
macOS Catalina - css
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/10/macos-catalina-is-available-today/
======
jedberg
I've been on the beta for a while. I'm sort of surprised that they actually
released with the state it is currently in. Most things work, but my CPU still
spikes for no reason running some OS process or another.

Also, clicking on a dropdown box in a web browser (Safari, Chrome, or Firefox)
after the computer has been asleep for a while freezes the whole computer for
about 10 seconds.

Maybe it's just me, but that feels like a showstopper.

The whole 32/64 bit thing doesn't seem too bad, although I've had to use Pages
instead of Word and can't use Adobe products anymore and have had to switch to
open source alternatives, but I don't use those products very much so it
wasn't a huge deal for me.

~~~
smsm42
I've just checked which 32-bit apps I have (system
information/software/applications if you wonder) and turns out if I upgrade I
lose:

\- My scanner support (they have new version, which is insanely buggy and
can't even detect my scanner properly)

\- All my games (literally every single one of them turns out to be 32-bit) -
I don't play that much but still, would be a shame to lose all of them

\- Postal label printing app (no idea if they have an update, need to check)

\- App supporting my stand-alone disk array (not using it too much though)

\- My niche learning apps (pretty old, from small providers, not sure if
they'd ever be updated)

Much more than I expected, given that I don't have any exotic stuff like music
instruments, specialized equipment, etc. So I personally probably would hold
off upgrading as long as I can.

~~~
musicale
Apple's backward compatibility is poor, and particularly bad for games. The
32-bit apocalypse kills off a large subset of the Mac's already less-than-
stellar game library; and on iOS it already broke many apps that I used, many
of which will not be updated. To me it seems like Apple is going in the wrong
direction - really I want them to _add_ an x32 ABI to save pointer space for
apps that don't need more than 4GB!

Stick with Windows/Steam/Consoles/etc. if you don't want a bunch of your games
that you purchased to become unplayable every year (unless you add multi-boot
to run the old, compatible OS, or run them in a VM, which usually works
poorly.)

As I have mentioned before, it's a very annoying example of Apple shifting
technical debt and maintenance work away from themselves and onto developers,
and the overall maintenance burden is greatly increased.

I like how the platform moves forward, but I really wish that there were a way
of getting desirable security patches and feature improvements in the OS
without breaking all of my apps.

~~~
m000
Dropping 32bit support is _game-over_ for gaming on macOS. The numbers already
didn't add up for indie developers [1]. Even AAA game developers often ignore
macOS because the ROI is just too low. And from the $5/month subscription how
much will end up to the developers [2]?

Essentially what Apple Arcade will end-up hosting is ports of run-of-the-mill
mobile games. And I'd bet the advertised number of developers will diminish as
soon as the agreements they secured for the launch expire. But if this is the
kind of gaming you're interested into, you already have your iPhone/iPad.

[1]: [https://www.gridsagegames.com/blog/2019/09/sorry-mac-
users-a...](https://www.gridsagegames.com/blog/2019/09/sorry-mac-users-apple-
doesnt-care-about-us-devs/)

[2]: [https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/43k4ww/its-hard-to-use-
ap...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/43k4ww/its-hard-to-use-apple-arcade-
without-wondering-how-developers-will-be-paid)

~~~
wtallis
> Dropping 32bit support is game-over for gaming on macOS.

No, it isn't. There were never any 32-bit x86 Macs with decent GPUs. Dropping
32-bit support only affects games that were already old enough to be
commercially irrelevant or games that rely on unmaintained third-party
middleware that never got a 64-bit port. Those don't add up to enough to be a
major impact on the Mac gaming market. There are plenty of other factors that
are much more important, such as Apple's abandonment of OpenGL and preference
for Metal over Vulkan.

~~~
gpderetta
A huge amount of Indie games do not require a powerful (or even decent cpu).
Many of them have Linux and Mac ports. Those are the same kind of games whose
developers do not have a lot of spare resources to stay on the endless
treadmill of deprecation.

It also kills any hope of wine powered support for proton in steam as many
many windows games will be still 32 bit for a very long time (mind you, metal
already had put a big dent in that).

Interestingly Linux users are indirectly getting affected by this: for many
developers supporting Linux was just a byproduct of supporting macOS. As the
latter is being dropped, support for the former is getting harder to justify.
Luckily Proton seem to be a very viable alternative to native games.

~~~
lonelappde
I thought PlayOnLinux/WINE is the linux gaming solution.

~~~
gpderetta
Proton is a wine variant directly integrated with steam.

------
troydavis
Publishers of audio products (soft synths, DAWs), games, and a fair number of
domain-specific products have told their customers not to upgrade yet.

Here's a rundown of products that depend on 32-bit support or that haven't
been tested in 64-bit on Catalina yet:

Audio products:
[https://www.sweetwater.com/sweetcare/articles/macos-10-15-ca...](https://www.sweetwater.com/sweetcare/articles/macos-10-15-catalina-
compatibility-list/)

Games: [https://www.macgamerhq.com/opinion/32-bit-mac-
games/](https://www.macgamerhq.com/opinion/32-bit-mac-games/)

~~~
chrisseaton
Haven't those developers had access to the beta for months? What's the point
in the beta if people aren't getting ready before the release?

~~~
klodolph
The writing has been on the wall for 32-bit for literally _over a decade_ and
it’s not going to magically happen now just because support has been dropped.

Imagine digging up an old project, recompiling it for 64-bit, and finding out
that:

1\. It doesn’t compile any more, with modern tools.

2\. When you get it to compile, it crashes mysteriously.

3\. When you get it to run, it again crashes mysteriously when you try a
64-bit build.

Yes, there are a lot of “best practices” out there to avoid this. Any
discussion of best practices is moot because people in the field have to work
with actual practices and legacy code that might be full of undefined
behavior, custom build systems, weird hacks, and lost tribal knowledge. And
you are simply not given enough time to go through and fix it.

This is not all about the 32-to-64 bit transition, but that’s the biggest
part.

Then consider the smaller shops—which might only have a couple of Apple
devices altogether, and not a lot of spare developer-weeks to go through and
test old plugins on new systems.

