17 ms·

Mac OS Catalina: more trouble than it’s worth

295 points by ttepasse 7y ago

swalls 7y ago
Apple has an obsesssion with killing off anything slightly inconvenient to them, users be damned.
mark_l_watson 7y ago
I couldn’t tell from the article if the author had actually tried Catalina. I have been running the beta since day one of the beta release and the only issue is that applications have to be signed or built locally. Apple wants macOS to be a safe walled garden like iOS and Chromebooks. I am fine with this, but I also have a very nice Linux laptop to play with. I expect organized crime and most governments to continue hacking activities so it makes sense having my Apple devices locked down as much as possible. I avoid arbitrary web browsing on my Linux laptop and just use it for coding.
- dwighttk 7y ago
  Seems like he hasn't... just read about problems.
- tebruno99 7y ago
  Why would you try it? Some of us lose money when our machines go down. Apple is supposed to represent quality, but that hasn't happened in so long that if your machine is the machine you make money on, you wait to hear what other people are encountering. Thanks for being my beta tester!
- throwaway1777 7y ago
  What about all the iCloud bugs? https://tyler.io/broken/ https://tyler.io/broken/
  - amiantos 7y ago
    Countering a personal anecdote with another personal anecdote. Here's another: I've been using Catalina since release on multiple Macs and haven't had any problems. I'm also an extensive user of iCloud services, Photos and Drive are very important to me and if I had any issues with either I'd probably lose my mind.
    - kevingadd 7y ago
      "iCloud did <x> to my files" is not an anecdote. It's an assertion of software behavior. The fact that only one sample is being provided does not magically make it an anecdote. You can say the person reporting the bug is a liar, but that's not how quality assurance works in the real world. Most likely the bug they encountered happens in a specific scenario, but regardless, "personal anecdote" or "it works for me" are not appropriate ways to respond to a bug report, let alone one about data loss.
    - CJefferson 7y ago
      The problem is your anecdotes not equal. One person is losing file site awful. One person finds out works isn't suprising, it just shows apple managed to release an OS which isn't buggy for every user.
    - benhurmarcel 7y ago
      iCloud having bugs isn't a rare occurrence. I only have one Apple device (an iPhone), and even in that simple use case I have sync issues from time to time. It's mainly previously deleted things that appear back on the device (photos, reminders…). Apple isn't good at this.
- curt15 7y ago
  >I avoid arbitrary web browsing on my Linux laptop and just use it for coding. What makes web browsers less secure on Linux than on macOS?
  - umvi 7y ago
    Well, lack of DRM support for one. Disney+ won't work on Linux browsers.
    - newnewpdro 7y ago
      WTF does DRM have to do with browser security?
      - krastanov 7y ago
        I think OP got confused and gave an example of how allegedly browsers on Linux are more secure because there is no DRM (because DRM to an extent allows another party to control what your computer can and can not do, through an unvetted binary blob). But even then they are wrong, as DRM works on browsers running on Linux.
        Deukhoofd 7y ago
        He's right in that Disney+ doesn't work on Linux however, as it uses Widevine L1, which isn't supported, and which I doubt will ever get supported. I personally expect Disney+ to allow L3 eventually, which is supported on Linux, as it's just software based.
  - newnewpdro 7y ago
    Unless you're going out of your way to run your browser in a container or dedicated VM on Linux, there are substantial risks associated with browsing the web in terms of exposing all of your information in /home, which might include ssh and pgp private keys, basically everything your user can access. But we have a number of solutions for running things in containers if you just use them. Early on firejail was popular, these days I just run nspawn containers for browser instances and bind mount in some stuff for a shared Downloads directory etc. I can't speak to how that compares to OSX as I've never used it, but it is worth noting that the security story on Linux can range from bad to somewhat OK depending on your setup. Edit: In responses people seem to be completely ignoring that I already stated above in my original comment that I can't speak to how it compares to OSX. I don't know what OSX is doing for application sandboxing defaults. I can however speak with some authority on the Linux situation. And today, if you're running firefox/chrome as your regular user as installed by apt/yum etc, without any additional sandboxing, and that user has access to secrets like ssh/gpg private keys, you're being unnecessarily reckless. And unfortunately that is basically the default way browsers are run today on most distributions This is a major reason why the Flatpak/GNOME people have been working so hard on portals and namespaces are an integral component of the runtime. It's not just about application distribution. They're trying to close a major security hole in desktop linux as it's often used today. They want applications like the browser run in its own namespaces with just the minimum of host filesystem paths bind mounted in. There's absolutely no reason for your browser process to have the ability to access all of your private keys, just because they happen to be under the home directory it happens to have access to, full stop.
- mulle_nat 7y ago
  How does a user "try out" Catalina, decide that its not for him and then revert back to Mojave ?
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    Install it on a new volume/virtual machine?
    - robbrown451 7y ago
      Except that that may not really tell you much. If you have a system that is working, and are worried that Catalina might make it no longer work as it did before, you don't learn a lot by installing on a new volume or virtual machine.
      - least 7y ago
        That's a risk inherent with any upgrade to any software. The answer is ultimately that you can't know without trying it on your system. The best thing you could do is to create a cloned backup of your drive or use time machine to restore it if it doesn't work out.
    - mulle_nat 7y ago
      I'd hazard to say, that option is out of reach for most of the Apple user demographic. Instead most will be nagged by Apple to upgrade, upgrade and then there is no going back.
- morrick 7y ago
  Hello! I am the author, and no, I haven't tried Catalina because, as I state at the very end of my article: "Both my main Macs are really working flawlessly at the moment, and Catalina is beta-quality software that’s likely to give me headaches I don’t need right now. Who knows, maybe down the road I could acquire a cheap used Mac that can run Catalina (something like a 2014 Mac mini) and use it as a test machine. As things are now, I absolutely do not want Catalina to mess with my current setups and data." I'll add — I'm in a position (work-wise) where I can't afford to risk Catalina messing with my current setups and data.
  - vinni2 7y ago
    Can you give me the TLDR version of MacOS Catalina’s downsides? Apart from mail layout change of course. I tried to read your blog but it was too difficult to find the points you were making too much rant with actual points hidden here and there. Personally for me this has been the smoothest upgrade ever! Literally no apps are broken and no data lost. Edit: typos and clarified that I read the blog.
    - loriverkutya 7y ago
      He is using Aperture and it is not even starting on Catalina and it is part of his work process.
Nicci00 7y ago
Selling a computer with spinning rust as main drive in 2017 is extremely shameful.
- oneplane 7y ago
  Why? Time and I/O speed isn't as relevant for everyone as you might think. I sure don't want a system without flash memory, but I know not everybody is me and not everybody will care.
  - 3JPLW 7y ago
    My mother bought a spinning rust iMac two years ago, sold to her as a "fast" machine. It was not fast. It took 15-30 seconds+ to do the most basic of tasks. It was unusable. I did what I could to remove background tasks and it was still painful to work on. She hated it. I cloned the drive onto an external SSD with no other changes. Immediately she had a usable machine, and she now enjoys using it again.
    - shantly 7y ago
      Operating systems increasingly seem to be expecting an SSD. Windows is unreasonably slower on an HDD, extremely frustrating to use at all. IIRC that started with Win8, but might've been 10. Linux DEs, heading the same way. Wouldn't be surprised to find out that MacOS is like that these days, too. That does mean OS/DE devs are hitting disk way the hell too often and just hoping modern disk speed makes it harder to notice, but there's no way that's not adding up to some real (but less crippling) latency even on SSD-equipped systems.
    - oneplane 7y ago
      So it's not an option for you, me or your mom, but that doesn't mean it's not an option for the billions of other people in the world. (again, not saying it's a good idea considering the cost and storage requirements for a general user -- but again, not everyone is the same user)
  - fredsted 7y ago
asperous 7y ago
"why mess with Mail’s classic layout? It’s been my preferred layout since Mac OS X 10.0, and that type of layout has basically been the one I have used since I started using email more than twenty years ago" This seems to be the heart of the post. I see the value in stable, unchanging things, but I also have to believe the designers at Apple are trying to make things better, and I think that is honorable.
- Ididntdothis 7y ago
  From what I have seen the designers aren’t making things better but different for its own sake or dumbed down.
- imron 7y ago
  > but I also have to believe the designers at Apple are trying to make things better Except they're not trying to make things better. They're just changing things - often ignoring their own UI guidelines to do so - and introducing bugs that cause data loss at the same time. Updates shouldn't cause data loss - especially for something as critical as email.
  - duskwuff 7y ago
    There is no evidence, and no reason to believe, that the UI changes in Mail are related to reports of data loss.
    - imron 7y ago
      You are correct, updating the UI and the underlying storage mechanism are almost certainly separate things falling under a broader umbrella of "lets change up Mail instead of fixing long-standing bugs". I would really love to see every other major release of macOS and iOS to be a bug-fix release rather than a "lets change all the things" release.
      - SrslyJosh 7y ago
        > I would really love to see every other major release of macOS and iOS to be a bug-fix release rather than a "lets change all the things" release. Here fucking here!
prepend 7y ago
I’m always wary of MacOS upgrades from when Snow Leopard made my Warcraft and Age of Empires stop working. Ultimately, I find it best to just suck it up and upgrade and use virtualization to run specific stuff. Mac is the easiest for me to have a daily driver browser while also being useful for most dev and basic Unix user tasks.
- musicale 7y ago
  Unfortunately Apple has lousy backward compatibility, particularly for games. Dropping 32-bit is going to kill a bunch of games. On iOS it seeem even worse, with yearly releases breaking many apps; Apple's aggressive ABI changes offload a large maintenance burden onto app developers, who have to keep updating their apps every year just to keep them working the same way. Windows seems to do a lot better, and game consoles do even better: with the exception of multiplayer games whose servers get shut down after a year or two, most games keep working indefinitely across firmware revisions.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    > Apple's aggressive ABI changes offload a large maintenance burden onto app developers, who have to keep updating their apps every year just to keep them working the same way Ideally, apps that work on one iOS release will continue working on the next with no change in behavior, as Apple checks when apps were linked and will opt out of the new behavior.
ggm 7y ago
I did upgrade. A small number of apps I depend on work fine. A larger number of homebrew dependencies work fine. They played with DPI scaling again, it works fine. They fucked up USB device reattach and my dell dock is a hassle in clamshell mode, which is a multi time per day (sleep and plugin unplug) royal pain in the ass. Tl;dr is no different to any recent upgrade if you live in a terminal to other hosts.
nicky0 7y ago
To save anyone reading 10,000 tedious words: It’s always a wise decision to wait till till the new OS matures before upgrading.
- morrick 7y ago
  I'd prefer if more people read my 3,300 words and actually understood my point. :-)
ladzoppelin 7y ago
For what its worth, Catalina has made my 2019 run slightly smother and less buggy. This might be because it reset all the preferences or its just in my head. All my "pro" audio stuff seems to work and my Apogee Groove works like before. My usb hub network port/driver would fail/crash randomly on Mojave needing a reboot but this has not happened on Catalina. Edit: And someone else replied, the DPI/font stuff seems to be fixed as it was driving me crazy in Mojave. The upgrade is worth a try for that alone.
- CharlesW 7y ago
  FWIW, many (most?) audio developers[1] are advising that folks wait to upgrade to Catalina for legitimate reasons. [1] https://www.pro-tools-expert.com/production-expert-1/2019/9/18/brands-are-already-issuing-warnings-about-not-upgrading-to-macos-catalina https://www.pro-tools-expert.com/production-expert-1/2019/9/...
- zten 7y ago
  I'm happy with it too. They just added Radeon RX 5700 XT drivers to the latest beta release, something I have been eagerly awaiting since the card got released.
- jjtheblunt 7y ago
  Same here
Ididntdothis 7y ago
They totally destroyed audiobooks in what used to be iTunes. No smart lists, can’t edit MP3 tags, can’t delete or listen to single tracks, can’t store files on external drive. I don’t understand how anybody could think this was a good idea. Why destroying functionality that worked and replace it with something that barely works? This is a huge disappointment.
- woadwarrior01 7y ago
  I don’t use iTunes for audiobooks (I had an audible subscription that went unused and I finally unsubscribed, I’ve realised that I prefer reading physical books), but there’s this free OSX app called AudioBookBinder[1] that can bind a set of mp3 files into an m4a file and add it to iTunes as an audiobook. That might help in this case. [1]: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/audiobook-binder/id413969927 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/audiobook-binder/id413969927
