
Mac OS Catalina: more trouble than it’s worth (Part 2) - _fs
http://morrick.me/archives/8760
======
ble52
Am I the only person that doesn't have any significant issues with Catalina?
I'll admit, some of the permissions-related pop-ups are a bit annoying, but
overall it's been a rather stable macOS version for me (developer, working
mostly in Xcode and JetBrains IDEs).

~~~
fredsted
Not sure what the issue is either, once you add the necessary permissions for
your apps, it doesn't ask again.

Only complaint is Apple seem to ignore long-standing bugs that have been there
for years, like monitors switching around every time you dock your MacBook.
They should make a Snow Leopard-like release and clean out their bug tracker.

~~~
jen20
This isn’t something I’ve encountered and I dock to three different desk
setups most days. It’s typically good enough that it remembers the correct
layout for multiple of the same type of monitor once configured. Is your
monitor sending the serial number correctly?

~~~
Hamuko
I think I heard someone complaining about this when docking to two identical
displays (with identical model names in display settings).

~~~
TimMeade
I have two identical setups, both with two 27 monitors and to make it worse
one is horizontal and one vertical. Most of the time when i go to the other
desk the monitors switch and I have to reset the orientation in display
preferences. I have been fighting this for two years. Reset everything apple
has told me to and no fix at all. Total PIA.

~~~
chrisweekly
Tried 3rd party app "SwitchResX"?

~~~
TimMeade
It's not the resolution it's the orientation that keeps getting flipped.

\--- Well I take that back. It's been updated since last i used it a few years
ago. There is display orientation savings now. It might now solve the problem,
but it sure looks to make the fix much easier and faster. Trying it now.
Thanks

------
chalst
Also worth reading John Gruber's complaints, over and above bugs:

> But I don’t know a single expert Mac user who is not seriously annoyed by
> the heavy-handed security design of Catalina. Not one. Every single expert
> user I know is annoyed. That is a bad place for MacOS to be. MacOS 10.16
> needs a serious course correction to fix this, and if 10.16 goes the
> opposite way — growing even more heavy-handed in restricting professional
> Mac users from just using their machines as they want and expect to — I
> genuinely fear for the future of the Mac as a platform for serious computer
> users.

[https://daringfireball.net/2020/02/my_2019_apple_report_card](https://daringfireball.net/2020/02/my_2019_apple_report_card)

~~~
syntheticcdo
> there should be a single switch for expert users to toggle to effectively
> say “I trust all of the software on my Mac”.

As an "expert" software engineer, I completely trust absolutely zero software
running on my computer, in my browser, or basically on any device anywhere. I
begrudgingly put up with it all because there is no alternative. Adding
friction is good because it will eventually push (force?) developers to use
more modern, safer development patterns.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
What if _I_ wrote the software?

I have a bunch of Applescripts which start with:

    
    
        tell application (path to frontmost application) to
    

...so they can control whatever is on screen at the time.

Since Mojave, any time a new application happens to be in front, I get
prompted to give Bash permission to control that app. And then the entire set
of approved apps seems to get wiped sometimes when I edit the Applescripts.
There's no way to approve apps ahead of time, and there's no way to blanket
approve control of _any_ app.

~~~
hhas01
“What if _I_ wrote the software?”

Good point. Apple doesn’t care. If they did, they would’ve put some fricking
effort into it. Not only is 10.15’s “Automation” security model pathetically
thin and annoying (I’ve used those APIs; they’re crap), it doesn’t even
protect users as it claims.

Allowed a script running in Terminal.app permission to access your Contacts?
Great, now ANY script that runs in Terminal can do whatever it likes to your
address book.

Once again, anything that does _not_ fit cleanly into Apple’s naive App-
centric model gets neglected, overlooked, or stomped on.

Honestly, I think now they’re just waiting for AppleScript usage to die out on
its own, so they can kill off the old and crusty (but _very_ powerful) Apple
event IPC system entirely. So it goes.

\--

TL;DR: Apple is in the commercial business of selling Apps. So where’s the
benefit to them in you making your own?