~~~
dmix
Do you have any specific examples of what would break because of this?

~~~
klodolph
I hate to suggest a web search but there are a lot of examples online if you
search, e.g.,
[https://www.viva64.com/en/a/0004/](https://www.viva64.com/en/a/0004/)

One of the big ones is that integer constants are 32-bit on LP64 / LLP64
systems unless they are large enough, so e.g.

    
    
        // Equal to 0x80000000 on ILP32
        // Undefined behavior on LP64 / LLP64
        size_t max = 1u << (sizeof(size_t) * CHAR_BIT - 1);
    
        // Correct version
        size_t max = (size_t)1 << (sizeof(size_t) * CHAR_BIT - 1);
    

This can also happen with e.g. multiplication

    
    
        #define K 1024
        #define M (1024 * K)
        #define G (1024 * M)
        #define T (1024 * G)
        // Undefined behavior, on both 32-bit and 64-bit.
        size_t max_object_size = 10 * T;
        // Correct version (#1)
        size_t max_object_size = 10995116277760;
        // Correct version (#2)
        static const size_t K = 1024;
        static const size_t M = 1024 * M;
        ... etc ...
    

Or if you need to align your pointers for some reason, so you do the cast
correctly (with uintptr_t) and get

    
    
        void *align_ptr(void *p) {
            // Mask is 0xfffffff0 on 32-bit (correct)
            // Is also 0xfffffff0 on 64-bit (mistake)
            return (void *)(((uintptr_t)p + 0xf) & ~0xf);
            // Correct version
            return (void *)(((uintptr_t)p + 0xf) & ~(uintptr_t)0xf);
        }
    

Consider that you might do some pointer alignment e.g. to work with SIMD. This
stuff isn’t so crazy and if you haven’t been targeting 64-bit, a lot of it can
creep into your code base over the years. Legacy projects may not compile even
remotely cleanly with warnings enabled, it’s just a fact, so even though
warnings / static analysis will catch some of the errors above you’re not
safe.

This is why so many languages have stricter rules about converting integers to
narrower / wider types.

~~~
dmix
I was hoping for some real life examples from some games and reasons why
they’d use something like pointer arithmetic in such a way or so often it
couldn’t be easily migrated, or why they’d even do it in the first place on a
desktop machine. I get the old software.

Of course basic examples between 32 vs 64 are easy to find. I guess I should
have clarified as the OP sounded like he knew the topic well.

I’ve never dug hard into C++ gaming architectures and the patterns they use.

~~~
tjoff
In my experience a far more common and much harder issue is dealing with
dependencies.

A large project probably has lots of them. If you are lucky there is a 64 bit
version of it. Very often though there isn't so you have to find something
equivalent and rewrite all interactions with it.

And there might have been very good reasons for choosing those specific
dependencies.

That can take ages upon ages and can be quite demotivating. You might have
issue even finding out if you have any problems in your own application after
you've spent months on replacing dependencies.

------
ProfessorLayton
Looks like it's the end of the road for my Dashboard usage. I know it's
basically been deprecated for years, yet it remained vastly more useful for me
than it's replacement in _Notification Center_

It was still the fastest way to access:

\- Multiple calculators

\- Multiple sticky notes

\- Multiple unit conversions

\- Stocks

\- Weather widgets

Notification center as currently implemented is just not cutting it. The
amount of widgets I can quickly access is dependent on screen size, and worse,
they're moving targets! — The weather widget causes all the ones below it to
shift up and down while it loads. Not to mention I can't see my notifications
when in Widget mode.

What a sad state of affairs for what was once a very powerful feature.

EDIT: For fun here's Steve Jobs' intro to Dashboard widgets
[https://youtu.be/XQQPTtdzBig?t=4872](https://youtu.be/XQQPTtdzBig?t=4872)

~~~
robterrell
Dashboard was a clone ("Sherlock") of Konfabulator, a third party app. It
looks like Konfabulator was acquired by Yahoo but eventually shut down. Maybe
this is once again an interesting third party opportunity?

