
macOS Catalina 10.15.5 - simjue
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210642#macos10155
======
MperorM
Since Catalina I have been getting daily freezes, where the entire operating
system locks up. I can still move the cursor around and audio keeps playing as
well, but everything else is completely frozen.

Once in a while the freeze lasts so long the computer crashes resulting in a
crash report:

Termination Reason: WATCHDOG, [0x1] monitoring timed out for service

Termination Details: WATCHDOG, checkin with service: WindowServer returned not
alive with context:

unresponsive work processor(s): WindowServer main thread

I am at my wits end to what can be causing this. Is anyone else experiencing
similar freezes?

~~~
2OEH8eoCRo0
Why do you guys put up with this? Do you like pain?

Edit: I'm not trying to troll, I genuinely want to know why people put up with
this. I bounce between Linux and Windows and have no loyalty to either of
them. I've settled on Windows with WSL2 on my desktop but I'm tempted again to
install the new Fedora on my Thinkpad. Is it the lock in? With my hardware I
can run anything I want except for macOS. Once you buy Apple hardware it seems
incredibly difficult to go elsewhere.

~~~
rayiner
I've got a brand-new 2019 16" and am dealing with the widespread crashes on
wake from sleep. Honestly, it's a harder decision to send it back than you
might think, for several reasons:

1) The hardware quality of other OEMs is bad too. Lenovo has really gone
downhill. I sold my maxed-out X1 Carbon 7th Gen, which in less than a year: a)
came with an LTE card that never worked for more than an hour at a time; b)
had the display bezel start peeling off (it's a sticker!); c) developed a
bunch of dead pixels; d) started randomly locking up; e) had weird issues with
power usage, where some service related to the touchpad would go crazy and
start using all the CPU.

2) Other laptop makers make design choices and trade-offs that I find
unacceptable. For me, the 16" MBP is the perfect balance of power, weight, and
battery life. It compromises by using a 3K screen instead of a 4K screen, and
gets 11+ hours of light usage. Alternatives like the XPS 15 or Lenovo X1
Extreme force you to choose between an FHD panel and good battery life, or a
4K panel and substantially shorter battery life. The Surface Laptop 15" uses a
15W ultra-mobile processor in a machine that runs $2,800 when configured with
32GB of RAM, and has a battery half the size of the one in the MBP 16". Many
15" laptop vendors include a numeric keypad, which is a deal-breaker for me
because it forces you to type at an angle to keep your hands centered in front
of you when in the home position.

3) Touchpad and high-DPI scaling.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
Have you considered keeping the Macbook and running Bootcamp full time?

(Or Linux, but I know Linux was in a bad state on new Macbooks as of fairly
recently, don’t know if it has gotten better.)

~~~
asdff
Bootcamp drivers are in a sorry state. Expect battery life, performance,
trackpad, display to all tank.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
I was recently using Bootcamp on a relative's 2020 Macbook Air, and I was
generally impressed with how well everything worked. Especially the Trackpad,
which I remembered being a problem under Bootcamp many years ago.

If I didn't dislike Windows so much, I thought I could see myself using that
setup full time.

I didn't look at battery life though.

~~~
72deluxe
Even my old MacBook Pro 2012 in BootCamp is very poor under BootCamp. Getting
the right drivers for it is the worst bit because who knows whether I should
be using Bootcamp 5 or 6? The display brightness and volume keys no longer
work. The discrete GPU is used all the time so battery life is very bad.

The touchpad works fine though!

~~~
Wowfunhappy
> Getting the right drivers for it is the worst bit because who knows whether
> I should be using Bootcamp 5 or 6

I mean, I'd use whatever the heck Bootcamp Assistant downloads for me
automatically. I don't think I've ever thought about Bootcamp versions.

Never had issues with brightness and volume keys either...

~~~
72deluxe
What magic do I need to perform to do this? It worked and then stopped working
after a Windows 10 update and Bootcamp 5 (for my 2012 mac) doesn't know about
Windows 10 drivers or something...