- chmaynard 7y ago
  Exactly. I use iTunes every day to manage a very large music library. It works very well and has the features I need. I spent years learning how to use it well. I see no reason to give it up now. Could Apple have kept iTunes intact and simply removed the non-essential components? Of course, but it would have been expensive and time-consuming. If iTunes is truly obsolete, Apple should release the source code and let a community of users and developers continue its development.
  - tonyedgecombe 7y ago
    iTunes was a bloated mess, I'm glad to see the back of it.
- johnisgood 7y ago
  Yep, destroying functionality is what Apple has been doing for a while now. I am unable to understand how anybody could think that this is a good idea. Do not break what works!
Grustaf 7y ago
Installed the first beta, had some issues in beta 3 or so with actually deleting files when emptying the bin, but that’s why it’s called beta. Had zero problems with later betas, have no idea why podcasters and other influencers are negging on it so much.
sheinsheish 7y ago
I have an issue with my iMac 5k 2017 not staying in sleep when I selected so. Randomly wakes with the display off. But I can tell because there’s a very low fan noise and some heat from the back.
- alexis_fr 7y ago
  Are you sure “power naps” isn’t enabled? It’s in your power panel.
dkonofalski 7y ago
That reads less like a reasonable, well-thought breakdown and more like a whiny diatribe coming from an entitled teenager. If the entire argument boils down to "I don't wanna!", then what's the point? Don't upgrade. Apple isn't forcing anyone to upgrade at all. If you need to run all your old software, don't upgrade. That's not a fault of the new OS. Technology changes. That's a fact of life. Even the example of Aperture is a little far-fetched. It's literally been years since Aperture was discontinued and taken off the shelves. I dunno... to me it sounds like someone complaining that their new computer can't run DooM anymore because it didn't come with a 3.5" floppy drive. Yes, you can run DooM still but not in the very specific, needlessly encumbered method you want to run it in. Times change, technology changes, and it's just not productive to lock yourself in to something and then complain when what you've locked yourself into doesn't work out the way you predicted. Keep using the old OS. Just don't act surprised and attacked when it doesn't work anymore years from now.
- mullen 7y ago
  Catalina does break a lot of games. I am pretty sure that if you get on Steam, the list of games that Catalina breaks is longer than the list of games that work on Catalina.
  - dkonofalski 7y ago
    I'm sure it does because most games didn't update to 64-bit. I still fail to see how that warrants an article like that. If you know the games won't work and you still want to play them, don't upgrade. It's not that hard.
    - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
      As it happens, the author isn't upgrading.
      - dkonofalski 7y ago
        And your point is? I've already acknowledged that. I'm pointing out that a disappointment for their individual situation doesn't indicate that the update is a failure nor does it warrant what they've written.
0000011111 7y ago
"My point is, I’ve been into technology for more than 30 years, and I feel that Apple’s software culture has become progressively more user-hostile than it used to be." Supporting the upgrade process at an enterprise level is especially difficult. PPPC's must be created to get anything connected to the camera, mic, keyboard or screen. The walls to the rose garden of macOS are higher. Could OS software be built like Ubuntu? With LTS in the model for 5 years? + Security patches when necessary?
tebruno99 7y ago
My iMac Pro went into reboot loops every 20 minutes. Even after a clean install. Then I lost a lot of mail even on a clean install. Its pretty much crap. I'll wait until 10.16 is out and then upgrade to the 10.15 that isn't crap.
jtms 7y ago
I always wait a minimum of a few months after major updates are released to install them. Nothing I hate more than having my dev environment hosed because some binary I depend won’t build correctly or something in my stack starts throwing runtime errors. A couple months usually all of these type issues to get ironed out.
amiantos 7y ago
Author hasn't tried Catalina, and their biggest complaint appears to be that the email app allegedly has a new UI--but I don't think it does. Mail app looks the same in Catalina, doesn't it? I can't say I noticed any differences. Either way, this is an extremely long blog post to say basically just "I don't like change, and I'm not willing to see change as a potential improvement to try to accept it".
- saagarjha 7y ago
  The author is talking specifically about the classic layout, which appears to be missing in macOS Catalina.
  - amiantos 7y ago
    Ah, I see, looks like there is a way to get the classic layout back in Catalina if you want it: https://www.macintouch.com/community/index.php?threads/macos-10-15-catalina.2054/page-4#post-18968 https://www.macintouch.com/community/index.php?threads/macos...
- morrick 7y ago
  I am the author, and I may be guilty of writing an extremely long blog post; but judging by your response, you didn't bother to read it that thoroughly. The new layout in Catalina's Mail.app is actually my smallest complaint. I don't like change when it unnecessarily breaks things that used to work just fine. I don't like change when it is haphazardly imposed on a yearly basis by a company which has clearly stopped caring about Mac OS as far as management is involved. I used to like change more when it actually made me work better, when the advantages clearly outweighed the downsides, when progress and improvements were noticeable and thoughtfully implemented. But hey, that's me.
  - berberous 7y ago
    Alternative possibility: you just got old. In all seriousness, older people are more opposed to UI and other types of change.
devxpy 7y ago
Not a conspiracy theorist or anything, but all of this seems like a cheap strategy to make users move to iPadOS.
- threeseed 7y ago
  That makes no sense. 1) Apple makes more margins on Mac hardware. 2) Catalina allows you to basically run iPad apps on the Mac. They wouldn't do this if they were trying to push users to iPad. 3) iPadOS and OSX are fundamentally different. There is no way Apple could ever replace the Mac with an iPad.
  - pier25 7y ago
    > Apple makes more margins on Mac hardware Maybe but sells a lot more iOS units.
  - devxpy 7y ago
    I never said they could, but from the ads, feels like they want to.
- hk__2 7y ago
  > Not a conspiracy theorist or anything, but all of this seems like a cheap strategy to make users move to iPadOS. How can users "move" to a different OS that’s not designed for nor compatible with their device?
alphabettsy 7y ago
TLDR; The author hasn’t upgraded, and while they have some well-founded concerns they haven’t actually used it. It’s going to be difficult to make anyone happy with this release that has already decided they don’t like it.
- semiotagonal 7y ago
  If it's breaking 32-bit apps, and you need at least one 32-bit app (for the author, Aperture), that's kind of all you need to know.
  - FireBeyond 7y ago
    Aperture is a 64 bit app. Still doesn't work, though.
- morrick 7y ago
  You know why I haven't actually used it? Because I've read enough experiences from tech-savvy people and power users who actually used it, and based on what I've read, plus all the things that Catalina would disrupt for me, my work, and how I use my Macs, I've made my cost/benefit analysis and decided that no, I'm not going to upgrade to Catalina. It has been a perfectly informed decision from someone who has been using Macs since 1989. I haven't got out of bed on the wrong side the other day and just decided I didn't like Catalina.
yodsanklai 7y ago
I find it slightly annoying too, especially when an upgrade breaks the command line tools, or homebrew, and make me lost a few GB of SSD space. The last upgrade made me lose about 30 minutes of my day to fix a few issues. And I didn't notice much changes, besides the welcome screen picture, and that something changed with itunes, which prevented me from using it. So overall, I tend to think that there are too frequent upgrades and that I don't need them. But overall, I'm still a satisfied mac user so I give Apple the benefice of the doubt.
- trustfundbaby 7y ago
  This is one of the biggest reasons I hate doing Mac updates. I will usually wait almost 6 months to do the upgrade because of that, and then usually over a weekend/holiday so I don't lose work time trying to deal with the troubles that can arise.
ryanolsonx 7y ago
I thought this post was going to be about stability. It is _not_ stable. That's the biggest problem.
- rimliu 7y ago
  Author did not even try it. He knows nothing about how stable it is.
whalesalad 7y ago
> my desktop workhorse, a 2017 4K retina iMac > 5400 rpm hard drive as its main internal volume Regardless of OS, the author _really_ needs to bail on the 5400rpm HDD and get a solid state disk in there... especially if you're gonna call it a workhorse!
- morrick 7y ago
  When it was time to get that 4K retina iMac, I only had money for one built-to-order upgrade. It was a tough decision. It was either leaving the internal 1TB hard drive and choose to have 16GB of RAM instead of the base 8GB, or choosing a 256GB internal SSD and keeping the base 8GB of RAM. Since RAM in that 21.5-inch retina iMac is only upgradable at purchase, not down the road, I opted for the 16GB of RAM and staying with the hard drive. My reasoning is that I can upgrade to an external Thunderbolt SSD at a later date when I can afford it. RAM is not upgradable later.
  - lostgame 7y ago
    >> RAM is not upgradable later. Biggest reason I will never buy another Mac. It seems like they just don't want this to be the case. Terrible for the environment.
  - toyg 7y ago
    Surely you can just swap the internal drive. External thunderbolt disks and enclosures are very expensive for no good reason. Source: I have been looking for cheap ways to have fast external disks for years. 4 years ago I went with a hacked Buffalo LinkStation (it’s one of the few products that can be easily taken apart, so I swapped its slow disk with an SSD), and now I just ordered a new TB3 enclosure from aliexpress (plus a super-fast disk from a reputable source) to replace it. External TB disks are still overpriced, let alone TB3. I honestly don’t know why that is - I suspect it’s something to do with the main market being Apple users with deep pockets and limited knowledge.
- arvinsim 7y ago
  > Regardless of OS, the author _really_ needs to bail on the 5400rpm HDD and get a solid state disk in there... especially if you're gonna call it a workhorse! Apple themselves needs to bail on the 5400rpm HDD
benburleson 7y ago
Since readers here might be more apt to have the same problem: Has anyone else noticed Catalina doesn't remember external display rotation when waking from sleep? There have been a few instances where it somehow restores the proper rotation, but most of the time I am forced to put it back manually. I don't want a "workaround" via AppleScript or a hotkey to easily set it back to what I had configured, I just want it to work like it always had!
lostgame 7y ago
I don't understand the possible, potential advantage removing 32-bit support even has. It doesn't improve security for my sake, because I can't use a system that doesn't allow for 32-bit apps. Why can't we have a Rosetta equivalent? I've had to tell every MacOS user I know, especially non-techie ones, just to not upgrade, and consider something other than Apple moving forward.
- ridiculous_fish 7y ago
  I worked at Apple during the 64 bit transition. The answer is that 32 bit was quite painful to maintain. The 64 bit transition was a compatibility break that enabled shedding technical debt, like NeXT-isms that no longer applied. In particular it added the ObjC 2 runtime, which allowed features like adding a variable to a class without needing to recompile subclasses. So long as 32 bit is supported, it is difficult for Apple to use these features internally. If you add a variable to a class you break the 32 bit system. If you add a variable conditionally under an #ifdef then it is annoying to manage the separate build configurations, or disparate 32bit/64bit behaviors. This only applies to the Mac; iOS always had the modern runtime. But macOS engineers are very very happy to see 32 bit go because it was painful to support.
  - kevingadd 7y ago
    Would you say this is due to architectural limitations in how 32/64-bit are implemented in OS X, vs the way compatibility works on say Windows or Linux? I know people have claimed that part of this is due to the need for system binaries/etc to all include full 32/64-bit versions.
    - yyyk 7y ago
      Windows 64bit mostly uses 32bit shims which call the 'real' 64bit API. This means that 32bit support is almost no-cost to maintain - I am certain MS will support 32bit for the next decade at the very least - but at the cost of having the 64bit API itself slightly less breaking compatibility so shims are easier to make (e.g. "long" is still 32bit). Arguably MS would have made the same API compromises anyway just to make porting easier. Linux has some 32bit shims in the kernel and a few separate syscalls, but userland does the separate libraries approach where all 32bit libs are separate than 64bit libraries. So the kernel pays a small cost, while userland needs to maintain separate versions of the libraries - which often costs very little (many can simply be recompiled, this is open source after all), but can bite the maintainer sometimes. MacOS uses the fat binaries approach, where every binary carries all the arch versions. I don't think the system supports a different method - so Mac pays a bigger cost than Windows or Linux in order to maintain 32 bit. Also Mac kernel API is unstable by design, and I guess Apple would like to drop some older stuff. For better or worse that's the Apple Way - they don't maintain anywhere as much backward compat as other platforms.
Razengan 7y ago
I still love macOS but Catalina has been the buggiest beta and release that I can recall. When we saw betas of x.1 before there were even GMs/release candidates of x.0 we knew it was going to be rushed out the door. Even after release it's still randomly losing files. Just yesterday my purchased music downloads just disappeared. No explanation (unless I trashed and emptied them in a fugue state). They were still showing as downloaded in the Music app, but when I tried to play them I got the "File missing. Locate?" dialog, so the Music app wasn't aware of this either. They weren't stored on iCloud Drive either, just the default local music folder, so it wasn't related to the iCloud Drive bug. This was a clean installation on a fresh disk, no third party system level junk, and after the unnumbered OS update they released a while ago. There are quite a few other bugs too. macOS is still the better alternative to Windows, but the wow factor of "It just works!" is becoming rare and bug fatigue is creeping in.
