
Is Catalina a Good Upgrade Yet? - mrzool
https://eclecticlight.co/2020/02/02/last-week-on-my-mac-is-catalina-a-good-upgrade-yet/
======
newscracker
After following the changes as well as the issues in Catalina since it was
released, I'm in no hurry to upgrade to it. I actually dread that Apple would,
in a few short months, announce a new major release with even more changes and
new features. So here's my short open letter to Apple.

Dear Apple:

Eat your false pride and do a reset on macOS – in WWDC 2020, don't add a new
major macOS release, and don't have a new release name with funny stories of
how your crack marketing department came up with it. Accept that you messed
up, just like you messed up with the Mac Pro and tried to save face by saying
that you "painted yourself into a thermal corner" (but didn't say why you went
into radio silence for years). Then work on a stability focused release
without adding major new features. We know you don't focus or spend as much on
Mac/macOS as you do on iPhone and iOS. Introspect and realize that you bit a
whole lot more than you can chew (even with hundreds of billions of dollars in
cash) with macOS Catalina.

Fix the design, fix the data loss issues, fix the Time Machine issues, fix the
iTunes "replacements", fix the performance issues of APFS on magnetic hard
drives, fix Catalyst, improve your QA/QC...the list of big ticket items is
long enough to keep your tiny macOS team busy for another year or two.

Follow a tick-tock cycle if you can't solve this with your current
organization structure and people – one feature release a year, followed by
(another) one whole year for stabilization and tiny incremental improvements.

It takes a big mind to accept mistakes, accept them sooner than later, and
then correct them. It's high time for you to grow up (being in the top two or
three in market cap and all) and start doing this. You'll find people more
accepting of deficiencies/issues and more willing to wait for fixes when you
communicate like an adult and treat your customers as adults.

[P.S.: If I have to lose some virtual points for this critical comment, so be
it]

~~~
Pamar
_fix the Time Machine issues_

Can someone please point out what the issues are? I am not challenging this
statement, it is just that I am not aware of any specific issues with Time
Machine so I am a bit worried about any problems (and if there is anything I
can do to mitigate the risks). I am using a separate, third party cloud backup
but I still count on Time Machine for day-to-day operations.

Thanks in advance to anyone that could give me more info about this.

~~~
climb_stealth
I have been bitten by Time Machine in the past. There is not much more
frustrating than a fried computer and a backup that doesn't work and can't be
recovered.

Since then I only use Carbon Copy Cloner [0]. It has very very very excellent
documentation and it is well the worth the purchase. The documentation covers
lots of backup scenarios, how to do recovery and dealing with error cases. It
also lets you create bootable backups on external drives, though I have only
used it for backups over the network.

I'm not affiliated, but I can't praise their work enough.

[0] [https://bombich.com/](https://bombich.com/)

~~~
Pamar
Thanks, but I wanted to understand what the actual problems of Time Machine
are, especially with Catalina, and - most importantly - which are the symptoms
I should be wary of.

~~~
jeromeof
Well one problem I ran into was because of the changes to iTunes audiobooks
are now stored in the Books app but the Books app doesn't support external
drives for media so the Catalina update includes hours of copying files from
my external HDD to my primary Macintosh HD - filling it up almost entirely (I
have/had about 300GB of audiobooks) - this was bad enough (as their was no UI
telling me it was doing this) but then Time Machine kicked in trying to back
up these files (I had excluded the external drive but obviously not the
primary partition) but because I ran out of space during the initial Catalina
upgrade run, their were lots of artifacts which also got added to Time
Machine. Time machine itself started trashing for hours.

I lost probably a day (to a day and a half tidying things up and cleaning up
stuff that was not my fault) and of course I have no decent way of managing
audiobooks now.

------
russellbeattie
This is an easy Google search, but I'll add it just in case someone hasn't
done it yet. If you'd like to avoid upgrading to Catalina until you think it's
ready, but still get security updates, etc., run this in your terminal:

    
    
        $ sudo softwareupdate --ignore "macOS Catalina"
        $ defaults write com.apple.systempreferences AttentionPrefBundleIDs 0
        $ killall Dock
    

This ignores the system update, and gets rid of the red update dot.

~~~
forthispurpose
How do I roll it back?

