32 ms·

macOS Catalina

477 points by css 7y ago

fprog 7y ago
This is a bit of an odd release, no? I did not see an advance announcement of the date, there is no feature in the Mac App Store indicating that the OS is now available (though there is one for Apple Arcade), and until a moment ago, clicking "How to Upgrade" on the Apple site still led to a link to Mojave.
- theoctopus 7y ago
  I'd assume the reason it's not advertised on the Mac App Store is because OS updates are now done through System Preferences.
  - tsieling 7y ago
    It's in the Mac App Store for me, but not as the marquee product at the moment.
  - bredren 7y ago
    I've suspected that notifications of upgrade opportunities and advertising of new versions may track with Apple's desire to pace rollout. For example, I'd be surprised if they hit every available device with the upgrade notification about ios 13 given 13.1 would be available only days later.
deleted 7y ago
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rolleiflex 7y ago
Heads up for developers like me building Mac apps, this release is going to take a little more adoption time than most due to the 64bit-only nature of this release. For example, I know there is a contingent of people who are stuck at Adobe CS6, whose certain critical components are 32 bit. Since Adobe no longer sells permanent licenses, opting to only rent their software instead, it's impossible to get these updated. And these expensive and still-in-use licenses are going to die the moment people update to Catalina.
- pazimzadeh 7y ago
  Does anyone know if it's possible to start from a pure Catalina installation of macOS and install a partition with Mojave? For the first time in forever I won't update macOS on my computer so that I can keep using a few 32-bit app, including http://www.halomd.net/ http://www.halomd.net/.
  - zitterbewegung 7y ago
    Probably would be a better idea to run Mojave in a VM like virtual box.
    - iscrewyou 7y ago
      OSX VMs are so slowwww in a virtual environment though. I’ve tried doing it several times in parallels and they just crawl. Unless I’m doing something wrong.
      - simcop2387 7y ago
        My experience and knowledge about it has said that this is because of the reliance of OSX on GPU hardware. That means it won't ever perform well on any kind of software rendering. Some kind of GPU passthrough or sharing is needed to make it work acceptably.
        Wowfunhappy 7y ago
        It's got to be more complicated than that. I've used Parallels to run complex DX10 games such as a Tomb Raider 2013. I'm not sure what wizardry they use to make that happen, but it works really well. Parallels is, perhaps not coincidentally, not as terrible at running macOS as some other solutions, but it's still fairly poor.
        xoa 7y ago
        >It's got to be more complicated than that. It's not. I've run macOS under a hypervisor with GPU passthrough and it's essentially as fast as on metal (I think you can see a single digit percentage difference in benchmarks). I don't think anyone has a soft 3D driver though for macOS guests. Parallels and VMware have both put a lot of work into getting some level of soft VM based 3D acceleration working for Windows guests, presumably because that's where the demand is. At the same time macOS has been built heavily around GPU for everything for a very long time now, initially as a way to improve even basic interface smoothness in Aqua back in the day. So it's a dog in pure software on a VM. It really needs a GPU. FWIW, in the past VMware did officially have Mac Pros on the hardware compatibility list for ESXi (up to 5.5 I think? maybe the trashcan lasted longer). And that in turn would be legit for running a Mac guest. I've read you can sort of get it to work on other Macs like the Mini, though secure boot must be disabled and the T2 causes other issues. Otherwise you need to patch it, or go with KVM or some other alternative.
cygned 7y ago
If you use Little Snitch, update it before installing Catalina. https://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/releasenotes.html#version-5430 https://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/releasenotes.html...
- wingworks 7y ago
  Yeeeah, I made the mistake of updating Catalina first... oops. If others do this, you have to reboot into recovery to fix it. https://www.obdev.at/support/index.html?product=LS&topic=faq&search=Catalina https://www.obdev.at/support/index.html?product=LS&topic=faq...
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- faitswulff 7y ago
  > On Catalina, system apps have been moved from /Applications to /System/Applications and the paths in rules must be updated. This seems like a sizeable change.
- fr34k8 7y ago
  Yep recovery has also worked for me
macjohnmcc 7y ago
I usually install the latest MacOS version right away. After installing iOS 13, 13.1 and 13.1.1 and finally (so far) 13.1.2 in a month I think I'll wait this one out until a maintenance release.
troydavis 7y ago
Publishers of audio products (soft synths, DAWs), games, and a fair number of domain-specific products have told their customers not to upgrade yet. Here's a rundown of products that depend on 32-bit support or that haven't been tested in 64-bit on Catalina yet: Audio products: https://www.sweetwater.com/sweetcare/articles/macos-10-15-catalina-compatibility-list/ https://www.sweetwater.com/sweetcare/articles/macos-10-15-ca... Games: https://www.macgamerhq.com/opinion/32-bit-mac-games/ https://www.macgamerhq.com/opinion/32-bit-mac-games/
- eq_sd_ 7y ago
  Same for Unity
- anonova 7y ago
  Yep, Native Instruments (on that list) sent out an explicit email saying not to update: https://support.native-instruments.com/hc/en-us/articles/360001890378-macOS-10-15-Catalina-Compatibility-with-Native-Instruments-Products https://support.native-instruments.com/hc/en-us/articles/360...
  - holy_city 7y ago
    Waves sent one out last month as well. Par for the course really. Audio pros are some of the most distrustful users w.r.t updates because they've been burned so many times.
    - Eric_WVGG 7y ago
      Another way of looking at that might be, developer of pro audio apps are notoriously bad at preparing their apps for new OS releases.
      - holy_city 7y ago
        That's fair. Pro Tools crashing during a session has been a meme for awhile, despite it being pretty stable for the last 5-ish years. But keep in mind these companies are usually pretty small, a lot of sole-proprietors out there, and their revenue comes from new products/sales not maintaining projects. So there's logistical and incentive problems in deploying fixes quickly.
beat 7y ago
I do audio recording and editing on my Mac. My email is full of dire warnings from software vendors to not upgrade to Catalina yet.
- asveikau 7y ago
  Anyone care to explain what happened that there are audio complaints and breakages? What part did they rewrite? I see this comment a lot, but googling doesn't find a quick answer.
  - tomduncalf 7y ago
    This article explains it quite well https://cdm.link/2019/09/macos-catalina-will-be-incompatible-with-much-of-your-music-software-heres-what-to-know/ https://cdm.link/2019/09/macos-catalina-will-be-incompatible...
  - dkonofalski 7y ago
    This is the first version of macOS that doesn't support 32-bit applications. Most of the software in question hasn't been updated in years so people are hesitant to upgrade. It's mostly a legacy issue.
  - pnako 7y ago
    On top of using their main application (DAW), which is most likely 64-bit, musicians tend to use a ton of plug-ins; some commercial, some freeware. Many if not most are 32-bit only and probably will never be updated (abandonware, or just old unsupported releases from commercial vendors). Basically for many musicians, upgrading macOS will mean killing some of their plugins.
  - renaudg 7y ago
    For the most part, it's not a technical issue at all but a cultural one : pro audio users are notoriously, almost pathologically conservative when it comes to software upgrades. You'll find plenty of threads on forums like Gearslutz, asking for tips on how to downgrade brand new Macs to an older version of macOS that doesn't even support their hardware. Or 2019 threads asking if it's now safe to upgrade to High Sierra. They're typically 2-3 versions behind. Why ? Older is just safer, better in their worldview. In that context, audio developers know they have customers on their side against "evil Apple that's always breaking everything for no benefit", and every year in September/October they get away with emails that read like Apple just unexpectedly dropped a huge bomb on them out of the blue, and it'll take them 6-12 months to get ready, like WWDC and 3-4 months of developer betas never happened.
vadansky 7y ago
Any chance the Sidecar feature can make it to PC/Windows? I've been using Duet but it's kinda flaky.
sneakernets 7y ago
Honestly, the 32-bit support shouldn't have been removed. It should have been split off into a separate package like the XQuartz project, as some of us still use 32-bit applications daily. Very disturbing that one of the biggest companies around can't keep 32-bit support, at least in some capacity.
- buzzerbetrayed 7y ago
  It’s not that they can’t keep 32-bit support, it’s that they don’t want to. Apple has a history of forcing people in to the future that they envision. Much like they did with removing the disk drive and the headphone jack. Seems like that is what they are doing here by killing 32-bit applications.
  - wtallis 7y ago
    This is more like when they dropped support for PowerPC emulation. It's less about forcing people into the future than about forcing Adobe and friends into the present.
    - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
      Adobe is in the present, though—Creative Cloud is completely 64 bit. Removing 32 bit support hurts users.
      - wtallis 7y ago
        Adobe wasn't 64-bit clean at the time that Apple announced they would be deprecating 32-bit binary compatibility. At the very least, Apple forced Adobe to update their DRM to something that didn't require running 32-bit code.
        Wowfunhappy 7y ago
        That's fair, I didn't realize that. However, I think it's worth asking, who was that hurting? Users certainly aren't going to notice, and license activation isn't performance-critical code.
deleted 7y ago
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bitL 7y ago
I shows up on my Mojave-based MacBook but not on the one with Catalina Beta. Are there different release dates for MacBooks enrolled in the beta program?
- numbers 7y ago
