Now you know: Apple support communities are heavily censored
 

When I applied the latest MacOS 12.4 update to my Macintosh, something went wrong – I was presented with an "administrator password prompt" that could not be answered, and the update did not complete.

I immediately called Apple Support on the phone and gave them the heads-up.

When I attempted to post a warning of this on the Apple Support Community web-site, it was promptly "taken down" twice.

Of course, in the next 24 hours, since most software updates are applied automatically, millions of MacBook customers are quite likely to encounter this. But, Apple's ever-vigilant moderators took very great pains to prevent the alert from getting out. Now you know.

Censorship, in a technical forum intended to allow customers to alert one another about problems that they mutually face, "is hardly appropriate."

Mac Users: do not apply the latest software update. At least, not yet.

If you do, and should you encounter "issues," you can re-install MacOS by a command-key sequence at startup.

That is low even for Apple. So concerned with "it just works" that they prevent people discussing actual problems.

Normal I guess though. My wife's work keeps telling us the problem is our internet and not their VPN (which worked flawlessly until they removed their Cisco gateway from her setup here at the house). Nevermind the fact that I can game at 40ms all day with nary a hitch. No one wants to admit to anything...

This story also illustrates the folly of automatic updates. By the time I do my monthly Slackware update, any problems will have been well aired (not that they are at all common). I did once get caught by an AntiX update that broke dns resolution but fortunately it proved easy to provide a temporary fix.

I called Apple Support again by phone, and spoke to a representative about the incident, describing it politely as "a training issue," and not as anything for which employee heads should roll. He agreed, and promised to escalate it appropriately.

Indeed, it is the purpose of the community support forum for actual users to be able to inform one another about issues that they have faced, and to discuss potential solutions to those issues. Most especially those concerning an "automatic update" that was published last night, for which "time is of the essence."

Obviously, someone on their moderator staff does not understand the guidelines, or those guidelines need to be clarified.

Very interesting. A manager in Apple Support just called me out of the blue, apologized for the incident and said that the guidelines given to the moderators would be immediately clarified. Nice touch.

I agree, very interesting. Keep us posted.