~~~
kevan

      $ sudo softwareupdate --reset-ignored
    

That will clear all ignored updates. From the CLI docs it doesn't look like
there's a way to do it individually but there's probably a plist somewhere you
could modify.

~~~
forthispurpose
thank you

------
kitsunesoba
While Catalina certainly isn’t perfect, the issues are a bit overblown from my
point of view. I’ve been running 3 different machines on it since release
(hackintosh tower, 2017 iMac, 2015 MBP), two of which are used on a daily
basis, and they’ve all been fine. The permissions prompts were annoying for
the first hour after install and it’s been smooth ever since.

But my use case is almost exclusively programming and Blizzard games, so maybe
the problems are centered around particular types of software or something.

~~~
xtracto
Macs permission prompts remind me of this:
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8CwoluNRSSc](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8CwoluNRSSc)

There is several software that doesn't work with Catalina. In my case
RingCentral meetings. But in general people shouldn't downgrade to it... it is
100% a downgrade, as it removes features available in the previous version.

~~~
pilif
The prompts appear once per app.

The vista prompts appeared every time an app was doing something that required
elevated privileges which, back then, was all the time.

This issue is totally overblown and, TBH, I like to know what application has
access to what data on my machine. If the price for that is a one-time prompt
per application, I'm willing to pay that.

If you are not and you are willing to forego the security advantage, then use
spctl to disable Gatekeeper

------
makecheck
From a file access point of view in Catalina, the OS’ “left hand” still
doesn’t always seem to know what its “right hand” is doing.

For example, just today I tried to save a file on top of an existing file, and
when the system panel prompted me, I said Replace. That appeared to be
accepted but _after_ the panel closed the app failed to actually save, citing
something about how I do not have access to the target file. I used the Finder
to trash the old file and retried, and then it worked. From a user point of
view, this is exactly the kind of work-around that should never be required,
and I can imagine some people not even trying and just thinking everything is
broken.

And as an app developer these things are even more frustrating because I
literally cannot tell all the ways a user “might” have an issue anymore. How
many awful combinations of file-related failures are there? How many obscure
messages are possible, and is a message even displayed for every case?

If a system is really complex, it is not only hard to get it right _once_ but
it is really hard to _keep_ it right over time. I am worried that all these
special cases will just be fixed and re-broken for months on end.

------
wespiser_2018
I would say no, not worth it if you rely on using your mac for developing
software and don't want to spend two days getting everything to work again! I
run 10.15 at work, and 10.14 at home, and so far, here are a couple of the
issues I've run with 10.15.

1) Some weirdness around XCode and XCode Command Line Tools that made
installing node-gyp a huge pain. I mean, look at these instructions and tell
me if this is something you want to deal with:
[https://github.com/nodejs/node-
gyp/blob/master/macOS_Catalin...](https://github.com/nodejs/node-
gyp/blob/master/macOS_Catalina.md)

2) Change of default shell in 10.15 from bash to zsh. Kind of minor, but Apple
doesn't want to use Bash 5.2 because of licensing. Great.

3) Lack of support for 32 bit programs. This is actually a big deal for me,
since a course I am taking requires the use of WinBugs (I know, we should use
STAN :) ), which is only available in 32 bit pre-compiled binaries. There is
an unfortunately large amount of software like this!

~~~
isolatedbyyou
Every major update appears to uninstall xcode command line tools. All you have
to do is that xcode-select --install or whatever it is, but I mean, god, how
much testing do they do to not see this.

~~~
L_Rahman
Wait this is a bug? It happens to predictably after every update that I
thought it was an intentional design pattern.

~~~
lloeki
I’d say that if I had the CLT installed before upgrading, the OS updater
should make sure I have the new version after upgrade.