:(

------
xkemp
How can there still be people writing these yearly "I'm so disappointed"
articles. It's the same for _every single MacOS release_. I bet if I look
through the archives here, the last halfway usable OS release from Apple was
Mac OS 8.

You'd figure the people writing these articles wold leave for other platforms,
and those that remain should be less likely to do hot-take duty next year,
considering they didn't feel the need to this year?

Unless there's constant renewal in the pool of people-with-something-to-say. I
guess today's worst-MacOS-ever is their future good-old-days-of-quality.

~~~
thawaway1837
This is absolutely not true.

I haven’t been in the Mac ecosystem for some time now, but I can say for sure
that no one was writing these articles until Snow Leopard at least.

I thin what has led to the prevalence of these articles is Apples shift to an
annual release cycle for their Mac OSes. It used to be well known that you
didn’t upgrade to an OS until the .1 version at the earliest, and it was only
until .3 or .4 that a new OS X would be absolutely stable. Unfortunately with
the annual release cycle the OS isn’t stable for even a few months before it
is replaced. And I’m convinced that the fixes aren’t as good anyways because
as soon as one OS is out, many devs are likely working on the next one.

Catalina itself appears to have become a bigger disaster due to what may be
considered good decisions, such as better security and killing 32 bit, but
done in a way that reminds people of Vista. With nag screens and a poor
transition path. That’s why the noise against Catalina has been even louder.

~~~
tambourine_man
Memory is a curious thing. Snow Leopard had a very problematic release but got
better during the dot updates. Its “no new features” slogan was commendable
and resonated well, but it meant under the hood changes that broke things.

Perhaps they should reconsider the yearly release schedule. Either go back to
a more conservative one, letting things settle after many point updates and
enjoying the achieved stability for longer, or adopt a continuous evergreen
model, like Chrome and Firefox.

~~~
thawaway1837
Well, no one moved to a new OSX release on their main machines until .1 at
least. That applied to Snow Leopard as well. And so SL wasn’t penalized for
that.

The difference was that the non annual release cycle meant that the .0 version
was a significantly smaller proportion of Snow Leopards life cycle, than is
the case for recent annual releases of OSX.

Let’s assume Apple takes 3 months to stabilize an OS right after release. If
you’re always up to date, an annual release cycle means that for 25% of your
time, you’re using an unstable version of the OS. A 2 year cycle would mean
that you’re using an unstable version for only 12.5% of your time. That’s a
very significant change.

And in practice I think it’s worse because with the non annual release cycles,
most OSX devs would use the time right after release to stabilize the OS.
Whereas with the annual release cycle, it’s apparent that most devs’
priorities shift to next years OS instead.

~~~
tambourine_man
> The difference was that the non annual release cycle meant that the .0
> version was a significantly smaller proportion of Snow Leopards life cycle,
> than is the case for recent annual releases of OSX.

Exactly. That’s what I meant.

------
nicolas_t
I have a new macbook pro 16 inch so I'm forced to use Catalina for it. Up
until 10.15.2, it was extremely buggy with applications like the Terminal
crashing and then refusing to start again if you force quit them. I had to
restart the computer once a day about...

With 10.15.3, it's a bit better but I still see the spinning spinning wheel of
death way more than I used to, and my computer completely crashed once with
the fan turning on very quickly and the screen becoming completely gray... I
don't think it's production ready yet.

As an aside not being able to run 32 bits applications is really annoying to
me. I like to play old games, and not being able to annoys me. I can use
crossover with the windows version of the games but it's a hassle. Just for
the 32 bits issue, I wish I could install Mojave on my mbp 16 inch.

So, yes, worst os upgrade in a long time... I'm now dreading the os update
that will disable kernel extensions and stop me from having Little Snitch and
Karabiner. If that happens, I'll probably switch to Linux for my personal
computers.

