macOS Sonoma is the newest version of the Mac operating system released in September 2023. As of October 2023, the current version of the IBM SPSS statistical software does not support macOS Sonoma. Users can apply a patch released by IBM to resolve compatibility issues while IBM develops SPSS 30, which is supposed to have native support for macOS Sonoma.
***This patch is only supported in SPSS 29. Versions 28 and older will not be fixed with this patch.***
Installing the interim fix
Identify the exact version of SPSS you are running by navigating within SPSS to SPSS Statistics → About SPSS Statistics → Release/Build information. An example release number is “25.0.0.2”.
Download the interim fix for your specific version of SPSS.
Follow these instructions published by IBM on how to install the interim fix.
Alternative instructions provided by IBM Help Desk
1. Make sure you have SPSS installed and have the interim fix in your downloads folder and have extracted the files in it.
2. Note the name of the file that needs replacing: it's libplatdep.dylib
3. In your applications folder locate SPSS Statistics, you must right-click if you are using a mouse or use Control-Click with the keyboard to get to "Show package Contents" ,
then Click on Contents, Click on lib.
4. Copy this file (libplatdep.dylib) to another location, such as your desktop.
5. Go into your downloads and grab the file of the same name that you downloaded in step 1
6. Put it in the Contents/lib folder. you'll get a warning about there being an older file with the same name - replace it,
you copied the older file to your desktop in case anything went wrong.