  Not the best answer you'll get but my experience in the past has been that once you put your device on the "beta" cycle (iphone, mac, everything else), they will follow that until you hard reset it...meaning once the OS goes general release, you're still on the beta releases. This means you're probably already using latest Catalina on the device that's on the beta cycle and you will continue getting new minor releases before the general public release one.
  - bitL 7y ago
    Is it possible to get off beta cycle without "destroying" the device? iPad also shows beta 13.2 available but I stopped it from upgrading and would like to "downgrade" to regular iPadOS.
    - phs318u 7y ago
      This page shows you how to unenroll from the beta programs for the various OS’s. https://beta.apple.com/sp/betaprogram/unenroll https://beta.apple.com/sp/betaprogram/unenroll
      - grounded042 7y ago
        Then after that just go to the App Store, search for Catalina, and install it.
      - bitL 7y ago
        Perfect, that worked fine, iPad instantly turned to official iPadOS 13.1 and Catalina release could have been downloaded from the app store. Thanks!
Wowfunhappy 7y ago
I had nothing but bad experiences with Mojave. Everything was noticeably slower, and stuff seemed to crash more often. This was despite the fact that Mojave shared a base with the very stable iOS 12. Now we have Catalina, which shares a base with iOS 13, which according to numerous reports is very buggy... I don't want to touch Catalina with a ten foot pole. The fact that my copy of CS6 would stop working is icing the cake. I should get one more year of security updates on High Sierra. Not sure what I'll do after that...
- _fzslm 7y ago
  That's weird. Mojave has been rock solid for me, way better than High Sierra. But I guess mileages vary. I'm not updating to Catalina either, I plan to stick around on Mojave until they release something that actually makes me want to upgrade. (maybe when Catalyst matures)
  - russh 7y ago
    Mojave was a frustrating experience for me until I bit the bullet and did a clean install and remigrated my stuff. I doubt I'll do another in place upgrade again.
    - TAForObvReasons 7y ago
      > did a clean install How do you do a clean install? Is this available from the recovery menu?
      - haylel 7y ago
        You write a bootable usb drive and format your hard-drive.
        acdha 7y ago
        This hasn’t been necessary for many years as long as you haven’t had to replace the drive or lack an internet connection: just hold Command-R down at boot. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201314 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201314
jedberg 7y ago
I've been on the beta for a while. I'm sort of surprised that they actually released with the state it is currently in. Most things work, but my CPU still spikes for no reason running some OS process or another. Also, clicking on a dropdown box in a web browser (Safari, Chrome, or Firefox) after the computer has been asleep for a while freezes the whole computer for about 10 seconds. Maybe it's just me, but that feels like a showstopper. The whole 32/64 bit thing doesn't seem too bad, although I've had to use Pages instead of Word and can't use Adobe products anymore and have had to switch to open source alternatives, but I don't use those products very much so it wasn't a huge deal for me.
- e40 7y ago
  As a long-time macOS user, I don't upgrade to a new version until x.y.5. I've just had too many issues over the years, with stability and application compatibility. Of course, for development, I install it into a VM right after release.
  - dwighttk 7y ago
    As a long time macOS user[1], I've always installed on public release and I've only ever experienced issues maybe once or twice. Rare enough that I can't think of any specific issues. [1]didn't really pay attention to version numbers before 7.6, but I guess "install on public release" didn't begin until OS X...
    - pier25 7y ago
      You've been lucky. Many big vendors like Adobe take its time before fully supporting a new macOS version.
      - shawnz 7y ago
        I'm not a macOS user, but if the situation is anything like on Windows, then luck has nothing to do with it. The updates by and large work just fine for almost everyone, but with such a widely deployed product you inevitably will still see hundreds or thousands of people that experience issues.
president 7y ago
Does Catalina boast any fixes/improvements/features for business users? Looks like mostly lackluster enhancements for mainly consumer users (Apple Arcade, Screentime, entertainment apps, etc). I would have like to see some UI/UX overhauls in some of the default apps at least.
- SkyMarshal 7y ago
  Some useful security improvements, for example OS files now sit on a different read-only volume from all the users files and programs, making it more difficult to insert worms, Trojans, rootkits and other things that can compromise the actual OS. And all apps installed on the Mac are now checked not just that they’re trusted, but for known security vulnerabilities too. To the extent businesses care about reducing losses from cyber attacks, that’s probably useful.
  - ghostpepper 7y ago
    How does moving system files to a read-only volume provide any additional protection on top of SIP, which prevents unsigned processes from writing to system files? https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204899 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204899
    - J5892 7y ago
      I'm not sure, but I believe Chrome's /var symlink bug would have been prevented by that.
    - pram 7y ago
      SIP had numerous exploits over the years, basically. The new volume provides additional isolation and utilizes native mechanisms in APFS to make it transparent to the user space. 'Defense in depth'
tschellenbach 7y ago
did they fix the detection of external displays so they no longer randomly swap order?
- rconti 7y ago
  It's not just me! It's particularly fun given that one is horizontal and one is vertical.
- Rebelgecko 7y ago
  I wasn't planning on updating, but this is the one thing that might actually make me go for it
senthilnayagam 7y ago
upgraded, will test and update
- senthilnayagam 7y ago
  no crashes yet. could not get sidecar working on my late 2013 MBP, even after modifying defaults as suggested by some sites. overall performance seems better. connects to wifi network faster. default shell on terminal is now zsh. will upgrade homebrew managed packages now, Catalina bottles are available.
Damogran6 7y ago
Suddenly I wish I'd written down all the applications the OS reported as needing to be updated. There are a couple I really need.
- Xavdidtheshadow 7y ago
  You can get a full list here: https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/macos-10-15-warning-32-bit-apps https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/macos-10-15-warning-32-bi...
- 13415 7y ago
  This app supposedly lists all 32 bit apps: https://www.stclairsoft.com/Go64/ https://www.stclairsoft.com/Go64/ Note: I haven't tested it.
- mistersquid 7y ago
  tl;dr: 1. Click the Apple symbol () in the menu bar on your Mac's desktop. 2. Click on About This Mac. 3. Choose "System Report" at the bottom of the window. 4. Scroll down to the Software list on the sidebar. 5. Select "Applications." 6. Scroll all the way to the right to see the 64-bit list. [0] https://www.macrumors.com/guide/32-bit-mac-apps/ https://www.macrumors.com/guide/32-bit-mac-apps/ You can sort on the "64-bit (Intel)" column to separate 32-bit from 64-bit apps. When I tried this on my crufty main machine, Step 5 would yield a timeout and a very unhelpful error message. Works OK on my work machine. YMMV [0] https://www.macrumors.com/guide/32-bit-mac-apps/ https://www.macrumors.com/guide/32-bit-mac-apps/ EDIT: formatting, punctuation
  - nomel 7y ago
    Looking at my list, it appears that gaming on Mac is truly dead at this point.
    - jakebasile 7y ago
      Yep, this release decimates the already unfortunately small library of games available on Mac. I don't use my Mac much for gaming but it was a nice thing to have available in a pinch.
B1FF_PSUVM 7y ago
Amazing. I had to dive into the 4th page of Google results to get something Catalina Island related, e.g. https://www.catalinaconservancy.org https://www.catalinaconservancy.org Otherwise it was all Apple or irrelevant. (Sufficiently out of it to wonder if Catalina was related to Messalina ...)
- kstrauser 7y ago
  Remember, Google tunes your search results based on your own personal search history. I searched for "Catalina" in a private browser window and got exactly two results about today's release news, then a whole lot of Catalina Island results.
reaperducer 7y ago
I'm glad this finally happened. When I upgraded my iOS devices to 13, my shared To Do lists stopped working in macOS. Each item in the list has a warning triangle next to it that explains I have to upgrade my desktop OS to use the lists again. It turns out that I underestimated the importance of the grocery list shared among my family members. I now have five gallons of milk and no kitty litter in the house.
gnicholas 7y ago
Unfortunately, I made the mistake of "upgrading" the Reminders app on my new iPhone, and now I can't access my reminders on my Mac until I upgrade to Catalina. That's really lousy. Apparently there's a web interface I can use, but yeah no thanks. > Upgraded reminders aren't compatible with earlier versions of iOS and macOS. If you upgrade your reminders on your iPhone with iOS 13, your iPad and Mac using the same iCloud account can’t access your reminders until iPadOS and macOS 10.15 Catalina are available. from https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210220 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210220
- ttul 7y ago
  The web interface is barely functional.
- thektan 7y ago
  The web interface only allows you to add text. (No due date, flags, etc) You can't even view the "smart" lists.
thesquib 7y ago
Time to upgrade to Mojave then :)
- pier25 7y ago
  I usually do the same... I wait for a new macOS version to update to the previous one.
  - dartdartdart1 7y ago
    why?
    - thesquib 7y ago
      Why not?
    - pier25 7y ago
      I've experienced a number of problems. Anything from Apple fuckups to software that won't run for one reason or another. It's much safer to wait at least 6 months before updating.
Ambroos 7y ago
If you upgrade and wonder why fonts in Chrome look just a little bit off, there's a bug in Chrome/ium (HarfBuzz). Most text will look a tiny bit too narrow, some text will be slightly too wide. Nothing major, but I noticed. (Also affected: Chromium-powered apps like VS Code, Atom, many messaging apps, ...) https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1005969 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=100596...
g051051 7y ago