Surprisingly, I'm less bothered by the Permission popups, and while I don't
care about apps having access to Downloads and Desktop, I do care about them
having or not access to Documents. I see this is as a complement of Little
Snitch. So this is for me the only positive of Catalina...

~~~
dep_b
Some issues I noticed on my previous 2015 MBP 15" (still on Mojave) also
popped up on my brand new 2019 MBP 16", like the UI completely halting doing
mundane stuff like opening a new tab or something. I always thought it was
software rot after 5 years of use and a fresh install would fix everything.

~~~
nicolas_t
At the same time, my old trusty Mac Pro on Mojave never does that... Both have
the same amount of RAM, both are 8 cores... But the Mac pro is just that much
more stable.

------
mhd
It's been a long time since a MacOS upgrade was "worth it", from an end-user
perspective. They're much more liked Windows Service Packs these days. This
used to be way different, every new OS X release was much more celebrated and
often brought features that were really appreciated by the users.

Sure, part of that was just easier in the beginning: 10.0 started out with a
_lot_ of issues, and just getting rid of most of the CRT-focussed UI elements
(heavy zebra-striping, gum-drop buttons) took several releases (I do miss
drawers, though).

But that still left you with quite a few innovations: FileVault, Spotlight,
Expose, Time Machine, Dashboard, Spaces etc.

I was a lot more excited about the zoological releases than the geographical
ones. Cross-pollination with iOS didn't produce something exciting, either.

Dropping compatibility once again would sure be a better sell if expectations
of the future would be higher.

~~~
pjc50
And from the _developer_ point of view, notarisation is a colossal headache.
It might be OK if you're shipping a single app, but we have a vast hybrid
thing that includes Mono, a JDK, and some Python native libraries. All of
which have to be signed themselves.

~~~
dep_b
I did a Xamarin app that had some kind of custom USB driver built in. That
hell just got one level deeper?

------
rcarmo
I’ve put off upgrading until (at least) the Mail issues are fixed. I have zero
trust that Apple is even prioritizing those kinds of fixes, and simply can’t
risk the disruption of having my machine not work in some subtly critical way.

(In contrast, my Windows machines are stubbornly reliable, even the one
running Insider builds. Which is a wild inversion of the reasons I started
[https://taoofmac.com](https://taoofmac.com) 16 years ago...)

------
thewhitetulip
The biggest issue I have with Mac upgrades is that for me, it doesn't cache
the upgrade.

My internet is weak, not as great in speed and bandwidth as US so it downloads
4gb and then fails. Then it starts from 0 sgain.

I expected Apple of all companies to cache downloads.

Frankly, it caches only the first 500MB. I do not know why.

Any workarounds?

~~~
sgt
Frankly nowadays (on most systems) you need a decent connection. I would
perhaps connect from another connection (if you have the opportunity) for the
download itself.

~~~
jaynetics
If 25M people are eligible for this upgrade and it fails in the middle for
only 1%, that is 1 Petabyte transferred in vain. Not to mention man hours
wasted. Just to save a few lines of code.

~~~
sgt
You're missing the point. It's about the way you treat people and also shaming
a particular individual on a corporate blog.

------
athiercelin
I've heard these upgrade stories since the 90s (on Mac). It got better a few
years back, and it's back again at hit or miss but in the end it's like backup
strategies: it's basic knowledge at this point but still needs to be repeated.

If your mac is a production machine, don't jump on any of the updates, decide
if you need the update then check your programs one by one.

If you can, pop into the Apple Store to test the system.

I'm not defending Apple, I'm not victim-blaming, it's just an advice to avoid
the misery of going past the point of no return.

~~~
neurostimulant
Yup, this is pretty much what I do regardless of operating system. Just don't
upgrade to the latest major version immediately after release. Wait around a
bit to see if other people reported any major issue, and then wait until those
issue fixed before upgrading.

