Apple Releases macOS 10.12.4 with Night Shift, Cricket Scores, Enterprise Features

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Apple released macOS 10.12.4 Monday, an update that adds a couple of new features and some other minor improvements. The biggest new feature is Night Shift, technology that shifts your Mac’s display towards the red at the end of your day. The update also adds cricket scores for Indian Premier League and the International Cricket Council to Siri. Apple also added a slew of enterprise-specific features.

macOS 10.12.4 is a 1.56GB download through the Mac App Store.

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macOS Sierra

Apple’s Patch Notes for iOS 10.3

What’s New in Version 10.12.4

The macOS Sierra 10.12.4 update improves the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac.

This update:

  • Adds Night Shift for automatically shifting the colors in your display to the warmer end of the spectrum after dark
  • Adds Siri support for cricket sports scores and statistics for Indian Premier League and International Cricket Council
  • Adds Dictation support for Shanghainese
  • Resolves several PDF rendering and annotation issues in Preview
  • Improves the visibility of the subject line when using Conversation View in Mail
  • Fixes an issue that may prevent content from appearing in Mail messages

Enterprise content:

  • Adds the tethered-caching command, which optimizes certain downloads for iOS devices tethered via USB. For details, enter man tethered-caching in Terminal.
  • Updates the security command to include the delete-identity option, which deletes both a certificate and its private key from a keychain. For details, enter man security in Terminal.
  • Updates the profiles command to include the -N flag, which displays a device-enrollment notification that prompts the user to complete Mobile Device Management (MDM) enrollment. For details, enter man profiles in Terminal.
  • Fixes an issue that causes notebook computers connected to certain docking stations to display a blank screen instead of the macOS login window on the built-in display.
  • Fixes an issue that causes a newly changed user-account password to be rejected at the macOS login window, if FileVault is turned on.
  • Adds the ability to automatically renew certain certificates delivered via a configuration profile.
  • Includes numerous Xsan fixes.

11 thoughts on “Apple Releases macOS 10.12.4 with Night Shift, Cricket Scores, Enterprise Features

  • I don’t see the update available for my late 2011 Mac mini after opening the Mac App store update section. Wondering if this update is available for my older Mac? Bryan, please let me know if the update is indeed available for your 2011 MacBook Air. It it is, then it should also work for my 2011 mini.

  • Also went smoothly on my wife’s 2014 MBA (11″). It did go black for nearly a minute, then restarted and resumed the installation, thus making two restarts for the whole process. That did not happen with my MBP.

    I believe that Graham McKay is correct about the force shutdown. I recall having to do that with one of my family member’s computer years ago, and installation resumed. I can’t remember which macOS system it was, or the machine.

    Next will be my daughter ‘s iMac.

  • As with Bryan, the update went smooth on my 5K iMac.

    It went half smooth on my mid 2010 MacBook Pro. There are two accounts on the MBP, mine which is administrator and my wife’s which is user. After the update logging into my account was smooth, but it got hung on the iCloud password for my wife and the screen went black. I had to force restart and everything is fine for now. Now understand that this MBP is getting dog slow.

  • Everything went smoothly on my 2014 15″ MBP, and also on a 2010 13″ MBP.

    I am very happy to see PDF fixes for Preview, as this was a problem I was running into rather often. I am also excited to get Night Shift on my Mac. I have been using Night Shift on my iPhone and iPad since it became available, and love it.

  • Across the many client Macs that I perform macOS updates on I have noticed an increased recent tendency for the update to get “stuck”. My suspicion is that it is happening at the shutdown/restart junction and, just like can happen with a normal restart, some background process is ignoring the OS request to shut down. From memory in all these cases after I force a power shutdown & restart of the Mac, the update then continues to completion.

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