
Mac OS Catalina: more trouble than it’s worth - ttepasse
http://morrick.me/archives/8599
======
Razengan
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.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
I got to say, my Windows 10 PC at work, with an 8 year old CPU, has been _rock
fucking solid_.

So has my 2013 MBPr at home.

~~~
Pokepokalypse
Seems to me 2013 was the real sweet-spot for MBP.

I still use mine almost every single day. It's a beast, and has been very
reliable. Keyboard is WAY nicer to type on than the current generation. It's a
little thicker and heavier, and lacks USB-c ports, but it's still damn fine.

~~~
madaxe_again
Yup. Still on my pimped-out 2013 MBP. Still has plenty of horses, and the only
things that have failed were a fan ((cats & cigarettes) simple replacement),
and the power lead wore through.

Super reliable machine, still relevant performance-wise.

I plan on using it until it disintegrates.

Edit: I wonder if apple regret making these machines. They seem like a failure
of planned obsolescence - at least, until new releases of OS X stop supporting
them, which will probably be the next release, looking at the current horizon.
Anyway. Totally broke the upgrade cycle for me - I have grown rather fond of
my (t)rusty steed. My _mother_ upgrades more often than I do, usually because
she’s left every process open and running, and the machine is slow, and
therefore she thinks she needs a new one.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
I bought my mum a MacBook Pro, I honestly can't remember what year or which
CPU. She told me last week she had someone put a new battery in it and an SSD
to replace the spinning disk. She's still well happy with it.

It's a good point about the planned obsolescence: I've dropped this machine so
many times it doesn't quite close properly, the aluminium around the top of
both USB ports and the HDMI port are deformed, I've had to clean metal
particles out of the MagSafe2 connector many times, I work in a metal
fabrication workshop so metal particles follow me everywhere.

Six year old machine still in reasonably good condition and works fine.

------
jwr
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).

~~~
skohan
I'm in the same situation with Aperture. It's not only a problem because of
the issue you describe with losing the product of my prior work, but it's not
clear what the migration target would be. The most obvious alternative is
Lightroom, but this would mean trading a tool I have been using happily for
free for 7 years for a 20EUR/month subscription service I would have to
maintain the rest of my digital life.

My current solution is just to keep a bootable Mojave volume around, but long
term I don't know.

~~~
sneak
You can always just pirate Lightroom (LR Classic, that is—the non-cloud-
dependent one). It’s not particularly difficult, and sidesteps the
subscription lock-in nicely.

~~~
c256
The article mentions that the author tried Lightroom, twice, in case the newer
version was a better fit.

------
amiantos
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".

~~~
morrick
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
Alternative possibility: you just got old.

In all seriousness, older people are more opposed to UI and other types of
change.

~~~
johnisgood
He is evidently NOT opposed to changes, read these quotes from him:

> I don't like change when it unnecessarily breaks things that used to work
> just fine.

> 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.

He is opposed to changes that 1) break things that used to work fine, 2) do
not make him work better, and so on, you get the idea. If those changes make
him work better, or when the advantages clearly outweigh the downsides, and
when improvements are noticeable and thoughtfully implemented, then he is all
in favor of those changes, i.e. not opposed to changes in general, just some
changes that do not meet some criteria.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _He is opposed to changes that 1) break things that used to work fine_

The arguments for building emulators into the OS are weak. A minority of users
running old operating systems in VMs while the majority get a sleeker, better
maintained and thus hopefully more secure OS. That is a fair tradeoff.

Pulling native 32-bit support may be 2019’s laptop-with-no-disk-drive drama.

~~~
swish_bob
People who've been using an OS for a fairly long time tend to accumulate
applications. Many of them will have been 32-bit at the point they got them.
Many of them still will be, or will be fairly awkward to update. While I'm
happy I should be able to find 64 bit versions of everything I want to
upgrade, I'm confident I wouldn't be able to talk my mother through it on the
phone.

It's been flagged that it's coming for a while, but _at best_ it's a massive
ballache for an awful lot of customers. Apple are going to need to provide me
with a pretty compelling reason to persuade me to willingly undergo that pain
...

------
mark_l_watson
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.

~~~
curt15
>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?

~~~
newnewpdro
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.

~~~
jolmg
> 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.

What are you talking about? You're saying that a random website is given
unrestricted file access to everything the user can access. Can you back that
up with a concrete example or a link explaining the issue or something?

~~~
newnewpdro
All it takes is a browser exploit.

We've had plenty of browser exploits for any given browser, sandboxing the
entire program a la containers is the most effective mitigation outside of
running it in a dedicated vm.

~~~
jolmg
All it takes is a browser exploit, in _any_ OS.

What does the possible existence of exploits have to do with macOS being more
secure than Linux? macOS can also have exploits.

I don't understand where your claim that there's a specific risk of
unrestrained file access to websites comes from. In my eyes, saying that it
could be true because exploits could exist nullifies everything you said.

You could apply that argument to everything: There is a substantial risk in
iPhones giving websites unrestrained access to making phone calls on your
behalf because all it takes is an exploit.

