Apple's new entry-level 14-inch MacBook Pro with the standard M3 chip began arriving to customers over the past day, and some early adopters have discovered that the laptop cannot currently be updated to macOS Sonoma over the air.
As noted by @aaronp613 on X, at least some 14-inch MacBook Pro models with the M3 chip shipped with an unreleased build of macOS Ventura 13.5 installed. When users attempt to update to macOS Sonoma in the System Settings app, macOS Ventura 13.5 is listed as the latest version available instead of macOS Sonoma 14.1.
One user who experienced this issue is Daniel Rotar, host of the YouTube channel ZONEofTECH, according to a post he shared on X today. Additional users across X and the MacRumors Forums have mentioned the issue.
Ok, here’s something weird. Our M3 MacBook Pro shipped with Ventura and can’t seem to update to Sonoma at all. Version not compatible. Our M3 Pro MacBook Pro shipped with Sonoma. Did anyone else get an M3 that shipped with Ventura? pic.twitter.com/me0kLZjk6f — Daniel (@ZONEofTECH) November 7, 2023
Given that macOS Ventura 13.5 was released in July, it seems that Apple began stockpiling the 14-inch MacBook Pro with the M3 chip several months ago.
It's unclear when Apple will address this problem, but in the meantime, software researcher Nicolás Álvarez said that affected users can download the Install Assistant for the M3-compatible version of macOS Sonoma 14.1 and manually install the update. It is also possible to enable macOS public betas to get the update to appear.
Update: As noted by 9to5Mac, this issue appears to affect the new iMac with the M3 chip as well.