------
m1h4
Still having a (at least one of the multiple different) kernel panic during
sleep:

panic(cpu 0 caller 0xffffff801e29169c): Sleep transition timed out after 180
seconds while calling power state change callbacks. Suspected bundle:
com.apple.iokit.IOGraphicsFamily. Thread 0x2754.

Ever since moving to a brand new 16" MBP there isn't a day that passes wihout
me being welcomed by the crash report dialog…

~~~
emrikol
I have the same. Every day. I've done a lot of searching, and some people
think that certain external monitors might be "the issue"\--which I use. It
didn't seem to be an issue before Catalina though.

~~~
Wintamute
Hmm, same for me perhaps. New MBP 16 and Catalina connected to a external
monitor via USB-C (a HP Z27 4K UHD).

If I leave it to sleep for a long duration, then it panics when waking from
sleep and just black screens for a good few minutes, then turns on the fans
full blast for like 2 seconds and reboots.

I've taken to just shutting down completely when finishing work and not
letting sleep.

~~~
Foivos
I have the same monitor and connect over usb-c with a 2018 13' MBP running
10.15.4. I have not experienced any such issue, even though Catalina broke
several other things.

In my case, if I use the usb-c port of the monitor to connect the ethernet
adaptor, it works for a few minutes and then drops all the packets. This was
never an issue before Catalina or with a windows machine.

Another weird issue that I have with this monitor and Mac OS (not only
Catalina) is related to the Microsoft sculpt ergonomic keyboard receiver, when
plugged to one of the USB ports of the monitor. If I unplug a the MBP and
connect a windows machine to the monitor, when I connect the MBP again, there
is a >50% chance the receiver will not be recognised. Plugging and unplugging
does not work. I have to do a restart of the MBP.

The above make it very annoying when I have to switch laptops. Sometimes I
have to work on 3 machines at the same time, which by coincidence run 3
different operating systems (Win 10, ubuntu and mac). The reason I got this
monitor is mostly for the build in hub. If it worked properly, I would just
plug everything on the monitor and I would only need to plug the usb-C to the
laptop and be ready to go. Sometimes it does work and I feel like I am in the
future, using a dock that can support every device, with just one universal
cable. Now I often have to plug and plug things directly at the laptops.

One last thing for people who might consider a similar set up. Due to USB
limitations, if you plug any storage device on the monitor and the monitor is
at 4k@60Hz, you are limited to USB2 speeds.

------
diimdeep
> The battery health management feature in macOS 10.15.5 is designed to
> improve your battery's lifespan by reducing the rate at which it chemically
> ages. The feature does this by monitoring your battery's temperature history
> and its charging patterns.

> Based on the measurements that it collects, battery health management may
> reduce your battery's maximum charge when in this mode. This happens as
> needed to ensure that your battery charges to a level that's optimized for
> your usage—reducing wear on the battery, and slowing its chemical aging.

Sound great. I hope this means no more swollen batteries.
[https://www.ifixit.com/Wiki/What_to_do_with_a_swollen_batter...](https://www.ifixit.com/Wiki/What_to_do_with_a_swollen_battery)
[https://lepageblog.wordpress.com/2011/11/24/how-to-fix-a-
swo...](https://lepageblog.wordpress.com/2011/11/24/how-to-fix-a-swollen-
macbook-battery/)

~~~
sroussey
I just had a MBP fixed (it was quick!) due to it swollen up one day. It would
not lie down flat on a table and the trackpad was useless. Obviously could not
close the screen either. How common is this?

~~~
grishka
I've had this exact thing happen with my 2012 15" retina. Won't lay down flat
and clicking the trackpad required pressing really hard. Had the battery
replaced, works like new now — on Mojave, I'm not updating to the dumpster
fire that is Catalina.

------
darkteflon
> Major new releases of macOS are no longer hidden when using the
> softwareupdate(8) command with the --ignore flag. This change also affects
> macOS Mojave and macOS High Sierra after installing Security Update
> 2020-003.

As a Mojave user, not happy about this.