~~~
newnewpdro
Different OSes have different sandboxing capabilities.

Until relatively recently, Linux had effectively _none_ , just chroot, and
selinux which almost everyone disabled for a decade.

The point, which you seem to be missing, is that with generalized sandboxing
tools like containers, you can isolate _any_ application to limit the
potential damage of application exploits.

It's a form of defense in depth. We must assume browsers have many bugs and
are exploitable. Ok, from that perspective, what do we do to safely access
untrusted input (the entire internet) with the browser on a computer we also
do things like banking, private communications, and access privileged servers
from? We run it in either a dedicated VM or more recently, we use sandboxing
technologies like containers.

I don't understand why this is so difficult for you to grok.

~~~
curt15
>Until relatively recently, Linux has effectively none, just chroot, and
selinux which almost everyone disabled for a decade.

Chrome has long used several Linux sandboxing features, namely user namespaces
and seccomp-bpf [1].

[1]
[https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src.git/+/master/...](https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src.git/+/master/docs/linux_sandboxing.md)

~~~
newnewpdro
Chrome was also found to be secretly downloading binary blobs for execution,
we should not be trusting Chrome's sandboxing exclusively to protect us from
the internet, we can't even trust Chrome itself. [0]

In-browser sandboxing is more for attempting to isolate tabs from accessing
one another's state. It can't be relied upon exclusively for protecting the
larger host from the browser itself.

One should really put the entire browser in a sandbox where it can only access
data and functionality necessary for its operation. Nothing more.

How one achieves that, what tools is at their disposal, is greatly OS-
dependent and that's the core of my point. On Linux systems, the out-of-box
configuration for most distros is to just run the browser on the host with no
sandboxing. It's not sufficient.

Flatpak is one of the active efforts to fix this. If you run firefox or chrome
from a flatpak, it will be run in isolation, and accessing external host
resources will be done in a controlled fashion via portals or explicitly
enumerated mounts in the manifest.

As mentioned elsewhere, I used firejail in the past but now prefer systemd-
nspawn containers, often ephemeral ones that are spun up and thrown away per
browser session.

[0]
[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/06/17/debian_chromium_hub...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/06/17/debian_chromium_hubbub/)

------
teekert
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.

~~~
m0xte
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.

~~~
0x0
Google Picasa for Mac (the desktop app, now discontinued), was great for that.
Keep .jpgs in folders, and use picasa to search and browse on top of that.
Seeing at it seems to be a 32bit app, I'll be holding on to Mojave for much
longer than usual.

------
ladzoppelin
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
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/...](https://www.pro-tools-expert.com/production-
expert-1/2019/9/18/brands-are-already-issuing-warnings-about-not-upgrading-to-
macos-catalina)

------
namesbc
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
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.

~~~
kevingadd
How does it count as a transition if everything just breaks? Them giving you
warning doesn't make it a transition, it's just an EOL with advanced notice. A
transition implies that you're moving from one working state to another, or
replacing the old thing with a new one. How am I supposed to replace
unmaintained/old software when there's no new 64-bit, notarized version of it?

~~~
dkonofalski
>How am I supposed to replace unmaintained/old software

You're not supposed to. The fault lies with the developers of these apps that
knew the change was coming and didn't do anything about it.

------
woutr_be
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.

~~~
kranner
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.

~~~
AhtiK
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
My bad, it was indeed a 2016 model.

------
asperous
"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.

~~~
imron
> 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
There is no evidence, and no reason to believe, that the UI changes in Mail
are related to reports of data loss.

~~~
imron
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
> 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!

------
0000011111
"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?

------
birdyrooster
"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

~~~
semiotagonal
> 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.

------
yodsanklai
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
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.

------
tebruno99
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.

------
morrick
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."

~~~
rimliu
Despite all this wall of text the one thing voids everything: you haven't even
tried the new OS. And thinking that "knowing a thing or two about UI" makes
you better than Apple… well, I'll leave it here. "Apple is going downhill
since Steve Jobs" and "this is a buggiest (i)OS( X) ever" got old years ago.

Just look up comment after any major upgrade of OS X. It will be a deja-vu.
People compare the last x.x.xx release with tons of bugfixes to the y.0.00 and
are so shocked there are bugs. Well, duh.

------
whalesalad
> 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
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
>> 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.

------
komoreba
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
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
I see! Maybe because I wasn’t running any 32-bit applications, it was rather
seamless for me.

~~~
sjwright
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.

------
jyrkesh
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
> insisted on always reformatting as exFAT, in spite of Win10's 4+ GB .wim
> files

exFAT doesn't have a 4gb limitation like FAT32

------
vinay_ys
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
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
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.

------
lostgame
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
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.

