10.14.2 update borked prefs/Library/something

[dondiego87]

Just a bug report; I don't have a good solution other than restoring from a backup. This might be related to some of the issues others seem to have had with the 10.14.1 → 10.14.2 update. Here's what happened:

Thursday (Dec. 13): Updated my mid-2014 Macbook Pro from 10.14.1 to macOS 10.14.2. Upon completion of the update, Microsoft Office apps no longer thought they were registered. Screensaver said “[My] Macbook” instead of time.

Friday (Dec. 14): Woke computer up. Started Calendar, was given “What’s new in Calendar” screen. I soon noticed that the Macintosh HD icon on desktop was reporting only 43 GB of space. I knew that wasn’t right, so I decided to restart the computer. (This problem will reappear, but I think it's a red herring—probably not related to the issue at hand.)

Upon logging in, I was given the privacy statement screen and asked whether I wanted to enable Talk To Siri. Macintosh HD icon on desktop now correctly indicated that 127 GB are free, but lots of preferences were wrong. Just the ones I noticed right off the bat:

• macOS
  • Menu bar battery icon
  • Apps added to dock: Siri, Apple Maps, News
• Third-party
  • iTerm
  • iStat Menus
  • Spotify Notifications
  • MS Office apps still thought they weren't registered

Called Apple; they had me do a Recovery reinstall over the internet. (Installer thought there were only 27 GB available!) Didn't fix the issue. All previously described issues remained. More that I noticed as I used the machine throughout the rest of the day:

• Skim asked me if it should check for updates automatically (that was previously enabled and it hadn’t asked in a while). 5th button on toolbar was changed from highlight to pen. My colors were not in toolbar, and when added, my custom colors were gone.
• Papers:
  • Prompted me to choose a library file and went through other initial setup steps
  • Couldn’t open its Spotlight Search Index.
  • Thinks it’s unregistered.

As a test, I tried replacing the /Users/$USER/Library/Application Support/Papers3 folder with its pre-10.14.2 Time Machine backup. That solved the Spotlight Index problem and didn’t trigger “new setup” prompts, but unfortunately didn’t solve the registration issue.

So it looks like the problem may have to do with Library files, but going through every app and replacing its Library stuff with its backup would have been really annoying and probably would have broken other stuff. Instead, I ended up just restoring from a 10.14.1 Time Machine backup.

I think I'll hold off on 10.14.2 for a little while...