It's definitely a buggy device/firmware. There is no way an OS update can cause this (barring some massive Apple bug which is unlikely); more likely the device

It's definitely a buggy device/firmware. There is no way an OS update can cause this (barring some massive Apple bug which is unlikely); more likely the device firmware mishandles some valid standard USB commands that older OSes didn't issue. In general, it's quite common for USB device firmware to be of extremely poor quality; it'll be tested and bugs fixed until it works with the target OSes and drivers, but no comprehensive testing of whether it can deal with all possible standard request patterns is done.