------
MikeTaylor
One of the killers for me is the dropped support for 32-bit binaries. I don't
have a gaming box, so I play Steam games on my MacBook. Lots of the games I
want to play (e.g. all the BioShocks) are 32-bit.

~~~
whywhywhywhy
I understood when they removed PPC support via Rosetta from Intel OS X (Even
though the tech pretty much felt like magic). But I don't get the
justification for ditching all that legacy 32bit software.

If it hasn't been upgraded yet, then it's never going to be. The Mac isn't
like iOS, it's pretty niche. You can't just throw all the software under the
bus every few years and sit back smugly expecting either developers to fix all
their old software or the market to create new software to fill the gap.

No 32bit Mac apps are going to be replaced with 64bit SwiftUI native apps,
they're going to be replaced with Javascript apps in wrappers and your
platform is going to be worse off than it would be if the dusty "old" 32bit
cocoa app still ran.

~~~
jmull
I think the issue is that supporting 32-bit apps in MacOS isn't free. So
there's a cost/benefit analysis to do.

It probably isn't helped by the current MacOS business model. MacOS needs to
focus on things that help sell new Macs because that's where the money comes
from. Back when you'd drop $129 every few years the focus could be more on the
OS itself. Not that it didn't also have to sell Macs, but the OS itself was
product and it isn't any longer.

~~~
whywhywhywhy
I think that makes a lot of sense, until you look at the rest of the market
and that Windows 10 was a one off purchase in 2015 and still supports apps
from the early 90s, with a selection of apps tens, maybe hundreds? of times
more than OS X. Not to mention Apple specifically chose that business model
themselves for business reasons, they get the cost benefit of not having to
support older versions which must outweigh 32bit support. We can't
retroactively claim that business choice is not a bad thing just because it
supports their bad actions today.

Been a fan of Macs for 20 years but becoming more jaded with Apples approach
to the platform.

~~~
jmull
> We can't retroactively claim that business choice is not a bad thing

I'm not saying it's good or bad, just explaining why (in my analysis).

Regarding Windows, I think we have yet to fully see how the movement toward
"the operating system is free" will affect it. For one thing, OEMs and
businesses are still paying for Windows. I'd guess direct revenue from Windows
is dropping and is expected to continue to drop. But that's not the same thing
as the $0 that MacOS makes (directly).

But, yes, if you want to run software from the '90s and not in a VM, then
Windows is probably your OS (I think businesses are the reason for that. They
have a lot of software in use that would be very disruptive/expensive to
replace or move to some visualized environment.)

------
speeder
I never been an Apple fan. When iPhone launched I was skeptical, and didn't
wanted one, and so on...

I often argued with apple fans, and one thing that was clear to me, is that
people that tried apple products around 2008 or so often would just love it,
and many would become apple fans too.

I used my first Mac around that time, and although I found some stuff just
silly (mouse with only one button...) I overall liked it.

Fast forward to launch of Touch Bar...

Now I see lots of division and love hate relationship with apple... Still, my
sister moved to US to be a researcher, invited by top universities (she even
did a 6 month stint in MIT, at their request!) And was offered to pick a
computer. She always liked Apple and other "fashionable" brands and picked up
a machine with touch bar and would get mad at me whenever I pointed out it's
flaws (like the impossible to repair keyboard), until the touchbar suddenly
died and the machine would not boot anymore... She took it to Apple and they
just swapped the whole machine.

Then keyboard broke... Another swap.

Then Catalina...

Then the fact upgrading it's RAM was unecessarily hard and expensive and
needed urgently (an app to analyze microscope data was outright refusing to
run).

Then she came to me, sheepishly, to ask me to recommend a non Apple computer,
and said Apple was worse than what I said...

Thing is, it is not just her, I have the impression that current Apple is
opposite of 2008 Apple, instead of making weird but good stuff that create
hardcore fans, it is creating products that are just bad and makes haters stop
hating, and just ignore the company, and fans start hating...

~~~
xkemp
Your relationship with both your sister and Apple users seems to mainly
consist of condescension. For your sister, there's some added dependency: of
course she's eventually gonna fold if she wants you to do tech support and you
more or less make it a requirement that you get to make her decisions
forthwith.

FWIW the stereotype of Apple targeting "beginners" who are after "fashion
items" is ridiculous. There are millions of "professionals" using Macs. It's a
fully functional Unix with a GUI that gets out of way.

Pick any project you consider excellent, and you'll find someone working on it
that uses a Mac, even the Linux Kernel. Now, try to argue against _that_
person's reasons, not some figment of your imagination rendered into a sack of
stereotypes.