- lostgame 7y ago
  >> it's still randomly losing files. Whoa, no. That is a huge code red for me as a creative. Especially in the music folder. I work at all crazy times of day and night, inspiration hits, and is often impossible to replace. Not alright.
  - deanclatworthy 7y ago
    That’s why as a creative you should be using a backup solution. With modern internet connections backing up is quick and efficient. File loss should be expected on the FS. Many things can and will go wrong one day.
    - arvinsim 7y ago
      Having a backup still doesn't excuse Catalina for that bug.
      - KibbutzDalia 7y ago
        Apparently it does for the Apple zealots.
gorgoiler 7y ago
The comment about macOS’s Mail.app struck a chord with me. My upgrade to iOS 13 has changed the mail app on my phone to sporadically open old inbox threads. It happens something like 1 in every N times I launch the app. It’s seemingly done at random and is the strangest thing about this upgrade by far. It’s like Apple are trying to nudge me into being better at responding to emails. Is there a PM at Apple watching an engagement metric increase? With my personal email?!
- lostgame 7y ago
  My God, me, too! I swear to God, I thought I was just confused or something, 'when did I open this?' - and it had only seemed to happen past the upgrade - this is certainly bizarre, if not just a strange coincidence.
  - gorgoiler 7y ago
    This also raises the question: not only is it suspected that an email application is being monitored for engagement metrics, but is it also the case that growth-enhancing UI features are being a/b tested on us as well? Well that is of course all silly conjecture and I doubt its anything more than a bug, but if it were true then that’s some real Silicon Valley stuff right there. Maybe Apple own stock in whichever paper manufacturer is post commonly used for printing emails from meemaw. More emails really pushes the needle on those paper sales! Q4 performance summary cycle bonuses all round!
bastardoperator 7y ago
Then switch or don't upgrade. For all the bash purist you're gonna need this: export BASH_SILENCE_DEPRECATION_WARNING=1
- saagarjha 7y ago
  I just install a recent version of bash from MacPorts instead of relying on the one that ships with the system.
  - bastardoperator 7y ago
    Bash is depreciated in favor of Zsh in Catalina. Regardless of you where you get bash from, I prefer brew, a nag message is presented to the user about Zsh everytime a terminal session is initiated: The default interactive shell is now zsh. To update your account to use zsh, please run `chsh -s /bin/zsh`. For more details, please visit https://support.apple.com/kb/HT208050. The export I provided prevents this nag message from being displayed for Bash users.
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      The message is coming from /bin/bash, no? I have /opt/local/bin/bash set as my login shell, so I never see it.
khana 7y ago
Catalina from my pov: 1) more ephemeral keys in Keychains (take a look) 2) more latent Task Manager - way more buggy 3) more Cloud dependent :( 4) more shitty code on top of beautiful hardware I agree with the author 100%.
ms013 7y ago
Nobody is forcing people to upgrade - you’re free to stick with an older version of any OS, although possibly at the cost of the OS going out of support from the vendor. Why such a decision seems to lead to these long winded opinion pieces on the internet is weird - don’t these authors have something better to do than opine about how what they want doesn’t line up exactly with what some vendor is giving them for free?
- pier25 7y ago
  > Nobody is forcing people to upgrade Except if you want the latest Xcode version.
wrnr 7y ago
I know apple isn't the company it used to be and with all the FUD going around I was reluctant to install the latest version but it works perfectly. This is article of +3000 words, don't take the time to write this and then complain about having to click a number of popups.
the_solenoid 7y ago
As an owner of a nvidia650m macbookpro, the fact apple actually made it work again with discrete graphics is the best part of the upgrade (in the previous os, it would slow down till it was unuseable)
namesbc 7y ago
I have too many 32bit games that will never be updated to 64bit. For the first time in 18 years, I am not going to upgrade to the latest mac os. Apple orchestrated a much smoother transition from OS 9 to OS X and RISC to x84 than from 32bit to 64bit.
- Bud 7y ago
  They did? 32-bit apps continued to be supported for a full decade after the hardware architecture went 64-bit. During that entire decade, Apple issued steadily-increasing warnings to users that eventually, the 32-bit support would cease. Seems like a smooth transition to me.
  - johnisgood 7y ago
    I do not even get the transitioning part within this context. If you are pretty sure that the software you are using will not work on Catalina, then what significance does transitioning have? Having more time saying your goodbyes to your old games (in this case), or what? 32-bit applications will not magically turn into 64-bit ones. In any case, I think it was a silly decision to "force" the customer to pick between old vs new software, but I am sure they can afford it. People will probably forgive them for it, and then completely forget about it. New users in the future probably will not even have anything to forget (or forgive), unless they want to run "really old" software, in which case people will just boo on them, and say "times change, technologies change, you gotta adapt, man" and the like which seems to be the case today with respective to both old software and hardware.
  - SliderUp 7y ago
    But why warn, why stop supporting it at all?
    - johnisgood 7y ago
      Because the removal of widely used things that worked fine caught on for some reason. Apple has been doing this for a while now. Jack, USB, ESC key, whatever else I cannot recall.
twarge 7y ago
Real data required: How many people who experienced data loss or other issues have one of the following underlying conditions: 1. Creeping storage corruption that is exposed by the upgrade. 2. Latent configuration issues from running the betas. Personal experience: I have had several issues with apps on a machine that went through all the betas. Had to spend some quality time with Console to sort things out. Zero issues with machines that upgraded untouched by betas.
- jjtheblunt 7y ago
  Real data: my Mac Pro transitioned from betas to production fine, albeit with some annoying warning messages about unexplained dangers during upgrade, about a Preboot folder that would be deleted, so be ware. Hours of backing up later, it just upgraded off the beta train perfectly, though didn't explain why it took some valid files (perhaps cached from iCloud) and dumped them into a folder.
- FireBeyond 7y ago
  Completely fresh install (disk utility format/partition) on a 2016 iMac... reboot loop, disk space complaints. Had to re-attempt install to get it to succeed. No diagnostic issues.
SeanLuke 7y ago
I have a Korg Microsampler. It's a common music synthesizer (er, sampler) keyboard manufactured in 2009. The only way to upload and download samples to this device is via a piece of proprietary software made by Korg USA. Which is 32-bit. So I'm in the situation that OS X Catalina will not only break my various 32-bit applications, it will also obsolete external hardware that I use regularly. I am lost as to why Apple would do this with no legacy option whatsoever.
- taejavu 7y ago
  The legacy option is to remain on an older OS. Or you could say it's Korg's responsibility to provide a 64-bit version of the software.
jyrkesh 7y ago
Not a Mac user, so I have a little anecdotal evidence here, but with all the buzz about Catalina being broken, has this been a problem in earlier versions? Just last night I spent all day trying to do some work on a friend's 2011 or 2012 MBP (16 GBs RAM, i7, should be fully capable). They needed Windows 10 for some special software, and wanted some help cleaning the hard drive to make room for the partition. After hours and hours of fighting tools and trying to work around Boot Camp Assistant limitations (it insisted on always reformatting as exFAT, in spite of Win10's 4+ GB .wim files), I finally determined that it was probably all fixed in a later version of macOS and proceeded to update her to Mojave. Fast forward another hour and we're stuck in a bootloop of failing Mojave installs with some barebones diagnostics and repair tools that do nothing. Thank GOD she had months worth of complete Time Machine backups we could easily restore. But it's insane to me that a system update served by the App Store in the golden path on a piece of hardware still within it's support lifecycle could fail so catastrophically. I've given the middle finger to Windows' "Don't turn off this computer" messages scores of times, and it's always been able to boot up again just fine. As of late, I've not even experienced the need to do "Automatic Startup Repair" like the old days. Is Apple really slipping that hard right now?
- tomc1985 7y ago
  > insisted on always reformatting as exFAT, in spite of Win10's 4+ GB .wim files exFAT doesn't have a 4gb limitation like FAT32
fitzroy 7y ago
I got hit with the "not enough space" endless reboot loop during installation. Booting into Recovery Mode and reverting to a previous local Time Machine backup fixed everything in about 5 minutes. However, discovering that 5 minute fix took about 24 hours hours of frustration and command line experimentation. I didn't even know Mojave created local snapshots. Then I hit the "configuring macOS" forever bug after the second install attempt (just force reboot). I think both of these installer bugs have been addressed in the recent supplemental update to 10.15.0 for any downloads going forward. Despite all these issues, things have been fine actually running Catalina, but I'd wait a few point releases if I did it again. The whole thing 'feels' very fragile, for lack of a better word — mostly due to the online conversation about it. I'm definitely leaving my home theater Mac Mini on 10.14 for the foreseeable future after reading about the HDMI issues.
diminoten 7y ago
I'm just... confused. Is the author using the same OS I am? I upgraded the day it came out, and I haven't even noticed in any meaningful way. ZSH is the biggest change, but I've already gotten used to it. Nothing I use is breaking, none of my workflows or habits needed changing, it was fine. The author ought to take a good, long look in the mirror and ask if maybe they've got some problems with change.
morrick 7y ago
I'm the author of the article, and I would like to add a few things to hopefully make my point clearer. - While I'm flattered by the attention my piece got by 'making Hacker News', it is simply a personal view and a personal disappointment towards the direction Apple is going with Mac OS. It's not a prescriptive article. I'm not telling people to avoid upgrading to Mac OS 10.15. It's your Mac, it's your work, it's your data, it's your time. Do whatever you please. My decision to not upgrading is the result of a lot of time spent gathering information and evaluating costs and benefits of the upgrade. And my conclusion, as I clearly stated in the article, is that I'm not upgrading because "what Catalina takes away from me is more than what it gives me." I also took the opportunity of sharing a few reflections and my criticism towards Apple's recent treatment of Mac OS. Whatever the underlying causes, it's undeniable that Mac OS is not as robust, consistent, and well-designed as it used to be. It wasn't bug-free before. Nothing is bug-free. But I remember past versions very well. I use a variety of Macs of older vintages, so I still use older Mac OS X versions. The degrade in software quality and system stability isn't a matter of opinion. It's out there to see. And yes, I don't like the direction Apple has been moving after Steve Jobs's passing. That's an entirely personal preference, and I respect the point of view of those who, instead, love what Tim Cook & Co. are doing. I'm not really 'complaining' that Apple's not doing things 'my way'. However, as someone who has been using computers for 38 years and Macs for 30, as someone who knows a thing or two about user interfaces, user interaction and user experience, I think I'm allowed to share a few criticisms about the direction Mac OS is going without being called a 'whiny entitled teenager'. I try to approach technology by focusing more on the forest than a single tree, and sometimes I struggle to see all this 'progress' and 'future' other tech geeks keep talking about. Technology should adapt to us, not the other way round. Progress should mean making things better, improve what we do with the help of computers and devices. Instead, as I wrote, "I also notice that — for everything to keep working smoothly — you have to do more work than before. It just works, with Apple products, has lost the frequency and consistency it once had. It is a strange progress when you keep feeling the sting of two steps back for every step forward."
- lostgame 7y ago
  Hey - thanks for commenting on this thread. I personally enjoyed the article. >> I think I'm allowed to share a few criticisms about the direction Mac OS is going without being called a 'whiny entitled teenager'. I do as well - and, to boot - I wholeheartedly agree with your critique for the most part. >> Progress should mean making things better, improve what we do with the help of computers and devices. For sure, and removing access to a lot of my commonly-used applications doesn't help with that, for sure.
villgax 7y ago
Images on webpages in the beta look glitched with a pinkish hue. Finder becomes slow af too
mrbonner 7y ago
Is Apple release cadence a 6-month length now? My company just suggests an upgrade to High Sierra a month ago. They don't even go for Mojave yet let alone Catalina. No wonder everyone is complaining about the quality.
- Wowfunhappy 7y ago
  Release candance is once per year, your company is just being conservative.
jinonoel 7y ago
I really, really miss Dashboard. It was a nice quick way to have access to my stickies, a calculator, the weather, and a calendar all in one place
junkrat001 7y ago
> It’s been my preferred layout since Mac OS X 10.0, and that type of layout has basically been the one I have used since I started using email more than twenty years ago Lost me at UIs shouldn't change in twenty years