I can't even recall how to invoke Dashboard. The fact that was always hidden
meant I never used it.

~~~
andrew_
I was the author of a Windows competitor named Kapsules back when Konfabulator
was hot and before the buyout by death knell by Yahoo!. (I tried to go with
Winfabulator but they didn't take too kindly to that - I was young and
ignorant.)

This was a space that was useful, and then became saturated and commercialized
to the detriment of usefulness. It was just before we had good off-screen
rendering, right as the html-and-js-as-desktop-apps was starting to take off,
and when transparency in window rendering was still difficult. I could share a
lot more thoughts

Is there an opportunity to fill the void? I'm really not sure. Bear in mind
that this was well before the iPhone hit and smartphone apps got huge. Most of
the things we did with widgets back then are far easier done on our phones
now. Kapsules had some good parity with what Konfabulator and Apple Widgets
had offered, and I can't name a single widget for Kapsules, aside from the
silly barking hamster, that doesn't ship by default with our phones now.

The widget craze was a fun phase of app development, and no doubt influenced
UX and mobile apps, but I consider it merely an interesting footnote now. If
anyone is interested in the source code for Kapsules, I can probably dig it up
from one of my old HDDs. It was written in C# on .NET 4.0.

~~~
fixmycode
What's your take on Android widgets? I used to think they were all I ever
wanted in a system only to use them less and less with every iteration of the
OS, now fewer and fewer apps come with widgets, or even try to use them for
something really useful. Has the user lost the appetite for at-glance desktop
tools?

~~~
andrew_
Great observation. I've been an Android user since the Galaxy Nexus; from my
own personal experience, I think they've lost relevancy as really fast and
easy app switching is available, and we populate our various launcher screens
with more and more app icons/shortcuts. Apps also have really good
notification bar "widgets" now that seem to be the preference (e.g. Spotify,
Pandora)

------
rolleiflex
Heads up for developers like me building Mac apps, this release is going to
take a little more adoption time than most due to the 64bit-only nature of
this release.

For example, I know there is a contingent of people who are stuck at Adobe
CS6, whose certain critical components are 32 bit. Since Adobe no longer sells
permanent licenses, opting to only rent their software instead, it's
impossible to get these updated. And these expensive and still-in-use licenses
are going to die the moment people update to Catalina.

~~~
pazimzadeh
Does anyone know if it's possible to start from a pure Catalina installation
of macOS and install a partition with Mojave? For the first time in forever I
won't update macOS on my computer so that I can keep using a few 32-bit app,
including [http://www.halomd.net/](http://www.halomd.net/).

~~~
zitterbewegung
Probably would be a better idea to run Mojave in a VM like virtual box.

~~~
AlexeyBrin
Unless you have a very powerful host system running macOS in a VM is painfully
slow. On a 2019 MacBook Air with 16GB or RAM running a virtualized macOS is
crawling to render the Finder window.

~~~
kitsunesoba
The biggest problem with virtualizing macOS is that it’s built assuming that a
half competent GPU is available, meaning that its software rasterizer is dog
slow which is a big problem because no VM simulates a GPU that macOS supports.
I’ve heard things about getting GPU passthrough working to fix this but I’ve
not tried that myself.

------
Razengan
I dived (dove?) into Catalina on day 1, the very first developer beta, because
of SwiftUI.

It's an amazing framework. Sure Flutter and others came first and already did
parts of what SwiftUI+Combine do, but being able to take an app from design
mockups -> interactive prototype -> final version right in the same editor and
using the same language for UI, logic and model (with native APIs and look-
and-feel) is something I've fantasized about since forever.

There are many rough edges (just like Swift itself which took like 3 years to
become good enough for "serious" use), you still need AppKit/UIKit for some
things, and Apple's developer documentation remains appalling as ever, but I
was able to turn a bunch of ideas into usable apps in a matter of hours, that
traditional frameworks would have taken me weeks to do.

I hadn't even planned or expected to make "proper" apps with it, I was just
playing around, iteratively adding to mockups, and boom, there was an actual
app on device.

Catalina itself however was the buggiest macOS beta for me. I permanently lost
random files on iCloud Drive, CPU and network usage was always high, and I had
to use a temporary local user account that was not tied to iCloud to avoid
messing things up.

And it's annoying that they still haven't fixed some minor bugs I reported
since the Mojave beta, like unreadable white text on brightly colored tags in
Dark Mode and Books jumping around between desktops on its own (the kind of
stuff that would have infuriated Steve Jobs I assume but is deemed unimportant
now.)

~~~
patientplatypus
Yeah...and SwiftUI is by default an iOS only program. Flutter you can plug any
phone in that's been made in the last 5 years, type `flutter run` in the
terminal, and get hot reloading.

SwiftUI is walled-garden bait. Hard pass.

EDIT: Not sure why I'm being downvoted - (one of) Flutter's main selling point
is that it's cross platform by default. SwiftUI doesn't do that and yet is
marketed to be very similar in coding style to Flutter, which yeah great, but
no cross platform so you still have to code everything _twice_ , unless all
your users happen to have iPhones. I mean really?

~~~
Razengan
> _SwiftUI is by default an iOS only program._

and macOS, tvOS, watchOS (and soon I suppose, AROS?), all counting for over a
billion devices.

You can literally run the same SwiftUI code on all of them, then make small
changes to adopt each OS's unique paradigms (like menus on macOS, the crown on
watchOS, the remote on tvOS) and get the most native performance via Metal
etc. for free.

It's ideal for publishing to services like the new Apple Arcade and
macOS/iPadOS Catalyst.

How is Flutter for accessibility features? Those seem really effortless to
adopt in SwiftUI.

