assume the working ones were migrated from my old computer).

  • Most of the configuration files were functionally equivalent, but with Apple-specific content moved into separate files, distinct from the BSD-default configuration. I updated my configuration to match the defaults.

  • The /etc/ssh/moduli file has changed. Looking at the file-version number at the top, it changed from 1.35 (dated October 25, 2023) to version 1.38 (dated August 21, 2024) - clearly, Apple integrated a newer version of OpenSSH.

    I accepted the new file, but made a backup copy of the old one, just in case it should matter.

It asked me, too; I didn’t mention it because I was reporting that Apple had not enabled it silently (as I thought someone else had reported).

I also had no shortcut on the the desktop, but it was where you mentioned. Everything was in '/Users/Shared/Relocated Items/Configuration/private/etc/ssh.system_default'. That’s not surprising; I seem to have a simpler system than you.

This (I assume) means that your SSH configuration doesn’t match the current system-default. If you never made any changes (as I didn’t), then I assume it’s because your configuration was migrated forward from an older macOS installation (possibly an older computer).

I suspect (and will find out after the next update) that if you change your current configuration to match this new system-default (as I just did), that a future upgrade will see that your current installation matches the expected installation and you won’t get another relocated item.

I host a small web server (only accessible from my home LAN). macOS includes the Apache2 server but doesn’t include any system settings panel to enable or configure it. (They did many years ago, via a “Personal Web Sharing” checkbox in the Sharing preference panel.) So you need to hand-edit the configuration files in /etc/apache2 and then start the server by typing apachectl start. The act of starting it will add a launch daemon object to automatically restart it when the system reboots.

I should probably write an article about how to do this, because it’s actually pretty easy.

I never made any changes (that I recall; I’m just not that tech savvy), and I also didn’t migrate from an older macOS installation. I bought this computer new (and this was the first OS update). All I copied from the old Mac were documents from my home directory, and I did that without Migration Assistant.

You make it sound easy, but why would you have a web server that is only available on your Local Area Network? I think the answer is Yes, but would this be available to you when you are out of town if you had Tailscale configured and running?

Strange. There shouldn’t be any relocated items folder if the running system files are identical to the contents of that folder. But it probably doesn’t matter too much.

I have several computers at home, and there are some files I want to be able to access from anywhere. I put those files in my ~/Sites directory, which exposes it to the LAN with a URL of the form http://hostname/~username/filename, which I can stick in any web browser on any computer (macOS, Windows, Linux or anything else) to read the file.

I don’t export a lot of files that way, but the ones I do are useful, including:

• An HTML file with my most frequently-used bookmarks. I actually set up most of my computers to use this URL as the home page, so I always have easy access, from any browser on any operating system.
• When I work on my various databases, I print reports to PDF files, and make them available here as well.
• Back when my ISP had free web storage, I also used it as a staging area for site changes before uploading them. If I ever decide to buy web hosting, I’ll resume that practice.

I could probably accomplish the same thing using file sharing or cloud storage, but there are a whole bunch of ugly OS-dependency issues that come into play with that approach. And things always seem to glitch in the most annoying ways when I use those protocols.

I actually have a second web server in the house on a Linux PC, which serves a similar purpose, but mostly holds public documents that I find useful for work (e.g. standards-body documents) that I may need to access from a variety of locations and don’t want to rely on the public URL always being valid.

That second server also runs an Apache Tomcat J2EE server. It runs a locally-installed copy of the PlantUML UML editing/rendering software. I use this because my employer doesn’t permit company data to pass through third-party web servers, so I can’t use the public server for work, but I can use a locally-installed copy of the same software, since the data never leaves my computer.

And you’re right, I can’t access any of this when I’m away from home. I’m OK with that, because I rarely require access when I’m away. If there is something I think I’m going to need when traveling, I create an encrypted disk image on my laptop and copy the files there, then transfer everything back when I return home. Again, I could probably also use cloud storage (I have iCloud, Google and OneDrive available), but they never seem to work exactly the way I would like.

Here are two more changes that I have noticed since installing macOS 15.5.

If I change the contrast slider at System Settings > Accessibility > Display > Display Contrast, nothing happens until the Mac goes to sleep and gets awakened. That strikes me as really strange. (As an aside, anything other than the Normal setting strikes me as painfully garish, and I was really surprised when I woke my Mac and saw the result of the just-barely-increased contrast setting.)

Mail > Settings > Accounts > Mailbox Behaviors > Erase deleted messages and Erase junk messages were both changed to Never, for all accounts.