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
dmix 7y ago
FWIW I installed Catalina from the first beta and it's worked flawlessly for me. Maybe because I'm on a newish Macbook Pro and I don't use shitty Adobe software, produce music on this machine, or have a complex testing setups with purposefully old stuff. If you mostly use a browser/terminal for everything its nothing to worry about. I will say that Podcasts app kinda sucks, just like the iPhone one it's needlessly confusing when trying to open the show's page with the episode list, instead of just "recently played" or w/e you've downloaded. It tries too hard to be clever, while abandoning simple descended by when the show was added. idk why they can't do both.
woutr_be 7y ago
I've upgraded to Catalina on my 2015 MacBook Pro the day it released (didn't run the betas), and I haven't experienced any problems. I mostly use it for development, everything still works. My only annoyance so far has been SideCar, it just never works the first time, I have to switch from second display to mirror, then back to second display to make it work.
- stock_toaster 7y ago
  I have had a few weird freezes/lock-ups, which I think were related to time machine going out to lunch. Other than that, it’s been pretty good. Battery life improvement, seems faster, etc.
- kranner 7y ago
  Sidecar is officially supported only on 2016 and later MacBook Pros. https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT210380#systemrequirements https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT210380#systemrequirements I use a 2015 MBP too, so I'm glad to hear it does work and thanks for the workaround.
  - woutr_be 7y ago
    Oh that's strange, pretty sure mine is a 2015 model. (Although I would need to check). Once it works, it's actually really great, I mainly use it for my terminal and browser debug tools. It's nice to have some extra space.
  - AhtiK 7y ago
    Could you double-check if it's really a 2015 and if it's early or something else, what cpu? My early 2015 shows error for Sidecar/not enabled and supposedly requires at least a Skylake CPU. EDIT: my Q was more likely to woutr_be, where it was enabled..
    - woutr_be 7y ago
      I’ll double check tonight.
    - 7y ago
birdyrooster 7y ago
"Apple Music, TV, Podcasts, Photos, Notes, Reminders, Screen Time, and Apple Watch" Apple has, for the entirety of Mac OS X and macOS, has spent a substantial amount of time enhancing media and mobile quality of life. Catalina is no different. Take a stroll down memory lane: iTunes (was the amalgamation of the first three apps you mentioned), DVD playback, iChat, .Mac syncing, Dashboard (Widgets), Back to My Mac, MobileMe, Front Row, Photo Booth, App Store, iMovie, iPhoto, iChat, AirDrop, Messages, FaceTime, Game Center, and iCloud. Some of the apps you mention have been getting updates for longer than just Catalina. Photos was launched in Yosemite, while Notes and Reminders launched in Mountain Lion. I am sure we can both imagine people who were disappointed in 2007 when Apple redesigned Mail and were posting on digg about how Lion is more trouble than it's worth. As for the lack of 32-bit support, this is really not a sticking point for customers who pay to have their applications supported. If a product is no longer being developed, why is it that you blame Apple's software update? Oh, and another thing that isn't new: initially buggy releases of macOS
- FPGAhacker 7y ago
  > Oh, and another thing that isn't new: initially buggy releases of macOS True, but the combined bugginess of iOS 13 and Catalina is astonishing. Shit really went wrong with this cycle. I am sure they will get it under control, but it’s so bad right now that I’ve actually told people considering entering the Apple ecosystem to hold off for a while until this dumpster fire is put out.
- semiotagonal 7y ago
  > I am sure we can both imagine people who were disappointed in 2007 Was it to the same extent that people are complaining about MacOS Catalina though? This is the first update that I don't like, and it's because of the lack of 32-bit support. Being forewarned about 32-bit going away doesn't make my 32-bit applications run on Catalina.
deanclatworthy 7y ago
The Catalina update did not go smoothly for me. I upgraded a stock brand new MBP a couple of weeks after I got it. Every time I plug in a monitor or remove a monitor it inverts my mouse scroll direction and trackpad scroll direction.
Pokepokalypse 7y ago
I didn't have any issues with my personal laptop (2013 MBP) (which is superior, by far, in almost every way, to my work laptop, a 2019 MBP). The only difference I noticed (and I don't really have time to obsess over little details) - was that WINE was broken. As far as my work-laptop goes, I'm just going to hold off. I don't really need any of the new features; and I don't rely on WINE for anything I do for work. I just don't have any strong feelings for a major OS X update right now. I think the last time I even used Safari was about 5 years ago for testing a website I was developing.
jwr 7y ago
I fully agree with the author, and I am also worried about how Apple treats its users. And I am also an abandoned Aperture user, with huge libraries full of organized albums with non-destructive edits. I still do not know what to do about that. Having read most of the comments, I got the impression that you could correlate them with age. Younger people are all "Catalina works for me! Progress! Change is necessary! What are you whining about?!". Perhaps I can relate because I've been using computers for >25 years now, and I'd like to see a division between rapidly changing things (like my applications) and foundation-type stuff that I need to get work done (like computers and operating systems).
- rimliu 7y ago
  I doubt you could count me someone from the younger generation. My experience with computers started with DOS. I Have been Mac user since 2006. Catalina works fine for me. I was also Aperture user. And then Lightroom user. And now I am Capture One user.
  - deepGem 7y ago
    Ditto. Catalina is working fine for me too. Mac user since 2006, I think the first intel chips. It's definitely not a noticable change. The only such change was the upgrade to Snow Leopard. That was a 'wow' change. This is more like a 'meh' change. I haven't tried the iPad sharing thing yet, not too excited by that either. What I have noticed is that Apple hardware is highly inconsistent these days. I think it's a function of the Retina displays. The non retina Macbook air with such an underpowered processor sesms to work better than the current Macbook air. OTOH the Macbook pro is seemingly working great. The 1.4GHz entry model outclasses the older generations by leaps and bounds. I have also started appreciating the touch bar, despite being a heavy vim user. The one touch shortcuts for da y to day stuff like zoom sharing desktops etc are very welcome.
    - close04 7y ago
      I have used Macs for quite some time now, mostly as secondary machine. PowerMac G4, Quad G5, first Intel aluminum iMac, 2013 iMac (and a few others occasionally in between), and basically all the OS versions up to and including Mojave. That's where I stopped and moved away from Macs (at least for the time being). Not because they're bad but because I can't find a compelling reason to keep using it, it just steered away from what I considered a good match with my preferences and use cases. Still very much enjoy the iPhone and iPad. Just no room for the Mac. I guess my point is something doesn't have to be "good OR bad" for some people to like it and others to dislike it. Pretty sure it can be both at the same time, depending on where you're looking from.
thesquib 7y ago
I would just like to have Mojave kept stable for a few years, security updates included. Keep macOS as a solid platform, and add features through apps. That's pretty much all Apple seems to do each release, make new applications and add-ons, bundle them with the OS and call it an upgrade. I generally agree with the author, I don't have anything else in the Apple ecosystem so most of the new features are largely worthless to me compared to what I have to give up.
- xckfs 7y ago
  > That's pretty much all Apple seems to do each release. So, they're doing what you want?
kkylin 7y ago
- I like SideCar. After logging in and out of iCloud, it works just fine. - Having issue with Time Machine taking forever, but that seems to be more a Spotlight indexing issue. - Anyone else miss the iTunes Remote? I kinda like the new Music app, but wish I can still control it from my phone.
- siquick 7y ago
  I just bought an iPad today solely for Sidecar. As a remote dev who doesn't want to lug a monitor around, its an absolute diamond of a feature.
teekert 7y ago
My father feels the same, he initially started using apple because he felt his Windows machine was using too much of his time for bs. Now he just upgraded to Catalina and Photos stopped working with this Synology based library, even I, a computer nerd, have already spend an hour at the problem. We are about done. I feel that Windows 10 would be just fine for him (or maybe I can get him sold on Ubuntu). Where pictures are simply in folders and any backup program will just sync them anywhere. My in laws are very happy on Ubuntu Mate, it looks like old Windows (after changing one setting), and the Pictures and the email app are simple and clean. It's all they do.
- mobilemidget 7y ago
  "Photos stopped working with this Synology" I have this too, I planned to look into it this weekend to see if there is a fix. I have moved my photos library to my synology just before upgrade to Catalina, as well having a little one, your photos exponentially increase. When I want to sync now it says it syncing, 'finishes within 3 seconds' and didn't sync at all..
  - teekert 7y ago
    I did some research, officially Apple does not recommend or support any photo Libraries on a NAS. It has to be a local APFS or HFS+ disk. Insane. My father is now pulling his 120 GB library over wifi to a local disc to see if it can be fixed. They really want you in the Apple cloud. I thinking maybe use Synologies "Moments" but apps get less than 2 stars... Meanwhile over here in Ubuntu-land I have Shotwell sitting in a nice folder structure working perfectly, simple , easy to move to something else and easy to backup.
- m0xte 7y ago
  Photos is one reason I always end up back on windows. My photo library is windows explorer and the file system. It just works. And it’s not hidden in any weird opaque and fragile abstraction. Every time I’ve used macOS (I’ve had three MacBooks and two iMacs) I have to fight them. And I’m not up for that.
apatheticonion 7y ago
I would love it if someone ported the MacOS desktop manager to Linux.
vinay_ys 7y ago
I have been using Macs to manage my digital life (personal photos, files, videos, music, notes, documents etc) since Tiger/Leopard days and have been mostly happy with the experience. But I feel now more than ever before that my decade and half old collection is on shaky ground and at risk of being lost with any given OS upgrade. Lost because of file system or crypto or some such software deprecation/compatibility bug or because of the software apps may become unusable. (Btw iOS 13 upgrade did cause me data loss on my phone – it wouldn't unlock after upgrade because my passcode had a special character that it would no longer accept as input, post upgrade. I had to wipe reset the phone and lost data that hadn't synced yet.) Standards based software engineering seems to be all but dead in consumer apps (it never existed?). Clearly, there is no explicit guarantee of longevity to your data and the metadata (edits, collections, albums, tags, comments) you create upon your own data. This is a really poor way to live one's digital life. Do you think about longevity of your data+metadata? What's your setup deal with this?
- kace91 7y ago
  I think it's about diversifying. The general rule is 3 copies of your data in different places - for me personally, I keep important data in an external drive at home, another in an external drive at my parent's house (updated less frequently for obvious reasons) and an account in the cloud with a third one. Funnily enough, the cloud account is the one that worries me the most. The data I want to keep includes some indie movies and music that I fear might disappear from the internet (like mixtapes from very indie local groups I listened as a teenager that nobody cares about) and I fear the whole account might be suspended if at some point they set up a copyright filter or something.
  - drcharris 7y ago
    Privacy from the vendor, for cloud backups, is barely addressed by most of the cloud storage providers. I find the best solution is to - like many comments here about photo and music storage - stick to older more stable standards that aren't about trying to sell you services. In my case that means a chunk of SFTP-based storage, and rclone to make that storage encrypted at-rest.
- 7y ago
sidchilling 7y ago
I’m pissed because I can’t create a /logs folder anymore :/
- Wowfunhappy 7y ago
  You can if you really, really want. Turn off SIP and remount / as rw. You can create a launchd plist to redo this every time your os boots.
komoreba 7y ago
When reading articles like this, I always wonder whether it was that different way back when: Did macOS change less disruptively five years ago? I switched to using macOS just recently (Mojave being the first I really used), so I might not know. I notice myself being less and less open to radical new change and being more willing (and able) to just stick to something that works for me. I have tinkered a fair lot in my days, mainly on Linux.
- sjwright 7y ago
  This is far and away the most disruptive major update to macOS in recent memory. My experience of the past few major versions have been almost entirely seamless.
  - komoreba 7y ago
    I see! Maybe because I wasn’t running any 32-bit applications, it was rather seamless for me.
    - sjwright 7y ago
      I haven’t had a bad experience with Catalina, but the new app sandboxing has broken a few minor tools like BalenaEtcher. Not a big deal as it still runs fine under sudo... and they’ll surely release a new version shortly.
- stoobs 7y ago
  I think some people have short memories, there have been numerous grumblings (right or wrong) about many of the step-change releases. To me, this feels a bit like when the rosetta fat-binaries were killed off in 10.7, for some people it was pretty bad for those with software which didn't and wouldn't support Intel binaries, but for others it was a minor blip. Catalina has been fine for me, but I probably have a different use-case.
fulldecent2 7y ago
I can't upgrade because I depends on VS Code + Panic Transmit (downgraded to old version). This allows me to edit files on a remote server.