Welp, that's the end of my 2011 Macbook Air. Sigh. There are already 6 incompatible updates out. Plus the recent iOS update ended support for my iPhone, so that's on the way to joining my iPad and iPod Touch.
- kstrauser 7y ago
  A few months ago I finally replaced my longsuffering 2011 MBP with an iPad Pro and a Mac Mini.
ProfessorLayton 7y ago
Looks like it's the end of the road for my Dashboard usage. I know it's basically been deprecated for years, yet it remained vastly more useful for me than it's replacement in Notification Center It was still the fastest way to access: - Multiple calculators - Multiple sticky notes - Multiple unit conversions - Stocks - Weather widgets Notification center as currently implemented is just not cutting it. The amount of widgets I can quickly access is dependent on screen size, and worse, they're moving targets! — The weather widget causes all the ones below it to shift up and down while it loads. Not to mention I can't see my notifications when in Widget mode. What a sad state of affairs for what was once a very powerful feature. EDIT: For fun here's Steve Jobs' intro to Dashboard widgets https://youtu.be/XQQPTtdzBig?t=4872 https://youtu.be/XQQPTtdzBig?t=4872
- sys_64738 7y ago
  How can they toss away a fundamental part of the OS? Steve just presented it back in Tiger. This and tossing 32 bit apps to the wind. Crazy Apple.
  - 2arrs2ells 7y ago
    Tiger came out 14 years ago. Dashboard has barely seen any investment since then. Calling it a "fundamental part of the OS" makes me think you're trolling. This isn't the least bit surprising. (And I'm sure a 3rd party replacement will pop up, if there are enough frustrated users).
    - webwielder2 7y ago
      Maybe they could call it Konfabulator.
  - s_dev 7y ago
    Bar gaming, most serious apps have gone 64 bit and gaming was never more than niche on Mac.
    - 7y ago
thesquib 7y ago
I'm still holding back from upgrading my hardware (my 2013 Macbook Pro is still going strong with no maintenance required). For one, the butterfly keyboard issues have really put me off the newer laptops. It seems like everyone I know has a key that doesn't work properly anymore. I also like having plenty of ports without buying an adaptor and carrying one around with me.
NN88 7y ago
Safari is so garbage now
haukur 7y ago
It appears that the system font was changed. I'm trying to figure out what it is now, it appears that San Francisco isn't even installed on my system anymore. GitHub, Twitter, and other sites using system-ui / -apple-system as the font-family now look very odd.
- Exuma 7y ago
  damn that sucks................. i loved that font D:
- zapzupnz 7y ago
  No, it's very much still San Francisco. Are you sure it's not a browser plugin issue, or perhaps something changed in Catalina that causes the browser not to display the font the same way as in previous versions? If you're using Chrome, this may be the result of a bug in Chrome. Have a look in Safari, it should be fine there.
sramsay 7y ago
I was amazed to see that with Catalina, zsh is now the default shell on MacOS. Then it occurred to me that this is probably more about Apple's great GPL purge than anything else.
- jabl 7y ago
  Yes, they were stuck on the ancient last GPLv2 release of bash. Surprising it took them so long.
godDLL 7y ago
My bingo card: - return of scripting, alright maybe not AppleScript, but JS, Python, anything: I want to automate my UI meanderings, what the hell - return of services: make this a reminder, make this a note, send this as email, etc. come on - a chat app with windows: why is it exactly that every Telegram and Twitter and whatnot has me clicking back and forth and back and there and back and here, why? also why can't I open a chatroom with these three WhatsApp peeps and this one Twitter dude and my mom on Skype? this is backwards - return of managers: at some point iTunes stopped being my 90+GB music library manager, and became hell knows what. same with Photos, Safari, Mail. all full of cloud and gotchas and eye-candy that keeps me away from my stuff by making me wait. - the return of self-published dashboard widgets. they are awesome. I'll be where they are, thank you very much.
- zapzupnz 7y ago
  - Scripting isn't gone. The OSA services are still there; Python isn't installed by default but that's all. - Services isn't gone. - Yeah, that's fairly annoying. I think Skype has tear-off-able windows but that might only be for voice calls, not chat windows. - The new Music app (which is really just iTunes with all the videos, podcasts, and other crap ripped out) now just manages music — it's oriented towards Apple Music by default but a couple of clicks in the View menu changes that.
  - duskwuff 7y ago
    > Scripting isn't gone. The OSA services are still there; Python isn't installed by default but that's all. Python is still installed by default. Launching /usr/bin/python (2.7.16) prints a big warning about how "future versions of macOS will not include Python 2.7", but that's because Python2 is EOL.
    - zapzupnz 7y ago
      Thanks for the clarification! Either way, the scripting capability is still very much a part of the system.
  - godDLL 7y ago
abinaya_rl 7y ago
Reminder: 32-bit apps will not work in Catalina. If you use your computer as your main work machine, hold off on the update. You're bound to run into a random forgotten app you use every once in a while that's no longer supported. To see what's still 32-bit on your mac, go to: Apple icon > About this mac > system report > applications > then click the 64-bit column to sort. No will be 32-bit apps.
bikeshed 7y ago
This is probably going to be what gets me to switch all my audio applications to Windows 10. Once again, everything I use -- Serato, Ableton, and half a dozen pieces of hardware from different manufacturers -- is broken in this release. Apple's become a phone company that grudgingly still makes computers, and this is reflected in their treatment of end users.
iamspoilt 7y ago
It moved my Anaconda installation to a relocated folder with all the envs gone. So I had to reinstall it and recreate all my envs. Also had to reinstall Xcode because git stopped working.
Razengan 7y ago
I dived (dove?) into Catalina on day 1, the very first developer beta, because of SwiftUI. It's an amazing framework. Sure Flutter and others came first and already did parts of what SwiftUI+Combine do, but being able to take an app from design mockups -> interactive prototype -> final version right in the same editor and using the same language for UI, logic and model (with native APIs and look-and-feel) is something I've fantasized about since forever. There are many rough edges (just like Swift itself which took like 3 years to become good enough for "serious" use), you still need AppKit/UIKit for some things, and Apple's developer documentation remains appalling as ever, but I was able to turn a bunch of ideas into usable apps in a matter of hours, that traditional frameworks would have taken me weeks to do. I hadn't even planned or expected to make "proper" apps with it, I was just playing around, iteratively adding to mockups, and boom, there was an actual app on device. Catalina itself however was the buggiest macOS beta for me. I permanently lost random files on iCloud Drive, CPU and network usage was always high, and I had to use a temporary local user account that was not tied to iCloud to avoid messing things up. And it's annoying that they still haven't fixed some minor bugs I reported since the Mojave beta, like unreadable white text on brightly colored tags in Dark Mode and Books jumping around between desktops on its own (the kind of stuff that would have infuriated Steve Jobs I assume but is deemed unimportant now.)
- patientplatypus 7y ago
  Yeah...and SwiftUI is by default an iOS only program. Flutter you can plug any phone in that's been made in the last 5 years, type `flutter run` in the terminal, and get hot reloading. SwiftUI is walled-garden bait. Hard pass. EDIT: Not sure why I'm being downvoted - (one of) Flutter's main selling point is that it's cross platform by default. SwiftUI doesn't do that and yet is marketed to be very similar in coding style to Flutter, which yeah great, but no cross platform so you still have to code everything twice, unless all your users happen to have iPhones. I mean really?
  - Razengan 7y ago
    > SwiftUI is by default an iOS only program. and macOS, tvOS, watchOS (and soon I suppose, AROS?), all counting for over a billion devices. You can literally run the same SwiftUI code on all of them, then make small changes to adopt each OS's unique paradigms (like menus on macOS, the crown on watchOS, the remote on tvOS) and get the most native performance via Metal etc. for free. It's ideal for publishing to services like the new Apple Arcade and macOS/iPadOS Catalyst. How is Flutter for accessibility features? Those seem really effortless to adopt in SwiftUI.
jrochkind1 7y ago
My only question is how do I sync both selected music (a playlist) and selected podcasts to my 10-year-old ipod mini without iTunes? I have a playlist called "ipod" that I select to sync to ipod. I have certain podcasts that I select to sync to ipod. I plug my ipod in and click sync. The end. I've been doing this for 10 years. Now what?
- bobbylarrybobby 7y ago
  When you plug in your iPod, it will appear in the Finder sidebar and you can sync there.
patientplatypus 7y ago
I remember the last update (Mojave?) where the first release gave root access and allowed unlocking of the computer by default. Woops! Yeah, no thanks. Until Apple learns to release non-buggy crap I'll wait out the horror show for at least the next 6 months. You guys have fun debugging this for me! EDIT: Pretty funny watching all the Apple fanboys going through my account and downvoting all my posts. Oh no! My fake internet points! /s
unnouinceput 7y ago
Well then, time to copy/paste one of my Mojave VM and upgrade it to Catalina. On a side note, 20 years ago my girlfriend at the time name was Catalina. Hopefully this macOS not going to leave me with broken heart like the ex-gf.
- cerberusss 7y ago
  I hope the next partner was an upgrade :)
m0zg 7y ago
Crashed when installing and already crashed once running Lightroom. This is worse-than-Windows reliability, Apple. You don't need to run faster than the bear, you only need to run faster than Microsoft. And you're failing at it.
musgrove 7y ago
I've tried to download and install Catalina 5 times now and every time it errors out and stops with no explanation.
skohan 7y ago
At the moment I am not upgrading because I regularly use Aperture for photo editing, and it will be unusable after the update. I bought it 5 years ago, and it's worked perfectly since then, meeting all my needs for photo editing and not even feeling remotely dated in terms of UX/UI even with all the OS updates since then. I have no idea what I'm going to replace it with, since I really don't want to go to Lightroom and it's subscription model.
