Apple Releases First Beta of Upcoming macOS Catalina 10.15.1 Update

[Zdigital2015]

Well, deprecated means they are still there and can be used. And it's not like Apple has been doing anything with OpenGL over the years – it has been at version 4.1 since OS X Mavericks released in 2013.

Anyway, I don't understand why the deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL motivates the lack of support for later GPU offerings from Nvidia(?).

Because Metal brings the same API to all of Apple’s OS platforms, which is incredibly important to Apple if they want to eventually move Macs over to A-series CPUs and this benefits developers by having a single API to develop for.

Also, Apple has its own investment and initiatives in AI/AR/Machine Learning with OpenML and NVIDIA has CUDA. Apple has zero interest in allowing CUDA onto the Mac in a meaningful way to undermine OpenML. That’s my theory, not the facts, which Apple is never go to discuss in public.

Apple is never going to give NVIDIA access to things they want to do driver development and vice versa, so it’s best to simply move on and hope that AMD keeps innovating their GPUs as they have been.

 

[kingtj]

5 of you for 100 people I look after 850 Mac's pretty much on my own. But your co-worker is right Catalina is not yet ready.

Technically, it's 5 of us for around 100 full-time employees and over 200 freelance workers they use randomly on various projects. But yes, we have people spread all over the country in different time zones, and expectations of a high level of support. (Broken laptop means we get you a working replacement with all your data restored back on it just like the one you had, in less than 24 hours, etc.)

I've been in I.T. in one form or another for 30 years now, and frankly, it's kind of pathetic how so many businesses take a sort of pride in how many machines they've got only 1 or 2 people supporting. At that point, all you're really doing is bragging how well your automation and scripts work -- which is great until something totally unexpected happens. You're definitely not able to do things like personally greet each new hire and spend an hour or so with them, teaching them about their new system and desk phone setup and how to use it, right?

 

[haddy]

Check your backup first to make sure it's complete, of course.

For my needs macOS 10.15 is by far the best OS ever released, and the first OS I used was 4.1 then to 6. In other words been using Macs since 1986. I have a very upmarket hifi system (the cables alone are worth more than the Mac) attached to my iMac (2019 27" maxed out...well only 64GB RAM). I buy CDs and transfer the music tracks to the hard drive....don't use the Apple Store. The sound reproduction using the Music program, VLC watching MKV files (some TV shows and movies have really good sound tracks) and my browser, Brave, to watch Youtube clips is just so so much better than any other OS before Catalina. I have no idea what the software engineers at Apple have done to producing sound on my Mac using Catalina (maybe someone on this board can tell me) but it is just unbelievably good.

 

[n-evo]

Under users, the Parental Control check box is no more ... how do I assign a login account to Mac OS as a “children’s account” ... that link is missing

Create a Standard User Account for a kid, log into that, go to Screen Time and select “Limit Adult Websites” and whatever else you want.

 

[Babygotfont]

Create a Standard User Account for a kid, log into that, go to Screen Time and select “Limit Adult Websites” and whatever else you want.

thank you ... I just missed the documentation/release notes on this ...

 

[marshy]

Navi / RDNA support is no longer listed in the 10.15.1 beta release notes, so I'm guessing it was pulled from this intial beta release at the last minute...

[edit: typo]

 

[fathergll]

Amen...good grief, talk about a CF...and slow. MacOS X 10.1 fixed a lot of things and for me, Jaguar was good at the end with 10.2.6, Panther, better once 10.3.3 shipped, Tiger at 10.4.4, Leopard by 10.5.6, SL at 10.6.8, Lion was complete crap through every release, ML was fine by 10.8.5, Mavericks I never really even remember using that much, Yosemite took until 10.10.4, Sierra by 10.12.4, HS by 10.13.4 and for me Mojave 10.14.5 was more stable than 10.14.6. I hold out hope that Catalina will be better by 10.15.4, there is still a ways to go, unfortunately.