295 points by ttepasse 7y ago

Apple has an obsesssion with killing off anything slightly inconvenient to them, users be damned.

I couldn’t tell from the article if the author had actually tried Catalina. I have been running the beta since day one of the beta release and the only issue is that applications have to be signed or built locally. Apple wants macOS to be a safe walled garden like iOS and Chromebooks. I am fine with this, but I also have a very nice Linux laptop to play with. I expect organized crime and most governments to continue hacking activities so it makes sense having my Apple devices locked down as much as possible. I avoid arbitrary web browsing on my Linux laptop and just use it for coding.

dwighttk 7y ago
Seems like he hasn't... just read about problems.
tebruno99 7y ago
Why would you try it? Some of us lose money when our machines go down. Apple is supposed to represent quality, but that hasn't happened in so long that if your machine is the machine you make money on, you wait to hear what other people are encountering. Thanks for being my beta tester!
throwaway1777 7y ago
What about all the iCloud bugs? https://tyler.io/broken/ https://tyler.io/broken/
- amiantos 7y ago
  Countering a personal anecdote with another personal anecdote. Here's another: I've been using Catalina since release on multiple Macs and haven't had any problems. I'm also an extensive user of iCloud services, Photos and Drive are very important to me and if I had any issues with either I'd probably lose my mind.
  - kevingadd 7y ago
    "iCloud did <x> to my files" is not an anecdote. It's an assertion of software behavior. The fact that only one sample is being provided does not magically make it an anecdote. You can say the person reporting the bug is a liar, but that's not how quality assurance works in the real world. Most likely the bug they encountered happens in a specific scenario, but regardless, "personal anecdote" or "it works for me" are not appropriate ways to respond to a bug report, let alone one about data loss.
  - CJefferson 7y ago
    The problem is your anecdotes not equal. One person is losing file site awful. One person finds out works isn't suprising, it just shows apple managed to release an OS which isn't buggy for every user.
  - benhurmarcel 7y ago
    iCloud having bugs isn't a rare occurrence. I only have one Apple device (an iPhone), and even in that simple use case I have sync issues from time to time. It's mainly previously deleted things that appear back on the device (photos, reminders…). Apple isn't good at this.
curt15 7y ago
>I avoid arbitrary web browsing on my Linux laptop and just use it for coding. What makes web browsers less secure on Linux than on macOS?
- umvi 7y ago
  Well, lack of DRM support for one. Disney+ won't work on Linux browsers.
  - newnewpdro 7y ago
    WTF does DRM have to do with browser security?
    - krastanov 7y ago
      I think OP got confused and gave an example of how allegedly browsers on Linux are more secure because there is no DRM (because DRM to an extent allows another party to control what your computer can and can not do, through an unvetted binary blob). But even then they are wrong, as DRM works on browsers running on Linux.
      - Deukhoofd 7y ago
        He's right in that Disney+ doesn't work on Linux however, as it uses Widevine L1, which isn't supported, and which I doubt will ever get supported. I personally expect Disney+ to allow L3 eventually, which is supported on Linux, as it's just software based.
- newnewpdro 7y ago
  Unless you're going out of your way to run your browser in a container or dedicated VM on Linux, there are substantial risks associated with browsing the web in terms of exposing all of your information in /home, which might include ssh and pgp private keys, basically everything your user can access. But we have a number of solutions for running things in containers if you just use them. Early on firejail was popular, these days I just run nspawn containers for browser instances and bind mount in some stuff for a shared Downloads directory etc. I can't speak to how that compares to OSX as I've never used it, but it is worth noting that the security story on Linux can range from bad to somewhat OK depending on your setup. Edit: In responses people seem to be completely ignoring that I already stated above in my original comment that I can't speak to how it compares to OSX. I don't know what OSX is doing for application sandboxing defaults. I can however speak with some authority on the Linux situation. And today, if you're running firefox/chrome as your regular user as installed by apt/yum etc, without any additional sandboxing, and that user has access to secrets like ssh/gpg private keys, you're being unnecessarily reckless. And unfortunately that is basically the default way browsers are run today on most distributions This is a major reason why the Flatpak/GNOME people have been working so hard on portals and namespaces are an integral component of the runtime. It's not just about application distribution. They're trying to close a major security hole in desktop linux as it's often used today. They want applications like the browser run in its own namespaces with just the minimum of host filesystem paths bind mounted in. There's absolutely no reason for your browser process to have the ability to access all of your private keys, just because they happen to be under the home directory it happens to have access to, full stop.
mulle_nat 7y ago
How does a user "try out" Catalina, decide that its not for him and then revert back to Mojave ?
- saagarjha 7y ago
  Install it on a new volume/virtual machine?
  - robbrown451 7y ago
    Except that that may not really tell you much. If you have a system that is working, and are worried that Catalina might make it no longer work as it did before, you don't learn a lot by installing on a new volume or virtual machine.
    - least 7y ago
      That's a risk inherent with any upgrade to any software. The answer is ultimately that you can't know without trying it on your system. The best thing you could do is to create a cloned backup of your drive or use time machine to restore it if it doesn't work out.
  - mulle_nat 7y ago
    I'd hazard to say, that option is out of reach for most of the Apple user demographic. Instead most will be nagged by Apple to upgrade, upgrade and then there is no going back.
morrick 7y ago
Hello! I am the author, and no, I haven't tried Catalina because, as I state at the very end of my article: "Both my main Macs are really working flawlessly at the moment, and Catalina is beta-quality software that’s likely to give me headaches I don’t need right now. Who knows, maybe down the road I could acquire a cheap used Mac that can run Catalina (something like a 2014 Mac mini) and use it as a test machine. As things are now, I absolutely do not want Catalina to mess with my current setups and data." I'll add — I'm in a position (work-wise) where I can't afford to risk Catalina messing with my current setups and data.
- vinni2 7y ago
  Can you give me the TLDR version of MacOS Catalina’s downsides? Apart from mail layout change of course. I tried to read your blog but it was too difficult to find the points you were making too much rant with actual points hidden here and there. Personally for me this has been the smoothest upgrade ever! Literally no apps are broken and no data lost. Edit: typos and clarified that I read the blog.
  - loriverkutya 7y ago
    He is using Aperture and it is not even starting on Catalina and it is part of his work process.

Nicci00 7y ago

Selling a computer with spinning rust as main drive in 2017 is extremely shameful.

oneplane 7y ago
Why? Time and I/O speed isn't as relevant for everyone as you might think. I sure don't want a system without flash memory, but I know not everybody is me and not everybody will care.
- 3JPLW 7y ago
  My mother bought a spinning rust iMac two years ago, sold to her as a "fast" machine. It was not fast. It took 15-30 seconds+ to do the most basic of tasks. It was unusable. I did what I could to remove background tasks and it was still painful to work on. She hated it. I cloned the drive onto an external SSD with no other changes. Immediately she had a usable machine, and she now enjoys using it again.
  - shantly 7y ago
    Operating systems increasingly seem to be expecting an SSD. Windows is unreasonably slower on an HDD, extremely frustrating to use at all. IIRC that started with Win8, but might've been 10. Linux DEs, heading the same way. Wouldn't be surprised to find out that MacOS is like that these days, too. That does mean OS/DE devs are hitting disk way the hell too often and just hoping modern disk speed makes it harder to notice, but there's no way that's not adding up to some real (but less crippling) latency even on SSD-equipped systems.
  - oneplane 7y ago
    So it's not an option for you, me or your mom, but that doesn't mean it's not an option for the billions of other people in the world. (again, not saying it's a good idea considering the cost and storage requirements for a general user -- but again, not everyone is the same user)
- fredsted 7y ago

asperous 7y ago

"why mess with Mail’s classic layout? It’s been my preferred layout since Mac OS X 10.0, and that type of layout has basically been the one I have used since I started using email more than twenty years ago" This seems to be the heart of the post. I see the value in stable, unchanging things, but I also have to believe the designers at Apple are trying to make things better, and I think that is honorable.

Ididntdothis 7y ago
From what I have seen the designers aren’t making things better but different for its own sake or dumbed down.
imron 7y ago
> but I also have to believe the designers at Apple are trying to make things better Except they're not trying to make things better. They're just changing things - often ignoring their own UI guidelines to do so - and introducing bugs that cause data loss at the same time. Updates shouldn't cause data loss - especially for something as critical as email.
- duskwuff 7y ago
  There is no evidence, and no reason to believe, that the UI changes in Mail are related to reports of data loss.
  - imron 7y ago
    You are correct, updating the UI and the underlying storage mechanism are almost certainly separate things falling under a broader umbrella of "lets change up Mail instead of fixing long-standing bugs". I would really love to see every other major release of macOS and iOS to be a bug-fix release rather than a "lets change all the things" release.
    - SrslyJosh 7y ago
      > I would really love to see every other major release of macOS and iOS to be a bug-fix release rather than a "lets change all the things" release. Here fucking here!

prepend 7y ago

I’m always wary of MacOS upgrades from when Snow Leopard made my Warcraft and Age of Empires stop working. Ultimately, I find it best to just suck it up and upgrade and use virtualization to run specific stuff. Mac is the easiest for me to have a daily driver browser while also being useful for most dev and basic Unix user tasks.

musicale 7y ago
Unfortunately Apple has lousy backward compatibility, particularly for games. Dropping 32-bit is going to kill a bunch of games. On iOS it seeem even worse, with yearly releases breaking many apps; Apple's aggressive ABI changes offload a large maintenance burden onto app developers, who have to keep updating their apps every year just to keep them working the same way. Windows seems to do a lot better, and game consoles do even better: with the exception of multiplayer games whose servers get shut down after a year or two, most games keep working indefinitely across firmware revisions.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  > Apple's aggressive ABI changes offload a large maintenance burden onto app developers, who have to keep updating their apps every year just to keep them working the same way Ideally, apps that work on one iOS release will continue working on the next with no change in behavior, as Apple checks when apps were linked and will opt out of the new behavior.

ggm 7y ago

I did upgrade. A small number of apps I depend on work fine. A larger number of homebrew dependencies work fine. They played with DPI scaling again, it works fine. They fucked up USB device reattach and my dell dock is a hassle in clamshell mode, which is a multi time per day (sleep and plugin unplug) royal pain in the ass. Tl;dr is no different to any recent upgrade if you live in a terminal to other hosts.

nicky0 7y ago

To save anyone reading 10,000 tedious words: It’s always a wise decision to wait till till the new OS matures before upgrading.

morrick 7y ago
I'd prefer if more people read my 3,300 words and actually understood my point. :-)

ladzoppelin 7y ago

For what its worth, Catalina has made my 2019 run slightly smother and less buggy. This might be because it reset all the preferences or its just in my head. All my "pro" audio stuff seems to work and my Apogee Groove works like before. My usb hub network port/driver would fail/crash randomly on Mojave needing a reboot but this has not happened on Catalina. Edit: And someone else replied, the DPI/font stuff seems to be fixed as it was driving me crazy in Mojave. The upgrade is worth a try for that alone.

CharlesW 7y ago
FWIW, many (most?) audio developers[1] are advising that folks wait to upgrade to Catalina for legitimate reasons. [1] https://www.pro-tools-expert.com/production-expert-1/2019/9/18/brands-are-already-issuing-warnings-about-not-upgrading-to-macos-catalina https://www.pro-tools-expert.com/production-expert-1/2019/9/...
zten 7y ago
I'm happy with it too. They just added Radeon RX 5700 XT drivers to the latest beta release, something I have been eagerly awaiting since the card got released.
jjtheblunt 7y ago
Same here

Ididntdothis 7y ago

They totally destroyed audiobooks in what used to be iTunes. No smart lists, can’t edit MP3 tags, can’t delete or listen to single tracks, can’t store files on external drive. I don’t understand how anybody could think this was a good idea. Why destroying functionality that worked and replace it with something that barely works? This is a huge disappointment.

woadwarrior01 7y ago
I don’t use iTunes for audiobooks (I had an audible subscription that went unused and I finally unsubscribed, I’ve realised that I prefer reading physical books), but there’s this free OSX app called AudioBookBinder[1] that can bind a set of mp3 files into an m4a file and add it to iTunes as an audiobook. That might help in this case. [1]: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/audiobook-binder/id413969927 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/audiobook-binder/id413969927
chmaynard 7y ago
Exactly. I use iTunes every day to manage a very large music library. It works very well and has the features I need. I spent years learning how to use it well. I see no reason to give it up now. Could Apple have kept iTunes intact and simply removed the non-essential components? Of course, but it would have been expensive and time-consuming. If iTunes is truly obsolete, Apple should release the source code and let a community of users and developers continue its development.
- tonyedgecombe 7y ago
  iTunes was a bloated mess, I'm glad to see the back of it.
johnisgood 7y ago
Yep, destroying functionality is what Apple has been doing for a while now. I am unable to understand how anybody could think that this is a good idea. Do not break what works!