~~~
tempodox
I was just about to let the 2020-003 Security Update run on Mojave, but after
this warning I will leave that well alone.

Apple had a great OS once, but now they are losing me more with each update.
Can't buy new Mac HW either any more, since it will be systematically unable
to run the 32-bit SW I need. Apple forcing decades-long users off their
platform to Windoze and Linux is just bizarre.

~~~
orf
Not installing security updates with large numbers of pretty critical fixes[1]
doesn't sound too smart to me.

1\. [https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211170](https://support.apple.com/en-
us/HT211170)

~~~
apple4ever
Putting in a user hostile feature in a security update, leading to people to
not update, doesn't sound too smart to me.

~~~
orf
Why? Catalina has lots of security improvements so it's a net positive for
security if more people upgrade.

~~~
tempodox
But it's a net minus for usability that it can't run 32-bit software any more.
That makes it a no-go for some of us, and Apple knows that, so all the nagging
to “upgrade” is pointless anyway.

~~~
orf
So because 0.5% of people have some dodgy 32-bit software that they cannot or
have not updated, Apple should just not bother trying to make the rest 99.5%
of people update?

Doesn't seem smart.

~~~
tempodox
I didn't say that. But taking away the option to explicitly tell the OS to
stop nagging me is still a user-hostile move.

So, you are saying that all 32-bit software is by definition “dodgy”? But
let's break it off here since I realize that disagreeing with you may not seem
smart.

------
ehsanullahjan
My MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2019) was having kernel panics multiple times a day
after having been asleep for extend periods. This was extremely annoying, as
you can imagine. I’m happy to report that the Catalina 10.15.5 update fixes
the kernel panics for me.

The issue I experienced has been well documented
[here]([https://mrmacintosh.com/10-15-4-update-wake-from-sleep-
kerne...](https://mrmacintosh.com/10-15-4-update-wake-from-sleep-kernel-panic-
in-16-mbpro-2019)) and elsewhere on the web.

I use my MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2019) with a CalDigit TS3 Plus Dock and LG 32”
4K monitor. It’s worth noting that using the computer undocked never gave me
any problems.

~~~
perardi
_Thank you_ for documenting this. I have been getting exactly this kernel
panic dump on my 16-inch MacBook Pro, and it's good to know I'm not sitting on
a lemon.

(Another lemon. My first one was absolutely a lemon.)

------
therockhead
I have Catalina on a iMac Pro, a 16inch and 15 MacBook pro and for what it
worth have hit zero issues.

~~~
yedpodtrzitko
"works on my machine"

~~~
frereubu
Most of this thread is anecdata, which tends to skew heavily negative. As a
comment above says, it's difficult to tell whether these are issues at scale,
and whenever I read these complaint-heavy anecdata threads I always feel like
chipping in that I've had very few problems with my Mid-2014 MacBook Pro 15"
on all versions of MacOS that have been release since I bought it. I'm not
even sure what the purpose of threads like this is, really.

~~~
snazz
Yes. It's extremely difficult to get an idea of the scale of these problems
from these threads because they bring out a lot of +1 piggybacking ("I have
this issue too"). From there, it inevitably goes into a thread about the
demise of Apple's quality control.

Somebody should make an accurate product problems site where you can share
your issues and people can only vote on them if they legitimately have that
issue. Then it would be obvious the extent to which the problem is actually
there.

------
fossuser
The group FaceTime UI is very strange, why have several overlapping boxes
rather than just dividing the screen equally and using all of it? I know it's
like this in iOS, but I'm not sure what group video looks like in macOS
(though it sounds like it's the same based on the update text here).