------
oxfordmale
Catalina has much improved since its initial version. My development MacBook
now only crashes a few times a week rather than a few times a day. The Apple
Catalina developers clearly know what they are doing. /s

~~~
Roboprog
Sadly, my 2011 MacBook Pro won’t update to these later versions, so I just
have to leave it running for months at a time.

Perhaps when the keyboard fails, someday, I’ll replace it, instead of just
upgrading the RAM and drive.

Kidding aside, I would like to get a newer version someday with better screen
resolution and size, but Apple seems to have many missteps to recover from the
last 5 years or so.

I’m assuming an implied “/s” at the end of your comment.

~~~
hanniabu
I also have a 2011 and still running El Capitan because I was concerned about
how it would handle updates. What version are you running right now and how
much RAM do you have?

~~~
cglong
I have a 2011 iMac that's running High Sierra (its last supported release). I
upgraded it from its base 4GB to 20GB of RAM.

Since getting High Sierra, everything's been really smooth, but the Sierra ->
High Sierra upgrade actually bricked my computer. It was perpetually stuck in
the installation phase, bailing after 45 minutes because it couldn't unmount
my partition. To Apple's credit though, after I used recovery mode to
reinstall the OS, everything worked and my data was intact.

------
diebeforei485
Apple really needs to have a "maintenance year" for software - where the
majority of work is fixing bugs and simplifying complicated features, and
minimal new features are added beyond those necessary to support new hardware.

I personally had so many bugs with Catalina that I decided to just wipe my
device and start afresh with a clean install of Catalina off a USB stick. It
helped a great deal, but I still have some bugs.

It looks like a lot of testing at Apple is done on either clean builds, or a
simple upgrade from a year ago (while most real-life users have 3-4 upgrades
stacked on each other)

~~~
discordance
Ah, yes just like 10.6.8: Snow Leopard. No new features. The best Mac OS I’ve
used.

Those were the days.

~~~
huebomont
Snow Leopard is such rose-colored-glasses nostalgia. That release was buggy as
hell too and only came to be the "rock-solid" release that people love after
like 8 months of bugfixes and patches.

------
sumanthvepa
With a great deal of caution I finally upgraded one of the 5 Macs I own to
Catalina over the weekend. First thing I notice is that my NFS mounts no
longer work since, they were mounted at a non-standard location. I've shelved
further plans to update until I resolve NFS mounts issue using the
automounter. Sigh. The apple ecosystem is becoming harder to use. But I really
have no choice I do a lot of iOS and MacOS development, and its the only
platform I can use for that purpose.

~~~
K0SM0S
> Sigh. The apple ecosystem is becoming harder to use. But I really have no
> choice I do a lot of iOS and MacOS development, and its the only platform I
> can use for that purpose.

So, first off, sincere sympathy. I feel you, I've been there.

My current recommendation to people is: whatever you do in your personal life
(Apple, Android, Windows, whatever), keep your Apple-related _work_
environment _completely segregated_ — that usually just means one dedicated
Mac and the test iOS devices. Do not use any of it for anything else than
work. Do not mix a home server with work-Mac-related stuff and personal life.
Do not use the same AppleID. Do not mix anything.

It's generally a good approach anyway, regardless of one's development
platform/target.

It then becomes natural to e.g. never worry about NFS and simply use the
"recommended" Apple path — like some Thunderbolt drive, or whatever MacOS
networks with these days.

The downside that it obviously induces additional cost is debatable:

\- developing for Apple systems usually translates to higher income, and Apple
is somewhat "fairly" (at least in their mind) forcing some extra burden of
cost on developers, but it's likely marginal for said devs (although hostile
to developing markets, at first glance).

\- work-related machines generally fall under different tax regimes than
personal stuff, and while we surely all dabble into the grey area, it's always
better to have it 100% legit work or personal but not both. Insurances etc.
may care too.