Grustaf 7y ago

Installed the first beta, had some issues in beta 3 or so with actually deleting files when emptying the bin, but that’s why it’s called beta. Had zero problems with later betas, have no idea why podcasters and other influencers are negging on it so much.

sheinsheish 7y ago

I have an issue with my iMac 5k 2017 not staying in sleep when I selected so. Randomly wakes with the display off. But I can tell because there’s a very low fan noise and some heat from the back.

alexis_fr 7y ago
Are you sure “power naps” isn’t enabled? It’s in your power panel.

dkonofalski 7y ago

That reads less like a reasonable, well-thought breakdown and more like a whiny diatribe coming from an entitled teenager. If the entire argument boils down to "I don't wanna!", then what's the point? Don't upgrade. Apple isn't forcing anyone to upgrade at all. If you need to run all your old software, don't upgrade. That's not a fault of the new OS. Technology changes. That's a fact of life. Even the example of Aperture is a little far-fetched. It's literally been years since Aperture was discontinued and taken off the shelves. I dunno... to me it sounds like someone complaining that their new computer can't run DooM anymore because it didn't come with a 3.5" floppy drive. Yes, you can run DooM still but not in the very specific, needlessly encumbered method you want to run it in. Times change, technology changes, and it's just not productive to lock yourself in to something and then complain when what you've locked yourself into doesn't work out the way you predicted. Keep using the old OS. Just don't act surprised and attacked when it doesn't work anymore years from now.

mullen 7y ago
Catalina does break a lot of games. I am pretty sure that if you get on Steam, the list of games that Catalina breaks is longer than the list of games that work on Catalina.
- dkonofalski 7y ago
  I'm sure it does because most games didn't update to 64-bit. I still fail to see how that warrants an article like that. If you know the games won't work and you still want to play them, don't upgrade. It's not that hard.
  - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
    As it happens, the author isn't upgrading.
    - dkonofalski 7y ago
      And your point is? I've already acknowledged that. I'm pointing out that a disappointment for their individual situation doesn't indicate that the update is a failure nor does it warrant what they've written.

0000011111 7y ago

"My point is, I’ve been into technology for more than 30 years, and I feel that Apple’s software culture has become progressively more user-hostile than it used to be." Supporting the upgrade process at an enterprise level is especially difficult. PPPC's must be created to get anything connected to the camera, mic, keyboard or screen. The walls to the rose garden of macOS are higher. Could OS software be built like Ubuntu? With LTS in the model for 5 years? + Security patches when necessary?

tebruno99 7y ago

My iMac Pro went into reboot loops every 20 minutes. Even after a clean install. Then I lost a lot of mail even on a clean install. Its pretty much crap. I'll wait until 10.16 is out and then upgrade to the 10.15 that isn't crap.

jtms 7y ago

I always wait a minimum of a few months after major updates are released to install them. Nothing I hate more than having my dev environment hosed because some binary I depend won’t build correctly or something in my stack starts throwing runtime errors. A couple months usually all of these type issues to get ironed out.

amiantos 7y ago

Author hasn't tried Catalina, and their biggest complaint appears to be that the email app allegedly has a new UI--but I don't think it does. Mail app looks the same in Catalina, doesn't it? I can't say I noticed any differences. Either way, this is an extremely long blog post to say basically just "I don't like change, and I'm not willing to see change as a potential improvement to try to accept it".

saagarjha 7y ago
The author is talking specifically about the classic layout, which appears to be missing in macOS Catalina.
- amiantos 7y ago
  Ah, I see, looks like there is a way to get the classic layout back in Catalina if you want it: https://www.macintouch.com/community/index.php?threads/macos-10-15-catalina.2054/page-4#post-18968 https://www.macintouch.com/community/index.php?threads/macos...
morrick 7y ago
I am the author, and I may be guilty of writing an extremely long blog post; but judging by your response, you didn't bother to read it that thoroughly. The new layout in Catalina's Mail.app is actually my smallest complaint. I don't like change when it unnecessarily breaks things that used to work just fine. I don't like change when it is haphazardly imposed on a yearly basis by a company which has clearly stopped caring about Mac OS as far as management is involved. I used to like change more when it actually made me work better, when the advantages clearly outweighed the downsides, when progress and improvements were noticeable and thoughtfully implemented. But hey, that's me.
- berberous 7y ago
  Alternative possibility: you just got old. In all seriousness, older people are more opposed to UI and other types of change.

devxpy 7y ago

Not a conspiracy theorist or anything, but all of this seems like a cheap strategy to make users move to iPadOS.

threeseed 7y ago
That makes no sense. 1) Apple makes more margins on Mac hardware. 2) Catalina allows you to basically run iPad apps on the Mac. They wouldn't do this if they were trying to push users to iPad. 3) iPadOS and OSX are fundamentally different. There is no way Apple could ever replace the Mac with an iPad.
- pier25 7y ago
  > Apple makes more margins on Mac hardware Maybe but sells a lot more iOS units.
- devxpy 7y ago
  I never said they could, but from the ads, feels like they want to.
hk__2 7y ago
> Not a conspiracy theorist or anything, but all of this seems like a cheap strategy to make users move to iPadOS. How can users "move" to a different OS that’s not designed for nor compatible with their device?

alphabettsy 7y ago

TLDR; The author hasn’t upgraded, and while they have some well-founded concerns they haven’t actually used it. It’s going to be difficult to make anyone happy with this release that has already decided they don’t like it.

semiotagonal 7y ago
If it's breaking 32-bit apps, and you need at least one 32-bit app (for the author, Aperture), that's kind of all you need to know.
- FireBeyond 7y ago
  Aperture is a 64 bit app. Still doesn't work, though.
morrick 7y ago
You know why I haven't actually used it? Because I've read enough experiences from tech-savvy people and power users who actually used it, and based on what I've read, plus all the things that Catalina would disrupt for me, my work, and how I use my Macs, I've made my cost/benefit analysis and decided that no, I'm not going to upgrade to Catalina. It has been a perfectly informed decision from someone who has been using Macs since 1989. I haven't got out of bed on the wrong side the other day and just decided I didn't like Catalina.

yodsanklai 7y ago

I find it slightly annoying too, especially when an upgrade breaks the command line tools, or homebrew, and make me lost a few GB of SSD space. The last upgrade made me lose about 30 minutes of my day to fix a few issues. And I didn't notice much changes, besides the welcome screen picture, and that something changed with itunes, which prevented me from using it. So overall, I tend to think that there are too frequent upgrades and that I don't need them. But overall, I'm still a satisfied mac user so I give Apple the benefice of the doubt.

trustfundbaby 7y ago
This is one of the biggest reasons I hate doing Mac updates. I will usually wait almost 6 months to do the upgrade because of that, and then usually over a weekend/holiday so I don't lose work time trying to deal with the troubles that can arise.

ryanolsonx 7y ago

I thought this post was going to be about stability. It is _not_ stable. That's the biggest problem.

rimliu 7y ago
Author did not even try it. He knows nothing about how stable it is.

whalesalad 7y ago

> my desktop workhorse, a 2017 4K retina iMac > 5400 rpm hard drive as its main internal volume Regardless of OS, the author _really_ needs to bail on the 5400rpm HDD and get a solid state disk in there... especially if you're gonna call it a workhorse!

morrick 7y ago
When it was time to get that 4K retina iMac, I only had money for one built-to-order upgrade. It was a tough decision. It was either leaving the internal 1TB hard drive and choose to have 16GB of RAM instead of the base 8GB, or choosing a 256GB internal SSD and keeping the base 8GB of RAM. Since RAM in that 21.5-inch retina iMac is only upgradable at purchase, not down the road, I opted for the 16GB of RAM and staying with the hard drive. My reasoning is that I can upgrade to an external Thunderbolt SSD at a later date when I can afford it. RAM is not upgradable later.
- lostgame 7y ago
  >> RAM is not upgradable later. Biggest reason I will never buy another Mac. It seems like they just don't want this to be the case. Terrible for the environment.
- toyg 7y ago
  Surely you can just swap the internal drive. External thunderbolt disks and enclosures are very expensive for no good reason. Source: I have been looking for cheap ways to have fast external disks for years. 4 years ago I went with a hacked Buffalo LinkStation (it’s one of the few products that can be easily taken apart, so I swapped its slow disk with an SSD), and now I just ordered a new TB3 enclosure from aliexpress (plus a super-fast disk from a reputable source) to replace it. External TB disks are still overpriced, let alone TB3. I honestly don’t know why that is - I suspect it’s something to do with the main market being Apple users with deep pockets and limited knowledge.
arvinsim 7y ago
> Regardless of OS, the author _really_ needs to bail on the 5400rpm HDD and get a solid state disk in there... especially if you're gonna call it a workhorse! Apple themselves needs to bail on the 5400rpm HDD

benburleson 7y ago

Since readers here might be more apt to have the same problem: Has anyone else noticed Catalina doesn't remember external display rotation when waking from sleep? There have been a few instances where it somehow restores the proper rotation, but most of the time I am forced to put it back manually. I don't want a "workaround" via AppleScript or a hotkey to easily set it back to what I had configured, I just want it to work like it always had!

lostgame 7y ago

I don't understand the possible, potential advantage removing 32-bit support even has. It doesn't improve security for my sake, because I can't use a system that doesn't allow for 32-bit apps. Why can't we have a Rosetta equivalent? I've had to tell every MacOS user I know, especially non-techie ones, just to not upgrade, and consider something other than Apple moving forward.

ridiculous_fish 7y ago
I worked at Apple during the 64 bit transition. The answer is that 32 bit was quite painful to maintain. The 64 bit transition was a compatibility break that enabled shedding technical debt, like NeXT-isms that no longer applied. In particular it added the ObjC 2 runtime, which allowed features like adding a variable to a class without needing to recompile subclasses. So long as 32 bit is supported, it is difficult for Apple to use these features internally. If you add a variable to a class you break the 32 bit system. If you add a variable conditionally under an #ifdef then it is annoying to manage the separate build configurations, or disparate 32bit/64bit behaviors. This only applies to the Mac; iOS always had the modern runtime. But macOS engineers are very very happy to see 32 bit go because it was painful to support.
- kevingadd 7y ago
  Would you say this is due to architectural limitations in how 32/64-bit are implemented in OS X, vs the way compatibility works on say Windows or Linux? I know people have claimed that part of this is due to the need for system binaries/etc to all include full 32/64-bit versions.
  - yyyk 7y ago
    Windows 64bit mostly uses 32bit shims which call the 'real' 64bit API. This means that 32bit support is almost no-cost to maintain - I am certain MS will support 32bit for the next decade at the very least - but at the cost of having the 64bit API itself slightly less breaking compatibility so shims are easier to make (e.g. "long" is still 32bit). Arguably MS would have made the same API compromises anyway just to make porting easier. Linux has some 32bit shims in the kernel and a few separate syscalls, but userland does the separate libraries approach where all 32bit libs are separate than 64bit libraries. So the kernel pays a small cost, while userland needs to maintain separate versions of the libraries - which often costs very little (many can simply be recompiled, this is open source after all), but can bite the maintainer sometimes. MacOS uses the fat binaries approach, where every binary carries all the arch versions. I don't think the system supports a different method - so Mac pays a bigger cost than Windows or Linux in order to maintain 32 bit. Also Mac kernel API is unstable by design, and I guess Apple would like to drop some older stuff. For better or worse that's the Apple Way - they don't maintain anywhere as much backward compat as other platforms.

