macOS 10.15 Catalina

Sad Professor · 03-06-2019 8:34pm #1

Just announced at WWDC, out in Autumn as usual.

Major change is that iTunes is no more. Now separate Music, Podcasts and TV apps with device syncing relegated to the Finder. Also improvements to Photos, Notes, Reminders and Safari. And the ability to use an iPad as a second display and use the Pencil via the iPad. Some iOS features like Screentime and Activation Lock (only recent Macs) have also been ported over. Also Voice Control for navigating the Mac via voice commands.

Supports all mid-2012 or later Macs.

More here: https://www.apple.com/macos/catalina-preview/

Thoughts?

03-06-2019 8:41pm

Happy that my mid 2012 macbook pro gets yet another extension. Great value.

iniall · 03-06-2019 10:33pm

Delighted that my 2013 MacBook Air gets another OS update - thought that Mojave would be the end of the road for it...

whippet · 03-06-2019 10:43pm

Using the iPad as a desktop extension is a game changer for me ! I use my MacBook Pro with two external displays on the desk and when I’m out and about - which is most of the time I really get frustrated with the single screen

Cabaal · 04-06-2019 12:13pm

No upgrade for me, Mid-2011 iMac 27" is too old.

To be honest for the performance loss I regret upgrading last time

calum · 05-06-2019 12:48am

whippet wrote: »

Using the iPad as a desktop extension is a game changer for me ! I use my MacBook Pro with two external displays on the desk and when I’m out and about - which is most of the time I really get frustrated with the single screen

There have been plenty of great 3rd party solutions for that for some time (Duet, Luna Display etc.), if that's what you needed to keep you sane...

calum · 05-06-2019 11:00am

OSI wrote: »

Duet has been widely condemned for being an unreliable piece of ****.

Has it? I've never heard that, and I've used it for years with no issues. But anyway, it's by no means the only option available.

PropJoe10 · 07-06-2019 5:43pm

JayZeus wrote: »

Happy that my mid 2012 macbook pro gets yet another extension. Great value.

Likewise! Running a 2012 unibody that I wasn't expecting to get any more updates for. Nice to know I've at least another couple of years of support on this!

Installing the beta on it now actually.

IamMetaldave · 02-07-2019 11:12am

OSI wrote: »

Duet has been widely condemned for being an unreliable piece of ****.

100% Agree. It's awful.

I too am pleased that my 2012 Air is going to see another update (the last I would imagine). I am planning an upgrade in the next 6 months so it won't make any odds going forward.

Sad Professor · 05-10-2019 4:15pm

GM is out but apparently quite buggy. Wouldn't surprise me if there's a second GM before release.

calum · 06-10-2019 1:45pm

Doubt I'll be going anywhere near it unless/until I need to get a new Mac. I have way too many bought-and-paid-for 32-bit apps and games still in use.

PropJoe10 · 06-10-2019 5:50pm

Might not bother moving to this at all, Mojave runs great on my 2012. Might see if I can install it on my 2008 Mac Pro for the craic at some stage, though.

DubDJ · 07-10-2019 9:21am

I can see Catalina being released this week. Although at the same time they might be holding it back until they have their rumoured October event, but more than likely it’s shipping soon especially with the GM already released.

I’m looking forward to it. The iTunes split and Finder being the new device manager makes a lot of sense to me. I’m glad Apple finally added auto dark mode switcher, should have been there on day 1.

jack presley · 07-10-2019 6:50pm

Out now.

jack presley · 07-10-2019 9:38pm

Not impressed with the Music app on first impressions.

I have about 50-60 playlists in my library and like a certain layout of what's displayed (band, album, song, time etc.). Apple Music gives a default that is different to what I want to see and there doesn't seem to be a way to change them all to my preferred format in one go so it looks like I'll have to go into each one individually and change.

Also when syncing music to the phone, the options (playlist, album, artist, genre) are still there but the album one which you used to able to see all albums by an artist in order is changed. Now you just see every album in your library in chronological order with no artist name so you can't differentiate between albums with the same name by different artists.

Sad Professor · 07-10-2019 9:48pm

Became unresponsive on the post-installation setup screen, had to force a restart. Now Mail won't open, keeps crashing. Finder is stuck loading for ages.

Not a good start. I'd strongly advise people to think twice before installing.

jack presley · 08-10-2019 6:48am

jack presley wrote: »

Not impressed with the Music app on first impressions.

I have about 50-60 playlists in my library and like a certain layout of what's displayed (band, album, song, time etc.). Apple Music gives a default that is different to what I want to see and there doesn't seem to be a way to change them all to my preferred format in one go so it looks like I'll have to go into each one individually and change.

Also when syncing music to the phone, the options (playlist, album, artist, genre) are still there but the album one which you used to able to see all albums by an artist in order is changed. Now you just see every album in your library in chronological order with no artist name so you can't differentiate between albums with the same name by different artists.

My album art seems to be missing for a good chunk of my albums too.