- goblin89 7y ago
  If you are looking to replace the 32-bit-only Aperture with something else for photo editing on Catalina and don’t like Adobe’s subscription model, you may want to consider Capture One. It is actively supported, has the “buy and own” option, and is very capable though its interface may take some getting used to and/or customizing. I tried the demo earlier this year and liked it a lot, and they even happened to have a promotional discount at the time, but for whatever reason the purchase button was broken for me. I’m sure it was either just my machine, or Phase One has fixed the bug long ago.
tannhaeuser 7y ago
Does anyone know how the app notarization thing works? Is it for natively compiled executables only, or also for scripts started using hashbangs?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- nicky0 7y ago
  Executables. It doesn't affect scripts.
vinay_ys 7y ago
Did Apple lose some critical people in the last year or so? Johnny Ive we all heard about. But maybe more such important foundational people on systems and core OS side also left? I'm guess this because the drop in quality in both iOS and MacOS even in released software is significant that regular people are feeling it. I seriously hope this is a temporary glitch and I won't be forced to figure out a new system setup (back to Windows? Or Linux or ChromeOS?) for my day-to-day.
pantulis 7y ago
Anyone tried Catalina on an old late-2013 16GB 15'' MBP? Is general performance affected? So far so good with Mojave.
makecheck 7y ago
A strange bug was that a permission prompt appeared during the OS setup phase (large centered window in background), blocking part of the setup window but refusing to accept input. Each time I tried to enter my password the focus would glitch back to the large background window, which oddly could still be clicked. So I had to keep clicking grayed-out Continue buttons in the background setup window, until the desktop finally appeared and the password prompt (which was in front the whole time) would finally accept input. I mean, this is the first thing you see when you launch the OS, these are exactly the kinds of bugs that need to be found by Apple and not by users.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
luismedel 7y ago
I read a lot of people debating about how "difficult" is maintaining 32-bit support, or if it adds more vector attacks to the system. Don't fool yourself. Maintaining 32-bit support is "easy" (with all the technical issues we all know). This is simply a sales strategy. It's the same strategy than disabling a glorified vnc (Sidecar) on three years "old" laptops. Sure you need a lot of horsepower to display a remote image in real time. Never done. Yeah. Apple is taking the "appliance route". Your (my) Apple computers, your (my) Apple phones...are closed appliances (no ram upgrade, no battery upgrade, no significant OS upgrade). This appliance version do this, the next appliance version do that. Soon we'll see that they're no longer upgradeable computers, and we will be fine with it...sadly.
- rimliu 7y ago
  If you have this attitude, don't buy Apple devices. Is that too difficult? Everything is easy when it is someone's else problem.
  - luismedel 7y ago
    I have a very open attitude. I, like most of us, use a lot of devices for a myriad of things. Some professionally, some as a hobby. It's that experience and knowledge that makes me question some tactics. I think it's not bad to question things, right?
- ken 7y ago
  How is dropping 32-bit support a "sales strategy" for Apple? They haven't sold a 32-bit Mac since 2006. If anything, Apple is helping drive sales of other companies' software, and hurting the adoption of their own $0 operating system. For anyone with 32-bit software that won't run on Catalina, there's nothing you can buy from Apple which will help one bit.
  - luismedel 7y ago
    You made a good point, but I continue to see a -subtle- sales strategy here. [ ] We remove 32-bit support because is better for our users. [ ] We remove 32-bit support to push a sentiment of obsolescence on our users. Choose yours.
Angostura 7y ago
It gives me - the ability to use my iPad as a second screen, and takes away the ability to run all my 32 bit apps. Until now I've pretty much been a day 1 updater with MacOS. Nope.
cotelletta 7y ago
Wow, not a single feature managed to spark any interest whatsoever. Have they fixed mission control's top bar not expanding by default yet? That would be the only reason to upgrade.
- cerberusss 7y ago
  I don't use it, so I don't know the previous behavior. But in Catalina, when I use Ctrl-Up, the desktop zooms out and a narrow strip appears on top, labeled "Desktop 1", "Desktop 2", "Desktop 3", etc. When you move your mouse over to the label, it expands into a preview.
  - cotelletta 7y ago
    Yes, it is the dumbest thing ever, and demonstrates they've forgotten what Exposé was all about and what the innovation was. Instead of showing you labels or icons in a task switcher, they just showed you all your windows. Direct representation instead of symbolic proxies. "Desktop 1/2/3" is meaningless. Show me what's on it so I can see where my windows are. Don't put a dumb gesture between me and what I need to see. They only did this because of tiny screens, it makes zero sense on any decent monitor. Old Apple would've put in a hidden pref, tracked its use, and then quietly eaten crow. New Apple thinks they know better than even their power users. It's ridiculously arrogant.
Blackstone4 7y ago
I know dropping 32-bit support will cause issues but isn't is broadly positive? Windows has always had a strong focus on backwards compatibility and look where it has ended up. I feel like in 5-10 years time, we will look back and say it was the right decision. I remember when Apple dropped the CD-ROM drive....I haven't used a CD/DVD since 2013...over 6 years ago and I cannot remember a time when I needed to use one other than playing old DVDs which is not a big deal with Netflix & co.
otaviokz 7y ago
"The new Find My app combines Find My iPhone and Find My Friends into a single, easy-to-use app on Mac, iPad and iPhone. Find My can help users locate a missing Mac even if it’s offline and sleeping by sending out Bluetooth signals that can be detected by Apple devices in use nearby, and then relaying the detected location of the Mac to iCloud so a user can can locate it in the Find My app." I'm curious about what kind of T&C will need to be accepted for this to work.
pixelbreaker 7y ago
I've had the beta for a while specifically to fix an HDMI handshake issue with my new mac mini. The only big deal for me was the switch from bash to zsh as the default shell. I had to rework some of my dotfiles. Maybe took 2 hours to get it all how I wanted. Other issue is that arduino flashing is broken for my redox wireless keyboard, so I have to flash firmware on my old laptop for now. Something to do with super low baud rates not working in catalina! Other than that, nothing in catalina that gets me excited, the screentime thing is pretty broken, it shows the same amount of time for all apps pretty much, so kinda pointless.
anonthrowaway28 7y ago
No iTunes? no thanks. I refuse to "upgrade" to marketing adware that takes away features. I'll stick with Mojave on my Hackintosh for however long that lasts. Oh and Catalina won't run anything that's 32-bit either.
- gchokov 7y ago
  You do not get to upgrade by definition. Play with your Hackintosh and leave the hate speech for somewhere else.
wodenokoto 7y ago
How do you set up a decent adblocker / content blocker on the new safari? I used to use uBlock Origin and forget about it, but now I don't know what to use. The market feels scammy or very expensive or even both.
- jzl 7y ago
  After reading a bunch of different articles and reviews about this topic, I'm currently testing AdGuard For Safari, which is 1) free, 2) open source, 3) in the Mac App store. (Not to be mistaken with "AdGuard for Mac", which is an all-encompassing machine firewall.) Overall I'm happy with it so far. It's a little weird in that some aspects of the Safari plugin only work if the standalone app is running at the same time, like the ability to disable blocking for a specific site. Not sure if all new-style adblockers have the same limitation, or if that was a specific decision by AdGuard? Either way, I'm happy with it so far, and happy with the fact that they use multiple Safari extensions to achieve > 50k block patterns, which is the limit for a single extension. (1BlockerX does the same on iOS.)
- simonklitj 7y ago
  I'm currently trying out "Ad And Stuff Blocker" (https://apps.apple.com/dk/app/ad-and-stuff-blocker/id1184130209?mt=12 https://apps.apple.com/dk/app/ad-and-stuff-blocker/id1184130...). It's not the best, but surprisingly decent and free. Struggles with some videos, and YouTube in particular. But, as @jzl wrote in the sibling comment, most ad blockers require that their app is running as well, for them to function. "Ad And Stuff Blocker" does not, which is why I'm trying it out. Has been treating me well for two weeks.
plg 7y ago
How many of you (1) wipe disk, install new OS, & reinstall apps & documents (2) let apple try to upgrade in place
FraKtus 7y ago
Not too many coders seem to be concerned, but QuickTime was never really replaced. AVFoundation is not a full replacement for QuickTime if you do advanced authoring...
bookofjoe 7y ago
Wow, took over two hours to download/set up: 2019 iMac (with hard drive) x 300mps download speed
lonelappde 7y ago
Catalina feels like a "Elves are Leaving Middle Earth" moment. There's just too much going wrong with Mac for me to try to remember why it's still worth it. Windows is uglier for sure, but at least it works.
tempodox 7y ago
No can do. This will be the first macOS that I will never install. And when support for the current OS runs out, I'l have to move to a Linux box, assuming that 32-bit support still exists by then.
johnmen1986 7y ago
Downloaded the new MacOS And now every single one of my apps or programs on my Mac crashes and will not open
chmaynard 7y ago
As far as I'm concerned, macOS Catalina never happened. I'll wait for the next major version (10.16), which will undoubtedly be a maintenance release with almost no new features.
joggy 7y ago
Unless you are an iOS developer looking to use the latest features of Xcode. It doesn't seem like it's worth the hassle.
joggy 7y ago
Don't you just compile a 32bit program source code with a 64bit library to make it 64 bit? All my c++ project from college work once they get new links to the Apple libraries.