Razengan 7y ago

I still love macOS but Catalina has been the buggiest beta and release that I can recall. When we saw betas of x.1 before there were even GMs/release candidates of x.0 we knew it was going to be rushed out the door. Even after release it's still randomly losing files. Just yesterday my purchased music downloads just disappeared. No explanation (unless I trashed and emptied them in a fugue state). They were still showing as downloaded in the Music app, but when I tried to play them I got the "File missing. Locate?" dialog, so the Music app wasn't aware of this either. They weren't stored on iCloud Drive either, just the default local music folder, so it wasn't related to the iCloud Drive bug. This was a clean installation on a fresh disk, no third party system level junk, and after the unnumbered OS update they released a while ago. There are quite a few other bugs too. macOS is still the better alternative to Windows, but the wow factor of "It just works!" is becoming rare and bug fatigue is creeping in.

lostgame 7y ago
>> it's still randomly losing files. Whoa, no. That is a huge code red for me as a creative. Especially in the music folder. I work at all crazy times of day and night, inspiration hits, and is often impossible to replace. Not alright.
- deanclatworthy 7y ago
  That’s why as a creative you should be using a backup solution. With modern internet connections backing up is quick and efficient. File loss should be expected on the FS. Many things can and will go wrong one day.
  - arvinsim 7y ago
    Having a backup still doesn't excuse Catalina for that bug.
    - KibbutzDalia 7y ago
      Apparently it does for the Apple zealots.

gorgoiler 7y ago

The comment about macOS’s Mail.app struck a chord with me. My upgrade to iOS 13 has changed the mail app on my phone to sporadically open old inbox threads. It happens something like 1 in every N times I launch the app. It’s seemingly done at random and is the strangest thing about this upgrade by far. It’s like Apple are trying to nudge me into being better at responding to emails. Is there a PM at Apple watching an engagement metric increase? With my personal email?!

lostgame 7y ago
My God, me, too! I swear to God, I thought I was just confused or something, 'when did I open this?' - and it had only seemed to happen past the upgrade - this is certainly bizarre, if not just a strange coincidence.
- gorgoiler 7y ago
  This also raises the question: not only is it suspected that an email application is being monitored for engagement metrics, but is it also the case that growth-enhancing UI features are being a/b tested on us as well? Well that is of course all silly conjecture and I doubt its anything more than a bug, but if it were true then that’s some real Silicon Valley stuff right there. Maybe Apple own stock in whichever paper manufacturer is post commonly used for printing emails from meemaw. More emails really pushes the needle on those paper sales! Q4 performance summary cycle bonuses all round!

bastardoperator 7y ago

Then switch or don't upgrade. For all the bash purist you're gonna need this: export BASH_SILENCE_DEPRECATION_WARNING=1

saagarjha 7y ago
I just install a recent version of bash from MacPorts instead of relying on the one that ships with the system.
- bastardoperator 7y ago
  Bash is depreciated in favor of Zsh in Catalina. Regardless of you where you get bash from, I prefer brew, a nag message is presented to the user about Zsh everytime a terminal session is initiated: The default interactive shell is now zsh. To update your account to use zsh, please run `chsh -s /bin/zsh`. For more details, please visit https://support.apple.com/kb/HT208050. The export I provided prevents this nag message from being displayed for Bash users.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    The message is coming from /bin/bash, no? I have /opt/local/bin/bash set as my login shell, so I never see it.

khana 7y ago

Catalina from my pov: 1) more ephemeral keys in Keychains (take a look) 2) more latent Task Manager - way more buggy 3) more Cloud dependent :( 4) more shitty code on top of beautiful hardware I agree with the author 100%.

ms013 7y ago

Nobody is forcing people to upgrade - you’re free to stick with an older version of any OS, although possibly at the cost of the OS going out of support from the vendor. Why such a decision seems to lead to these long winded opinion pieces on the internet is weird - don’t these authors have something better to do than opine about how what they want doesn’t line up exactly with what some vendor is giving them for free?

pier25 7y ago
> Nobody is forcing people to upgrade Except if you want the latest Xcode version.

wrnr 7y ago

I know apple isn't the company it used to be and with all the FUD going around I was reluctant to install the latest version but it works perfectly. This is article of +3000 words, don't take the time to write this and then complain about having to click a number of popups.

the_solenoid 7y ago

As an owner of a nvidia650m macbookpro, the fact apple actually made it work again with discrete graphics is the best part of the upgrade (in the previous os, it would slow down till it was unuseable)

namesbc 7y ago

I have too many 32bit games that will never be updated to 64bit. For the first time in 18 years, I am not going to upgrade to the latest mac os. Apple orchestrated a much smoother transition from OS 9 to OS X and RISC to x84 than from 32bit to 64bit.

Bud 7y ago
They did? 32-bit apps continued to be supported for a full decade after the hardware architecture went 64-bit. During that entire decade, Apple issued steadily-increasing warnings to users that eventually, the 32-bit support would cease. Seems like a smooth transition to me.
- johnisgood 7y ago
  I do not even get the transitioning part within this context. If you are pretty sure that the software you are using will not work on Catalina, then what significance does transitioning have? Having more time saying your goodbyes to your old games (in this case), or what? 32-bit applications will not magically turn into 64-bit ones. In any case, I think it was a silly decision to "force" the customer to pick between old vs new software, but I am sure they can afford it. People will probably forgive them for it, and then completely forget about it. New users in the future probably will not even have anything to forget (or forgive), unless they want to run "really old" software, in which case people will just boo on them, and say "times change, technologies change, you gotta adapt, man" and the like which seems to be the case today with respective to both old software and hardware.
- SliderUp 7y ago
  But why warn, why stop supporting it at all?
  - johnisgood 7y ago
    Because the removal of widely used things that worked fine caught on for some reason. Apple has been doing this for a while now. Jack, USB, ESC key, whatever else I cannot recall.

twarge 7y ago

Real data required: How many people who experienced data loss or other issues have one of the following underlying conditions: 1. Creeping storage corruption that is exposed by the upgrade. 2. Latent configuration issues from running the betas. Personal experience: I have had several issues with apps on a machine that went through all the betas. Had to spend some quality time with Console to sort things out. Zero issues with machines that upgraded untouched by betas.

jjtheblunt 7y ago
Real data: my Mac Pro transitioned from betas to production fine, albeit with some annoying warning messages about unexplained dangers during upgrade, about a Preboot folder that would be deleted, so be ware. Hours of backing up later, it just upgraded off the beta train perfectly, though didn't explain why it took some valid files (perhaps cached from iCloud) and dumped them into a folder.
FireBeyond 7y ago
Completely fresh install (disk utility format/partition) on a 2016 iMac... reboot loop, disk space complaints. Had to re-attempt install to get it to succeed. No diagnostic issues.

SeanLuke 7y ago

I have a Korg Microsampler. It's a common music synthesizer (er, sampler) keyboard manufactured in 2009. The only way to upload and download samples to this device is via a piece of proprietary software made by Korg USA. Which is 32-bit. So I'm in the situation that OS X Catalina will not only break my various 32-bit applications, it will also obsolete external hardware that I use regularly. I am lost as to why Apple would do this with no legacy option whatsoever.

taejavu 7y ago
The legacy option is to remain on an older OS. Or you could say it's Korg's responsibility to provide a 64-bit version of the software.

jyrkesh 7y ago

Not a Mac user, so I have a little anecdotal evidence here, but with all the buzz about Catalina being broken, has this been a problem in earlier versions? Just last night I spent all day trying to do some work on a friend's 2011 or 2012 MBP (16 GBs RAM, i7, should be fully capable). They needed Windows 10 for some special software, and wanted some help cleaning the hard drive to make room for the partition. After hours and hours of fighting tools and trying to work around Boot Camp Assistant limitations (it insisted on always reformatting as exFAT, in spite of Win10's 4+ GB .wim files), I finally determined that it was probably all fixed in a later version of macOS and proceeded to update her to Mojave. Fast forward another hour and we're stuck in a bootloop of failing Mojave installs with some barebones diagnostics and repair tools that do nothing. Thank GOD she had months worth of complete Time Machine backups we could easily restore. But it's insane to me that a system update served by the App Store in the golden path on a piece of hardware still within it's support lifecycle could fail so catastrophically. I've given the middle finger to Windows' "Don't turn off this computer" messages scores of times, and it's always been able to boot up again just fine. As of late, I've not even experienced the need to do "Automatic Startup Repair" like the old days. Is Apple really slipping that hard right now?

tomc1985 7y ago
> insisted on always reformatting as exFAT, in spite of Win10's 4+ GB .wim files exFAT doesn't have a 4gb limitation like FAT32

fitzroy 7y ago

I got hit with the "not enough space" endless reboot loop during installation. Booting into Recovery Mode and reverting to a previous local Time Machine backup fixed everything in about 5 minutes. However, discovering that 5 minute fix took about 24 hours hours of frustration and command line experimentation. I didn't even know Mojave created local snapshots. Then I hit the "configuring macOS" forever bug after the second install attempt (just force reboot). I think both of these installer bugs have been addressed in the recent supplemental update to 10.15.0 for any downloads going forward. Despite all these issues, things have been fine actually running Catalina, but I'd wait a few point releases if I did it again. The whole thing 'feels' very fragile, for lack of a better word — mostly due to the online conversation about it. I'm definitely leaving my home theater Mac Mini on 10.14 for the foreseeable future after reading about the HDMI issues.

diminoten 7y ago

I'm just... confused. Is the author using the same OS I am? I upgraded the day it came out, and I haven't even noticed in any meaningful way. ZSH is the biggest change, but I've already gotten used to it. Nothing I use is breaking, none of my workflows or habits needed changing, it was fine. The author ought to take a good, long look in the mirror and ask if maybe they've got some problems with change.

morrick 7y ago

I'm the author of the article, and I would like to add a few things to hopefully make my point clearer. - While I'm flattered by the attention my piece got by 'making Hacker News', it is simply a personal view and a personal disappointment towards the direction Apple is going with Mac OS. It's not a prescriptive article. I'm not telling people to avoid upgrading to Mac OS 10.15. It's your Mac, it's your work, it's your data, it's your time. Do whatever you please. My decision to not upgrading is the result of a lot of time spent gathering information and evaluating costs and benefits of the upgrade. And my conclusion, as I clearly stated in the article, is that I'm not upgrading because "what Catalina takes away from me is more than what it gives me." I also took the opportunity of sharing a few reflections and my criticism towards Apple's recent treatment of Mac OS. Whatever the underlying causes, it's undeniable that Mac OS is not as robust, consistent, and well-designed as it used to be. It wasn't bug-free before. Nothing is bug-free. But I remember past versions very well. I use a variety of Macs of older vintages, so I still use older Mac OS X versions. The degrade in software quality and system stability isn't a matter of opinion. It's out there to see. And yes, I don't like the direction Apple has been moving after Steve Jobs's passing. That's an entirely personal preference, and I respect the point of view of those who, instead, love what Tim Cook & Co. are doing. I'm not really 'complaining' that Apple's not doing things 'my way'. However, as someone who has been using computers for 38 years and Macs for 30, as someone who knows a thing or two about user interfaces, user interaction and user experience, I think I'm allowed to share a few criticisms about the direction Mac OS is going without being called a 'whiny entitled teenager'. I try to approach technology by focusing more on the forest than a single tree, and sometimes I struggle to see all this 'progress' and 'future' other tech geeks keep talking about. Technology should adapt to us, not the other way round. Progress should mean making things better, improve what we do with the help of computers and devices. Instead, as I wrote, "I also notice that — for everything to keep working smoothly — you have to do more work than before. It just works, with Apple products, has lost the frequency and consistency it once had. It is a strange progress when you keep feeling the sting of two steps back for every step forward."

lostgame 7y ago
Hey - thanks for commenting on this thread. I personally enjoyed the article. >> I think I'm allowed to share a few criticisms about the direction Mac OS is going without being called a 'whiny entitled teenager'. I do as well - and, to boot - I wholeheartedly agree with your critique for the most part. >> Progress should mean making things better, improve what we do with the help of computers and devices. For sure, and removing access to a lot of my commonly-used applications doesn't help with that, for sure.

villgax 7y ago

Images on webpages in the beta look glitched with a pinkish hue. Finder becomes slow af too

mrbonner 7y ago

Is Apple release cadence a 6-month length now? My company just suggests an upgrade to High Sierra a month ago. They don't even go for Mojave yet let alone Catalina. No wonder everyone is complaining about the quality.