~~~
speeder
I never said that.

I am a Designer and I have an animation degree, there are lots of Macs in the
field, and they are not for "professionals", but for actual professionals, the
computers I mentioned I used were MacPros that were actually rather
interesting machines, and it was sad when Apple decided to stop making them
(now they are making them again but with ludicrous prices).

What I DID mean, is that my sister is prone to being a "fan" of a company,
instead of choosing only for the product quality, and this was a factor in
choosing Apple's stuff, and more importantly, a factor in her being defensive
about the company.

What I mean is: Apple attracts certain types of people, including some that
become fans, but they are not stupid, if products are bad they start to hate
the company instead, and Apple is attracting their hate right now with crappy
products.

~~~
arh68
Mac Pros not being MacBooks is an interesting point. A wide range of products
leads to a spectrum of quality. Die-hard fans may be the ones in the high-
price/-reliability quadrant, but maybe 5x more are attracted by the lower-
price/-reliability quadrant. I suspect that MacBook was in the starter
quadrant, and the actual professionals are in the other.

Sometimes things even shift in a single product over time: establish a good
reputation, then water down the product a couple years later. All the die-
hards leave, and the rest are none the wiser.

IMO $6k is just too much for a Mac Pro, except if it rocked a 3990X (do it,
Mr. Apple!). It might actually be worth the money, even still. Apple seems to
support Mac Pro OS upgrades for ~10 years after release.

------
SkyMarshal
I have a 2013 MacBook that is my main work computer when not at home on my
desktop workstation.

Years ago I learned to disable automatic system updates and to stay 1 major OS
version behind. Let the enthusiasts, fanboys and early adopter pawns work out
all the bugs in the current OS X version, install it only when the next
version nears or launches.

------
tbarbugli
Catalina is by far the worst OSX release for me and many people I know.

For months ext monitor support was buggy, touchbar stopped working daily
(related to ext monitor bug) and restarts were necessary in order to go back
to stable state. Since a couple weeks things improved a lot and I am back to
my default state: I dont care about my OS nor about any Apple app, just let me
use my IDE and browser without annoying me. I think that the wise thing here
is to never ever upgrade OSX until a couple minor releases are out. Bugs
eventually get fixed and security patches are important! This reminds me of
Cassandra where x.y.6 was the right version to use :)

------
diebeforei485
We're coming to a point where March is the best time to upgrade. By then,
Apple has fixed most issues, and most apps have fixed their bugs as well.

The issue is: every year at WWDC they announce a bunch of (way too many)
features.

Then, they only have ~3 months to actually complete the features. But
crucially, betas are only made available after WWDC. So they get a ton of bug
reports that they can't possibly really fix by release.

------
dwaite
I think in general Catalina was missing flagship features.

\- The split of iTunes into Music, Podcasts and TV (and system integration for
iOS synchronization/backup) didn't bring about significant user-visible
benefits. I think there was an issue with content not being available in
iTunes under 4k the was solved, and Dolby Atmos was added.

\- Catalina is not really a user-level feature. The apps which are created
using Catalina aren't really draws - Find My is probably my most used, and I
could just use the website if it wasn't an app.

\- Reminders got a big refactor and new functionality, but the in itself is a
limited draw.

\- A few smaller changes to Notes, Photos, and Safari, but nothing I couldn't
live without

\- Screen Time - perhaps useful in families, but my understanding is that the
conceptual differences between iPhone usage and Mac usage weren't accommodated
for.

There was the delayed release, impact to polish, and removal of features like
iCloud Folder Sharing (which I've indirectly been told were all the same issue
- that folder sharing was not stable enough to be integrated into the tree and
it impacted other development). It was a much rockier-than-normal update.

You also have the anti-features of 32-bit support being removed, and
additional privacy-consent-for-access prompts for screen sharing, sensitive
folder access, etc. The prompts are IMHO overblown - they are one-time and
many of them have gone away as software has been updated for Catalina (as in,
there was no legitimate reason for some particular application to be scanning
the Desktop to begin with). This doesn't change that there isn't a big draw.

If there is a big feature for macOS Catalina, it would be SideCar. This adds a
second screen to the Mac, it enables pencil usage, and perhaps even provides a
slight bit more justification to Touch Bar functionality. This is still
limited as it is an ecosystem feature - IMHO its real value comes when you are
using an iPad Pro.

------
checker659
I used to be a huge fan of Dashboard. Why they had to remove it is beyond me.