It's weird because the easier thing also seems like the obvious thing, and
it's clearly better.

~~~
reaperducer
_why have several overlapping boxes rather than just dividing the screen
equally and using all of it_

It's good for smaller screens. I was on a Zoom video conference last week, and
all I could think about was how so many people who weren't allowed to/going to
speak were taking up valuable screen real estate.

~~~
psychometry
There's a setting to toggle gallery view...

~~~
applecrazy
Correct, but if you have multiple people talking at the same tome, you still
want to see all of those people, without relying on Speaker Mode to switch
between speakers for you.

------
lxgr
Battery health management sounds great!

I wish there was a way to customize this, though: Thinkpads have (on Linux)
allowed setting thresholds for "charge only when less than" or "charge only up
to" for many years now.

Given that such primitives must also exist as part of 10.15.5 now, I hope that
somebody will figure out how to modify the default behavior.

~~~
OJFord
I'd rather leave it to the OEM to determine the best setting (knowing their
batteries and charge circuitry), but have the option in OSs that run on
devices whose OEM hasn't done so.

~~~
chadlavi
on a mac those are the same thing

~~~
OJFord
That's my point - I replied to someone wanting it to be configurable on macOS;
I'm saying why, I'd rather leave it to Apple, I assume they can do a
better/more accurate job than me, but sure, it's great that you can do that on
Linux if there aren't OEM drivers available with better tuning.

------
saagarjha
Security content: [https://support.apple.com/en-
us/HT211170](https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211170)

~~~
72deluxe
Thanks, that's quite a lot of fixes.

~~~
saagarjha
I should note that this list isn't unusually long for a point release.

------
i2shar
It's crazy that even dot releases are a full 3.6G download

~~~
TheChaplain
Binary patching hasn't been a thing for years unfortunately.

Even bigger wreck on consoles these days, where an update can be 50+
gigabytes...

~~~
tomxor
> Binary patching hasn't been a thing for years unfortunately.

True, and it's fair to say binary diffs aren't worth the complexities they
introduce anymore, yet the concept of only pulling updates for individual
packages has been a thing for over two decades in the *nix world. It seems
like a poor choice for Apple to not bother making updates more discerning
while also removing binary diffs... certainly a shitty move for anyone without
a 99th percentile internet connection - then again everyone outside of that
group probably can't afford Apple products anyway.

For some perspective: 3.6 GiB is significantly larger than the downloads
required to install my entire OS from scratch, and 36 times larger than my
average weekly run of apt.

From my now outdated experience on Mac OS i'm aware they do divide things into
installer packages with some kind of receipt for version info that software
update probably probes. So I guess it must be that these packages are not very
granular.

~~~
specialist
> binary diffs aren't worth the complexities they introduce anymore

Noob question: Why are binary diffs impractical?

Is it because the (compiled) object code layout dances around too much? If
true, isn't that fixable? Meaning: make the order more stable, to minimize the
size of the diffs?

I recall a recent story/post about boosting runtime performance by optimizing
object code layout. Sorry, I can't refind that article.

If true, couldn't the internals of released code be "sorted" to better enable
binary diffings? Maybe the layout optimizer step would minimize the
variability enough without requiring a resort.

A fun experiment would be to take a series of releases, run that layout
optimizer, and then try the binary diffing again.

\--

Didn't Google publish some research, maybe 10 years back, about better binary
diffing for publishing updates? Apologies, but I sorta assumed it had become
the norm.

~~~
ttfkam
Yep, and they use Courgette for all of their Chrome/Chromium updates. It's why
no one ever sees long "Downloading update..." progress bars in that browser
anymore. 100KB binary diffs are typical. Blink (no pun intended) and you'd
miss the download.

~~~
specialist
Result! Thank you.

Skimmed the landing page, original paper. Courgette infers program's structure
for smarter diffing. My half-baked notion is somewhere in between.

~~~
rhencke
Check out IntelliJ's binary patching - it might be closer to what you want?
It's based on bsdiff.