So... Yeah. I hope you can segregate and rationalize the work-Mac(s) to follow
Apple's best practice (whatever they push as "This is the way" for MacOS).

~~~
eric-hu
> Do not use the same AppleID.

I've done what you suggested in this paragraph, and do this as well. It means
you can't use a personal iPad with Catalina's Sidecar feature, which just
sucks knowing a second monitor is almost right there.

------
ojosilva
I really wish the community would take over and fork MacOS at its lowest
opensource/forkable denominator to start a free-as-in-Linux, MacOS binary-
compatible alternative. Something that is stable and predictable for hardware
makers to distribute and drivers to be written for. And inviting for the wider
user base to adopt knowing that their favorite apps will run just the same.
That would be a game-changer as pc hardware makers are at a dead end running
Windows from a company that is not focused on its OS anymore, Linux
unfortunately doesn't seem to ever cut it with the massses and app makers and
MacOS is only available as a user hack in non apple hw.

Now this would be a serious challenge. Everything from APIs to the ecosystem
to the apps themselves have licenses and, righteous or not, would be game for
lawsuits left and right should the project be a head turner at some point.

This ex Apple OSX engineer in fact paints it as doomed from the start:

[https://www.quora.com/Would-it-be-ever-be-possible-to-
clone-...](https://www.quora.com/Would-it-be-ever-be-possible-to-clone-macOS-
and-fork-it-like-Linux)

~~~
DCKing
> I really wish the community would take over and fork MacOS at its lowest
> opensource/forkable denominator to start a free-as-in-Linux, MacOS binary-
> compatible alternative.

As your Quora link points out - it's not feasible to do this. The killer
features of macOS - the UI framework, all other OS frameworks, the interesting
drivers integrating all of this - are not available. macOS more than other
OSes is an integrated package. And that stuff is not open source.

The parts of macOS that are open source are just sufficient to allow you to
make your own Unix-like distro. OpenDarwin and PureDarwin are efforts that
bolt on open source tools, X11 and desktop environments on top of Darwin. The
result is an open source desktop like FreeBSD or some Linux distro. Then it
turns out that the macOS kernel is not really a killer feature of anything,
and if you're looking at an open source desktop you'd better run FreeBSD or a
Linux distro anyway.

Technically, PureDarwin is binary compatible with macOS. You can take the
macOS version of, say, tar or grep, and it will run on PureDarwin. Any command
line utility that doesn't integrate with macOS specific frameworks (i.e. all
the stuff they import from FreeBSD, stuff from MacPorts) will probably work.
That's not very interesting though. All that stuff is there on Linux and
FreeBSD too.

Your Quora link gives some big time and team requirements for this to happen,
but it also touches on the fact that there's really no business model and lots
of legal risks involved. At this point, I don't think an open source clone of
macOS is ever going to happen. If we're going to get something that's close,
it's not going to be based on the Darwin kernel, but something in the
direction of Darling [1].

[1]: [https://www.darlinghq.org/](https://www.darlinghq.org/)

~~~
wool_gather
There's already a Cocoa clone in GNUStep:
[http://www.gnustep.org/index.html](http://www.gnustep.org/index.html)

~~~
DCKing
People always point to GNUStep. But Cocoa is just a fraction of the frameworks
you need on macOS, and GNUStep only implements a fraction of Cocoa. There's a
reason Darling is just beginning to run graphical apps - nearly all the work
is yet to be done.

~~~
wool_gather
Fair enough; I admit I've never tried using it, just browsed their docs and
repo.

------
asiachick
Copying files to my iDevice seems entirely broken in Catalina. not that it was
all puppies and unicorns in itunes but it's gotten worse.

Devices don't show up in the finder. Devices do show up but no info is shown.
Devices physically plugged in don't show up. Devices do show up but files tab
is empty.

When it does work there is no indication it's working. Drag a file to an app
and ... nothing, 100% silent. No copy progress bar, no spinner, no indication
what-so-ever that it is or is not working.

~~~
drukenemo
That’s a massive issue for me too. I used iTunes to transform audio files into
a podcast format and play it in the Podcast app. Now I have to do it via
iTunes for Windows. It works, but the files disappear after a few days from my
iPhone. A complete mess.

~~~
jbverschoor
Deezer actually has a decent interface and has music, podcasts and radio
streams

------
chadlavi
I don't get all the static over this. I've been using Catalina since the betas
and it's been fine the whole time.