~~~
epaga
> ideal for publishing to services like the new Apple Arcade and macOS/iPadOS
> Catalyst

I was just looking into this yesterday but found no info - so you're saying
it's now possible to write an iPadOS app with SwiftUI and use Catalyst to port
it to macOS? It used to be a "known issue" in the beta that this was not
supported... does this work now?

~~~
VangelicSurgeon
Yes, I did it earlier today and it was literally as simple as clicking the
‘macOS’ button under build targets.

That said, the app running out of the box needs a lot of work to feel like a
proper macOS app.

------
gnicholas
Unfortunately, I made the mistake of "upgrading" the Reminders app on my new
iPhone, and now I can't access my reminders on my Mac until I upgrade to
Catalina. That's really lousy. Apparently there's a web interface I can use,
but yeah no thanks.

> _Upgraded reminders aren 't compatible with earlier versions of iOS and
> macOS. If you upgrade your reminders on your iPhone with iOS 13, your iPad
> and Mac using the same iCloud account can’t access your reminders until
> iPadOS and macOS 10.15 Catalina are available._ from
> [https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210220](https://support.apple.com/en-
> us/HT210220)

~~~
thektan
The web interface only allows you to add text. (No due date, flags, etc) You
can't even view the "smart" lists.

------
cygned
If you use Little Snitch, update it before installing Catalina.

[https://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/releasenotes.html...](https://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/releasenotes.html#version-5430)

~~~
wingworks
Yeeeah, I made the mistake of updating Catalina first... oops. If others do
this, you have to reboot into recovery to fix it.

[https://www.obdev.at/support/index.html?product=LS&topic=faq...](https://www.obdev.at/support/index.html?product=LS&topic=faq&search=Catalina)

------
beat
I do audio recording and editing on my Mac. My email is full of dire warnings
from software vendors to _not_ upgrade to Catalina yet.

~~~
asveikau
Anyone care to explain what happened that there are audio complaints and
breakages? What part did they rewrite? I see this comment a lot, but googling
doesn't find a quick answer.

~~~
renaudg
For the most part, it's not a technical issue at all but a cultural one : pro
audio users are notoriously, almost pathologically conservative when it comes
to software upgrades.

You'll find plenty of threads on forums like Gearslutz, asking for tips on how
to downgrade brand new Macs to an older version of macOS that doesn't even
support their hardware. Or 2019 threads asking if it's now safe to upgrade to
High Sierra. They're typically 2-3 versions behind. Why ? Older is just safer,
better in their worldview.

In that context, audio developers know they have customers on their side
against "evil Apple that's always breaking everything for no benefit", and
every year in September/October they get away with emails that read like Apple
just unexpectedly dropped a huge bomb on them out of the blue, and it'll take
them 6-12 months to get ready, like WWDC and 3-4 months of developer betas
never happened.

~~~
lbotos
While this take is accurate, it's because they want to _do audio stuff_ and
not debug computers.

As a DJ, My Serato set up _works_. I don't have any show stopping bugs, and I
don't want any new features. It's running on Sierra with an older version of
Serato from like 2 years ago. Why do I need to upgrade the OS?

When I'm playing in the Club, I shut off wifi/bluetooth, and everything else
that I can.

If I could simplify even more, I would. General Purpose computers are both
great and a liability when it comes to digital audio especially for any live
performance.

~~~
renaudg
You're right, users absolutely should not have to debug computers and live
performance is especially sensitive to realtime constraints.

It's the developers job to do so, and they're basically procrastinating for as
long as they can, not heeding Apple's deprecation warnings for _years_ and
then trying to blame them in front of users when s __t finally hits the fan,
pretending they couldn 't possibly have known. That's simply dishonest.

------
macjohnmcc
I usually install the latest MacOS version right away. After installing iOS
13, 13.1 and 13.1.1 and finally (so far) 13.1.2 in a month I think I'll wait
this one out until a maintenance release.

------
president
Does Catalina boast any fixes/improvements/features for business users? Looks
like mostly lackluster enhancements for mainly consumer users (Apple Arcade,
Screentime, entertainment apps, etc). I would have like to see some UI/UX
overhauls in some of the default apps at least.

~~~
SkyMarshal
Some useful security improvements, for example OS files now sit on a different
read-only volume from all the users files and programs, making it more
difficult to insert worms, Trojans, rootkits and other things that can
compromise the actual OS. And all apps installed on the Mac are now checked
not just that they’re trusted, but for known security vulnerabilities too.

To the extent businesses care about reducing losses from cyber attacks, that’s
probably useful.

~~~
ghostpepper
How does moving system files to a read-only volume provide any additional
protection on top of SIP, which prevents unsigned processes from writing to
system files?

[https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204899](https://support.apple.com/en-
us/HT204899)

~~~
pram
SIP had numerous exploits over the years, basically. The new volume provides
additional isolation and utilizes native mechanisms in APFS to make it
transparent to the user space. 'Defense in depth'

------
Wowfunhappy
I had nothing but bad experiences with Mojave. Everything was noticeably
slower, and stuff seemed to crash more often. This was despite the fact that
Mojave shared a base with the very stable iOS 12.

Now we have Catalina, which shares a base with iOS 13, which according to
numerous reports is _very_ buggy... I don't want to touch Catalina with a ten
foot pole. The fact that my copy of CS6 would stop working is icing the cake.

I should get one more year of security updates on High Sierra. Not sure what
I'll do after that...

~~~
_fzslm
That's weird. Mojave has been rock solid for me, way better than High Sierra.
But I guess mileages vary.

I'm not updating to Catalina either, I plan to stick around on Mojave until
they release something that actually makes me want to upgrade. (maybe when
Catalyst matures)

~~~
russh
Mojave was a frustrating experience for me until I bit the bullet and did a
clean install and remigrated my stuff. I doubt I'll do another in place
upgrade again.

~~~
TAForObvReasons
> did a clean install

How do you do a clean install? Is this available from the recovery menu?

