Why Apple Pulled macOS Mojave Security Update

Apple recently pulled the latest macOS Mojave Security Update, along with the Safari 14 download for Macs running on macOS Mojave, due to a slew of problems users have been experiencing. Thankfully, the company has released new updates for Mac users.

The macOS Mojave Security Update that Apple pulled, Mojave 2020-005, caused a variety of problems affecting the Mac user experience very badly.

The problems that users encountered included memory issues (such as no free memory), system slowness, slow boot, high fan speeds, problems with Finder, inability to create a new local user through Users & Groups, migration assistant crashes and more, per Mr. Macintosh.

Users who experienced these problems started reporting about them shortly after Apple released the update on Sept. 24. Interestingly, Safari 14, which was also pulled as it was affected by the problems, was released Sept. 16 – more than a week before the Mojave 2020-005 update.

Some users reported issues via different forums. The first report appeared just hours after Apple released the security update. One MacRumors forum user said:

“Is anyone getting really low free RAM after applying this update? Activity Monitor says I have 12GB of RAM used right after I launch it after logging in.”

Another MacRumors forum user mentioned more problems:

“Additionally, boot time is slower, logging in is slower and when doing so I’m met with a blank desktop which needs 7-8 seconds before icons finally appear. Everything feels sluggish, and applications also take more than twice as long to start up.”

Mojave 2020-005 was supposed to address security vulnerabilities in ImageIO, Mail, Model I/O and the Sandbox. Apple, however, was forced to pull it after users complained about serious issues.

Re-released

Thankfully, Apple has re-released the updates, supposedly with fixes included in them, according to its website. It was able to re-release the updates within a day of removing them due to the above-mentioned problems.

The new updates, Mojave 2020-005 and Mojave 10.14.6 Supplemental Update (which includes the fixed version of Safari 14.0), can now be downloaded and installed on Macs running on macOS Mojave.