~~~
ohithereyou
You must not develop anything in Perl 5 because I can't get a single Perl 5
version after 5.26.1 to compile through perlbrew - at least one if not
multiple tests fail.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
I'm not saying that yours is not a valid data point, but "developing in perl"
strikes me as likely to be a fairly tiny subset even of developers in general.

~~~
ohithereyou
Fair. Catalina is the last version of macOS that I will run. I will move my
mac mini to Linux after Catalina loses security support, should it live that
long, or I'll replace it with a NUC running Linux if it doesnt.

------
LeoTinnitus
I had to boot into safe mode to log in to iCloud, to get an auth code from a
device I removed months ago, just to remove the notification flag that said I
needed to log in to use certain apps.

I don't get how they can keep making buggy OS upgrades like this. I mean is
the wealthiest company in the world too cheap to hire a good QA team? Or do
they just assume those who bitch on their forums are their QA team?

------
noctilux
I don't think anyone has mentioned yet that wine doesn't work yet on Catalina.
Until that's fixed I'm staying with Mojave.

~~~
krackers
Codeweavers has this working with their professional Crossover app. I recall
it requiring some hacky tricks and a special compiler for the shimming, so
there's been some issues trying to upstream the changes.

~~~
kristiandupont
I am using the crossover app now and it works but it feels painfully slow
compared to running Wine. Not sure exactly why, I am running a very simple
text editor.

------
jbj
I upgraded my MBP (late 2013 edition) 10 weeks ago. I have experienced more
forced software (mac news and some siri stuff) Additionally the Microsoft
office installation I had with a valid license is no longer functional, and
was "upgraded" to MS office 365, which is a subscription based model that
seems to run online rather than locally.

I refuse to pay for the upgrade, and just use Libre Office now.

Further more I am looking into best compatible linux system to run on the
hardware.

So far I have read that the cinnamon based manjaro linux should be reasonable.

~~~
mnm1
I'm sorry. I have a late 2013 mbpro too with Linux on it. Frankly, it's
terrible. It doesn't sleep. Connecting thunderbolt monitors can only be done
before booting. The os has needed to be reinstalled at least once when it ran
out of battery. Nowadays, no external monitors work at all, not even display
port. Brightness cannot be controlled. Lately redshift has stopped working.
It's been a nightmare.

Linux on laptops is like osx on any machine. It only runs on Linux hardware
well from what I hear. I'm quite skeptical of that even given my previous
experiences running it.

I'm currently considering an xps 15 as I had ordered a Lenovo p1 and after
almost two months they still haven't shipped it. Cancelled that garbage. The
laptop space in 2020 is frankly shit, way worse than it was in 2014. It's
devolved. Microsoft doesn't even make an os anymore, just malware that goes by
the name "Windows" so there is literally no alternative for people who refuse
to use such malware. Apple, Lenovo, Dell, or some crappy (hw wise) clevo Linux
laptop like the system 76s. Maybe it's time to go back to a desktop as
technology keeps devolving.

~~~
jbj
may I ask which distros you have tried? From investigating the arch wiki,
there is a bit info on the graphics:
[https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/MacBookPro11,x#Graphics](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/MacBookPro11,x#Graphics)

I have too considered system76 as well as lenovo t480, so far the mac can
still do the work I need.

~~~
mnm1
(K)ubuntu, mint, manjaro, and a few others I don't remember. I went through a
whole slew of them and didn't find one that was stable, not even mint. One of
the issues is that problems are intermittent and start without any obvious
cause. One day the external monitor works, the next day it doesn't. Etc. This
is a huge issue when the problem hits six months after purchase and the only
solution is to reinstall. I do remember kubuntu used to be stable back around
2007 or so but that was a different era. In 2010, it made it to about six
months before the x wouldn't boot anymore after I changed the title bar color
or something like that. On my current iteration on the mbpro, I've gotten
about 4 months of use out of it after it failed within the first week. Often
just changing something minor like the display manager's wallpaper will kill
the entire desktop environment. In no case was there an actual kernel crash.
It's always the gui. And it doesn't seem to matter what desktop environment
runs. None that I've tried have been stable.