~~~
haylel
You write a bootable usb drive and format your hard-drive.

~~~
acdha
This hasn’t been necessary for many years as long as you haven’t had to
replace the drive or lack an internet connection: just hold Command-R down at
boot.

[https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201314](https://support.apple.com/en-
us/HT201314)

------
unnouinceput
Well then, time to copy/paste one of my Mojave VM and upgrade it to Catalina.
On a side note, 20 years ago my girlfriend at the time name was Catalina.
Hopefully this macOS not going to leave me with broken heart like the ex-gf.

~~~
cerberusss
I hope the next partner was an upgrade :)

------
sramsay
I was amazed to see that with Catalina, zsh is now the default shell on MacOS.
Then it occurred to me that this is probably more about Apple's great GPL
purge than anything else.

~~~
jabl
Yes, they were stuck on the ancient last GPLv2 release of bash. Surprising it
took them so long.

------
wodenokoto
How do you set up a decent adblocker / content blocker on the new safari?

I used to use uBlock Origin and forget about it, but now I don't know what to
use. The market feels scammy or very expensive or even both.

~~~
jzl
After reading a bunch of different articles and reviews about this topic, I'm
currently testing AdGuard For Safari, which is 1) free, 2) open source, 3) in
the Mac App store. (Not to be mistaken with "AdGuard for Mac", which is an
all-encompassing machine firewall.) Overall I'm happy with it so far. It's a
little weird in that some aspects of the Safari plugin only work if the
standalone app is running at the same time, like the ability to disable
blocking for a specific site. Not sure if all new-style adblockers have the
same limitation, or if that was a specific decision by AdGuard? Either way,
I'm happy with it so far, and happy with the fact that they use multiple
Safari extensions to achieve > 50k block patterns, which is the limit for a
single extension. (1BlockerX does the same on iOS.)

------
tschellenbach
did they fix the detection of external displays so they no longer randomly
swap order?

~~~
rconti
It's not just me! It's particularly fun given that one is horizontal and one
is vertical.

------
skohan
At the moment I am not upgrading because I regularly use Aperture for photo
editing, and it will be unusable after the update. I bought it 5 years ago,
and it's worked perfectly since then, meeting all my needs for photo editing
and not even feeling remotely dated in terms of UX/UI even with all the OS
updates since then. I have no idea what I'm going to replace it with, since I
_really_ don't want to go to Lightroom and it's subscription model.

~~~
goblin89
If you are looking to replace the 32-bit-only Aperture with something else for
photo editing on Catalina and don’t like Adobe’s subscription model, you may
want to consider Capture One. It is actively supported, has the “buy and own”
option, and is very capable though its interface may take some getting used to
and/or customizing.

I tried the demo earlier this year and liked it a lot, and they even happened
to have a promotional discount at the time, but for whatever reason the
purchase button was broken for me. I’m sure it was either just my machine, or
Phase One has fixed the bug long ago.

------
otaviokz
"The new Find My app combines Find My iPhone and Find My Friends into a
single, easy-to-use app on Mac, iPad and iPhone. Find My can help users locate
a missing Mac even if it’s offline and sleeping by sending out Bluetooth
signals that can be detected by Apple devices in use nearby, and then relaying
the detected location of the Mac to iCloud so a user can can locate it in the
Find My app."

I'm curious about what kind of T&C will need to be accepted for this to work.

------
Damogran6
Suddenly I wish I'd written down all the applications the OS reported as
needing to be updated. There are a couple I really need.

~~~
mistersquid
tl;dr:

1\. Click the Apple symbol () in the menu bar on your Mac's desktop.

2\. Click on About This Mac.

3\. Choose "System Report" at the bottom of the window.

4\. Scroll down to the Software list on the sidebar.

5\. Select "Applications."

6\. Scroll all the way to the right to see the 64-bit list.

[0] [https://www.macrumors.com/guide/32-bit-mac-
apps/](https://www.macrumors.com/guide/32-bit-mac-apps/)

You can sort on the "64-bit (Intel)" column to separate 32-bit from 64-bit
apps.

When I tried this on my crufty main machine, Step 5 would yield a timeout and
a very unhelpful error message. Works OK on my work machine. YMMV

[0] [https://www.macrumors.com/guide/32-bit-mac-
apps/](https://www.macrumors.com/guide/32-bit-mac-apps/)

EDIT: formatting, punctuation

~~~
nomel
Looking at my list, it appears that gaming on Mac is truly dead at this point.

~~~
jakebasile
Yep, this release decimates the already unfortunately small library of games
available on Mac. I don't use my Mac much for gaming but it was a nice thing
to have available in a pinch.

------
bikeshed
This is probably going to be what gets me to switch all my audio applications
to Windows 10. Once again, everything I use -- Serato, Ableton, and half a
dozen pieces of hardware from different manufacturers -- is broken in this
release.

Apple's become a phone company that grudgingly still makes computers, and this
is reflected in their treatment of end users.

------
haukur
It appears that the system font was changed. I'm trying to figure out what it
is now, it appears that San Francisco isn't even installed on my system
anymore. GitHub, Twitter, and other sites using system-ui / -apple-system as
the font-family now look very odd.

