Ventura will be released as a "minor" update (bug)

[raymondap]

We were just made aware of this, and Jamf and Apple have confirmed. The Ventura release on Monday will be considered a minor update for anything 12.3 and higher, so major OS deferrals will not apply. Apple's recommendation is to defer all minor updates as well as major until you can get your clients to 12.6.1 (not released yet, maybe also on the 24th?). Jamf confirmed to us that you should have all your clients at 12.6.1 by Wednesday, November 23, 2022 if you wish to defer Ventura past that date.

Just passing on info. Hopefully this helps someone avoid a rough Monday.

Edit: Adding direct quote from our Jamf rep that explains better than I did:

Ventura major deferral bug, in a nutshell

On macOS 12.2 or earlier? - You're all good. Not affected.

On macOS 12.3 or later?

There's a bug. It's fixed in 12.6.1 and Apple has made a change so even 12.3+ will be fine for 30 days - make sure to get 12.6.1 installed

If you don't get 12.6.1 installed, Ventura updates published after 30 days might appear on Macs running 12.3 - 12.6 - even when major deferred

If you're past 30 days but not on 12.6.1, you can mitigate seeing Ventura by deferring both major and minor (but you should focus on getting to 12.6.1)

[FireboltShade]

I have Macs on 12.6.1 that are still showing Ventura in Software Update, sometimes it is deferred properly and after a reboot Ventura appears again. With the defer config, the user is no longer prompted or alerted about Ventura, so that's good at least; they have to manually go looking for it.

My organization is testing Ventura now and will deploy soon.

[FireboltShade]

I have Macs on 12.6.1 that are still showing Ventura in Software Update, sometimes it is deferred properly and after a reboot Ventura appears again. With the defer config, the user is no longer prompted or alerted about Ventura, so that's good at least; they have to manually go looking for it.

My organization is testing Ventura now and will deploy soon.

[ianatkinson]

Well, we're closed for Christmas (University) but I thought I'd just have a glance at the ol' JAMF dashboard like a good sysadmin on holiday does to check if anything looked like it was broken.

I wondered why my MacOS patch report widget was showing hundreds of up to date computers when we haven't rolled out Ventura yet...

Oh dear, it looks as though my Sunday software update picked up 13.1 as a normal update so has merrily OS updates all the online kit when there wasn't anybody there :/

Finding available software Software Update found the following new or updated software: * Label: Safari16.2MontereyAuto-16.2 Title: Safari, Version: 16.2, Size: 130909KiB, Recommended: YES, * Label: macOS Ventura 13.1-22C65 Title: macOS Ventura 13.1, Version: 13.1, Size: 3878233K, Recommended: YES, Action: restart,

We currently do the actual updates using the MDM command ScheduleOSUpdate/action/install (since everything else broke) and I wasn't aware of this issue so hadn't disabled any of that.

An affected machine was on 12.6.2 so above when this was apparently 'fixed'

25/12/2022 at 12:21

macOS 13.1

10/100/1000

Apple

iMac19,2

3000

1

6

16384

0

245.11 GB

0

24/12/2022 at 12:04

macOS 12.6.2

10/100/1000

Apple

iMac19,2

3000