------
chmaynard
This post seems like a sensible and fair summary of the current situation for
users who can't upgrade yet. There's also a group of users (myself included)
who don't _want_ to upgrade. In my case, I'm very familiar with iTunes and I
don't want to switch to a new, untested music app with a different UI.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
This just shows you can't please everybody, iTunes has to be the most
complained about piece of software from Apple.

~~~
ValentineC
> _iTunes has to be the most complained about piece of software from Apple_

Apple seems to have moved most of the iOS maintenance functionality from
iTunes over to iOS itself.

Personally, I have an iCloud storage plan, and I don't use iTunes regularly
anymore except when upgrading phones.

------
armitron
Since I need 32bit support and VMs are not option due to no HW acceleration
and overall shitty experience (I can’t help but blame Apple for that too)
Mojave will be the last macOS version I run before I make the switch to
FreeBSD in a few years.

~~~
jki275
What is the issue with VMs? I develop using them all the time - I’ve got at
least five VMs (Linux, BSD, and Windows) loaded on my MBP right now and use
three of them constantly.

~~~
armitron
Running macOS in a VM is highly problematic.

~~~
jki275
The terms of service prohibit doing so on other than a Mac, so it’s generally
unsupported on other platforms - maybe I misunderstood.

------
kirstenbirgit
Only real bug that annoys me in Catalina is the OS switching around the
external screens when I dock my MacBook. I have 2 monitors connected, and
almost every morning, after docking, I have to go into System Preferences and
drag them around. Very annoying, but it's a bug that's been there for years.

~~~
tbrock
You are probably swapping which cord goes in which port.

This world flawlessly for me.

~~~
Rebelgecko
I have the same problem as OP and I only use one USB port for my two monitors

~~~
tbrock
Maybe daisy chaining is the problem then? It has something to do with the
order the devices are enumerated.

------
jillesvangurp
I've updated my mac book pro but not my imac. I use my imac mainly for
browsing & light gaming and I'm not too eager to deal with some games not
working anymore. And since I can't really tell any meaningful difference
between my mac book pro and imac in terms of OS experience, I'm pretty
confident that the upgrade adds no value whatsoever for me. Apple seems to
have mostly done some security tweaks that are amazingly annoying, some window
dressing in terms of UI that I mostly don't notice and lots of tweaks to bits
of software that come with the OS that I never use. I'll probably do the
upgrade eventually but I'm getting less and less out of these yearly upgrades.

I've actually been considering switching the imac to linux but it seems to be
a bit of a hassle in terms of hardware support. I booted it once from a usb
stick but that messed up my bt keyboard/trackpad pairing so recovering from
that was a bit of a PITA.

------
RedComet
It's junk from my perspective. No 32 bit apps means I can't run tools I need,
particularly via Wine.

------
joshstrange
I just can't stomach all the issues I know I'll run into for getting so
little. I am very frustrated that I've lost access to my reminders (which I
actually use/used a lot) because my phone updated and now my desktop OS can't
see the "new" reminders. Unfortunately I'm not aware of another todo/reminder
app that can "park" notifications on the iOS lockscreen so that they don't go
away until I do them or reschedule them so I'm kind of stuck...

------
Razengan
Since WWDC 2019, I have ran into at least one bug almost every day in Apple’s
software and services. I wish that was an exaggeration.

I’ve always been a big proponent of Apple, and they’re still better than the
alternatives for me, but I can’t recommend Apple to a new user until there’s a
noticeable improvement in their quality control.

~~~
mrzool
Or until they just slow it down a little... nobody needs a major OS release
with 20 shiny new features every year. We need quality and stability.

------
someonehere
I still think there’s too much chatter, but it seems to have calmed down.

Where I work we turned on the ability for people to upgrade now. Before it was
dodgy with all the pop up requests that were overwhelming. It seems to be a
non issue in 10.15.2 and later.

I haven’t really come across anything that impedes our workflow at work.

------
kup0
As an iMac user for years, I've lately considered the idea of either a
hackintosh or just giving up on MacOS completely.

I'm ready to upgrade to a new Apple desktop, and none of the options are even
remotely enticing for the amount of money they require.