477 points by css 7y ago

This is a bit of an odd release, no? I did not see an advance announcement of the date, there is no feature in the Mac App Store indicating that the OS is now available (though there is one for Apple Arcade), and until a moment ago, clicking "How to Upgrade" on the Apple site still led to a link to Mojave.

theoctopus 7y ago
I'd assume the reason it's not advertised on the Mac App Store is because OS updates are now done through System Preferences.
- tsieling 7y ago
  It's in the Mac App Store for me, but not as the marquee product at the moment.
- bredren 7y ago
  I've suspected that notifications of upgrade opportunities and advertising of new versions may track with Apple's desire to pace rollout. For example, I'd be surprised if they hit every available device with the upgrade notification about ios 13 given 13.1 would be available only days later.

deleted 7y ago

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rolleiflex 7y ago

Heads up for developers like me building Mac apps, this release is going to take a little more adoption time than most due to the 64bit-only nature of this release. For example, I know there is a contingent of people who are stuck at Adobe CS6, whose certain critical components are 32 bit. Since Adobe no longer sells permanent licenses, opting to only rent their software instead, it's impossible to get these updated. And these expensive and still-in-use licenses are going to die the moment people update to Catalina.

pazimzadeh 7y ago
Does anyone know if it's possible to start from a pure Catalina installation of macOS and install a partition with Mojave? For the first time in forever I won't update macOS on my computer so that I can keep using a few 32-bit app, including http://www.halomd.net/ http://www.halomd.net/.
- zitterbewegung 7y ago
  Probably would be a better idea to run Mojave in a VM like virtual box.
  - iscrewyou 7y ago
    OSX VMs are so slowwww in a virtual environment though. I’ve tried doing it several times in parallels and they just crawl. Unless I’m doing something wrong.
    - simcop2387 7y ago
      My experience and knowledge about it has said that this is because of the reliance of OSX on GPU hardware. That means it won't ever perform well on any kind of software rendering. Some kind of GPU passthrough or sharing is needed to make it work acceptably.
      - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
        It's got to be more complicated than that. I've used Parallels to run complex DX10 games such as a Tomb Raider 2013. I'm not sure what wizardry they use to make that happen, but it works really well. Parallels is, perhaps not coincidentally, not as terrible at running macOS as some other solutions, but it's still fairly poor.
        xoa 7y ago
        >It's got to be more complicated than that. It's not. I've run macOS under a hypervisor with GPU passthrough and it's essentially as fast as on metal (I think you can see a single digit percentage difference in benchmarks). I don't think anyone has a soft 3D driver though for macOS guests. Parallels and VMware have both put a lot of work into getting some level of soft VM based 3D acceleration working for Windows guests, presumably because that's where the demand is. At the same time macOS has been built heavily around GPU for everything for a very long time now, initially as a way to improve even basic interface smoothness in Aqua back in the day. So it's a dog in pure software on a VM. It really needs a GPU. FWIW, in the past VMware did officially have Mac Pros on the hardware compatibility list for ESXi (up to 5.5 I think? maybe the trashcan lasted longer). And that in turn would be legit for running a Mac guest. I've read you can sort of get it to work on other Macs like the Mini, though secure boot must be disabled and the T2 causes other issues. Otherwise you need to patch it, or go with KVM or some other alternative.

cygned 7y ago

If you use Little Snitch, update it before installing Catalina. https://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/releasenotes.html#version-5430 https://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/releasenotes.html...

wingworks 7y ago
Yeeeah, I made the mistake of updating Catalina first... oops. If others do this, you have to reboot into recovery to fix it. https://www.obdev.at/support/index.html?product=LS&topic=faq&search=Catalina https://www.obdev.at/support/index.html?product=LS&topic=faq...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
faitswulff 7y ago
> On Catalina, system apps have been moved from /Applications to /System/Applications and the paths in rules must be updated. This seems like a sizeable change.
fr34k8 7y ago
Yep recovery has also worked for me

macjohnmcc 7y ago

I usually install the latest MacOS version right away. After installing iOS 13, 13.1 and 13.1.1 and finally (so far) 13.1.2 in a month I think I'll wait this one out until a maintenance release.

troydavis 7y ago

Publishers of audio products (soft synths, DAWs), games, and a fair number of domain-specific products have told their customers not to upgrade yet. Here's a rundown of products that depend on 32-bit support or that haven't been tested in 64-bit on Catalina yet: Audio products: https://www.sweetwater.com/sweetcare/articles/macos-10-15-catalina-compatibility-list/ https://www.sweetwater.com/sweetcare/articles/macos-10-15-ca... Games: https://www.macgamerhq.com/opinion/32-bit-mac-games/ https://www.macgamerhq.com/opinion/32-bit-mac-games/

eq_sd_ 7y ago
Same for Unity
anonova 7y ago
Yep, Native Instruments (on that list) sent out an explicit email saying not to update: https://support.native-instruments.com/hc/en-us/articles/360001890378-macOS-10-15-Catalina-Compatibility-with-Native-Instruments-Products https://support.native-instruments.com/hc/en-us/articles/360...
- holy_city 7y ago
  Waves sent one out last month as well. Par for the course really. Audio pros are some of the most distrustful users w.r.t updates because they've been burned so many times.
  - Eric_WVGG 7y ago
    Another way of looking at that might be, developer of pro audio apps are notoriously bad at preparing their apps for new OS releases.
    - holy_city 7y ago
      That's fair. Pro Tools crashing during a session has been a meme for awhile, despite it being pretty stable for the last 5-ish years. But keep in mind these companies are usually pretty small, a lot of sole-proprietors out there, and their revenue comes from new products/sales not maintaining projects. So there's logistical and incentive problems in deploying fixes quickly.

beat 7y ago

I do audio recording and editing on my Mac. My email is full of dire warnings from software vendors to not upgrade to Catalina yet.

asveikau 7y ago
Anyone care to explain what happened that there are audio complaints and breakages? What part did they rewrite? I see this comment a lot, but googling doesn't find a quick answer.
- tomduncalf 7y ago
  This article explains it quite well https://cdm.link/2019/09/macos-catalina-will-be-incompatible-with-much-of-your-music-software-heres-what-to-know/ https://cdm.link/2019/09/macos-catalina-will-be-incompatible...
- dkonofalski 7y ago
  This is the first version of macOS that doesn't support 32-bit applications. Most of the software in question hasn't been updated in years so people are hesitant to upgrade. It's mostly a legacy issue.
- pnako 7y ago
  On top of using their main application (DAW), which is most likely 64-bit, musicians tend to use a ton of plug-ins; some commercial, some freeware. Many if not most are 32-bit only and probably will never be updated (abandonware, or just old unsupported releases from commercial vendors). Basically for many musicians, upgrading macOS will mean killing some of their plugins.
- renaudg 7y ago
  For the most part, it's not a technical issue at all but a cultural one : pro audio users are notoriously, almost pathologically conservative when it comes to software upgrades. You'll find plenty of threads on forums like Gearslutz, asking for tips on how to downgrade brand new Macs to an older version of macOS that doesn't even support their hardware. Or 2019 threads asking if it's now safe to upgrade to High Sierra. They're typically 2-3 versions behind. Why ? Older is just safer, better in their worldview. In that context, audio developers know they have customers on their side against "evil Apple that's always breaking everything for no benefit", and every year in September/October they get away with emails that read like Apple just unexpectedly dropped a huge bomb on them out of the blue, and it'll take them 6-12 months to get ready, like WWDC and 3-4 months of developer betas never happened.

vadansky 7y ago

Any chance the Sidecar feature can make it to PC/Windows? I've been using Duet but it's kinda flaky.

sneakernets 7y ago

Honestly, the 32-bit support shouldn't have been removed. It should have been split off into a separate package like the XQuartz project, as some of us still use 32-bit applications daily. Very disturbing that one of the biggest companies around can't keep 32-bit support, at least in some capacity.

buzzerbetrayed 7y ago
It’s not that they can’t keep 32-bit support, it’s that they don’t want to. Apple has a history of forcing people in to the future that they envision. Much like they did with removing the disk drive and the headphone jack. Seems like that is what they are doing here by killing 32-bit applications.
- wtallis 7y ago
  This is more like when they dropped support for PowerPC emulation. It's less about forcing people into the future than about forcing Adobe and friends into the present.
  - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
    Adobe is in the present, though—Creative Cloud is completely 64 bit. Removing 32 bit support hurts users.
    - wtallis 7y ago
      Adobe wasn't 64-bit clean at the time that Apple announced they would be deprecating 32-bit binary compatibility. At the very least, Apple forced Adobe to update their DRM to something that didn't require running 32-bit code.
      - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
        That's fair, I didn't realize that. However, I think it's worth asking, who was that hurting? Users certainly aren't going to notice, and license activation isn't performance-critical code.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

bitL 7y ago

I shows up on my Mojave-based MacBook but not on the one with Catalina Beta. Are there different release dates for MacBooks enrolled in the beta program?

numbers 7y ago
Not the best answer you'll get but my experience in the past has been that once you put your device on the "beta" cycle (iphone, mac, everything else), they will follow that until you hard reset it...meaning once the OS goes general release, you're still on the beta releases. This means you're probably already using latest Catalina on the device that's on the beta cycle and you will continue getting new minor releases before the general public release one.
- bitL 7y ago
  Is it possible to get off beta cycle without "destroying" the device? iPad also shows beta 13.2 available but I stopped it from upgrading and would like to "downgrade" to regular iPadOS.
  - phs318u 7y ago
    This page shows you how to unenroll from the beta programs for the various OS’s. https://beta.apple.com/sp/betaprogram/unenroll https://beta.apple.com/sp/betaprogram/unenroll
    - grounded042 7y ago
      Then after that just go to the App Store, search for Catalina, and install it.
    - bitL 7y ago
      Perfect, that worked fine, iPad instantly turned to official iPadOS 13.1 and Catalina release could have been downloaded from the app store. Thanks!

