[R-SIG-Mac] Problems with RStudio for mac

Ken Beath ken @end|ng |rom kjbe@th@|d@@u
Thu Jul 17 10:42:34 CEST 2025 

I got a bit confused with Apples’s strange MacOS version numbers. Anyway Electron 38, which is out in a month or two drops support for Big Sur.

Support for MacOS 13 means that most, but not all, Macs after 2017 are supported, which is not a bad effort.

Ken

> On 17 Jul 2025, at 4:47 pm, Simon Urbanek <simon.urbanek using r-project.org> wrote:
> 
> Ken,
> 
> That's not true, Positron is based on Electron 34 which supports macOS 11 just fine (as do all stable releases of Electron). The breakage comes from the Jupyter R kernel which ostensibly was intended to be backward compatible (with minos set to 10.12 which is ancient) so it looks like an oversight at build time more than an intention. That is not to say that reliance on such a long list of 3rd party code doesn't have problems in that regard, so I wouldn’t hold my breath (Electron did announce the intent to break it in the future releases).
> 
> Cheers,
> Simon
> 
> 
>> On 17/07/2025, at 16:01, Ken Beath <ken using kjbeath.id.au> wrote:
>> 
>> The problem is that it uses the Electron framework, and it isn’t supported on earlier versions of MacOS. 
>> 
>> Ken
>> 
>>> On 17 Jul 2025, at 1:15 pm, Simon Urbanek <simon.urbanek using r-project.org> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Kevin,
>>> 
>>> You may have missed one key part: large fraction of Intel Mac users cannot upgrade, because Apple removed many Intel Mac drivers from more recent macOS versions, so many R users have no choice - they cannot upgrade even if they wanted to - which why we see so many R users using macOS < 13. The question of EOL support becomes irrelevant if it is the only way to keep a perfectly good machine running. That’s why it is important for R to keep supporting macOS 11 and higher at least for the x86_64 builds (arm64 is fine so far, Apple is currently supporting all Apple Silicon Macs in the latest macOS). One could say that Apple is becoming the victim of their own hardware quality :).
>>> 
>>> Cheers,
>>> Simon
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> On 17/07/2025, at 14:03, Kevin Ushey <kevinushey using gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Big Sur is no longer supported by Apple (it reached EOL in September 2023)
>>>> so you're unfortunately likely to continue to run into these sorts of
>>>> issues if you cannot upgrade your OS.
>>>> 
>>>> On Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 6:07 PM José Carlos Guerrero Antúnez <
>>>> jcgantunez using gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> Thanks Bill for the recommendation.
>>>>> I installed Positron but I got this message, it doesn't seem to connect
>>>>> with R.
>>>>> 
>>>>> R 4.5.1 failed to start up (exit code -1)
>>>>> 
>>>>> The kernel exited before a connection could be established
>>>>> dyld: Symbol not found:
>>>>> __ZTTNSt3__118basic_stringstreamIcNS_11char_traitsIcEENS_9allocatorIcEEEE
>>>>> Referenced from:
>>>>> 
>>>>> /Applications/Positron.app/Contents/Resources/app/extensions/positron-r/resources/ark/ark
>>>>> Expected in: /usr/lib/libc++.1.dylib
>>>>> in
>>>>> 
>>>>> /Applications/Positron.app/Contents/Resources/app/extensions/positron-r/resources/ark/ark
>>>>> 
>>>>> El mié, 16 jul 2025 a las 7:14, <bill+rsigmac using 8pawexpress.com> escribió:
>>>>> 
>>>>>> I’m neither a Posit/RStudio employee/dev nor do I use their IDEs atm, but
>>>>>> … while RStudio IDE requires MacOS 13+, the “next-gen” IDE from Posit is
>>>>>> Positron, and it allegedly depends only on MacOS 10.15+ with universal,
>>>>>> intel, and arm64 binaries. See https://positron.posit.co/download.html.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I’ve played briefly with it, and while I’m an avid emacs/ess user (never
>>>>>> been much for RStudio IDE itself), the Positron experience is getting
>>>>> much
>>>>>> closer to what I hope for. There are discussions on migrating (keyboard
>>>>>> shortcuts, mental assumptions, etc) from RStudio IDE to reduce the
>>>>> change,
>>>>>> and I believe there are few things one can do in RStudio that are not
>>>>> also
>>>>>> feasible in Positron.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Good luck,
>>>>>> Bill
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> On 7/15/25 18:36, Simon Urbanek wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> José,
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I agree that latest RStudio dropping support for a very large number of
>>>>> Macs is unfortunate. It may be worth raising it with Posit - we have very
>>>>> deliberately not increased the macOS version requirement of R binaries,
>>>>> because it would affect way too may R users based on the estimates from
>>>>> weblogs (as Intel Mac owners simply cannot upgrade).
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> That said, in the meantime you can install any older R version as well -
>>>>> see
>>>>>> https://cran.r-project.org/bin/macosx/big-sur-x86_64/base/
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> to match the last working RStudio to see if it will work for your use
>>>>> case.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Of course, for regular work you can switch to the Mac GUI which always
>>>>> supports the same macOS version as R, or any of the other GUI alternatives
>>>>> that don’t embed R.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Cheers,
>>>>>> Simon
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> On 16/07/2025, at 02:37, José Carlos Guerrero Antúnez <
>>>>> jcgantunez using gmail.com> <jcgantunez using gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Thanks Kevin and Roy,
>>>>>> I work with two old Macs with the BigSur operating system (one at home
>>>>> and
>>>>>> one at school) and I can't upgrade, which prevents me from having the
>>>>>> newest version of RStudio because it doesn't meet the requirements.
>>>>>> I wanted to install the caretSDM package, on the Mac at home I had
>>>>> version
>>>>>> 4.3.3 and the package recommended me to use a newer version of R and I
>>>>>> upgraded to version 4.5.1. In the case of the faculty Mac I am using
>>>>>> version R.4.4.0 and I have no problem with the caretSDM package.