I just don't like the state of things anymore and 99.9% of what I do doesn't
need MacOS. Though there is some investment into the ecosystem that will hurt
a bit.

Would have to repurchase Serif products on Windows. As much as I enjoy Linux
from time to time, I don't know that I could see myself moving to it full-time

~~~
djitz
Unless things have drastically changed in the last 2 years, any MacOS update
on a hackintosh is an absolute shitshow

~~~
kup0
I think things have changed some with using OpenCore now instead of the older
system. It does take more initial setup but from what I've heard it's a bit
more resilient when it comes to updates.

I'd still be scared of an update completely borking everything though...

------
why-oh-why
I didn’t upgrade: I created a new volume and installed a fresh Catalina on it.
Honestly it’s been working great for me and the battery life increased
(probably because my old install was… uhm… dusty)

~~~
GreenJelloShot
Yeah, I do this every time there is a major OS update and it saves me a lot of
hassle. It also forces me to re-evaluate everything I had previously
installed. Usually I end up with a much cleaner, smaller, and more optimized
image. It also trains me to get very comfortable testing backups and restores
and knowing how to quickly recover from any problems.

------
olliej
Current Catalina is a great upgrade, if you’re running an earlier version of
it :)

More seriously at this point most of the annoying issues seem to have gone
away.

The lack of 32bit still prevents me from playing a few games, but I will
continue to blame those developers rather than Apple - OSX has only supported
64bit platforms for a decade, there’s no excuse for any new software having
been 32bit only in the last 5 years at least.

------
gherkinnn
Have been using it since beta. Mostly behaved well enough, but bugs mounted
over time. A clean install fixed them all. Especially annoying was it fucking
around with iCloud. Will be the last beta I try.

Running two Catalina machines, I feel confident in saying that it is now a
solid setup.

It is of course a disgrace that it took em 6 months to stabilise the OS.

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LilBytes
PAM auth w/ YubiKey and I assume other cards is still broken too.

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pier25
I have no intention to upgrade any of my Macs to Catalina and neither do any
of the Mac users I know. Even hardcore Apple fans will remain for the time
being on Mojave.

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akerro
Yes, Tomcat has been used on production for a few years at least.

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Akababa
Works fine for me developing on PyCharm on a new MBA. But on the other hand, I
haven't used pre-10.15 macOS so I might be blind to some of the pain points of
upgrading.

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buu700
The regular kernel panics (multiple times daily) on my 2015 MBP are pretty
annoying. I would recommend sticking with Mojave for now.

~~~
hellofunk
What is the symptom in the operating system that you notice that means it is
having a kernel panic?

~~~
buu700
Essentially the same thing as a BSOD: [https://macpaw.com/how-to/fix-kernel-
panic-on-macos](https://macpaw.com/how-to/fix-kernel-panic-on-macos)

~~~
hellofunk
Interesting, I’ve never in my life seen this on any of the macs I’ve had,
including one I have now with Catalina. (2015 MBp)

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krisgenre
I am still on a 13' inch early 2015 MacBook Pro (128 GB SSD). Mojave already
takes up 50 gb, is it worth upgrading to Catalina?

~~~
tacheiordache
I’d wait. It may worthwile be when things are fixed and alternatives for
things that no longer work pop up

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FraKtus
I spent the week-time trying it. I did install it on a USB drive. I started
from a Carbon Copy Cloned version of my main OS that I updated. I had to give
up, I tried to update a project I am working on and after a 1-hour git pull
would not finish even if there were only a few files to update. Everything
takes forever even if the CPU is almost idle, I suppose trying it on an
external USB drive is a big issue even if I did that in the past with other
macOS versions...

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Ididntdothis
It seems alright. I can't forgive them what they did to audiobooks in itunes
though...

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m3kw9
Works very well here and I use it for work

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agent_simon
I had to downgrade from Catalina back to Mojave on my 2016 MacBook 15 TB, for
some reason the browsers (Safari, Chrome) would stop responding to keyboard at
all after a few hours in Catalina.

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asdff
I'm holding out until sim city 4 is finally ported.