IamMetaldave · 08-10-2019 11:00am

Installed last night on my mid 2012 MacBook Air, it was using the old Microsoft minutes from years (time going up and down... ).. anyway, after a pretty slow install it seems to have gone smoothly enough and it's all working OK so far. What's funny is, by this time of the morning my fans would usually be blowing on full... with the update the machine is running much cooler, even taking a peek at the activity monitor, CPU use is down, memory pressure seems to be down too..

whippet · 08-10-2019 11:06am

i installed it over night on my 2017 MBP 13" - and it did stall on start up this morning - restarted and it has been working away fine.

haven't played around with music or podcast yet ... but sidecar with my Gen 2 12.9" iPad Pro works a dream !! I work remotely and have a two external display set up in the home office .. so when i am out and about I do get frustrated with a single screen sometimes - however i've noticed that side care monsters the battery life of both devices !!

Sad Professor · 08-10-2019 12:50pm

Mr.S wrote: »

I’m stuck on the “Setting up your Mac” stage, any tricks to get around this?

I had to force power off, though I suspect this messed up Mail which it took me an hour to find a fix for last night and now my emails are loading in when I click on them and I have probably lost other things. Terrible update.

DubDJ · 08-10-2019 9:26pm

Just updated today. I ended up wiping the drive and setting up as a new Mac. A folder was created called “moved files” or something like that and there was a second Macintosh HD drive after the upgrade. Some strange behaviours. Setting up fresh and copying files over and everything is back to normal.

One big problem though, all my previous purchases in the Mac App Store are no longer there, the purchases page is blank. Previous apps are showing the price again instead of the cloud icon. I’ve tried signing out and in, restarting etc but still the same. Anybody else experience similar?

Sad Professor · 08-10-2019 10:10pm

I currently have a second Macintosh HD showing in Disk Utility as well.

DubDJ · 08-10-2019 11:30pm

Sad Professor wrote: »

I currently have a second Macintosh HD showing in Disk Utility as well.

I think one was a ‘data drive’ after the update for me. Didn’t pay much attention, just wiped the ssd clean. I don’t know what Apple did but they had some strange migration technique for this update.

brav · 09-10-2019 6:50am

Sad Professor wrote: »

I currently have a second Macintosh HD showing in Disk Utility as well.

This is expected as macOS now uses the same technique as the iOS does, it added firmlinking so user data is now a separate partition and is mounted in system/volumes but with firmlinking it acts and looks similar to how it used to look

https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/117470

https://medium.com/@hammen/significant-changes-in-macos-10-15-catalina-of-interest-to-mac-admins-fbc3865c055e

brav · 09-10-2019 7:00am

DubDJ wrote: »

Just updated today. I ended up wiping the drive and setting up as a new Mac. A folder was created called “moved files” or something like that and there was a second Macintosh HD drive after the upgrade. Some strange behaviours. Setting up fresh and copying files over and everything is back to normal.

One big problem though, all my previous purchases in the Mac App Store are no longer there, the purchases page is blank. Previous apps are showing the price again instead of the cloud icon. I’ve tried signing out and in, restarting etc but still the same. Anybody else experience similar?

Regarding the relocated items see
https://support.apple.com/en-ie/guide/mac-help/mchl8ae423a3/mac

On my own mac it was nothing important just some old config files in private/var somewhere

The purchases being blank could be related to issues the iTunes/App Store had:
https://www.macrumors.com/2019/10/08/itunes-store-is-unable-to-process-purchases-error/

DubDJ · 09-10-2019 7:46am

Yeah it was the same for me, some system files were in the folder. Strange thing is I had performed a clean install of Mohave and then upgraded and the relocated items were still there even though it was a stock version with no third-party software.

The dual volume Macintosh HD setup is interesting. Hadn’t seen that reported anywhere before. Thanks for the info.

I had a look over on Reddit and seems there’s a fair few people having the same issue with purchases on the Mac App Store. A lot of those seem to have done a clean install of Catalina, so possible it’s related to that. Hopefully Apple fix it server side.

finno · 09-10-2019 1:33pm

Mr.S wrote: »

I’m stuck on the “Setting up your Mac” stage, any tricks to get around this?

I installed this morning and i'm getting the same thing.

Sad Professor · 09-10-2019 7:07pm

I hate Apple for what they'd done my email with this update. I have to rebuild, reindex and redownload all my mailboxes, which may take days or weeks.

DubDJ · 09-10-2019 10:53pm

The Mac App Store issue with purchases seems to have resolved itself for me. No intervention required on my part.

Only other thing that required any extra work for me was the switchover from bash to the zsh shell in Terminal. My old profile no longer worked as expected due to the different syntax. Found a great walkthrough online though and was able to build a new profile using that. I knew the switchover was coming so wasn’t a big issue for me.

Overall, can’t say I had any major issues with the upgrade. Starting with a fresh install obviously helped with that.

Having activation lock on the MacBook Pro is also welcome, hopefully it will be an eventual deterrent for thieves in the future.

PropJoe10 · 10-10-2019 1:54am

Honestly have no idea why folks immediately upgrade to a new MacOS version. The newer releases are never stable enough for my liking until at least 10.1x.2. Why not stick with Mojave/High Sierra or something that works?

Grab All Association · 10-10-2019 1:59am

Am I the only one that this update went smoothly for? Apart from getting stuck on setting up mac which I solved by just unplugging my Mac.

macOS 10.15 Catalina

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