The actual binary patching magic happens here:
[https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-
community/tree/master/...](https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-
community/tree/master/updater/src/ie/wombat/jbdiff)

------
tibbydudeza
Is reset PRAM still a thing ???.

I used to have a Mac Pro (cheesegrater) but switched back about 2 years ago
due to having a kid in college and Dell and Windows 10 were not too shabby.

Probably on my 4th Windows 10 release from the original that Dell shipped with
and it has been rather stable system.

------
karmakaze
> Battery Health Management

> • Battery health management to help maximize battery lifespan for Mac
> notebooks

> • Energy Saver preference pane now displays battery condition and recommends
> if the battery needs to be serviced

> • Option to disable battery health management <<<

Apple learned from their iOS update/iPhone slowdown faux pas.

------
Reason077
> _”Addresses an issue that may prevent password entry on the login screen”_

I’m still on Mojave 10.14.6 and this hits me from time to time, maybe once a
month or so. Very annoying bug. Great if they have finally fixed it!

~~~
ttfkam
But if you update, you'll get nagware on upgrading to Catalina. Damned if you
do...

------
azangru
Anyone using Node.js for work who has updated to Catalina here? How did it go?
I heard there were problems with node-gyp, but didn't investigate further.
Everything running smoothly now? Any gotchas?

~~~
Sayrus
I had to reinstall xcode cli tools as node-gyp couldn't compile anything after
the update. However, this is pretty straightforward and there wasn't any
gotchas.

I did not investigate the root cause so reinstalling XCode might be a bit
overkill.

~~~
holstvoogd
yeah, you have to run xcode-select --install after every update/install afaik

------
AshamedCaptain
Anybody knows what has happened that multiple manufacturers (at least Dell,
HP, Lenovo, ASUS, and now Apple) have released _all within this year_ updates
to "enhance battery health management"?

Even on devices which were otherwise out of support already.

I ponder what has happened. I didn't hear any recent stories of battery
explosions, huge battery recalls, or new regulations, yet all manufacturers
are reacting to something.

~~~
crazygringo
Just regular market competition.

One manufacturer announces a feature, other manufacturers think "oh crap, we
don't want anyone buying a competitor rather than us because of that" so they
implement it too ASAP.

I've been in a lot of product decision meetings. In my experience, there's no
quicker or more effective way to justify building a feature than "our
competitor has it".

~~~
AshamedCaptain
I don't think so:

1\. this feature does not have a lot of user visibility,

2\. in fact many laptops already allowed you to set this (e.g. Lenovo and
Dell) but it seemed regular users didn't care at all,

3\. Apple does not tend to do that, anyway (for better or worse).

------
stadeschuldt
Direct download links

macOS Catalina 10.15.5 Update:
[https://support.apple.com/kb/DL2039](https://support.apple.com/kb/DL2039)

macOS Catalina 10.15.5 Combo Update:
[https://support.apple.com/kb/DL2040](https://support.apple.com/kb/DL2040)

------
pmarreck
I've been an Apple guy since 1984 when I was 12, and Catalina has finally
pushed me to Linux for my daily driver. I'll still keep Apples around due to
Apple's mostly excellent _ecosystem_ execution, but... something has gone
missing lately

~~~
holstvoogd
Almost there too. Too much crappy deamons, too much cloud integration. And now
since a week or two my bluetooth cannot connect to my external speaker. Looks
like only a fresh install _might_ fix it...

I've already bought a linux laptop for personal use, but it is just to crappy
to use. I might just have to continue my efforts to get a proper linux distro
on my mbp.

------
api
Looking forward to seeing whether this contains a microcode or OS patch to fix
what appears to be an Ice Lake CPU bug:

[https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/JBR-2310](https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/JBR-2310)

Read the whole thing. It really appears as if there is a virtualization-
escaping CPU-crashing bug in Ice Lake (10th generation) Intel chips that was
discovered because it exclusively crashes when used with Jetbrains IDEs.