~~~
zapzupnz
No, it's very much still San Francisco. Are you sure it's not a browser plugin
issue, or perhaps something changed in Catalina that causes the browser not to
display the font the same way as in previous versions?

If you're using Chrome, this may be the result of a bug in Chrome. Have a look
in Safari, it should be fine there.

------
pixelbreaker
I've had the beta for a while specifically to fix an HDMI handshake issue with
my new mac mini. The only big deal for me was the switch from bash to zsh as
the default shell. I had to rework some of my dotfiles. Maybe took 2 hours to
get it all how I wanted.

Other issue is that arduino flashing is broken for my redox wireless keyboard,
so I have to flash firmware on my old laptop for now. Something to do with
super low baud rates not working in catalina!

Other than that, nothing in catalina that gets me excited, the screentime
thing is pretty broken, it shows the same amount of time for all apps pretty
much, so kinda pointless.

------
g051051
Welp, that's the end of my 2011 Macbook Air. Sigh. There are already 6
incompatible updates out. Plus the recent iOS update ended support for my
iPhone, so that's on the way to joining my iPad and iPod Touch.

~~~
kstrauser
A few months ago I finally replaced my longsuffering 2011 MBP with an iPad Pro
and a Mac Mini.

------
Ambroos
If you upgrade and wonder why fonts in Chrome look just a little bit off,
there's a bug in Chrome/ium (HarfBuzz). Most text will look a tiny bit too
narrow, some text will be slightly too wide. Nothing major, but I noticed.
(Also affected: Chromium-powered apps like VS Code, Atom, many messaging apps,
...)

[https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=100596...](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1005969)

------
Blackstone4
I know dropping 32-bit support will cause issues but isn't is broadly
positive? Windows has always had a strong focus on backwards compatibility and
look where it has ended up. I feel like in 5-10 years time, we will look back
and say it was the right decision.

I remember when Apple dropped the CD-ROM drive....I haven't used a CD/DVD
since 2013...over 6 years ago and I cannot remember a time when I needed to
use one other than playing old DVDs which is not a big deal with Netflix & co.

------
vinay_ys
Did Apple lose some critical people in the last year or so? Johnny Ive we all
heard about. But maybe more such important foundational people on systems and
core OS side also left? I'm guess this because the drop in quality in both iOS
and MacOS even in released software is significant that regular people are
feeling it. I seriously hope this is a temporary glitch and I won't be forced
to figure out a new system setup (back to Windows? Or Linux or ChromeOS?) for
my day-to-day.

------
Angostura
It gives me - the ability to use my iPad as a second screen, and takes away
the ability to run all my 32 bit apps.

Until now I've pretty much been a day 1 updater with MacOS. Nope.

------
bitL
I shows up on my Mojave-based MacBook but not on the one with Catalina Beta.
Are there different release dates for MacBooks enrolled in the beta program?

~~~
numbers
Not the best answer you'll get but my experience in the past has been that
once you put your device on the "beta" cycle (iphone, mac, everything else),
they will follow that until you hard reset it...meaning once the OS goes
general release, you're still on the beta releases.

This means you're probably already using latest Catalina on the device that's
on the beta cycle and you will continue getting new minor releases before the
general public release one.

~~~
bitL
Is it possible to get off beta cycle without "destroying" the device? iPad
also shows beta 13.2 available but I stopped it from upgrading and would like
to "downgrade" to regular iPadOS.

~~~
phs318u
This page shows you how to unenroll from the beta programs for the various
OS’s.

[https://beta.apple.com/sp/betaprogram/unenroll](https://beta.apple.com/sp/betaprogram/unenroll)

~~~
grounded042
Then after that just go to the App Store, search for Catalina, and install it.

------
abinaya_rl
Reminder: 32-bit apps will not work in Catalina. If you use your computer as
your main work machine, hold off on the update. You're bound to run into a
random forgotten app you use every once in a while that's no longer supported.

To see what's still 32-bit on your mac, go to:

Apple icon > About this mac > system report > applications > then click the
64-bit column to sort. No will be 32-bit apps.

------
jrochkind1
My only question is how do I sync both selected music (a playlist) and
selected podcasts to my 10-year-old ipod mini without iTunes?

I have a playlist called "ipod" that I select to sync to ipod. I have certain
podcasts that I select to sync to ipod. I plug my ipod in and click sync. The
end. I've been doing this for 10 years.

Now what?

~~~
bobbylarrybobby
When you plug in your iPod, it will appear in the Finder sidebar and you can
sync there.

------
thesquib
Time to upgrade to Mojave then :)

~~~
pier25
I usually do the same... I wait for a new macOS version to update to the
previous one.

