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Apple Seeds First Beta of Upcoming macOS Catalina 10.15.4 Update to Public Beta Testers
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Which is weird, since macOS is a free upgrade. There's only costs, no profits, in creating new OS versions.
Personally, I'm still on High Sierra, and won't upgrade until I am either forced to due to other software I need not working on it, or there is a huge new feature (e.g. APFS) that I really want. And even then, I waited for several minor version releases, and a calming down of bug complaints, before upgrading to HS.
And I hear you on the VMWare being a costly upgrade with every new macOS version. Another reason to not upgrade macOS in a hurry.
Catalina is the first macOS that I'm completely skipping. I'll wait for WWDC and see what gets introduced there but I really hope they will focus on performance, stability etc. We need another snow leopard
Same here. I refuse to touch it.
In past versions of MacOS, the Console application was very useful for checking on things such as Time Machine activity, unexpected system shutdowns and reboots. But starting in 10.12 Sierra, the "new" Console application has become nearly useless for system administration and troubleshooting use:
eclecticlight.co
eclecticlight.co
Unfortunately, little has changed in MacOS Catalina version of Console. When the author of these articles wrote "I suspect that the previewers and reviewers never actually tried to do anything purposeful using Console 1.0" he must have been referring to puff pieces such as this one from Macworld:
www.macworld.com
Why would Macworld publish such an ignorant, uninformed article?
Sierra’s Console: promising but incomplete
Even a performing basic check can be an act of supreme intellectual challenge, or is now flatly impossible. Early beta quality.
eclecticlight.co
Welcome to macOS Sierra’s new Console: it’s buried in Terminal
So how do you check your logs to see if backups have been made correctly? Forget Console – you’ve got to use Terminal.
eclecticlight.co
Unfortunately, little has changed in MacOS Catalina version of Console. When the author of these articles wrote "I suspect that the previewers and reviewers never actually tried to do anything purposeful using Console 1.0" he must have been referring to puff pieces such as this one from Macworld:
Hands on with macOS Sierra’s Console: Now it’s easier to get the Mac information you need
Apple has revamped the Console, making it easier to use.
www.macworld.com
Why would Macworld publish such an ignorant, uninformed article?
Catalina broke my wife's HP scanner app. I was not very popular after I convinced her to upgrade.
You're not obligated to update Operating Systems, period. Catalina has different security policies, but once figured out it's faster, and more stable now than Mojave was at 10.14.3.
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In past versions of MacOS, the Console application was very useful for checking on things such as Time Machine activity, unexpected system shutdowns and reboots. But starting in 10.12 Sierra, the "new" Console application has become nearly useless for system administration and troubleshooting use:
Sierra’s Console: promising but incomplete
Even a performing basic check can be an act of supreme intellectual challenge, or is now flatly impossible. Early beta quality.
Welcome to macOS Sierra’s new Console: it’s buried in Terminal
So how do you check your logs to see if backups have been made correctly? Forget Console – you’ve got to use Terminal.
Unfortunately, little has changed in MacOS Catalina version of Console. When the author of these articles wrote "I suspect that the previewers and reviewers never actually tried to do anything purposeful using Console 1.0" he must have been referring to puff pieces such as this one from Macworld:
Hands on with macOS Sierra’s Console: Now it’s easier to get the Mac information you need
Apple has revamped the Console, making it easier to use.
Why would Macworld publish such an ignorant, uninformed article?
Console hasn't been updated since 2016. It's not hard to figure that out from the About Console panel. However, Terminal.app has seen an aging Bash shell be replaced with Zsh.
This blog post from a once senior QA Engineer at Apple is very interesting/disturbing. I avoid all new Mac OS releases as long as possible since Apple seems broken now re: software dev. Maybe they will fix it, but the stock market has voted in favor of the status quo, and Tim really manages to the stock price without concerns about "it just works".
Excerpt (sad that a productive QA engineer no longer feels he can contribute): "In the first 12 years or so, I was fortunate to be given the freedom to influence products to a degree far exceeded my position, a testament to the Apple management I worked under. As the company got bigger, my influence declined from a very high point to effectively zero."
Link (recommend entire blog):
techreflect.net
Excerpt (sad that a productive QA engineer no longer feels he can contribute): "In the first 12 years or so, I was fortunate to be given the freedom to influence products to a degree far exceeded my position, a testament to the Apple management I worked under. As the company got bigger, my influence declined from a very high point to effectively zero."
