Customers upset that they have to downgrade to 10.9.2

May 27, 2014 09:22 GMT  ·  By

People working with multiple monitors powered by a Mac Pro workstation or a MacBook Pro laptop are experiencing problems under the latest version of OS X Mavericks. First there were reports of GPUs acting up, now multi-display setups are not working properly.

According to a thread on Apple Support Communities, in some circumstances Macs running OS X 10.9.3 will be unable to output video on multiple monitors. Customers are particularly dismayed since they had no problem using multi-display setups under 10.9.2, and some will lose work by attempting to downgrade.

“I have three 30" displays, but after the 10.9.3 update, only 2 of them work at a time. Is this a known issue? Can I downgrade to 10.9.2 to get the use of my other display back? It was working just fine on my Mac Pro with 10.9.2,” writes a customer identified as frabtious.

Others are in the same boat. User Bearcat2005 says, “I am having the same problem. I have 4 30" ACDs but only 2 of them work. I time machined back to 10.9.2 via a restore and all is good on 10.9.2. Kinda stinks we can't update to latest software though.”

“Same problem here. Two 24" NEC screens and one 30" DELL U3011. Can have any two, but not three working,” says James Brown15.

For user Chet Pope, reverting back to 10.9.2 is impossible. He relays, “I can't get two monitors to work with 10.9.3. I thougt [sic] I was just updating iTunes but that was not the case. So [I] don't have a back up.”

Indeed the Mac App Store doesn’t always make it clear whether or not you’re updating one app or the entire OS, should a system update like OS X 10.9.3 be listed in the queue.

The thread starter later claims to have reached Apple and it seems a fix is being prepared.

“I have already received a response to the bug report from Apple, asking for more information. Good to see such a quick response. This is a pretty important issue for me, so hope they can fix it quickly,” writes frabtious. “Still, the more people who report it, the higher priority I expect they would give to it, and maybe be able to get different configuration information to enable them to track it down more quickly.”

OS X 10.9.3 has been confirmed as a bad apple on other fronts as well. According to reports, the new update breaks GPU support with Premiere Pro and Resolve, as well as other video editing solutions. It is unclear if Apple can address these widespread flaws with standalone patches. The Cupertino giant may be forced to rush out OS X 10.9.4.

Pro users have been struggling with multi-display issues ever since the release of OS X Mavericks last year, and next week Apple plans to launch the all-new OS X 10.10. Hopefully these problems will become a thing of the past when the new OS is deployed publicly.