macOS 13.2 Beta 1 crashes iMac

Not that it’s going to help but this blog seems to be where I document my macOS crashes (previously) so I might as well continue tradition.

This time its my iMac (Intel) with NVMe storage. It was working fine on macOS 12.x. I upgraded to macOS 13.1 when I turned on Advanced Data Protection. Boy that slowed the machine down. This iMac used to be fast, but every macOS update gradually slows (bogs?) it down. Things were fine this way until I started getting warnings that I am signed out of my Apple ID because I am not on the latest version of macOS. Nothing helped (like rebooting etc.) so I thought let’s update to the beta version. That didn’t help either. What finally helped was signing out of Apple ID and signing in again – should have just tried that to begin with!

Ever since the update though the machine crashes. Power it on, and within a few hours it’s crashed. Usually I am not even using it but it crashes. Weird. I upgraded to the 13.2(b) beta of today, but that didn’t help either.

So now I have a perfectly working iMac in a broken condition. Just going to keep it powered off until the next Beta comes along. Eugh.

Update 1: Needs further investigation, but maybe it’s Universal Control. Once I turned that off the iMac has stopped crashing. I did that on a whim plus on the macOSBeta Reddit community I saw complaints of issues with external displays. Maybe the two are related?

Update 2 (14th Jan): Looks like it crashed sometime yesterday as it was down again today morning. There’s a new Beta 2 out so I’ll upgrade to that and see if it helps. Of course, turning on Universal Control.

You know an irritating thing with Macs? Even if you use a Bluetooth keyboard (I use the Keychron K2) when it crashes or starts from a shutdown state it doesn’t accept the keyboard. The only options then are to either use a wired one or Bluetooth via the Magic Keyboard. Doesn’t seem to be an issue when you reboot.

Update 3 (23rd Jan): Beta 2 definitely helped. And today I updated to the just released RC and that’s fine too so far.