Wowfunhappy 7y ago

I had nothing but bad experiences with Mojave. Everything was noticeably slower, and stuff seemed to crash more often. This was despite the fact that Mojave shared a base with the very stable iOS 12. Now we have Catalina, which shares a base with iOS 13, which according to numerous reports is very buggy... I don't want to touch Catalina with a ten foot pole. The fact that my copy of CS6 would stop working is icing the cake. I should get one more year of security updates on High Sierra. Not sure what I'll do after that...

_fzslm 7y ago
That's weird. Mojave has been rock solid for me, way better than High Sierra. But I guess mileages vary. I'm not updating to Catalina either, I plan to stick around on Mojave until they release something that actually makes me want to upgrade. (maybe when Catalyst matures)
- russh 7y ago
  Mojave was a frustrating experience for me until I bit the bullet and did a clean install and remigrated my stuff. I doubt I'll do another in place upgrade again.
  - TAForObvReasons 7y ago
    > did a clean install How do you do a clean install? Is this available from the recovery menu?
    - haylel 7y ago
      You write a bootable usb drive and format your hard-drive.
      - acdha 7y ago
        This hasn’t been necessary for many years as long as you haven’t had to replace the drive or lack an internet connection: just hold Command-R down at boot. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201314 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201314

jedberg 7y ago

I've been on the beta for a while. I'm sort of surprised that they actually released with the state it is currently in. Most things work, but my CPU still spikes for no reason running some OS process or another. Also, clicking on a dropdown box in a web browser (Safari, Chrome, or Firefox) after the computer has been asleep for a while freezes the whole computer for about 10 seconds. Maybe it's just me, but that feels like a showstopper. The whole 32/64 bit thing doesn't seem too bad, although I've had to use Pages instead of Word and can't use Adobe products anymore and have had to switch to open source alternatives, but I don't use those products very much so it wasn't a huge deal for me.

e40 7y ago
As a long-time macOS user, I don't upgrade to a new version until x.y.5. I've just had too many issues over the years, with stability and application compatibility. Of course, for development, I install it into a VM right after release.
- dwighttk 7y ago
  As a long time macOS user[1], I've always installed on public release and I've only ever experienced issues maybe once or twice. Rare enough that I can't think of any specific issues. [1]didn't really pay attention to version numbers before 7.6, but I guess "install on public release" didn't begin until OS X...
  - pier25 7y ago
    You've been lucky. Many big vendors like Adobe take its time before fully supporting a new macOS version.
    - shawnz 7y ago
      I'm not a macOS user, but if the situation is anything like on Windows, then luck has nothing to do with it. The updates by and large work just fine for almost everyone, but with such a widely deployed product you inevitably will still see hundreds or thousands of people that experience issues.

president 7y ago

Does Catalina boast any fixes/improvements/features for business users? Looks like mostly lackluster enhancements for mainly consumer users (Apple Arcade, Screentime, entertainment apps, etc). I would have like to see some UI/UX overhauls in some of the default apps at least.

SkyMarshal 7y ago
Some useful security improvements, for example OS files now sit on a different read-only volume from all the users files and programs, making it more difficult to insert worms, Trojans, rootkits and other things that can compromise the actual OS. And all apps installed on the Mac are now checked not just that they’re trusted, but for known security vulnerabilities too. To the extent businesses care about reducing losses from cyber attacks, that’s probably useful.
- ghostpepper 7y ago
  How does moving system files to a read-only volume provide any additional protection on top of SIP, which prevents unsigned processes from writing to system files? https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204899 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204899
  - J5892 7y ago
    I'm not sure, but I believe Chrome's /var symlink bug would have been prevented by that.
  - pram 7y ago
    SIP had numerous exploits over the years, basically. The new volume provides additional isolation and utilizes native mechanisms in APFS to make it transparent to the user space. 'Defense in depth'

tschellenbach 7y ago

did they fix the detection of external displays so they no longer randomly swap order?

rconti 7y ago
It's not just me! It's particularly fun given that one is horizontal and one is vertical.
Rebelgecko 7y ago
I wasn't planning on updating, but this is the one thing that might actually make me go for it

senthilnayagam 7y ago

upgraded, will test and update

senthilnayagam 7y ago
no crashes yet. could not get sidecar working on my late 2013 MBP, even after modifying defaults as suggested by some sites. overall performance seems better. connects to wifi network faster. default shell on terminal is now zsh. will upgrade homebrew managed packages now, Catalina bottles are available.

Damogran6 7y ago

Suddenly I wish I'd written down all the applications the OS reported as needing to be updated. There are a couple I really need.

Xavdidtheshadow 7y ago
You can get a full list here: https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/macos-10-15-warning-32-bit-apps https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/macos-10-15-warning-32-bi...
13415 7y ago
This app supposedly lists all 32 bit apps: https://www.stclairsoft.com/Go64/ https://www.stclairsoft.com/Go64/ Note: I haven't tested it.
mistersquid 7y ago
tl;dr: 1. Click the Apple symbol () in the menu bar on your Mac's desktop. 2. Click on About This Mac. 3. Choose "System Report" at the bottom of the window. 4. Scroll down to the Software list on the sidebar. 5. Select "Applications." 6. Scroll all the way to the right to see the 64-bit list. [0] https://www.macrumors.com/guide/32-bit-mac-apps/ https://www.macrumors.com/guide/32-bit-mac-apps/ You can sort on the "64-bit (Intel)" column to separate 32-bit from 64-bit apps. When I tried this on my crufty main machine, Step 5 would yield a timeout and a very unhelpful error message. Works OK on my work machine. YMMV [0] https://www.macrumors.com/guide/32-bit-mac-apps/ https://www.macrumors.com/guide/32-bit-mac-apps/ EDIT: formatting, punctuation
- nomel 7y ago
  Looking at my list, it appears that gaming on Mac is truly dead at this point.
  - jakebasile 7y ago
    Yep, this release decimates the already unfortunately small library of games available on Mac. I don't use my Mac much for gaming but it was a nice thing to have available in a pinch.

B1FF_PSUVM 7y ago

Amazing. I had to dive into the 4th page of Google results to get something Catalina Island related, e.g. https://www.catalinaconservancy.org https://www.catalinaconservancy.org Otherwise it was all Apple or irrelevant. (Sufficiently out of it to wonder if Catalina was related to Messalina ...)

kstrauser 7y ago
Remember, Google tunes your search results based on your own personal search history. I searched for "Catalina" in a private browser window and got exactly two results about today's release news, then a whole lot of Catalina Island results.

reaperducer 7y ago

I'm glad this finally happened. When I upgraded my iOS devices to 13, my shared To Do lists stopped working in macOS. Each item in the list has a warning triangle next to it that explains I have to upgrade my desktop OS to use the lists again. It turns out that I underestimated the importance of the grocery list shared among my family members. I now have five gallons of milk and no kitty litter in the house.

gnicholas 7y ago

Unfortunately, I made the mistake of "upgrading" the Reminders app on my new iPhone, and now I can't access my reminders on my Mac until I upgrade to Catalina. That's really lousy. Apparently there's a web interface I can use, but yeah no thanks. > Upgraded reminders aren't compatible with earlier versions of iOS and macOS. If you upgrade your reminders on your iPhone with iOS 13, your iPad and Mac using the same iCloud account can’t access your reminders until iPadOS and macOS 10.15 Catalina are available. from https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210220 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210220

ttul 7y ago
The web interface is barely functional.
thektan 7y ago
The web interface only allows you to add text. (No due date, flags, etc) You can't even view the "smart" lists.

thesquib 7y ago

Time to upgrade to Mojave then :)

pier25 7y ago
I usually do the same... I wait for a new macOS version to update to the previous one.
- dartdartdart1 7y ago
  why?
  - thesquib 7y ago
    Why not?
  - pier25 7y ago
    I've experienced a number of problems. Anything from Apple fuckups to software that won't run for one reason or another. It's much safer to wait at least 6 months before updating.

Ambroos 7y ago

If you upgrade and wonder why fonts in Chrome look just a little bit off, there's a bug in Chrome/ium (HarfBuzz). Most text will look a tiny bit too narrow, some text will be slightly too wide. Nothing major, but I noticed. (Also affected: Chromium-powered apps like VS Code, Atom, many messaging apps, ...) https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1005969 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=100596...

g051051 7y ago

Welp, that's the end of my 2011 Macbook Air. Sigh. There are already 6 incompatible updates out. Plus the recent iOS update ended support for my iPhone, so that's on the way to joining my iPad and iPod Touch.

kstrauser 7y ago
A few months ago I finally replaced my longsuffering 2011 MBP with an iPad Pro and a Mac Mini.

