The original story was posted here a couple of days ago. Since then, FTDI have backed down and removed the offending driver.
Newer drivers, including those auto-installed by Windows Update or those available for OS X, will cease to work with cloned chips, but do not modify and disable those chips anymore.
Original post and discussion: https://plus.google.com/104012815742569035024/posts/bSDj7Wche2o
http://hackaday.com/2014/10/24/ftdi-screws-up-backs-down/
Please, don’t spread the misinformation about the OS X driver. FTDI released the last driver for OS X 2012, today the driver is from Apple. The only source claiming the OS X driver would be do the same, is Heise. But there is and was not a single user report confirming this.
@Alexander_Merz true, the last OS X driver from FTDI is from 2012. Apparently Apple are using their own implementation since.
Latest OSX driver that comes from Mavericks won’t work ok with Arduinos using FTDI chips (it fails to reset the board and upload fails).
@Miguel_Sanchez Did you read it somewhere (if yes, please provide an URL) or did this happened to you? In the later case, you can easily check, if the FTDI driver was responsible for it by looking up the actual USB-PID of the arduino board.
@Alexander_Merz It happened to me. We have an old batch of Arduino Duemilanove and NG in our lab. FTDI’s driver did the trick. It is well documented http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=198539.0
@Alexander_Merz Please note I did not claim latest OSX drivers were bricking FTDI’s but that FTDI drivers are actually needed to get Arduino working on Mavericks.
@Miguel_Sanchez Thanks for the URL. I spend a lot of time the last day to investigate the issue, especially if OS X is affected or not. I can acknowledge the Apple driver seems to have (or at least had) some problems concerning stability and compatibility.
To be clear on this subject: If the OS X driver blocks your Arduinos on purpose, it would mean their FTDI chips are recognized as counterfeit chips. The implications would be notable.
@Alexander_Merz The issue I pointed out is not connected with the recent Windows driver issue. But I wanted to bring up the fact that though OSX provides native drivers, these may be ineffective for some uses (like Arduino autoreset) though they may provide adequate functionality for more common tasks. It is my understanding that problem happpens regardless FTDI chips are original or clones.