EDIT: Forgot El Crapitan, which was fine by 10.11.4. Pretty good, actually, by the time it hit 10.11.6.

This is why I can't understand why the average person would even consider jumping on a new OS until at least 6 months after the release.(outside of something very specific or a very specific enhancement you need)

 

[Yendog]

Praying that is solves the "loading artwork" issue in Music that is CHEWING my memory. And... long long shot here.. COLUMN BROWSER VIEW option in Music... but doubt that would come back so quick.
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I am an early adaptor on iOS and OS but this rollout might change that as it has been THE WORST I can remember since 2000 (when i got my first mac)

 

[Zdigital2015]

This is why I can't understand why the average person would even consider jumping on a new OS until at least 6 months after the release.(outside of something very specific or a very specific enhancement you need)

Personally, I have two machines running Catalina, a 2012 MacBook Pro and my 2016 MacBook Pro. I am fortunate to have more than a single Mac that allows me to do that and not have to use Catalina on a critical work-related (i.e my money makers) machine. For those with a single Mac, they absolutely should be waiting for the six months as you suggest or even longer depending on what they do with their Mac.

In another thread, someone noted that they had upgraded their editing rig and were having issues and needed help. I am not a 100% sure that they were serious or joking, but I find it a bit disconcerting that users aren't more wary of updating their Mac without waiting to see what nasty bugs may present themselves by early adopters. The Public Beta cycle has enabled some of that risk taking because there is a segment of people who absolutely have to have to newest and shiniest, no matter what.

Although iOS has had its up and downs, it has been seemingly more stable and definitely more maintained and updated quickly due to sheer volume of installs, whereas macOS has a much smaller base and Apple has not taken the time to ensure it is as polished and reliable out the door from one release to another. To me, this all began with MacOS X Lion and has gone through ups and down of reliability or lack thereof, which is disheartening for those whose primary workload and flow is dependent on a desktop computer. Without waxing philosophic for too long, I have no problem with Apple's focus on the iPad as a traditional desktop/laptop replacement, I am embracing that myself, but we're still not there and macOS is still a beloved and vital component to many users daily experience. Limiting hardware choices is one thing, but not being respectful of the user base and its needs with respect to the operating system is an offense, given that you want us to entrust our data to these not inexpensive devices. Apple needs to do better with macOS engineering overall because no matter what hardware is running it, that's why we come back to Apple. Not the "amazing" hardware, but for the simplicity and power of macOS. No matter how hard Apple wants that to be refocused to iPadOS now, they need to make sure that understand that we will go when we're ready and not before. Especially since they are still actively selling, creating and marketing hardware to the general public. macOS should be bulletproof...end soapbox or rant or whatever it may be called.

Last bit - Catalina is a sea change in a lot of ways and it sets things up for the next 10 years or so, but Apple has done a fairly horrible job in communicating that to anyone but developers...at least that's my opinion. They really don't evangelize macOS and as such it is treated like an afterthought when compared to iOS and iPadOS. Apple does a lot of things right, but keeping the zeitgeist of macOS and the Mac as co-equal to the iPhone and iPad is sure as hell not one of them.

 

[Zdigital2015]

NAVI support is no longer listed in the 10.15.1 beta release notes, so I'm guessing it was pulled from this intial beta release at the last minute..

Somebody let the cat out of the bag early it seems. Navi references go back as far as High Sierra, IIRC, but with actual hardware out there, Apple is still not ready to acknowledge and support it as I suspect the next iterations of the iMac and the 16" MacBook Pro will be Navi driven. Goodness knows they aren't going to get much more mileage out of the 555X and 560X and users are going to be absolutely apoplectic unsympathetic if Vega 16 and 20 GPU are still BTO on the rumored 16" MacBook Pro. Just my 2¢.