ProfessorLayton 7y ago

Looks like it's the end of the road for my Dashboard usage. I know it's basically been deprecated for years, yet it remained vastly more useful for me than it's replacement in Notification Center It was still the fastest way to access: - Multiple calculators - Multiple sticky notes - Multiple unit conversions - Stocks - Weather widgets Notification center as currently implemented is just not cutting it. The amount of widgets I can quickly access is dependent on screen size, and worse, they're moving targets! — The weather widget causes all the ones below it to shift up and down while it loads. Not to mention I can't see my notifications when in Widget mode. What a sad state of affairs for what was once a very powerful feature. EDIT: For fun here's Steve Jobs' intro to Dashboard widgets https://youtu.be/XQQPTtdzBig?t=4872 https://youtu.be/XQQPTtdzBig?t=4872

sys_64738 7y ago
How can they toss away a fundamental part of the OS? Steve just presented it back in Tiger. This and tossing 32 bit apps to the wind. Crazy Apple.
- 2arrs2ells 7y ago
  Tiger came out 14 years ago. Dashboard has barely seen any investment since then. Calling it a "fundamental part of the OS" makes me think you're trolling. This isn't the least bit surprising. (And I'm sure a 3rd party replacement will pop up, if there are enough frustrated users).
  - webwielder2 7y ago
    Maybe they could call it Konfabulator.
- s_dev 7y ago
  Bar gaming, most serious apps have gone 64 bit and gaming was never more than niche on Mac.
  - 7y ago

thesquib 7y ago

I'm still holding back from upgrading my hardware (my 2013 Macbook Pro is still going strong with no maintenance required). For one, the butterfly keyboard issues have really put me off the newer laptops. It seems like everyone I know has a key that doesn't work properly anymore. I also like having plenty of ports without buying an adaptor and carrying one around with me.

NN88 7y ago

Safari is so garbage now

haukur 7y ago

It appears that the system font was changed. I'm trying to figure out what it is now, it appears that San Francisco isn't even installed on my system anymore. GitHub, Twitter, and other sites using system-ui / -apple-system as the font-family now look very odd.

Exuma 7y ago
damn that sucks................. i loved that font D:
zapzupnz 7y ago
No, it's very much still San Francisco. Are you sure it's not a browser plugin issue, or perhaps something changed in Catalina that causes the browser not to display the font the same way as in previous versions? If you're using Chrome, this may be the result of a bug in Chrome. Have a look in Safari, it should be fine there.

sramsay 7y ago

I was amazed to see that with Catalina, zsh is now the default shell on MacOS. Then it occurred to me that this is probably more about Apple's great GPL purge than anything else.

jabl 7y ago
Yes, they were stuck on the ancient last GPLv2 release of bash. Surprising it took them so long.

godDLL 7y ago

My bingo card: - return of scripting, alright maybe not AppleScript, but JS, Python, anything: I want to automate my UI meanderings, what the hell - return of services: make this a reminder, make this a note, send this as email, etc. come on - a chat app with windows: why is it exactly that every Telegram and Twitter and whatnot has me clicking back and forth and back and there and back and here, why? also why can't I open a chatroom with these three WhatsApp peeps and this one Twitter dude and my mom on Skype? this is backwards - return of managers: at some point iTunes stopped being my 90+GB music library manager, and became hell knows what. same with Photos, Safari, Mail. all full of cloud and gotchas and eye-candy that keeps me away from my stuff by making me wait. - the return of self-published dashboard widgets. they are awesome. I'll be where they are, thank you very much.

zapzupnz 7y ago
- Scripting isn't gone. The OSA services are still there; Python isn't installed by default but that's all. - Services isn't gone. - Yeah, that's fairly annoying. I think Skype has tear-off-able windows but that might only be for voice calls, not chat windows. - The new Music app (which is really just iTunes with all the videos, podcasts, and other crap ripped out) now just manages music — it's oriented towards Apple Music by default but a couple of clicks in the View menu changes that.
- duskwuff 7y ago
  > Scripting isn't gone. The OSA services are still there; Python isn't installed by default but that's all. Python is still installed by default. Launching /usr/bin/python (2.7.16) prints a big warning about how "future versions of macOS will not include Python 2.7", but that's because Python2 is EOL.
  - zapzupnz 7y ago
    Thanks for the clarification! Either way, the scripting capability is still very much a part of the system.
- godDLL 7y ago

abinaya_rl 7y ago

Reminder: 32-bit apps will not work in Catalina. If you use your computer as your main work machine, hold off on the update. You're bound to run into a random forgotten app you use every once in a while that's no longer supported. To see what's still 32-bit on your mac, go to: Apple icon > About this mac > system report > applications > then click the 64-bit column to sort. No will be 32-bit apps.

bikeshed 7y ago

This is probably going to be what gets me to switch all my audio applications to Windows 10. Once again, everything I use -- Serato, Ableton, and half a dozen pieces of hardware from different manufacturers -- is broken in this release. Apple's become a phone company that grudgingly still makes computers, and this is reflected in their treatment of end users.

iamspoilt 7y ago

It moved my Anaconda installation to a relocated folder with all the envs gone. So I had to reinstall it and recreate all my envs. Also had to reinstall Xcode because git stopped working.

Razengan 7y ago

I dived (dove?) into Catalina on day 1, the very first developer beta, because of SwiftUI. It's an amazing framework. Sure Flutter and others came first and already did parts of what SwiftUI+Combine do, but being able to take an app from design mockups -> interactive prototype -> final version right in the same editor and using the same language for UI, logic and model (with native APIs and look-and-feel) is something I've fantasized about since forever. There are many rough edges (just like Swift itself which took like 3 years to become good enough for "serious" use), you still need AppKit/UIKit for some things, and Apple's developer documentation remains appalling as ever, but I was able to turn a bunch of ideas into usable apps in a matter of hours, that traditional frameworks would have taken me weeks to do. I hadn't even planned or expected to make "proper" apps with it, I was just playing around, iteratively adding to mockups, and boom, there was an actual app on device. Catalina itself however was the buggiest macOS beta for me. I permanently lost random files on iCloud Drive, CPU and network usage was always high, and I had to use a temporary local user account that was not tied to iCloud to avoid messing things up. And it's annoying that they still haven't fixed some minor bugs I reported since the Mojave beta, like unreadable white text on brightly colored tags in Dark Mode and Books jumping around between desktops on its own (the kind of stuff that would have infuriated Steve Jobs I assume but is deemed unimportant now.)

patientplatypus 7y ago
Yeah...and SwiftUI is by default an iOS only program. Flutter you can plug any phone in that's been made in the last 5 years, type `flutter run` in the terminal, and get hot reloading. SwiftUI is walled-garden bait. Hard pass. EDIT: Not sure why I'm being downvoted - (one of) Flutter's main selling point is that it's cross platform by default. SwiftUI doesn't do that and yet is marketed to be very similar in coding style to Flutter, which yeah great, but no cross platform so you still have to code everything twice, unless all your users happen to have iPhones. I mean really?
- Razengan 7y ago
  > SwiftUI is by default an iOS only program. and macOS, tvOS, watchOS (and soon I suppose, AROS?), all counting for over a billion devices. You can literally run the same SwiftUI code on all of them, then make small changes to adopt each OS's unique paradigms (like menus on macOS, the crown on watchOS, the remote on tvOS) and get the most native performance via Metal etc. for free. It's ideal for publishing to services like the new Apple Arcade and macOS/iPadOS Catalyst. How is Flutter for accessibility features? Those seem really effortless to adopt in SwiftUI.

jrochkind1 7y ago

My only question is how do I sync both selected music (a playlist) and selected podcasts to my 10-year-old ipod mini without iTunes? I have a playlist called "ipod" that I select to sync to ipod. I have certain podcasts that I select to sync to ipod. I plug my ipod in and click sync. The end. I've been doing this for 10 years. Now what?

bobbylarrybobby 7y ago
When you plug in your iPod, it will appear in the Finder sidebar and you can sync there.

patientplatypus 7y ago

I remember the last update (Mojave?) where the first release gave root access and allowed unlocking of the computer by default. Woops! Yeah, no thanks. Until Apple learns to release non-buggy crap I'll wait out the horror show for at least the next 6 months. You guys have fun debugging this for me! EDIT: Pretty funny watching all the Apple fanboys going through my account and downvoting all my posts. Oh no! My fake internet points! /s

unnouinceput 7y ago

Well then, time to copy/paste one of my Mojave VM and upgrade it to Catalina. On a side note, 20 years ago my girlfriend at the time name was Catalina. Hopefully this macOS not going to leave me with broken heart like the ex-gf.

cerberusss 7y ago
I hope the next partner was an upgrade :)

m0zg 7y ago

Crashed when installing and already crashed once running Lightroom. This is worse-than-Windows reliability, Apple. You don't need to run faster than the bear, you only need to run faster than Microsoft. And you're failing at it.

musgrove 7y ago

I've tried to download and install Catalina 5 times now and every time it errors out and stops with no explanation.

skohan 7y ago

At the moment I am not upgrading because I regularly use Aperture for photo editing, and it will be unusable after the update. I bought it 5 years ago, and it's worked perfectly since then, meeting all my needs for photo editing and not even feeling remotely dated in terms of UX/UI even with all the OS updates since then. I have no idea what I'm going to replace it with, since I really don't want to go to Lightroom and it's subscription model.

goblin89 7y ago
If you are looking to replace the 32-bit-only Aperture with something else for photo editing on Catalina and don’t like Adobe’s subscription model, you may want to consider Capture One. It is actively supported, has the “buy and own” option, and is very capable though its interface may take some getting used to and/or customizing. I tried the demo earlier this year and liked it a lot, and they even happened to have a promotional discount at the time, but for whatever reason the purchase button was broken for me. I’m sure it was either just my machine, or Phase One has fixed the bug long ago.

tannhaeuser 7y ago

Does anyone know how the app notarization thing works? Is it for natively compiled executables only, or also for scripts started using hashbangs?