~~~
mantap
It was theoretically replaced by notification center widgets, but in reality
it was replaced by smartphones. All the little apps I used to have on
dashboard, like the weather, are now things I check on my phone.

------
sgt
I've actually kept postponing upgrading to Catalina (I'm still on Mojave)
because I want to keep iTunes. I have a lot of stuff there I don't really want
scattered all over the place, and I always felt iTunes was underrated.

~~~
dvfjsdhgfv
How are you going to solve this?

I'm in a similar position, having several music apps I bought a while ago that
won't work in Catalina. But I have to upgrade because it's my development
machine. So far my plan is to upgrade my MacBook Pro to continue develop
software, and leave my Mac Pro with Mojave to compose music. I wonder how
others deal with this.

~~~
newscracker
See my comment above [1] with a link to a Macrumors forum thread that allows
you to run iTunes and older versions of iTunes on Catalina and Mojave. It
might probably break at some point in the future, but people seem to be
managing so far.

[1]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22326724](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22326724)

------
anoncow
[https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250719221](https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250719221)

Thread on Catalina bricking Macbooks.

~~~
cannam
My god, the rudeness of some of the defensive replies on there. If I was in
that situation, with an expensively broken computer and no help from anyone,
and someone with no experience of it kept harrying me in that way, well... I'd
be so livid I could barely type.

------
indymike
Catalina has been a pretty smooth upgrade. Helps to have one of the newer macs
with a fingerprint reader... it makes all the new confirm you want to do this
thing dialogs much more livable. Migrating to zsh took an unexpected hour of
updating build scripts. Honestly, 90% of the annoyance in software updates is
being forced to do stuff you really didn't plan on doing.

------
cutler
For a long time I've been baffled about what amounts to testing at Apple. I
purposely avoid new releases for at least a year due to Apple's history of
releasing beta-grade OS X updates. Testing seems to be an afterthought or
maybe the users ARE the test suite. From one of the biggest tech companies on
the planet as well - unfathomable.

------
auggierose
Yeah, there's been some pain to upgrade to Catalina, but for me as a developer
it was worth it, just because of Project Catalyst. Also, they were making some
serious (and necessary) changes to the iCloud / File API, and I would have
been very surprised if that went without lots of bugs ... To be honest, the
transition went much smoother than I expected.

~~~
newscracker
Project Catalyst trades off some developer pain for a few thousand or tens of
thousands of developers with pain imposed on millions or tens of millions of
users. A rushed and half baked system that breaks Mac conventions isn’t worth
it for the users. Not now. It could turn out to be something worthwhile next
year or the year after.

------
mistahenry
I was already using zsh and somehow the MacOS upgrade path for making zsh the
new default shell deleted my shell history.

This was a short term blow to productivity since I had only made external
notes on about half the difficult command line tasks I’d completed since
getting this MacBook in 2017.

How do people generally go about backing up this file? Or do most people not

~~~
alexis_fr
I use several tabs and histories override each other, meaning I could never
count on a command being present in the history. I’ve always been told an
experienced dev has a folder with txt notes, so that is what I did.

~~~
jcelerier
I'm pretty sure that you can configure zsh to write to zsh_history every
command to prevent this

~~~
catalogia

        setopt inc_append_history

~~~
DelightOne
Thank you! I did not know that this option exists!

------
st3fan
DOOM! DOOM! SO MUCH DOOOOM!

