macOS Ventura 'upgrade' Destroys My User Account, Forces Recovery

2023-07-20 • SEND FEEDBACK |
Related: Apple, Apple Core Rot, Apple macOS, Apple macOS Ventura, Expose Somewhat To Right, Expose To The Right, Lightroom

re: Apple Core Rot

I gave up trying to figure out the performance problems with Lightroom on my 2021 MacBook Pro M1 Max, reluctantly resigning myself to "upgrading" to macOS Ventura. Since I have to run Ventura on my Mac Pro, I figure might as well get a double helping of a shit sandwich.

What a mistake.

After the upgrade, any attempt to login to my account results in a rainbow beachball hang, or a gray screen. That is, I enter my password, and that’s all she wrote. It doesn’t matter how long I wait (a minute or ten minutes). Any apps that are launched are listed as “not responding” and the Finder never launches nor does the system menu bar ever appear. All drives get a clean bill of health, etc.

BTW, this is why I always put my data on a separate volume; that way if the boot volume or account gets hosed, at least I don’t have to restore terabytes of my data.

In effect, my user account was destroyed. Nice work, Apple! What a clown show. A shit sandwich with a side of maggots. But at least there are some new emojis, right?

However, I could login into a different (alternative) admin account that I had created—no issue. It has no useful setup or data, but it’s there for just such an Apple-caused disaster. That doesn’t help much—what do I do with that?

Fortunately, the MBP is now my 2nd and travel machine, so I can delete the unusable login account and create a new one from a clone from my main machine. Or at least I hope that works.

I proceeded to delete the account, and accepted the option to create a DMG of the deleted account. The incompetent implementation was writing at a speed of 30-100MB/sec, predicting hours of waiting, then it failed outright. Test anything lately, Apple?

UPDATE: it was all worth for naught: Lightroom doesn’t run any faster.