Sounds unlikely, yes, but seriously read the whole thing.

~~~
api
Self-reply: no, it apparently does not. Microcode rev is the same and the
issue is still there.

TL;DR: Jetbrains IDEs all crash on the 2020 Air, which has a 10th gen Ice Lake
CPU in it. Sometimes it brings down the OS. Doesn't happen at all on older
Macs. At first I and everyone else thought it was a MacOS or maybe graphics
driver bug.

Then the plot thickened...

I tried it in a Parallels Linux VM, and it crashed and _brought down the
entire host_. Not the VM, the host. This should not be possible.

Then someone reported that it also afflicts a Microsoft Surface model with the
same generation CPU.

So given that it escapes VM isolation and occurs on multiple OSes and
hardware, it really appears as if this is an _Intel CPU bug_ being triggered
by some exotic pattern of instructions being generated by the JVM.

I must also add that nothing else crashes on this machine. Nothing. I've run
multiple OSes in concurrent VMs, done heavy work, run GPU stress tests, and
it's rock solid... unless I fire up CLion or GoLand... then kaboom.

No I'm not the only reporter. No it's not (insert mundane thing here). Read
the whole thread I linked above.

------
naetius
While I haven't had nearly as many bad experiences with Catalina as some other
users, I am indeed starting to feel increasingly uneasy with the overall
quality of the platform, both as a user and as a developer.

I've been a Mac user since the late 2000s: the first Mac I could afford at the
time was a MacMini G4.

When I booted that machine up for the first time I was amazed by the quality
and the refinements of the platform. When I started looking digging into the
platform as a developer the feeling was exactly the same: care and refinements
were almost omnipresent in every aspect of the platform.

While bugs - and even nasty ones - have never been aliens on Mac OS X/macOS,
what I've personally started to experience in the past few years is a feeling
of neglect toward the platform.

Yes, Catalyst seems to go against this trend: its intent, though, is to ease
the porting effort of iOS applications to Mac. A certainly laudable goal.

What would probably be more laudable for Mac users and developers are: core
platform stability and quality, API stability, developer documentation
overhaul [1].

Our CI breaks every single time there's a minor macOS update and/or an Xcode
update: we're at the point where our macOS UITests (XCTest) require more
maintenance to keep working than the application itself. XCTest on macOS has
ridiculous bugs. I lost count of the radars we've opened, and the sample apps
for reduction we've sent to Apple.

At every single minor macOS upgrade, few users complain that our application
"doesn't work anymore" in certain cases. And to be exquisitely blunt: there
ain't wrong with the application itself. Rebooting after a macOS upgrade fixes
whatever event tap regression we hit in Quartz.

In general, what I'd personally like to see:

* a less "hysterical" approach to the OS would be so. much. appreciated. (eg: focus on the few important core things, keep them working)

* release when it's ready: this whole marketing driven annual release cycle is unsustainable

I do understand that the vast majority of Apple's income is not Mac related at
this point, but WTH...

[1] The whole business with documentation is amazingly summarized by this HN
post from last year:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19966135](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19966135)

[Apologies if this comment sounds a bit complaining in nature, that's not what
I meant]

~~~
reaperducer
_When I booted that machine up for the first time I was amazed by the quality
and the refinements of the platform._

And the speed of the boot process. I switched to Macs around 2000. One of the
things that struck me was how quickly Macs booted compared with Windows
machines.

Today, a Macs don't seem to have any advantage when it comes to cold booting.
Sleep, yes. But not a real boot.

------
jneplokh
> Improves performance on certain Mac models when enabling hardware
> acceleration in GPU-intensive apps such as those used for video conferencing

Any info on which specific Mac models this applies to?

~~~
dijit
Probably Skylake and up. As Skylake has very competent h265/HEVC decoding.

------
dthul
Since the last Catalina update (10.15.4) Firefox is almost unusable for me,
whereas it was buttery smooth before. There are constant multi-second freezes
and when I switch tabs I often see a gray loading screen before the content
shows up a few seconds later. Never saw that happen before. Maybe it's just a
coincidence and has nothing to do with the Catalina update, but I am
interested whether other people experience the same.