So different story here: using Catalina on two Macs since the betas - zero
issues. Really, Zero Issues. It all just works. I use it 8+ hours a day -
Browsers, terminal work, Mail.app, lots of third-party applications, Xcode.

Ok fine, Xcode can be a PITA sometimes. But Catalina .. my workhorse since the
betas. Never lets me down.

------
narenkeshav
I use Unity3D and everytime there is a new macOS update, I always
procrastinate it for a year at least. This year around, I was very tempted to
update it, early last week. Looking at this feed, I ain't going to do it. I
have an iOS app to publish & can't do anything stupid.

~~~
davnicwil
I have a similar attitude. At the end of the day, MacOS updates have zero
chance of helping me get work done faster, yet they have low but non-trivial
chance of halting progress on work for a few hours due to obscure issues.

There just seems no upside to upgrading - I just wait until either I'm forced
to or starting a completely new project just to pay off a tech debt of sorts.
I'll caveat this by saying I don't work in the Apple ecosystem so don't have
any dependencies there, the tools I run are orthogonal to MacOS specific
features, so I don't really care about them per se.

~~~
riffraff
this, a hundred times. I stayed on snow leopard for years, and I can barely
notice anything better in Mojave, and about nothing in Catalina either.

On the other hand, the weather widgets in the dashboard have now stopped
working, and nobody seems to care, because that's not a cool feature anymore.

------
KingOfCoders
My main problem is with having an external monitor (LG) connected with USB-C.
Sometimes it detects the right solution, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes when
closing the laptop, sometimes that doesn't work either. Very frustrating in
2020.

------
hurricanetc
I am loving Catalina. The new Reminders app is a huge upgrade that allowed me
to stop relying on shoddy third party apps. Using Apple Watch to authenticate
is handy. Sidecar is useful as hell on business trips. iTunes is no longer a
bloated unorganized mess of an application. Safari is dramatically better.
Photos is better. Having screen time data on my Mac is great.

Catalyst has brought a handful of new macOS apps for me to use that were not
available previously. Several that I use on a daily basis.

And I haven’t experienced any bugs or issues.

So I guess your mileage will vary. But if you hate macOS enough to write TWO
blog posts about it why don’t you just switch to another platform???

~~~
filchermcurr
What Catalyst applications are you using? I haven't heard of any beyond Apple
News, Swift Playgrounds, and I think maybe Twitter? Definitely interested in
trying more.

~~~
hurricanetc
Carrot Weather, JIRA, and Rosetta Stone. There may be others that are Catalyst
that I am not even aware of. But I use those three heavily on a daily basis.

------
tannhaeuser
Even if I wanted to upgrade my old Mini (by having a new OS on an external
HD), Mojave and Catalina won't let me because required APFS support for EFI
comes only as part of the 6GB Mojave (or Catalina) download/install, rather
than as separately downloadable BIOS upgrade. Even bought a flash drive and
ordered to have Mojave installer copied to it at an Apple retailer only to
find out that it doesn't work like that anymore. After many years of good use
in the 2010s, for me the Mac has lost it's practical side where you could use
disk target mode, boot from external HD, etc.

Edit: 2000s not 2010s

~~~
newscracker
Someone somewhere must have faced the same issue as you. I’d suggest searching
on Reddit and the Macrumors forums. Worst case, you can install Linux and
continue using it (though the experience may not be the same in many ways).

~~~
tannhaeuser
Re installing Linux: I did that many years ago already ;) I used to enjoy an
alternative Unix laptop provider and hate to see Apple fade away as an option.
Regarding searching reddit and co, I briefly did, but then thought if I have
to go to forums etc., I can just as well run Linux on a well-supported
notebook in the first place.

------
atonse
I have heard enough horror stories about stability and security prompts that
it’s the first macOS release I’ll probably skip. Can’t afford to lose a day or
more of productivity to fiddling with my OS.

~~~
cerberusss
You do you, but the relentless flow of horror stories didn't stop me from
upgrading and it was flawless for me. I'd recommend reading these critical
pieces and seeing whether any of it actually applies to you.

