Apple Releases macOS 10.13.3 Supplemental Update With Telugu Crash Fix

Apple today released a new version of macOS High Sierra 10.13.3, which comes approximately one month after the first version of macOS High Sierra 10.13.3, an update that offered fixes for the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities discovered in early January.

The new macOS High Sierra update can be downloaded directly from the Mac App Store or through the Software Update function in the Mac App Store on all compatible Macs that are already running macOS High Sierra.

Today's update addresses a bug that causes apps like Messages to crash due to an inability to render a character in the Indian language Telugu. When sent or received, the character in question can cause an app like Messages or Safari to freeze up and become unresponsive.

There's also a separate macOS High Sierra 10.13.13 Supplemental Update for iMac Pros, which is designed to fix the Telugu bug on those machines.

Prior to today's update, the only fix in an app like Messages was to delete the entire conversation containing the buggy character. The update also impacted iOS 11.2.5, and Apple also released a new iOS 11.2.6 update to fix it.

Apple previously addressed the Telugu character bug in iOS 11.3 and macOS 10.13.4, but those updates are still in beta testing and won't be released until the spring. Apple last week promised a minor update to fix the bugs in the meantime.

Update: Apple released a second supplementary update for the iMac Pro in late February as iMac Pro users were not able to install the update.

Related Roundup: macOS High Sierra

Top Rated Comments

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nt5672

9 weeks ago

I can imagine that fix will take some time, even if it's high priority.

Yep, Apple already had everyone switched back over to work on animoji AR for the next iOS release.

Rating: 9 Votes

Populus

9 weeks ago

I can imagine that fix will take some time, even if it's high priority.

i just hope APFS will be polished enough with the launch of 10.14, because as you said, the file system is a high priority part of the operating system.

It would be nice to have it well optimized for mechanical hard drives and fusion drives as well.

Rating: 5 Votes

springsup

9 weeks ago

I can imagine that fix will take some time, even if it's high priority.

Probably not; as I mentioned in the dedicated thread on that topic, it's a silent error which should be a loud error. Not to trivialise the issue, but as potential filesystem bugs go, that's a breeze.

I think you are overplaying a single, minor bug. APFS is fine - there are hundreds of millions of people who have been using APFS for their critical data-storage needs for about a year, and we're not hearing about widespread data-corruption or anything.

The one thing I have noticed, is that these minor bugs are getting much more publicity than they used to. I don't think Apple's software has gotten worse overall; there are always better and less-excellent releases of any software. It's just that every minor bug appears to be an urgent catastrophe for some people. You have never used a piece of software with no bugs, I promise.

Rating: 4 Votes

LincolnsiPod

9 weeks ago

High Sierra has been the literal worst software experience I've had with Apple by far.

Messages ARE still out of order and has persisted for months! WTF

Rating: 4 Votes

BraytonAK

9 weeks ago

Looks like I've finally been bit by Apple's lack of software quality. Now that I've installed the update, kernel_task has elevated CPU usage. For over an hour it was pegged at 100% or more with spikes every ten to fifteen seconds. The system couldn't even shut down. It's finally elevated at 10% after a forced shutdown, but that's still too high.

I would love to see macOS 10.14 and iOS 12 offering "No New Updates" (say that in a certain presidential voice regarding taxes.) We don't need more features. We need the things we already have to be reliable and work as intended. I haven't installed this update on my phone, but I'm damn sure I'm skipping it. This crap makes me want to march into that spaceship that I helped pay for and sling my devices into the wall.

Rating: 2 Votes

OldSchoolMacGuy

9 weeks ago

That may be the case but the report of the bug comes from Bombich developers of Carbon Copy Cloner who are a highly respected source so cannot be ignored.
Apple should place releasing a fix for the APFS bug as High Priority no matter how few it impacts on.

Bombich works in a very small niche. I know, I've worked in it far longer than he has and he even took the approach to drive copying we pioneered and integrated it into his product.

This is a highly specialized bug. It's unlikely to impact even 0.001% of users. It won't be prioritized for that reason. This text character bug on the other hand, is being exploited across social media, AdWords, and other areas which impact far far far more people. There's a real priority there.
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Stupid question: Was macOS 10.12 (Sierra) also affected by this bug? And if yes, do you think we'll get an update for it and/or how critical could this become if people kept spamming, eg, Twitter with it?

No it was not. APFS wasn't added until High Sierra so it's not even possible to work with the required disk image which the bug impacts.
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I'd wager a guess that the character bug was significantly easier to fix. Also any change they apply to the file system needs to be extremely thoroughly tested. And it is not as if Apple has dozens of guys working on the file system. Even if they wanted, they couldn't increase the resources working on the file system bug arbitrarily, only the people who currently or recently worked on the file system would be fully qualified.

Point being, I think most people would expect that fixing a bug in the file system will take significantly longer than fixing a character bug (and we don't even know when Apple was first notified of the character bug).

It's not a fix to the file system that's required. It's an issue with a specific type of disk image, when formatted for a particular file system. It's a fairly simple fix to set the file size constraints for such disk images. A fix is coming soon.

Rating: 2 Votes

shuttersny

9 weeks ago

Over two hours now and the update still hasn't finished installing. WTF?

This was pretty much my experieince
I did a forced restart
Restored machine from weekly clone and automatic hourly Time Machine backups
I won't go near this supplemental update till I see some remedy
I've used Macs since 1983
Do regular "maintenance"
First "update" that I had any issue with
Does this say something?

Rating: 2 Votes

podam

9 weeks ago

Last time my bran new MacBook 15 2017 updates itself last month it couldn’t restart!!! Saying the update is corrupted or something, spent hours to factory reset my Mac OS system. So scary it was never happening with windows 10 or 8... Apple seems to have been busy with maximizing the profit and build the ring and left their promises aside. See the homepod
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I think I will let some other people install this and see how it turns out for them before installing it on my machines. I know it is a very minor update, however, with the way Apple QC has been...well, that speaks for itself.

:apple:

Perfectly right... Apple QC these days is
Frightening really. My brand new MacBook 2015 crashed last month on automatic update. I restarted the laptop few days after without knowing the system updated and the system was lost!! Had to factory reset MacOS!!
For me they really left over the Mac for
Their Animoji AR and other. Really sad

Rating: 2 Votes