>>>>>> From my ignorance I dare to say that there is a package that is
>>>>> generating
>>>>>> the conflict with R version 4.5.1.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Best regards,
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> El mar, 15 jul 2025 a las 1:02, roy (<rollinforall using gmail.com> <
>>>>> rollinforall using gmail.com>) escribió:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Hi José
>>>>>> fwiw, I tried R 4.5.1 on my macmini (15.5, Intel) with an old version of
>>>>>> RStudio and received the same similar error you reported.  When I updated
>>>>>> to the latest RStudio (Version 2025.05.1+513 (2025.05.1+513)) my quick
>>>>> test
>>>>>> (matrix multiplication) worked without error.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> cheers, roy
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> On Mon, Jul 14, 2025 at 8:42 PM Kevin Ushey <kevinushey using gmail.com> <
>>>>> kevinushey using gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Did you already try installing the latest available release of RStudio?
>>>>> In
>>>>>> general, R and RStudio should be upgraded together.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> If you still have problems with the latest release of RStudio, you should
>>>>>> file a big report at https://github.com/rstudio/rstudio/issues.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> On Mon, Jul 14, 2025, 6:54 PM José Carlos Guerrero Antúnez <
>>>>> jcgantunez using gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Thank you Jeff for your suggestions, I will keep them in mind.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> El lun, 14 jul 2025 a las 22:45, Jeff Newmiller (<
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> jdnewmil using dcn.davis.ca.us
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> )
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> escribió:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> R is maintained by the volunteer R Core group, while RStudio is
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> maintained
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> by Posit. You may get more thorough help with RStudio if you ask at
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> the
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Posit forum.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> That said, as a rule the RStudio team has to play "catch-up" when R is
>>>>>> upgraded by R Core. You may be running an older version of RStudio
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> that
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> does not know how to deal with R 4.5.1. Check for a newer version of
>>>>>> RStudio, or try uninstalling R 4.5.1 and re-installing an older
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> version
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> R... or try using R with a different text editor (there are a lot of
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> them).
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> RStudio is a fine option, but it is not the only way to use R.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> On July 14, 2025 5:54:47 PM PDT, "José Carlos Guerrero Antúnez" <
>>>>> jcgantunez using gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Hi,
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I am not sure if this is the right forum for this query, and I
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> apologize
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> in
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> advance.
>>>>>> I recently upgraded to version R 4.5.1, and I use the RStudio
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> program. I
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> can open it without any problem, but I am experiencing crashes
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> whenever
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> perform any action in the program. I receive the following message:
>>>>>> "R Session Aborted. R encountered a fatal error. The session was
>>>>>> terminated. Start New Session."
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Could you please recommend what I should do?
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Thank you very much
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>  [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> R-SIG-Mac mailing listR-SIG-Mac using r-project.orghttps://
>>>>> stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mac
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> Sent from my phone. Please excuse my brevity.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> José Carlos Guerrero
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>    [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> R-SIG-Mac mailing listR-SIG-Mac using r-project.orghttps://
>>>>> stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mac
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>    [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> R-SIG-Mac mailing listR-SIG-Mac using r-project.orghttps://
>>>>> stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mac
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> José Carlos Guerrero
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> R-SIG-Mac mailing listR-SIG-Mac using r-project.orghttps://
>>>>> stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mac
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> R-SIG-Mac mailing listR-SIG-Mac using r-project.orghttps://
>>>>> stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mac
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> ​
>>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> --
>>>>> José Carlos Guerrero
>>>>> 
>>>>>     [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>>>>> 
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> R-SIG-Mac mailing list
>>>>> R-SIG-Mac using r-project.org
>>>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mac
>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>>>> 
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