~~~
asdff
I experience this in a lot of different apps on catalina. just a brief flash
of something. Seems to have gone away in 10.15.5, but I've only had the update
for an hour.

------
dirtylowprofile
Just updated my 2012 MBP. So far still alive.

~~~
TMWNN
Same, except on Mojave. Keeping fingers crossed that 10.16 will continue
supporting 2012.

~~~
dirtylowprofile
Why are you still on Mojave? If I may ask

~~~
have_faith
Still on Mojave on my work laptop. If there's no clear benefit to outweigh
potentially breaking some local setup I have then I ignore it.

------
asplake
Last time I tried, it was not at all well documented how to upgrade to
Catalina when your iMac's boot drive is 1) an external SSD and 2) not (yet)
formatted to APFS. Giving it another try now, but unless it suddenly got a
whole lot easier I'll probably be passing again.

Have it on my 2016 and 2019 Airs though, no issues.

~~~
asplake
Passing once again...

------
isaikumar
Did anyone face any issues installing the update? I have been lucky till now
as I have never faced issue while updating. But then I read news reports that
say people faced issues and macbooks were bricked while updating. So I thought
from now on I would wait few days before I update.

------
ksec
Sigh. Now every time I use Speech to Text there is a sound before the
dictation. Before Catalina you could disable it in setting but now the setting
is complete gone.

And Apple wanted Voice Over to replace this dictation. The problem is most
Apps doesn't even support this type of input. Example I cant use Voice Over
for dictation on WhatsApp, but I could do it with old double Fn Key Dictation.

Not to mention the voice over recognition by default uses Enhance Dictation
which is offline, and its results is actually worst and slower than online
dictation.

Basically the worst of both worlds. It is super annoying.

------
eatbitseveryday
> Battery health management is on by default when you buy a new Mac notebook
> with macOS 10.15.5, or after you upgrade to macOS 10.15.5 on a Mac notebook
> with Thunderbolt 3 ports.

Unfortunately... this update does not help everyone. I have a MacBook Pro
(Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013) and these changes in the System Preferences are
not visible. This quote was found only when digging further in the "How to
control the battery health management feature" instructions.

------
bjoli
Catalina decided to remap my paragraph key to "ö" this week (using a 3rd party
Swedish Dvorak layout). Remaking the layout to the proper symbol works for
about an hour. It is my Emacs prefix for functions I don't consider important
enough to warrant their own direct key bindings. Annoying doesn't cut it.

I haven't done a factory reset yet, but I started backups today to be able to.

Catalina is a disaster. I got my Mac for free from a relative,but I sure as
hell won't buy another.

~~~
bjoli
So: The error seems to be that the keyboard assistant expects qwerty. It must
have run some time, and it wanted me to press the button next to the left
shift key, which on svdvorak is "ö". I had to delete the
library/preferences/com.keyboardsomethingsomething and redo the keyboard
identification and press the "<" key (which on svdvorak is about as far away
as you can come from the ö key).

Now it works.

------
archived22
Amid lockdown, I am scared to update.

~~~
jedieaston
It's fairly easy to install multiple versions of macOS on your drive to test
[0]. You could create a separate install of Catalina and test your
applications with it before making the move (which Apple now thinks is a bit
more urgent for some reason).

[0]: [https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208891](https://support.apple.com/en-
us/HT208891)

------
dochtman
Software Update isn't showing me 10.15.5 yet. Others?

On my 2019 16" I've definitely noticed that Zoom calls slow stuff down by a
lot. Would be great if that gets fixed here.

~~~
rado
Press ⌘+R in System Preferences – Software Update (really)

~~~
caribousoup
Wow, I never realized this.