Finally I had time to upgrade my iPad (air 4), iPhone (mini 12), Watch (series 6) and Mac mini (2018) to the latest OS versions. I was still running the last major version on all of them.
Upgrading my iPad and Mac mini went without any issues. On my iPhone I first got a message there was not enough room to download the update (I had 21 GB free, the update was a bit over 4 GB, so that was strange). Rebooting the phone solved that issue and everything went fine from there.
Then the problems started. I was forced to upgrade my Watch to 11.5 right after the upgrade of my phone had finished, no option to do it at night. The download took over an hour, preparing took over 30 minutes. During the prepare the battery of my Watch dropped below 20% so I decided to turn on Low Power mode, hoping it would not affect the upgrade. When the prepare was done I decided to perform the upgrade immediately because the battery had dropped to about 15%. So I put the Watch and iPhone on their chargers and waited. The Watch charged quite quickly so the upgrade started after about 15 minutes, finishing about another 15 minutes later. All in all, upgrading the Watch took over 2 hours during which I did not dare to do anything with my Watch and phone to avoid anything going wrong with the upgrade.
After the Watch upgrade I discovered Apple had, again, messed up some things I use a lot:

• the Remote app no longer sees iTunes or Music on a Mac so I can no longer control the music I stream from any Mac mini in my house; this is a function I used several times a day, very unhappy about this
• swiping between Watch faces no longer directly changes just the face but often opens an app, apparently associated with a complication on the face; sometimes swiping does directly go to the other face; I have not discovered when a swipe opens an app and when it just changes the face, and I have not found a setting that can turn off opening an app while swiping

There are worse things in life of course, but (again) I am unhappy with a Watch upgrade because Apple changed and removed things that were working perfectly fine and they should not have messed with.

Apple suggests that the watch be plugged in and on the charger before upgrading, and it’s probably more important for a big upgrade like this. It’s disappointing if you want to keep the watch on, but I’d suggest it going forward.

That was a change in watchOS 11 initially - the official way to change faces is long-press and then swipe and tap to select. But that’s now an option. On the watch, Settings app, scroll down to “Clock”, and turn on swipe to switch watch faces. This was added with watchOS 11.1 I think…

This feature should still work as I’m up to date on my iPhone. Check the settings on your phone under Apps for Remote as the first one where Remote needs to access the local network might have been turned off somehow:

RemoteApp.PNG1320×2868 142 KB

I hit the problem where iOS Mail just displays a blank mail list. I should have held off for iOS 18.5.1.

I am aware of that and usually when I get a message that an update is available I select ‘install tonight’ and all goes fine because I charge my watch at night. This time the update was forced, it just started and gave me no option to choose anything.

I know and have had that set ever since it was available. The issue I am facing is that the watch no longer DIRECTLY switches faces after a swipe, sometimes an app opens, seemingly one related to a complication on the face you are moving from. I have now discovered that it seems to matter where you swipe or start the swipe. Apple changed something that makes it harder to just change faces by swiping.

Yes, it still works on my Phone and I have Local Network on. My phone still sees the Macs on my network and can still control them from my Phone. My issue is that the remote app on the watch has been removed or replaced. Before the update my watch also had the iTunes Remote with an icon like a play button. Now the watch only has the Apple TV Remote with an icon like the physical Apple TV remote. That remote only sees my Apple TV. Apple removed something from the Watch that I used a lot. Removing things for no reason is bad, Apple should stop doing that.

I haven’t had that issue on watchOS 11 at all. A swipe always works for me. Long-press, swipe, and tap will always work, though.

I do have to say that my biggest pet peeve on watchOS, by far, relates to switching focus. I have a few scheduled focus switches during the day and when it happens the watch insists on showing me the notifications that happened when I wasn’t in the current focus, always when I am trying to do something else. I wish there was a way to turn this off. I’ll have to check watchOS 26 when it comes out.

Thanks for clarifying. I don’t have an Apple Watch as I still just use old school ones but I see that your issue is a problem. You have to wonder why Apple took that feature away. Maybe submit a report to Apple so they can bring it back.

In addition to my previous post I now want to share a backup disk issue I encountered after upgrading my Intel Mac mini (2018) from Sonoma 14.7.6 to Sequoia 15.5.
I have 2 backup disks dating back to 2022. About every month I switch disks (with the other at my mother’s house). Before I switch disks I run Disk Utility First Aid. This has not caused any issues all those years.
The first time I ran First Aid on my current backup disk after the upgrade to 15.5 it reported a severe error that could not be fixed, advising me to copy the files on the disk and reformatting it. The disk effectively became read only.
I decided to keep the disk as-is and start a new backup on a fresh disk. That all went fine, including running First Aid.
When I switched to my second backup disk exactly the same thing happened! Two disks suddenly going bad giving exactly the same error? That cannot be a coincidence! Something in MacOS Sequoia seems to damage older backup disks, or is incompatible at least. Isn’t the purpose of backups to be able to have access to older files, even from years ago? Why then did Apple break compatibility with older backup disks? I have no idea, but Apple has made me very unhappy and I will now be even more reluctant to install upgrades and updates from Apple.