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
nicky0 7y ago
Executables. It doesn't affect scripts.

vinay_ys 7y ago

Did Apple lose some critical people in the last year or so? Johnny Ive we all heard about. But maybe more such important foundational people on systems and core OS side also left? I'm guess this because the drop in quality in both iOS and MacOS even in released software is significant that regular people are feeling it. I seriously hope this is a temporary glitch and I won't be forced to figure out a new system setup (back to Windows? Or Linux or ChromeOS?) for my day-to-day.

pantulis 7y ago

Anyone tried Catalina on an old late-2013 16GB 15'' MBP? Is general performance affected? So far so good with Mojave.

makecheck 7y ago

A strange bug was that a permission prompt appeared during the OS setup phase (large centered window in background), blocking part of the setup window but refusing to accept input. Each time I tried to enter my password the focus would glitch back to the large background window, which oddly could still be clicked. So I had to keep clicking grayed-out Continue buttons in the background setup window, until the desktop finally appeared and the password prompt (which was in front the whole time) would finally accept input. I mean, this is the first thing you see when you launch the OS, these are exactly the kinds of bugs that need to be found by Apple and not by users.

deleted 7y ago

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luismedel 7y ago

I read a lot of people debating about how "difficult" is maintaining 32-bit support, or if it adds more vector attacks to the system. Don't fool yourself. Maintaining 32-bit support is "easy" (with all the technical issues we all know). This is simply a sales strategy. It's the same strategy than disabling a glorified vnc (Sidecar) on three years "old" laptops. Sure you need a lot of horsepower to display a remote image in real time. Never done. Yeah. Apple is taking the "appliance route". Your (my) Apple computers, your (my) Apple phones...are closed appliances (no ram upgrade, no battery upgrade, no significant OS upgrade). This appliance version do this, the next appliance version do that. Soon we'll see that they're no longer upgradeable computers, and we will be fine with it...sadly.

rimliu 7y ago
If you have this attitude, don't buy Apple devices. Is that too difficult? Everything is easy when it is someone's else problem.
- luismedel 7y ago
  I have a very open attitude. I, like most of us, use a lot of devices for a myriad of things. Some professionally, some as a hobby. It's that experience and knowledge that makes me question some tactics. I think it's not bad to question things, right?
ken 7y ago
How is dropping 32-bit support a "sales strategy" for Apple? They haven't sold a 32-bit Mac since 2006. If anything, Apple is helping drive sales of other companies' software, and hurting the adoption of their own $0 operating system. For anyone with 32-bit software that won't run on Catalina, there's nothing you can buy from Apple which will help one bit.
- luismedel 7y ago
  You made a good point, but I continue to see a -subtle- sales strategy here. [ ] We remove 32-bit support because is better for our users. [ ] We remove 32-bit support to push a sentiment of obsolescence on our users. Choose yours.

Angostura 7y ago

It gives me - the ability to use my iPad as a second screen, and takes away the ability to run all my 32 bit apps. Until now I've pretty much been a day 1 updater with MacOS. Nope.

cotelletta 7y ago

Wow, not a single feature managed to spark any interest whatsoever. Have they fixed mission control's top bar not expanding by default yet? That would be the only reason to upgrade.

cerberusss 7y ago
I don't use it, so I don't know the previous behavior. But in Catalina, when I use Ctrl-Up, the desktop zooms out and a narrow strip appears on top, labeled "Desktop 1", "Desktop 2", "Desktop 3", etc. When you move your mouse over to the label, it expands into a preview.
- cotelletta 7y ago
  Yes, it is the dumbest thing ever, and demonstrates they've forgotten what Exposé was all about and what the innovation was. Instead of showing you labels or icons in a task switcher, they just showed you all your windows. Direct representation instead of symbolic proxies. "Desktop 1/2/3" is meaningless. Show me what's on it so I can see where my windows are. Don't put a dumb gesture between me and what I need to see. They only did this because of tiny screens, it makes zero sense on any decent monitor. Old Apple would've put in a hidden pref, tracked its use, and then quietly eaten crow. New Apple thinks they know better than even their power users. It's ridiculously arrogant.

Blackstone4 7y ago

I know dropping 32-bit support will cause issues but isn't is broadly positive? Windows has always had a strong focus on backwards compatibility and look where it has ended up. I feel like in 5-10 years time, we will look back and say it was the right decision. I remember when Apple dropped the CD-ROM drive....I haven't used a CD/DVD since 2013...over 6 years ago and I cannot remember a time when I needed to use one other than playing old DVDs which is not a big deal with Netflix & co.

otaviokz 7y ago

"The new Find My app combines Find My iPhone and Find My Friends into a single, easy-to-use app on Mac, iPad and iPhone. Find My can help users locate a missing Mac even if it’s offline and sleeping by sending out Bluetooth signals that can be detected by Apple devices in use nearby, and then relaying the detected location of the Mac to iCloud so a user can can locate it in the Find My app." I'm curious about what kind of T&C will need to be accepted for this to work.

pixelbreaker 7y ago

I've had the beta for a while specifically to fix an HDMI handshake issue with my new mac mini. The only big deal for me was the switch from bash to zsh as the default shell. I had to rework some of my dotfiles. Maybe took 2 hours to get it all how I wanted. Other issue is that arduino flashing is broken for my redox wireless keyboard, so I have to flash firmware on my old laptop for now. Something to do with super low baud rates not working in catalina! Other than that, nothing in catalina that gets me excited, the screentime thing is pretty broken, it shows the same amount of time for all apps pretty much, so kinda pointless.

anonthrowaway28 7y ago

No iTunes? no thanks. I refuse to "upgrade" to marketing adware that takes away features. I'll stick with Mojave on my Hackintosh for however long that lasts. Oh and Catalina won't run anything that's 32-bit either.

gchokov 7y ago
You do not get to upgrade by definition. Play with your Hackintosh and leave the hate speech for somewhere else.

wodenokoto 7y ago

How do you set up a decent adblocker / content blocker on the new safari? I used to use uBlock Origin and forget about it, but now I don't know what to use. The market feels scammy or very expensive or even both.

jzl 7y ago
After reading a bunch of different articles and reviews about this topic, I'm currently testing AdGuard For Safari, which is 1) free, 2) open source, 3) in the Mac App store. (Not to be mistaken with "AdGuard for Mac", which is an all-encompassing machine firewall.) Overall I'm happy with it so far. It's a little weird in that some aspects of the Safari plugin only work if the standalone app is running at the same time, like the ability to disable blocking for a specific site. Not sure if all new-style adblockers have the same limitation, or if that was a specific decision by AdGuard? Either way, I'm happy with it so far, and happy with the fact that they use multiple Safari extensions to achieve > 50k block patterns, which is the limit for a single extension. (1BlockerX does the same on iOS.)
simonklitj 7y ago
I'm currently trying out "Ad And Stuff Blocker" (https://apps.apple.com/dk/app/ad-and-stuff-blocker/id1184130209?mt=12 https://apps.apple.com/dk/app/ad-and-stuff-blocker/id1184130...). It's not the best, but surprisingly decent and free. Struggles with some videos, and YouTube in particular. But, as @jzl wrote in the sibling comment, most ad blockers require that their app is running as well, for them to function. "Ad And Stuff Blocker" does not, which is why I'm trying it out. Has been treating me well for two weeks.

plg 7y ago

How many of you (1) wipe disk, install new OS, & reinstall apps & documents (2) let apple try to upgrade in place

FraKtus 7y ago

Not too many coders seem to be concerned, but QuickTime was never really replaced. AVFoundation is not a full replacement for QuickTime if you do advanced authoring...

bookofjoe 7y ago

Wow, took over two hours to download/set up: 2019 iMac (with hard drive) x 300mps download speed

lonelappde 7y ago

Catalina feels like a "Elves are Leaving Middle Earth" moment. There's just too much going wrong with Mac for me to try to remember why it's still worth it. Windows is uglier for sure, but at least it works.

tempodox 7y ago

No can do. This will be the first macOS that I will never install. And when support for the current OS runs out, I'l have to move to a Linux box, assuming that 32-bit support still exists by then.

johnmen1986 7y ago

Downloaded the new MacOS And now every single one of my apps or programs on my Mac crashes and will not open

chmaynard 7y ago

As far as I'm concerned, macOS Catalina never happened. I'll wait for the next major version (10.16), which will undoubtedly be a maintenance release with almost no new features.

joggy 7y ago

Unless you are an iOS developer looking to use the latest features of Xcode. It doesn't seem like it's worth the hassle.

joggy 7y ago

Don't you just compile a 32bit program source code with a 64bit library to make it 64 bit? All my c++ project from college work once they get new links to the Apple libraries.