 

[Ener Ji]

Somebody let the cat out of the bag early it seems. Navi references go back as far as High Sierra, IIRC, but with actual hardware out there, Apple is still not ready to acknowledge and support it as I suspect the next iterations of the iMac and the 16" MacBook Pro will be Navi driven. Goodness knows they aren't going to get much more mileage out of the 555X and 560X and users are going to be absolutely apoplectic unsympathetic if Vega 16 and 20 GPU are still BTO on the rumored 16" MacBook Pro. Just my 2¢.

Hear, hear.

 

[fathergll]

Personally, I have two machines running Catalina, a 2012 MacBook Pro and my 2016 MacBook Pro. I am fortunate to have more than a single Mac that allows me to do that and not have to use Catalina on a critical work-related (i.e my money makers) machine. For those with a single Mac, they absolutely should be waiting for the six months as you suggest or even longer depending on what they do with their Mac.

In another thread, someone noted that they had upgraded their editing rig and were having issues and needed help. I am not a 100% sure that they were serious or joking, but I find it a bit disconcerting that users aren't more wary of updating their Mac without waiting to see what nasty bugs may present themselves by early adopters. The Public Beta cycle has enabled some of that risk taking because there is a segment of people who absolutely have to have to newest and shiniest, no matter what.

Although iOS has had its up and downs, it has been seemingly more stable and definitely more maintained and updated quickly due to sheer volume of installs, whereas macOS has a much smaller base and Apple has not taken the time to ensure it is as polished and reliable out the door from one release to another. To me, this all began with MacOS X Lion and has gone through ups and down of reliability or lack thereof, which is disheartening for those whose primary workload and flow is dependent on a desktop computer. Without waxing philosophic for too long, I have no problem with Apple's focus on the iPad as a traditional desktop/laptop replacement, I am embracing that myself, but we're still not there and macOS is still a beloved and vital component to many users daily experience. Limiting hardware choices is one thing, but not being respectful of the user base and its needs with respect to the operating system is an offense, given that you want us to entrust our data to these not inexpensive devices. Apple needs to do better with macOS engineering overall because no matter what hardware is running it, that's why we come back to Apple. Not the "amazing" hardware, but for the simplicity and power of macOS. No matter how hard Apple wants that to be refocused to iPadOS now, they need to make sure that understand that we will go when we're ready and not before. Especially since they are still actively selling, creating and marketing hardware to the general public. macOS should be bulletproof...end soapbox or rant or whatever it may be called.

Last bit - Catalina is a sea change in a lot of ways and it sets things up for the next 10 years or so, but Apple has done a fairly horrible job in communicating that to anyone but developers...at least that's my opinion. They really don't evangelize macOS and as such it is treated like an afterthought when compared to iOS and iPadOS. Apple does a lot of things right, but keeping the zeitgeist of macOS and the Mac as co-equal to the iPhone and iPad is sure as hell not one of them.

There seems to be a psychological component behind upgrades for most users in that it's newer therefore 'better'(i've notice this in all aspects of software even outside of Apple). You are correct that it doesn't impact incredibly high visibility software like iOS for a number of reasons and it tends to impact lower volume software more often on average.

Apple has a lot of irons in the fire so it logically makes sense that MacOS was going to take a hit compared to the earlier days even if they are sitting on a far bigger pile of cash. iPhone development began in 2004 as 'project purple' and they started supporting both PowerPC and Intel that same year so it's possible that was the genesis of the issues(apparently Jobs had lots of resources stripped from other dev teams to make the iPhone happen).

I don't make money with MacOS and I still tend to wait close to a year before installing a new OS. People are nuts for upgrading to a new OS on work critical machines. I don't do it on machines for leasure just because it's a personal waste of time for me to spend time troubleshooting.

 

[Zdigital2015]

There seems to be a psychological component behind upgrades for most users in that it's newer therefore 'better'(i've notice this in all aspects of software even outside of Apple). You are correct that it doesn't impact incredibly high visibility software like iOS for a number of reasons and it tends to impact lower volume software more often on average.