Wowfunhappy 7y ago
Release candance is once per year, your company is just being conservative.

jinonoel 7y ago

I really, really miss Dashboard. It was a nice quick way to have access to my stickies, a calculator, the weather, and a calendar all in one place

junkrat001 7y ago

> It’s been my preferred layout since Mac OS X 10.0, and that type of layout has basically been the one I have used since I started using email more than twenty years ago Lost me at UIs shouldn't change in twenty years

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

dmix 7y ago

FWIW I installed Catalina from the first beta and it's worked flawlessly for me. Maybe because I'm on a newish Macbook Pro and I don't use shitty Adobe software, produce music on this machine, or have a complex testing setups with purposefully old stuff. If you mostly use a browser/terminal for everything its nothing to worry about. I will say that Podcasts app kinda sucks, just like the iPhone one it's needlessly confusing when trying to open the show's page with the episode list, instead of just "recently played" or w/e you've downloaded. It tries too hard to be clever, while abandoning simple descended by when the show was added. idk why they can't do both.

woutr_be 7y ago

I've upgraded to Catalina on my 2015 MacBook Pro the day it released (didn't run the betas), and I haven't experienced any problems. I mostly use it for development, everything still works. My only annoyance so far has been SideCar, it just never works the first time, I have to switch from second display to mirror, then back to second display to make it work.

stock_toaster 7y ago
I have had a few weird freezes/lock-ups, which I think were related to time machine going out to lunch. Other than that, it’s been pretty good. Battery life improvement, seems faster, etc.
kranner 7y ago
Sidecar is officially supported only on 2016 and later MacBook Pros. https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT210380#systemrequirements https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT210380#systemrequirements I use a 2015 MBP too, so I'm glad to hear it does work and thanks for the workaround.
- woutr_be 7y ago
  Oh that's strange, pretty sure mine is a 2015 model. (Although I would need to check). Once it works, it's actually really great, I mainly use it for my terminal and browser debug tools. It's nice to have some extra space.
- AhtiK 7y ago
  Could you double-check if it's really a 2015 and if it's early or something else, what cpu? My early 2015 shows error for Sidecar/not enabled and supposedly requires at least a Skylake CPU. EDIT: my Q was more likely to woutr_be, where it was enabled..
  - woutr_be 7y ago
    I’ll double check tonight.
  - 7y ago

birdyrooster 7y ago

"Apple Music, TV, Podcasts, Photos, Notes, Reminders, Screen Time, and Apple Watch" Apple has, for the entirety of Mac OS X and macOS, has spent a substantial amount of time enhancing media and mobile quality of life. Catalina is no different. Take a stroll down memory lane: iTunes (was the amalgamation of the first three apps you mentioned), DVD playback, iChat, .Mac syncing, Dashboard (Widgets), Back to My Mac, MobileMe, Front Row, Photo Booth, App Store, iMovie, iPhoto, iChat, AirDrop, Messages, FaceTime, Game Center, and iCloud. Some of the apps you mention have been getting updates for longer than just Catalina. Photos was launched in Yosemite, while Notes and Reminders launched in Mountain Lion. I am sure we can both imagine people who were disappointed in 2007 when Apple redesigned Mail and were posting on digg about how Lion is more trouble than it's worth. As for the lack of 32-bit support, this is really not a sticking point for customers who pay to have their applications supported. If a product is no longer being developed, why is it that you blame Apple's software update? Oh, and another thing that isn't new: initially buggy releases of macOS

FPGAhacker 7y ago
> Oh, and another thing that isn't new: initially buggy releases of macOS True, but the combined bugginess of iOS 13 and Catalina is astonishing. Shit really went wrong with this cycle. I am sure they will get it under control, but it’s so bad right now that I’ve actually told people considering entering the Apple ecosystem to hold off for a while until this dumpster fire is put out.
semiotagonal 7y ago
> I am sure we can both imagine people who were disappointed in 2007 Was it to the same extent that people are complaining about MacOS Catalina though? This is the first update that I don't like, and it's because of the lack of 32-bit support. Being forewarned about 32-bit going away doesn't make my 32-bit applications run on Catalina.

deanclatworthy 7y ago

The Catalina update did not go smoothly for me. I upgraded a stock brand new MBP a couple of weeks after I got it. Every time I plug in a monitor or remove a monitor it inverts my mouse scroll direction and trackpad scroll direction.

Pokepokalypse 7y ago

I didn't have any issues with my personal laptop (2013 MBP) (which is superior, by far, in almost every way, to my work laptop, a 2019 MBP). The only difference I noticed (and I don't really have time to obsess over little details) - was that WINE was broken. As far as my work-laptop goes, I'm just going to hold off. I don't really need any of the new features; and I don't rely on WINE for anything I do for work. I just don't have any strong feelings for a major OS X update right now. I think the last time I even used Safari was about 5 years ago for testing a website I was developing.

jwr 7y ago

I fully agree with the author, and I am also worried about how Apple treats its users. And I am also an abandoned Aperture user, with huge libraries full of organized albums with non-destructive edits. I still do not know what to do about that. Having read most of the comments, I got the impression that you could correlate them with age. Younger people are all "Catalina works for me! Progress! Change is necessary! What are you whining about?!". Perhaps I can relate because I've been using computers for >25 years now, and I'd like to see a division between rapidly changing things (like my applications) and foundation-type stuff that I need to get work done (like computers and operating systems).

rimliu 7y ago
I doubt you could count me someone from the younger generation. My experience with computers started with DOS. I Have been Mac user since 2006. Catalina works fine for me. I was also Aperture user. And then Lightroom user. And now I am Capture One user.
- deepGem 7y ago
  Ditto. Catalina is working fine for me too. Mac user since 2006, I think the first intel chips. It's definitely not a noticable change. The only such change was the upgrade to Snow Leopard. That was a 'wow' change. This is more like a 'meh' change. I haven't tried the iPad sharing thing yet, not too excited by that either. What I have noticed is that Apple hardware is highly inconsistent these days. I think it's a function of the Retina displays. The non retina Macbook air with such an underpowered processor sesms to work better than the current Macbook air. OTOH the Macbook pro is seemingly working great. The 1.4GHz entry model outclasses the older generations by leaps and bounds. I have also started appreciating the touch bar, despite being a heavy vim user. The one touch shortcuts for da y to day stuff like zoom sharing desktops etc are very welcome.
  - close04 7y ago
    I have used Macs for quite some time now, mostly as secondary machine. PowerMac G4, Quad G5, first Intel aluminum iMac, 2013 iMac (and a few others occasionally in between), and basically all the OS versions up to and including Mojave. That's where I stopped and moved away from Macs (at least for the time being). Not because they're bad but because I can't find a compelling reason to keep using it, it just steered away from what I considered a good match with my preferences and use cases. Still very much enjoy the iPhone and iPad. Just no room for the Mac. I guess my point is something doesn't have to be "good OR bad" for some people to like it and others to dislike it. Pretty sure it can be both at the same time, depending on where you're looking from.

thesquib 7y ago

I would just like to have Mojave kept stable for a few years, security updates included. Keep macOS as a solid platform, and add features through apps. That's pretty much all Apple seems to do each release, make new applications and add-ons, bundle them with the OS and call it an upgrade. I generally agree with the author, I don't have anything else in the Apple ecosystem so most of the new features are largely worthless to me compared to what I have to give up.

xckfs 7y ago
> That's pretty much all Apple seems to do each release. So, they're doing what you want?

kkylin 7y ago

- I like SideCar. After logging in and out of iCloud, it works just fine. - Having issue with Time Machine taking forever, but that seems to be more a Spotlight indexing issue. - Anyone else miss the iTunes Remote? I kinda like the new Music app, but wish I can still control it from my phone.

siquick 7y ago
I just bought an iPad today solely for Sidecar. As a remote dev who doesn't want to lug a monitor around, its an absolute diamond of a feature.

teekert 7y ago

My father feels the same, he initially started using apple because he felt his Windows machine was using too much of his time for bs. Now he just upgraded to Catalina and Photos stopped working with this Synology based library, even I, a computer nerd, have already spend an hour at the problem. We are about done. I feel that Windows 10 would be just fine for him (or maybe I can get him sold on Ubuntu). Where pictures are simply in folders and any backup program will just sync them anywhere. My in laws are very happy on Ubuntu Mate, it looks like old Windows (after changing one setting), and the Pictures and the email app are simple and clean. It's all they do.

mobilemidget 7y ago
"Photos stopped working with this Synology" I have this too, I planned to look into it this weekend to see if there is a fix. I have moved my photos library to my synology just before upgrade to Catalina, as well having a little one, your photos exponentially increase. When I want to sync now it says it syncing, 'finishes within 3 seconds' and didn't sync at all..
- teekert 7y ago
  I did some research, officially Apple does not recommend or support any photo Libraries on a NAS. It has to be a local APFS or HFS+ disk. Insane. My father is now pulling his 120 GB library over wifi to a local disc to see if it can be fixed. They really want you in the Apple cloud. I thinking maybe use Synologies "Moments" but apps get less than 2 stars... Meanwhile over here in Ubuntu-land I have Shotwell sitting in a nice folder structure working perfectly, simple , easy to move to something else and easy to backup.
m0xte 7y ago
Photos is one reason I always end up back on windows. My photo library is windows explorer and the file system. It just works. And it’s not hidden in any weird opaque and fragile abstraction. Every time I’ve used macOS (I’ve had three MacBooks and two iMacs) I have to fight them. And I’m not up for that.

apatheticonion 7y ago

I would love it if someone ported the MacOS desktop manager to Linux.

vinay_ys 7y ago

I have been using Macs to manage my digital life (personal photos, files, videos, music, notes, documents etc) since Tiger/Leopard days and have been mostly happy with the experience. But I feel now more than ever before that my decade and half old collection is on shaky ground and at risk of being lost with any given OS upgrade. Lost because of file system or crypto or some such software deprecation/compatibility bug or because of the software apps may become unusable. (Btw iOS 13 upgrade did cause me data loss on my phone – it wouldn't unlock after upgrade because my passcode had a special character that it would no longer accept as input, post upgrade. I had to wipe reset the phone and lost data that hadn't synced yet.) Standards based software engineering seems to be all but dead in consumer apps (it never existed?). Clearly, there is no explicit guarantee of longevity to your data and the metadata (edits, collections, albums, tags, comments) you create upon your own data. This is a really poor way to live one's digital life. Do you think about longevity of your data+metadata? What's your setup deal with this?

kace91 7y ago
I think it's about diversifying. The general rule is 3 copies of your data in different places - for me personally, I keep important data in an external drive at home, another in an external drive at my parent's house (updated less frequently for obvious reasons) and an account in the cloud with a third one. Funnily enough, the cloud account is the one that worries me the most. The data I want to keep includes some indie movies and music that I fear might disappear from the internet (like mixtapes from very indie local groups I listened as a teenager that nobody cares about) and I fear the whole account might be suspended if at some point they set up a copyright filter or something.
- drcharris 7y ago
  Privacy from the vendor, for cloud backups, is barely addressed by most of the cloud storage providers. I find the best solution is to - like many comments here about photo and music storage - stick to older more stable standards that aren't about trying to sell you services. In my case that means a chunk of SFTP-based storage, and rclone to make that storage encrypted at-rest.
7y ago

sidchilling 7y ago

I’m pissed because I can’t create a /logs folder anymore :/

Wowfunhappy 7y ago
You can if you really, really want. Turn off SIP and remount / as rw. You can create a launchd plist to redo this every time your os boots.

komoreba 7y ago

When reading articles like this, I always wonder whether it was that different way back when: Did macOS change less disruptively five years ago? I switched to using macOS just recently (Mojave being the first I really used), so I might not know. I notice myself being less and less open to radical new change and being more willing (and able) to just stick to something that works for me. I have tinkered a fair lot in my days, mainly on Linux.

sjwright 7y ago
This is far and away the most disruptive major update to macOS in recent memory. My experience of the past few major versions have been almost entirely seamless.
- komoreba 7y ago
  I see! Maybe because I wasn’t running any 32-bit applications, it was rather seamless for me.
  - sjwright 7y ago
    I haven’t had a bad experience with Catalina, but the new app sandboxing has broken a few minor tools like BalenaEtcher. Not a big deal as it still runs fine under sudo... and they’ll surely release a new version shortly.
stoobs 7y ago
I think some people have short memories, there have been numerous grumblings (right or wrong) about many of the step-change releases. To me, this feels a bit like when the rosetta fat-binaries were killed off in 10.7, for some people it was pretty bad for those with software which didn't and wouldn't support Intel binaries, but for others it was a minor blip. Catalina has been fine for me, but I probably have a different use-case.

fulldecent2 7y ago

I can't upgrade because I depends on VS Code + Panic Transmit (downgraded to old version). This allows me to edit files on a remote server.