~~~
dartdartdart1
why?

~~~
pier25
I've experienced a number of problems. Anything from Apple fuckups to software
that won't run for one reason or another. It's much safer to wait at least 6
months before updating.

------
m0zg
Crashed when installing and already crashed once running Lightroom. This is
worse-than-Windows reliability, Apple. You don't need to run faster than the
bear, you only need to run faster than Microsoft. And you're failing at it.

------
lonelappde
Catalina feels like a "Elves are Leaving Middle Earth" moment. There's just
too much going wrong with Mac for me to try to remember why it's still worth
it. Windows is uglier for sure, but at least it _works_.

------
godDLL
My bingo card:

\- return of scripting, alright maybe not AppleScript, but JS, Python,
anything: I want to automate my UI meanderings, what the hell

\- return of services: make this a reminder, make this a note, send this as
email, etc. come on

\- a chat app with windows: why is it exactly that every Telegram and Twitter
and whatnot has me clicking back and forth and back and there and back and
here, why? also why can't I open a chatroom with these three WhatsApp peeps
and this one Twitter dude and my mom on Skype? this is backwards

\- return of managers: at some point iTunes stopped being my 90+GB music
library manager, and became hell knows what. same with Photos, Safari, Mail.
all full of cloud and gotchas and eye-candy that keeps me away from my stuff
by making me wait.

\- the return of self-published dashboard widgets. they are awesome. I'll be
where they are, thank you very much.

~~~
zapzupnz
\- Scripting isn't gone. The OSA services are still there; Python isn't
installed by default but that's all.

\- Services isn't gone.

\- Yeah, that's fairly annoying. I think Skype has tear-off-able windows but
that might only be for voice calls, not chat windows.

\- The new Music app (which is really just iTunes with all the videos,
podcasts, and other crap ripped out) now just manages music — it's oriented
towards Apple Music by default but a couple of clicks in the View menu changes
that.

~~~
duskwuff
> Scripting isn't gone. The OSA services are still there; Python isn't
> installed by default but that's all.

Python is still installed by default. Launching /usr/bin/python (2.7.16)
prints a big warning about how "future versions of macOS will not include
Python 2.7", but that's because Python2 is EOL.

~~~
zapzupnz
Thanks for the clarification! Either way, the scripting capability is still
very much a part of the system.

------
tempodox
No can do. This will be the first macOS that I will never install. And when
support for the current OS runs out, I'l have to move to a Linux box, assuming
that 32-bit support still exists by then.

------
chmaynard
As far as I'm concerned, macOS Catalina never happened. I'll wait for the next
major version (10.16), which will undoubtedly be a maintenance release with
almost no new features.

------
iamspoilt
It moved my Anaconda installation to a relocated folder with all the envs
gone. So I had to reinstall it and recreate all my envs. Also had to reinstall
Xcode because git stopped working.

------
joggy
Don't you just compile a 32bit program source code with a 64bit library to
make it 64 bit? All my c++ project from college work once they get new links
to the Apple libraries.

------
makecheck
A strange bug was that a permission prompt appeared _during_ the OS setup
phase (large centered window in background), blocking part of the setup window
but refusing to accept input.

Each time I tried to enter my password the focus would glitch back to the
large background window, which oddly could still be clicked. So I had to keep
clicking grayed-out Continue buttons in the background setup window, until the
desktop finally appeared and the password prompt (which was in front the whole
time) would finally accept input.

I mean, this is _the first thing you see_ when you launch the OS, these are
exactly the kinds of bugs that need to be found by Apple and not by users.

------
FraKtus
Not too many coders seem to be concerned, but QuickTime was never really
replaced. AVFoundation is not a full replacement for QuickTime if you do
advanced authoring...

------
tannhaeuser
Does anyone know how the app notarization thing works? Is it for natively
compiled executables only, or also for scripts started using hashbangs?

~~~
nicky0
Executables. It doesn't affect scripts.

------
joggy
Unless you are an iOS developer looking to use the latest features of Xcode.
It doesn't seem like it's worth the hassle.

------
pantulis
Anyone tried Catalina on an old late-2013 16GB 15'' MBP? Is general
performance affected? So far so good with Mojave.

------
musgrove
I've tried to download and install Catalina 5 times now and every time it
errors out and stops with no explanation.

------
johnmen1986
Downloaded the new MacOS And now every single one of my apps or programs on my
Mac crashes and will not open

------
thesquib
I'm still holding back from upgrading my hardware (my 2013 Macbook Pro is
still going strong with no maintenance required). For one, the butterfly
keyboard issues have really put me off the newer laptops. It seems like
everyone I know has a key that doesn't work properly anymore. I also like
having plenty of ports without buying an adaptor and carrying one around with
me.

------
reaperducer
I'm glad this finally happened.

When I upgraded my iOS devices to 13, my shared To Do lists stopped working in
macOS. Each item in the list has a warning triangle next to it that explains I
have to upgrade my desktop OS to use the lists again.

It turns out that I underestimated the importance of the grocery list shared
among my family members. I now have five gallons of milk and no kitty litter
in the house.

------
bookofjoe
Wow, took over two hours to download/set up: 2019 iMac (with hard drive) x
300mps download speed

------
plg
How many of you

(1) wipe disk, install new OS, & reinstall apps & documents

(2) let apple try to upgrade in place

------
anonthrowaway28
No iTunes? no thanks. I refuse to "upgrade" to marketing adware that takes
away features. I'll stick with Mojave on my Hackintosh for however long that
lasts. Oh and Catalina won't run anything that's 32-bit either.

~~~
gchokov
You do not get to upgrade by definition. Play with your Hackintosh and leave
the hate speech for somewhere else.

------
cotelletta
Wow, not a single feature managed to spark any interest whatsoever.

Have they fixed mission control's top bar not expanding by default yet? That
would be the only reason to upgrade.

~~~
cerberusss
I don't use it, so I don't know the previous behavior. But in Catalina, when I
use Ctrl-Up, the desktop zooms out and a narrow strip appears on top, labeled
"Desktop 1", "Desktop 2", "Desktop 3", etc. When you move your mouse over to
the label, it expands into a preview.