Apple has a lot of irons in the fire so it logically makes sense that MacOS was going to take a hit compared to the earlier days even if they are sitting on a far bigger pile of cash. iPhone development began in 2004 as 'project purple' and they started supporting both PowerPC and Intel that same year so it's possible that was the genesis of the issues(apparently Jobs had lots of resources stripped from other dev teams to make the iPhone happen).

I don't make money with MacOS and I still tend to wait close to a year before installing a new OS. People are nuts for upgrading to a new OS on work critical machines. I don't do it on machines for leasure just because it's a personal waste of time for me to spend time troubleshooting.

The annual churn of the iPhone dictates iOS being numero uno and I have zero problem with that on a fundamental level. The next would be iPadOS and then probably watchOS, as each of these platforms is where the market share and mind share are at this point. The payoff, at least in my mind, is that the profits generated from those devices are both plowed back into R&D to keep them on top of their respective categories, but to also help buttress the rest of the ecosystem. I am not seeing that myself.

For all the talk of AppleTV+, the AppleTV hardware itself seems more like an afterthought at this point. Roku and Amazon Fire have seemingly sewn up the consumer 4K TV markets by aggressively licensing their use in everything from a $250 55” 4K TCL to more expensive models, until you get to the point where the manufacturer can afford to develop their own overlay for Android TV. When it was rumored that Apple might release a TV of it’s own, there was some momentary excitement, until one realized that the prospect of a $4K 55” 4K LED HDTV was completely untenable and unpalatable, no matter how beautiful if would have looked.

Now we’re expected to get excited about their streaming video service when the cost of entry is still ridiculously expensive next to the competition and offers nothing especially compelling besides an overpriced and crappy remote (I always pick it up and find out that it is upside down). Apple has really let the AppleTV languish when there are a myriad of possibilities for it to be a home entertainment hub. Caching movies, music, games and system updates for a family full of iOS users seems a logical extension.

For me, I can still see some incredibly gaping holes in Apple’s ecosystem lock in that I cannot determine whether they are simply things that Apple doesn’t have personnel to give attention to, that the C-Suite has debated and doesn’t see the value in taking a risk due to a lack of “vision” or that truly can be chewed up and spit out because it’s a stupid idea. I readily admit you have to go through a 100 ideas (or more) to get one good one, but Apple seems to be pulling even further away from that since the Watch launched.

I won’t denigrate a professional by saying they aren’t a professional after they hop on the update wagon, but for the work I do, you don’t just upgrade for the hell of it. Yes, people are nuts. Yes, time is precious and I don’t have time to troubleshoot Apple’s lack of software QA. Except when I have to because an update has to be performed to get a benefit that’s tangible from a productivity or monetary perspective.

I actually had designers on my previous job at El Capitan from the time 10.11.4 came out and I bit the bullet until the time that Mojave was released and I instead completely skipped High Sierra. The senior programmer bitched mightily, but for their work, the risk was too great. Mojave though was a way faster update...mostly successful.

 

[n-evo]

thank you ... I just missed the documentation/release notes on this ...

I figured it out just by looking around for 30 seconds or so.

 

[racingbull]

Why not just upgrade every 18-24 months when you know a version is stable and you get multiple features?

Sounds fair enough for me.

Indeed, I am (rationally) wondering whether to step out of the yearly upgrades.

I will need to buy a new MBP, iPhone and iPad in January. I could easily stick with ios13 and macOS Catalina for a few years.

... if I were sufficiently pragmatic.

 

[kingtj]

One problem I've often encountered with the Mac in a corporate setting, though, is Apple's arm-twisting you to do an OS upgrade that's otherwise unnecessary, just because it decides the new release will be the "bug fix" for a problem in the previous version.