~~~
renaudg
Thanks. This should be the top comment for every Catalina rant posted here.

~~~
markmark
As a user, why would I care how inconvenient it is for a trillion dollar
company to support their software?

~~~
dkonofalski
It's not their software that's breaking. It's software that hasn't been
updated that's breaking.

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

~~~
rimliu
Author did not even try it. He knows nothing about how stable it is.

------
Ididntdothis
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.

~~~
chmaynard
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
iTunes was a bloated mess, I'm glad to see the back of it.

------
jtms
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.

------
Nicci00
Selling a computer with spinning rust as main drive in 2017 is extremely
shameful.

~~~
oneplane
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
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
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.

------
SeanLuke
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
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.

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

------
benburleson
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!

------
jinonoel
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

------
fitzroy
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.

------
kkylin
\- 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
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.

------
prepend
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
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
> 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.

------
dmix
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.

------
Grustaf
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.

------
Pokepokalypse
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.

------
junkrat001
> 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

------
thesquib
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
> _That 's pretty much all Apple seems to do each release._

So, they're doing what you want?

------
gorgoiler
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
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
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!

------
twarge
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
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.

------
diminoten
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.

------
dkonofalski
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.

~~~
semiotagonal
> That reads less like a reasonable, well-thought breakdown and more like a
> whiny diatribe coming from an entitled teenager.

A customer is _legitimately entitled_ to upgrades that aren't actually
downgrades.

> Apple isn't forcing anyone to upgrade at all.

> Just don't act surprised and attacked when it doesn't work anymore years
> from now.

Well... if Apple isn't forcing people to upgrade now, but will later, then
there's still grounds for complaint.

An unhappy customer _always has the right_ , nay, _duty_ , to publicly
complain until the business changes its behavior.

~~~
dkonofalski
>legitimately entitled

No, they are not. This isn't an upgrade to their existing OS like a patch
release. This is a new OS completely and developers were all warned years in
advance that Catalina would drop 32-bit support. This is not a downgrade in
the slightest.

>but will later

I have a Mac Mini from 2005 that still runs MacOS Leopard just as well as the
day I bought it. I can't install all the latest, greatest software on it and I
can't even access every website anymore (TLS updates and all that) but it
still functions as good, if not better, than it did when I first bought it and
runs all the software that's still installed on it.

No MacOS update has ever been forced or mandatory. Ever.

The customer is _not_ always right but I'm pretty sure offering an OS upgrade
is doing right by the customer considering it doesn't cost anything and, for
most people, adds far more than it takes away and is, again, _optional_.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
There's a lot of space in between "Company X has wronged me" and "I'm happy
with company X". I feel very _let down_ by Apple right now, and I sense the
author does too. As the saying goes: I'm not angry, just disappointed.

The fact that macOS updates are optional, and you can downgrade at any time,
really does help a great deal here. However, Apple's three years of security
updates per release isn't much.

~~~
dkonofalski
>I feel very let down by Apple right now

And that is _totally fine_ for you to feel that way. You are not, however,
entitled to some kind of reparation for that and, if you wrote a diatribe that
was comparable to the OP, I would also say that you're making a mountain out
of a molehill.

Something being disappointing to you, individually, does not make it a massive
failure for everyone.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
> You are not, however, entitled to some kind of reparation for that

Did you get the sense the author feels "entitled to some kind of reparation"?
That's not a sentiment I came away with at all.

------
bastardoperator
Then switch or don't upgrade. For all the bash purist you're gonna need this:

export BASH_SILENCE_DEPRECATION_WARNING=1

~~~
saagarjha
I just install a recent version of bash from MacPorts instead of relying on
the one that ships with the system.

~~~
bastardoperator
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
The message is coming from /bin/bash, no? I have /opt/local/bin/bash set as my
login shell, so I never see it.

------
wrnr
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.

------
deanclatworthy
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.

------
mrbonner
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
Release candance is once per year, your company is just being conservative.

------
the_solenoid
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)

------
sheinsheish
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
Are you sure “power naps” isn’t enabled? It’s in your power panel.

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

~~~
Wowfunhappy
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.

------
fulldecent2
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.

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

------
ggm
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.

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

------
alphabettsy
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
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
Aperture is a 64 bit app. Still doesn't work, though.

------
nicky0
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
I'd prefer if more people read my 3,300 words and actually understood my
point. :-)

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

~~~
threeseed
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
> _Apple makes more margins on Mac hardware_

Maybe but sells _a lot_ more iOS units.

------
ms013
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
> _Nobody is forcing people to upgrade_

Except if you want the latest Xcode version.