Link (recommend entire blog):
Why I left Apple (2019) - Tech Reflect
All in-depth articles about my Apple career: How I ended up at Apple (1999) AppleCare (1999-2000) Mail team (2000-2004) Aperture: Senior QA (2004-2005) Eye Candy QA (2005-2011) Flipboard interlude (2011-2013) Calendar and Contacts (2013-2015) SwiftUI (2015-2016) Watch Hardware (2016-2017) Eye...
techreflect.net
Catalina is the first macOS that I'm completely skipping. I'll wait for WWDC and see what gets introduced there but I really hope they will focus on performance, stability etc. We need another snow leopard
thats what i said
check this out:
There have been improvement with each Catalina update, but I still wish I had waited to upgrade. I still have a Mojave on a few machines and everything works. Can't say the same for Catalina. Also, iOS 13 still has numerous issues.
I would love to hear any rumors on when MacOS XI will be coming out, or whatever comes after OS X.
I would love to hear any rumors on when MacOS XI will be coming out, or whatever comes after OS X.
Darth Tulhu
macrumors 68020
Catalina’s stock email app killed my endangered pet baby unicorn. And that’s not even the worst part about the email app.
Did they fix bluetooth problems? AirPods Pro and Sony WH1000MX2 still keeps disconnecting at random without ability to reconnect them back without power off/on
If you’re in enterprise, yes. Avoid. There are all kinds of issues, though this beta fixes a big one with AD joined machines and FileVault.
Home use, it’s fine and the new features are ‘nice’.
But why? Why not share your obvious tale of woe so that others can make up their own minds?
This is also down to the Intel CPU fixes Apple have issued overt the last year.
The performance of my late 2013 MacBook Pro is absolutely pathetic now. There's so little CPU power that even OneDrive syncing a bunch of files causes CPU to throttle to 100%.
People overlook how seriously smashed older CPU's are now.
There wasn't a good macOS release since... OS X Mountain Lion. It all went South when they gave up on the cat names.
That being said, for every day use, Catalina isn't really worse than Mojave -- provided that all your software is available as pure 64-bit builds. The "allow notifications" thing is annoying in the beginning, but once you're through that, Catalina does its job. It's completely boring and underwhelming and does not bring a single useful new feature to the table, but it does it's job. Is it worth upgrading? In all honesty: No. But neither was Mojave. Nor were High Sierra, Sierra, El Capitan, Yosemite or Mavericks. macOS no longer is a platform where anything interesting or exciting or innovative happens. If you need a work horse, that's a good thing. But if that is the case, then frankly speaking, let's stop pretending that these annual releases are "major upgrades". They are not.
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No. It took them over 30 (!) years to change Windows so much that the calculator from Windows 1.0 (!!!) no longer worked on a more recent Windows 10 build...
Microsoft is a hard and well earned reputation for going out their way to guarantee backwards compatibility. That is one of the main reasons for their huge success in the enterprise segment. (And Apple's total disregard for backwards compatibility is one of the main reasons why Macs never took off in the enterprise market. When you have to manage large scale rollouts, you need something that respects your administrative needs.)
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Interesting you say that. Catalina works great for me. Totally usable
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No issues with my 2014 MBP
It causes sysadmins a lot of headaches, because it once again broke a lot of stuff on the lower system level -- it especially broke stuff that automated software deployments and orchestration solutions relied on. So for admins, it really, really sucks.
On the user level, it mostly works. Just like Mojave mostly worked. It's neither truly good nor truly bad. It's uninteresting and breaks a lot of backwards compatibility. If your software is 64-bit compatible, you might not feel much of a difference. And since you don't feel much of a difference, there's probably no need to upgrade from Mojave (or even High Sierra). On the user level, there really is nothing interesting in this macOS release.
... and this is exactly the kicker when it comes to problem replication and difficultyness (if that's a word) ... the more server side software comes into play, the more difficult it is to identify/replicate/troubleshoot issues/problems/questions/etc.
the best investment (from the consumer POV) that iApple can make (in my lazy opinion) would be to either contract with an outside software QA/QC company to perform thorough regression testing; or to fork their own division explicitly for this purpose.
Sign me in. First Mac Os X distribution I skipped.Catalina is the first macOS that I'm completely skipping. I'll wait for WWDC and see what gets introduced there but I really hope they will focus on performance, stability etc. We need another snow leopard
If it makes you feel better, the latest biannual Windows 10 "feature update" broke VMWare Workstation for Windows. The main difference is I can stick with a stable Mojave forever, Windows is a ticking time bomb before forcing you to upgrade.
I assume there is a kickback from software vendors to Apple and Microsoft for breaking compatibility and driving paid upgrades. That's the world we live in.
I have had no issues with macOS Catalina on my MacBook Pro's and MacBook Air's. Works absolutely flawlessly, and I upgraded on day one.
I always do a fresh install of the new releases of macOS...maybe that is why I have had no issues...I honestly have no clue though?
I think if you have been holding out on Catalina, you would be fine to install it now, however, that is just my personal opinion.
