Apple Intelligence is now available on iPhone, iPad, and Mac!
24 hours later....
iMac 27″, macOS 11.6
Sapote wrote:
24 hours later....
https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/243b5032-0e60-4dd2-bead-f08eb7837d20
The current macOS — you are up to date Big Sur 11.6.3
Close the System Preference pane.
Sapote Said:
"Software Update is still checking for updates after Big Sur 11.6.3 yesterday.: Update: I tried Safe Boot Mode again and it did not work. But after restarting in normal boot mode it finally worked. I guess second time is the charm."
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Great to hear! Excellent job troubleshooting.
Update:
It was working again following a macOS Recovery (Erase & Reinstall) attempt to try and finally resolve the slow-down issue caused after updating to Big Sur from Catalina, but after another Restart it stopped working, then it worked again after another Restart, and then it stopped working again.
Haven't tried safe boot, Recovery seemed quicker.
It's 34+ hours now and still good. Despite me booting to another disk with Big Sur on it (my Drobo devices won't work in BS, Drobo wanted a bit more info, it's a 'known issue' apparently, they are working with Apple to fix it I believe).
Anyway 34+ hours and about 4 reboots later and all is still well.
I tried a lot of other possible solutions and nothing stuck, the best I got was 2-3 hours and then it gave up.
I created a keyboard maestro macro to check every hour and let me know if it works or not, every now and then I double check via the system preferences.
I *think* that clearing out that install.plist might have been the key for me. It seems to hold a list of updates to apply, but there were no directories for them so it could never complete.
Anyway, I searched for a few days, tried quite a lot of things that worked for other people, none of which worked for me. My issue only started after installing the 2022-02 patch, if I undid that, (initially via time machine, 2nd time via a CCC clone, 3rd time I did a clean reinstall and a migrate), each time it worked until I applied the patch, immediately after the reboot then the problem appeared!
I decided to clear out those directories just on the off chance, I had backups so it was worth a shot and thankfully, so far, has worked.
Fingers crossed it might fix it for you too.
I've decided just to ignore this for now and try macOS Recovery (Erase & Reinstall) again, but copy user account files over and do a clean install of all apps, instead of using Migration Assistant this time. My first attempt proved the restart slow-down/login lag issue was caused after updating to Big Sur from Catalina. I think it's obvious that something from the past 15+ years of updates, new releases, and migrating to new iMac's has taken its toll, especially with latest macOS releases. iMac/macOS was much more reliable a few year ago.
Also, how long has the slowdown been going?
You know that after an update macOS does quite a bit of housekeeping and the machine crawls for quite a while - at least mine does!
It verifies all the applications, rebuilds caches, xpc, dyld etc etc.
Over a year...
I updated to Big Sur from Catalina about a month after the release (first update I think).
Why do I keep getting this message for posting to my own posts? It happens after 2 replies.
"! You’ve exceeded the posting limits. Please try again in a few minutes."
Can't guarantee it will fix it, but it is worth a shot, it clears out all the crud, rebuilds all the necessary stuff and should hopefully make things better.
If it doesn't then back to plan A and do a clean install.
Hopefully something will fix it though.
I wished I could have stayed on High Sierra, but Apple make that very difficult. I've been using Macs for 30+ years and they get worse with each update. The only saving grace is that it isn't Windows 😉
Here's a Etrecheck Report for anyone curious...
Nothing has changed/improved. Software Update is still checking...
Update:
I tried Safe Boot Mode again and it did not work. But after restarting in normal boot mode it finally worked. I guess second time is the charm.
And it's back!
It's happening again after having to restart iMac due to network/wifi issue.
Really bizarre.
I have closed/quit System Pref's and even restarted iMac.
It's still checking.... I assume it won't connect at Apple's end and show it's up to date.
Expect an Other… in the Software Update panel for Safari 15.3 which trails the 11.6.3 release by a few hours.
Safari update was installed with MacOS Big Sur update.
Update:
Still checking for updates.....
Software Update is still checking for updates after Big Sur 11.6.3 yesterday.