~~~
llarsson
Very difficult to know if it is going to apply to one's own system.

With updates apparently sometimes crashing after being only partially applied,
even the most diligent research into application-specific "will I be able to
run XYZ after upgrading" might not be able to save you from having to
reinstall from scratch.

This is the kind of low-quality handling of software updates that I never
imagined coming from Apple.

I upgraded when it came out, had no issues, and only a few prompts. Because
the machine was entirely new to me anyway (inherited MBP2016), I couldn't
imagine having anything to lose. But on my older machine? Still have not
upgraded. Don't see a reason to, until they've ensured higher quality.

~~~
cerberusss
But your actual experience is that it worked fine, right?

I have the idea that there's currently an atmosphere where it's fashionable to
repeat other people's bad experiences. Regardless of one's own experience.

~~~
ckrailo
Nah, it's pretty bad.

------
mark_l_watson
I am happy with the direction Apple is taking, locking down macOS. I have two
Linux laptops I can mess with, I want my Macs as secure as possible.

------
blablabla123
It's the same with every Major update with breaking changes. This is not even
macOS specific, if these updates wouldn't happen, every software would be like
Windows or MS Office which stays backwards compatible for decades. It makes
sense to adapt as user and also that developers need to adapt, e.g. to create
64 bit software. Also there are _always_ work-arounds.

------
zer0zzz
Catalina has been mostly fine for me. My 2015 15” mbp has been a little
unresponsive at times under dark mode but all my other laptops are doing great
on it. Other than that, my work computer has all this stuff like Cisco and
chef installed on it and it generally needs a reboot every other day. But
generally my personal machines are fine.

------
georgehaake
When I upgraded my 2019 mini I thought I bricked it. It was a couple of days
of heroics to get it upgraded. Kind of a blur now. With the minor annoyances,
not any more shitty in aggregate than before. (current 13" macbook pro - no
upgrade issues at all)

------
prpl
My only gripe is that my login/wake up are slow for some reason (Macbook 16),
but I can't pinpoint it or rule out IT shenanigans.

I appreciate the security, I'm happy that many of the apps don't get to shit
all over my Documents directory as easily anymore.

------
nonamenoslogan
I'm a Macperson but for my primary Mac (Retina iMac), I refuse to upgrade
simply because of my 32bit apps. I still have plenty of them that work as
designed and have no interest in purchasing newer versions just because Apple
says so.

------
m000
Time Machine is the Internet Explorer of backup software. Change my mind.

------
foxx-boxx
Upgrading is a mess, if you for instance replaced a disk. It’s clearly a
software design and such move is unnecessary. I wouldn’t upgrade unless I
really have to. It’s painful.

------
jasoneckert
I'm still using Mojave for the simple reason that there's a 32-bit app that I
absolutely need to have, and Catalina doesn't run 32-bit apps anymore.

------
lovetocode
Catalina totally wrecked my development environment for Ruby versions < 2.4.
The only positive result is that we are running 2.6 now.

------
mistrial9
the people who are not complaining are in two camps ? the aggregate of
Homebrew / Web devs / terminal users; and on the other hand the unaware
consumers with their lives in the browser and simple purchases. ps- I am
looking at a 10.7 machine directly in front of me, and there are two more
nearby... zero interest in Catalina here

------
antihero
I was pretty sad I can’t play counter strike 1.6 every so often any more. Is
there a way to rollback?

------
szines
My recommendation is that never update only clean install. I never had any
problem with macOS.

------
joelrunyon
Still holding off on this. Is the consensus to just keep waiting for the next
one to drop?

~~~
newscracker
Unless the next release announced in WWDC 2020 is one that clearly says it’s
about stability and is low on new features, I’ll be holding off on any
upgrades. Mojave will have security updates for another year or so.

------
briandear
I am not sure who the author is, but why are so many people emailing him about
Catalina? As far as the people who didn’t know about the new Music app,
spotlight searching for iTunes will bring up Music.

