After Security Update 2021-007 for Catalina, Google Earth Pro isn't working anymore

Interesting. My iMac is fully patched Catalina with the 2021-007 security update installed. I clicked on the link you provided. No crash, just a bunch of fish swimming in a circle. I even clicked on the 30,000 fish option. The aquarium is running right now in another tab as I post this response. A third tab is playing a YouTube video. So I have three tabs open and the aquarium tab is still running just fine.

Bottom line, I don't know what your issue is but it’s definitely not the security update.

Can you try Safe Mode (which disables all third party extensions)?

I have a 2013 Macbook Air with the Security Update applied and it works fine. But it has the HD5000 Intel graphics, not the HD4000. It was reported in another thread that the problems went away with the HD4000 in Safe Mode, which might indicate that a third party extension does not work with the MacOS when the Security Update is applied. But I don't know what happens with the Intel graphics driver in safe mode, whether it is enabled or not.

Right question :-)

In Safe Mode the error does not occur. We found this during a session with Apple Support. But the graphics performance is extremely degraded then.

I'm absolutely no specialist for graphics hardware, but it feels like a very basic standard graphics driver uses an assumed standard graphics API like "VGA" in the IBM PC world. At least that works...

If Apple states that they fixed two security issues in the Intel HD4000 graphics driver then they obviously have the Intel sources and modified them or have modified their own driver and have the sources anyway. Then the 'third party extension' is in fact an Apple extension. :-)

Regards - Matthias

Kestrel -- in the other thread you described a clean install to an external drive where you applied the Security Update and then, with nothing other than Apple MacOS software, the system showed the errors. So I think that shows that the Security Update is not handling the HD4000 hardware properly. As I suggested in the other thread, I think you should submit a bug report to Apple. Maybe their support people already did that for you ...

I believe this is the same to us. And we also experience the crash issue with MAC OS Catalina 10.15.7 (19H1519), which contains the buggy graphics card driver for AppleIntelHD4000GraphicsGLDriver.

The update was released on Oct 25, and we started observing spiky crash for the issue. Searching shows that several other applications are also experiencing the same issue.

And we know the old graphics card HD 4000 is affected, and newer graphics card seems to be ok so far.

Please escalate this issue and release some patch as early as possible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacOS_Catalina

https://issueexplorer.com/issue/Ultimaker/Cura/10701

https://github.com/rstudio/rstudio/issues/10020

I did some looking around in the Mactracker database app. It appears the Intel HD 4000 graphics was used for a very short period of time in 2012 and 2013. How many models of that vintage are still in use could affect the speed of delivery of a patch for those specific machines.

Yeah, I totally agree!

So far this is our top crash issue, though the # of users may not be majority, but the crash # contributes almost half of the total.

All users are using Intel HD4000 Graphics card.

Looking forward to the new update from Apple! :-)

On my 2012 Mac mini, which has the Intel HD 4000 graphics, Google Earth Pro has been crashing for me too since the security update. It works fine on my 2019 MBP (which is running Catalina with the same update).

I also have another issue on my Mac mini since the update; any window that has a horizontal scroll bar will auto-scroll to the right when you mouse over it. The only way to stop it is to manually resize the window to the point that the scroll bar isn't needed any more.

I encountered a similar issue, trying to use Google Maps street view on my 2012 Mac mini. It's fine without the 2021-007 Catalina update; it breaks after the update was applied. I re-installed Catalina without the update.

Out of curiosity, has anyone been brave enough to try to replace the HD4000 driver code with the pre-update versions? I found these directories that might be applicable.

/System/Library/Extensions/AppleIntelHD4000Graphics.kext/

/System/Library/Extensions/AppleIntelHD4000GraphicsGLDriver.bundle/

/System/Library/Extensions/AppleIntelHD4000GraphicsMTLDriver.bundle/

/System/Library/Extensions/AppleIntelHD4000GraphicsVADriver.bundle/

realkato wrote:

Out of curiosity, has anyone been brave enough to try to replace the HD4000 driver code with the pre-update versions? I found these directories that might be applicable.

Yes, I replaced 'AppleIntelHD4000GraphicsGLDriver.bundle' only with the version of Update 006.

That solved the issue with WebGL pages but broke several other apps, e.g. 'Preview.app'.

I reinstalled the "Security Update 2021-007 Catalina" to make my Mac running smooth again.

In the end I'm not experienced enough (regarding macOS) to do such a bundle replacement right. I do not know if and how a cache of dynamic libraries has to be updated, if a new kernel must be relinked and so on...

A guy at mactechnews.de found a pretty simple solution for the "Safari/WebGL"-Problem:

In Safari check "Develop -> Experimental Features -> WebGL via Metal" to "on" - then WebGL-pages load again without problems (so far). Especially 'earth.google.com' works again :-)

Regards - Matthias

After a clean re-install of Catalina, testing and then installation of this security-update (2021-007) in addition to device-related updates, once again Safari crashes on certain pages after multiple-re-loads (i.e. pages like weather.com, radar view). Furthermore, Firefox crashes (very quickly) on these same pages. I believe that these browsers use Webkit. Microsoft Edge which uses Chromium as a base works fine under MACOS Catalina.

This bug concerns not only Google Earth, but also RStudio, certain QGIS Plugins, a lot of Web Pages for User who prefer Firefox and Chrome, and so on.

Apple has to react and must support the hd 4000 graphics again. That's the point

No contradiction.

Meanwhile there are/were workarounds.

Reinstallation of Catalina + SecurityUpdate 2021-006 seems no longer possible. But the described Safari Option is possible and fixes some (and only some) of the problems until Apple hopefully publishes "Security Update 202x-008 Catalina".

Exactly that's the solution if "WebGL via Metal" is not sufficient. Thanks a lot, I found this too some time ago. But the Safari-option solved all my problems regarding the 007 Update so far.

I read in another thread somewhere here that macOS Catalina meanwhile includes the Security Update 2021-007. If that's the case, then there's no way back anymore other than a TimeMachine-Backup if you have one :-(