~~~
cotelletta
Yes, it is the dumbest thing ever, and demonstrates they've forgotten what
Exposé was all about and what the innovation was.

Instead of showing you labels or icons in a task switcher, they just showed
you all your windows. Direct representation instead of symbolic proxies.

"Desktop 1/2/3" is meaningless. Show me what's on it so I can see where my
windows are. Don't put a dumb gesture between me and what I need to see.

They only did this because of tiny screens, it makes zero sense on any decent
monitor.

Old Apple would've put in a hidden pref, tracked its use, and then quietly
eaten crow. New Apple thinks they know better than even their power users.
It's ridiculously arrogant.

------
vadansky
Any chance the Sidecar feature can make it to PC/Windows? I've been using Duet
but it's kinda flaky.

------
senthilnayagam
upgraded, will test and update

~~~
senthilnayagam
no crashes yet. could not get sidecar working on my late 2013 MBP, even after
modifying defaults as suggested by some sites.

overall performance seems better. connects to wifi network faster.

default shell on terminal is now zsh.

will upgrade homebrew managed packages now, Catalina bottles are available.

------
patientplatypus
I remember the last update (Mojave?) where the first release gave root access
and allowed unlocking of the computer by default. Woops!

Yeah, no thanks. Until Apple learns to release non-buggy crap I'll wait out
the horror show for at least the next 6 months. You guys have fun debugging
this for me!

EDIT: Pretty funny watching all the Apple fanboys going through my account and
downvoting all my posts. Oh no! My fake internet points! /s

------
fprog
This is a bit of an odd release, no? I did not see an advance announcement of
the date, there is no feature in the Mac App Store indicating that the OS is
now available (though there is one for Apple Arcade), and until a moment ago,
clicking "How to Upgrade" on the Apple site still led to a link to Mojave.

~~~
theoctopus
I'd assume the reason it's not advertised on the Mac App Store is because OS
updates are now done through System Preferences.

~~~
bredren
I've suspected that notifications of upgrade opportunities and advertising of
new versions may track with Apple's desire to pace rollout. For example, I'd
be surprised if they hit every available device with the upgrade notification
about ios 13 given 13.1 would be available only days later.

------
luismedel
I read a lot of people debating about how "difficult" is maintaining 32-bit
support, or if it adds more vector attacks to the system.

Don't fool yourself. Maintaining 32-bit support is "easy" (with all the
technical issues we all know). This is simply a sales strategy.

It's the same strategy than disabling a glorified vnc (Sidecar) on three years
"old" laptops. Sure you need a lot of horsepower to display a remote image in
real time. Never done. Yeah.

Apple is taking the "appliance route". Your (my) Apple computers, your (my)
Apple phones...are closed appliances (no ram upgrade, no battery upgrade, no
significant OS upgrade). This appliance version do this, the next appliance
version do that. Soon we'll see that they're no longer upgradeable computers,
and we will be fine with it...sadly.

~~~
rimliu
If you have this attitude, don't buy Apple devices. Is that too difficult?
Everything is easy when it is someone's else problem.

~~~
luismedel
I have a very open attitude. I, like most of us, use a lot of devices for a
myriad of things. Some professionally, some as a hobby.

It's that experience and knowledge that makes me question some tactics.

I think it's not bad to question things, right?

------
B1FF_PSUVM
Amazing. I had to dive into the 4th page of Google results to get something
Catalina Island related, e.g.
[https://www.catalinaconservancy.org](https://www.catalinaconservancy.org)

Otherwise it was all Apple or irrelevant.

(Sufficiently out of it to wonder if Catalina was related to Messalina ...)

~~~
kstrauser
Remember, Google tunes your search results based on your own personal search
history.

I searched for "Catalina" in a private browser window and got exactly two
results about today's release news, then a whole lot of Catalina Island
results.

------
sneakernets
Honestly, the 32-bit support shouldn't have been removed. It should have been
split off into a separate package like the XQuartz project, as some of us
still use 32-bit applications daily.

Very disturbing that one of the biggest companies around can't keep 32-bit
support, at least in some capacity.

~~~
ubermonkey
It's not, really. Nobody wants to carry support for both 32- and 64-bit
forever. You've got to call the ball at some point. Now's as good a time as
any.

~~~
bluedino
Is it a security improvement? Is it just less hassle to keep updating all the
32-bit stuff? What does Apple or the users gain from removing 32-bit?

~~~
kamyarg
> What does Apple or the users gain from removing 32-bit?

> Nobody wants to carry support for both 32- and 64-bit forever.

Support means money and developer time, no one wants to waste money unless
they really have to. In this case they don't have to, because everyone should
have already updated whatever they use that was first made only for 32bit to
64bit.

imho the actual blame lies on whoever have resisted moving to 64bit(again
mostly because of money).

~~~
Hammershaft
We are talking about one of the richest companies on the planet that makes by
far the largest margins on their laptops and desktops in the industry. If any
company is equipped to offer 32 bit legacy support for the benefit of their
users it is Apple.

~~~
dkonofalski
That's not the point. Apple gave every developer ample time to update their
software. This has been in the works for _years_ and there have been 2 major
OS releases that specifically called this out for developers.

~~~
damnyou
Not all software is meant to be updated.

