Oracle cautions against Sonoma 14.4 update, cites Java failures

A bug in the release version of macOS Sonoma 14.4 causes Java processes to terminate unexpectedly, so Mac users who need to run Java should delay updating.

The new issue is affecting all versions of Java from version 8 on up, including current early access builds. There is currently no workaround available, according to Oracle.

The flaw wasn't seen in the betas leading up to the release of 14.4, according to Oracle Senior Director of Product Management Aurelio Garcia-Ribeyro. "Ahead-of-Time compiled applications created with GraalVM Native Image should not be affected, but your ability to build new images may be," he noted in a post warning about the flaw.

Oracle has notified its partners in OpenJDK, customers, and Apple of the problem. Since there is no easy way to revert a macOS update, affected Apple Silicon Mac users who have already upgraded to version 14.4 will have to wait for a fix from Apple to overcome the issue.

If users have a cloned copy of their previous complete system configuration, they may be able to return to that in order to keep running Java until the solution is found. The problem does not affect most typical Mac users, as Java was deprecated for the Mac back in 2012.

This new report comes alongside other, unrelated problems found in the final release of macOS 14.4. The update has caused some in-monitor hubs from third parties to stop working, as well as removing or corrupting some printer drivers.

13 Comments

FumeKnight 1 comment · New User

About 8 months ago

I'm not sure if saying that "Java was deprecated in 2012" is right; it's not Java that was deprecated, it was an Apple distribution of Java that was removed from the OS. Other Java distributions were not deprecated nor disallowed to be installed, everyone could install Java from any vendor (Oracle, Meta, OpenJDK) they wish. Until the last update, that is, when things broke.

It's like if Apple would remove a system Python runtime, and you would issue a news entry that Python was deprecated by Apple. That would not be true, because the user could install any Python version from the Python website they wish. The same thing is with Java.

humbug1873 168 comments · 2 Years

About 8 months ago

So no printing, no use of USB hubs in Monitors, no Java ... haven't heard of a MacOS Update that broken since 10.0.

lordjohnwhorfin 866 comments · 18 Years

About 8 months ago

humbug1873 said:

So no printing, no use of USB hubs in Monitors, no Java ... haven't heard of a MacOS Update that broken since 10.0.

The sky is falling! This would not have happened under Jobs! Apple is doomed!

Relax. SOME in-monitor hubs and SOME printer drivers are failing. Not exactly “no printing”. All my printers work fine and my in-monitor hubs work as well.
And about Java… I don’t know anything who still uses it on the desktop, so I doubt it’s impacting many people. There’s a reason it wasn’t uncovered during the beta cycle.