Make sure the Search field isn't focused, it is by default on launch.

------
Tre666
I have a 2014 mbpro. It was working fine but when I try to export from final
cut it crashed. After restart I tried to export again and it said that my
battery was dying (it was at 55%) then powered down

~~~
Tre666
This is actually the 1st time the mb ever crashed. I've had no issues with it

------
msie
Finally! They fixed my Image Capture bug! Now I can import pictures from my
iPhone AND they will be deleted from the iPhone. I've only imported 7 movies
at one time with no problem. So far, so good...

------
spacephysics
Is there any point in downgrading to Mojave from Catalina? Haven’t looked into
it, so I assume it’s a pain. But the semi-daily kernel panic, over heating,
kernel tasks taking up 80%+ CPU is rediculous for a $3k+ laptop

~~~
asdff
Set up a partition and find out! Won't be possible if your mac is newer than
mojave, though.

------
albertzeyer
I'm still on High Sierra... I wonder if there are really good reasons to
upgrade to Mojave? (I only know about disadvantages about upgrading to
Catalina.)

~~~
72deluxe
I'm on High Sierra on one Mac and Mojave on another.

Other than APFS, I cannot see any real differences in usability, other than
opening quickview and then pressing shift and up to go to the previous file in
a list (so you could look over many photographs and select them so as to
choose which ones to delete) is now busted in Mojave and will only show the
first file selected, making quickview now useless.

In High Sierra and prior (back to Snow Leopard at least?) this would work and
show you the preview of the most recently highlighted item, so in a selection
of 20 items, if you shift-up select item 21 you see 21. Now you only see item
1 all the time. It's a great annoyance.

So no I cannot think of a reason to upgrade.

------
sccxy
Thanks, but I'll wait for some months before update.

------
stuaxo
Does it have any fixes for the notarization delays ?

------
jacobush
My 10.15.4 tells me since I installed it there is an update, but when I go
into settings to install the update, there is nothing to install.

~~~
jorisw
Hit Cmd-R from within the preference pane

------
ryanmccullagh
It looks like they still haven't fixed the Power on thunderbolt failed issue.

------
m3nu
Third battery in my Macbook Pro in 3 years. Very excited about this feature.

~~~
randyrand
Do you leave your macbook pro plugged in all the time?

~~~
vSanjo
Has that been proven to be detrimental to the battery? I don't really follow
that tech-side, so it would be good to know -how- detrimental it is.

~~~
mbreese
Very. My MBPs are normally plugged in and the battery is almost always
degraded by the end of year 1. I’m looking forward to this update just for the
battery protection.

(And I know I should try to keep my MBP unplugged as much as I can, but it’s
normally docked.)

------
PunksATawnyFill
I don't see anything about making group FaceTimes actually work.

------
amaccuish
And still I lose IPv6 connectivity after a while :(

------
rado
Where is the Safari 13.1.1 changelog? Thanks.

~~~
css
As far as I can tell, this is all they publish: [https://support.apple.com/en-
us/HT211177](https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211177)

------
trishankdatadog
n=2 anecdata: no problems updating two MacBook Pros from 2017 and 2018, which
were also already on Catalina.

------
chris_wot
I am constantly gobsmacked by how slow point release upgrades are. On Ubuntu,
it takes virtually no time and doesn’t interrupt my workflow.

~~~
LeSaucy
There are plenty of disruptive ubuntu upgrade issues, for example for almost 5
years (through 12.04 to 16.04!) if you installed on LVM volumes your /boot
partition never cleaned up old vmlinuz and initrd images, causing dpkg-
reconfigure to fail, leaving dpkg completely broken.

Operating systems are hard.

~~~
chris_wot
Sure, that’s a hard failure, I was talking about the average speed to install
an update.

------
jevgeni
Will this update unbrick my iMac that 10.15.1 bricked?