Right now, we're running into a problem like that with the 2018 and 2019 Macbook Pro 15" notebooks. If they're on Mojave and they do videoconferencing with the built-in camera, it's subject to kernel panics and crashes. Yet upgrading to Catalina addresses the issue.

In the past, things like this have happened with security patches/fixes too, where a complete patch was never done for an older Mac OS X release. Proper security was only attainable by upgrading.

And certainly, you also have the problem eventually where you can't use a current version of a software application anymore without upgrading OS X first. (Microsoft Office was a good example.)

At least with Microsoft, Windows has a much larger team of programmers supporting it and they continue to patch even quite old Windows versions when newer ones are released. To this day, I believe companies can still pay a fee for a special "point of sale" edition of Windows XP that receives security updates and patches regularly? I know that was still the case only a year ago or so. That OS came out back in 2001!

I won’t denigrate a professional by saying they aren’t a professional after they hop on the update wagon, but for the work I do, you don’t just upgrade for the hell of it. Yes, people are nuts. Yes, time is precious and I don’t have time to troubleshoot Apple’s lack of software QA. Except when I have to because an update has to be performed to get a benefit that’s tangible from a productivity or monetary perspective.

I actually had designers on my previous job at El Capitan from the time 10.11.4 came out and I bit the bullet until the time that Mojave was released and I instead completely skipped High Sierra. The senior programmer bitched mightily, but for their work, the risk was too great. Mojave though was a way faster update...mostly successful.

 

[Zdigital2015]

One problem I've often encountered with the Mac in a corporate setting, though, is Apple's arm-twisting you to do an OS upgrade that's otherwise unnecessary, just because it decides the new release will be the "bug fix" for a problem in the previous version.

Right now, we're running into a problem like that with the 2018 and 2019 Macbook Pro 15" notebooks. If they're on Mojave and they do videoconferencing with the built-in camera, it's subject to kernel panics and crashes. Yet upgrading to Catalina addresses the issue.

In the past, things like this have happened with security patches/fixes too, where a complete patch was never done for an older Mac OS X release. Proper security was only attainable by upgrading.

And certainly, you also have the problem eventually where you can't use a current version of a software application anymore without upgrading OS X first. (Microsoft Office was a good example.)

At least with Microsoft, Windows has a much larger team of programmers supporting it and they continue to patch even quite old Windows versions when newer ones are released. To this day, I believe companies can still pay a fee for a special "point of sale" edition of Windows XP that receives security updates and patches regularly? I know that was still the case only a year ago or so. That OS came out back in 2001!

Unfortunately, because of the annual release schedule and Apple’s desire to keep up that torrential pace, those items that should be fixed in the current release get pushed into the next release, just as you assert. It has happened to me a few times, but I cannot remember the specifics (old, bad memory).

There is something to be said for how security progresses that necessitates upgrades to a more secure version and backporting is either impossible without breaking the previous version of the OS for many, or bleeds off dev resources for the current version. Given that Apple no longer (to my knowledge) has a dedicated macOS development team, Apple’s focus is on iOS and so macOS takes a bit of a backseat when it comes to upkeep of previous versions outside of critical Security Updates.

I diverge from you in that I believe there is a finite timeframe that anyone can expect an operating system to be supported once a successor has been released. Neither Apple nor Microsoft can be expected to support users who are still running WindowsXP or Apple supporting back to MacOS X Tiger (you would be surprised). Whether that timing is based on number of releases or number of years is up for debate, but the fact remains that users will sit and sit and sit on a version of an OS well past its expiration date. There is no magic formula, but Apple is in a somewhat unique position with having five (5) distinct operating systems on an annual upgrade cadence. Looking back very far is simply not feasible for a number of reasons.

Currently I am stuck on Mojave for my production computer until I hear from a couple of hardware/software vendors because their software simply won’t work and their Plug-Ins have to be Notarized. Although being inconvenient, I am hopeful that the changes in Catalina and the groundwork that has been laid will be worth it over the next decade. Time will tell.