Apple Seeds Fourth Beta of macOS Catalina to Developers

[Mike Haas]

Wow. I have a 2017 13" MBP and I'm not experiencing ANY of the issues most of you are writing about. In fact, this has been a fairly stable implementation, especially beginning with Dev B3. Dev B4 downloaded quickly and installed quickly. My only call-outs so far are that Time Machine stays in "preparing backup" for an unusual amount of time but finally kicks off as it did in B3. iCloud seems to be running and uploading my photo library more quickly now and I'm not experiencing all the crashes and spindumps associated with the iCloud Photo Library routines. I cannot pinch and adjust photo sizes in the Photos app but I can return them to normal with the slider at the top left of the screen.

Adobe apps and Microsoft Office are running smoothly. The only app I have issues with is the Carbon Copy Cloner beta which does basically...nothing. Home Sharing of music to the iPhone (iOS 13) is still not working but home-shared TV shows and movies play in the iPhones Apple TV app. Home Sharing of music to the iPhone has always been finicky. Music sharing works in the Apple TV public beta but not my TV shows and movies. Go figure.

I can only conclude that those of you with the 2018 hardware who were experiencing issues installing the Dev B3 are having a tough time with this Beta of Catalina and I'm really very sorry this is happening. I cannot figure out why Apple would still be releasing questionable developer betas at this stage. Mojave dev betas ran extremely well it seemed or at least, were much less troublesome.

 

[yomiko]

Ok. Weird. I pressed a lot of keys and now it says "about 9 minutes remaining"
[doublepost=1563310040][/doublepost]

Nope. False alarm. Stuck again. This is great

Sigh, same here. Started the update 3 hours ago. Tried rebooting twice, both times it lets me login and then goes back to the same update progress...

 

[adrianlondon]

Aaargh - I have not-on-bleeding-edge angst.

I typically upgrade to the latest dev beta (phone and laptop) as soon as it comes out. I'm not a registered developer - I'm not any kind of official developer - but I like to think I know enough (and have enough backups) to recover from any issue. However ...

I need my laptop for something important tomorrow, and this latest beta update seems flaky. I'll wait until tomorrow night. There's no corresponding iOS beta either, which is odd.

Well, that was all ado about nothing! Upgrade took 40 minutes and went without a hitch.

15" MBP Late 2013.

 

[MEJHarrison]

Well, that was all ado about nothing! Upgrade took 40 minutes and went without a hitch.

15" MBP Late 2013.

Same here, but with the 13" instead of the 15". I started it, went for a walk, and it was done when I returned.

 

[Rique]

Same here, but with the 13" instead of the 15". I started it, went for a walk, and it was done when I returned.

You folks are giving me confidence to try. Still, I feel as if I need to start when I get to the office at 10AM and be prepared to stick around the office until 8PM (can't do it at home, we have a slow satellite connection and our usage has a hard cap which we cannot exceed unless we are willing to tolerate modem speeds).

Assuming I can get confirmation that RingCentral Meetings definitely is working, I will take the plunge!

Regardless, I will back up again today (third time this month) and maybe take a stab at it tomorrow - if it fails (or hangs), I will have the weekend to restore.

 

[justperry]

At last, got my system running again after some major headaches, still had to delete more stuff, after a internet recovery it's all good, at least for now.

 

[tethead]

I can only conclude that those of you with the 2018 hardware who were experiencing issues installing the Dev B3 are having a tough time with this Beta of Catalina and I'm really very sorry this is happening. I cannot figure out why Apple would still be releasing questionable developer betas at this stage. Mojave dev betas ran extremely well it seemed or at least, were much less troublesome.

mine is a 2016 MBP (the first release with Touch Bar), so definitely not just the newest hardware.

for those of you who are just now installing the Public Beta, my advice is to let it sit plugged in for up to 2 days, because that's what it took for me

 

[yomiko]

mine is a 2016 MBP (the first release with Touch Bar), so definitely not just the newest hardware.

for those of you who are just now installing the Public Beta, my advice is to let it sit plugged in for up to 2 days, because that's what it took for me

I'm up to 7 hours and 2 reboots and no further progress, might be a 1-2 day endeavor here as well! I believe mine is a late 2017, it's all maxed out specs, so not a old / or slow / or low ram / or low hdd issue...

 

[Ricktracer]

I really don't know what I did right, but I installed the fourth Developer's Beta on two computers a late 2017 iMac and a 2018 MacBook Air with close to zero issues. In fact, the betas are running much better than the previous one.

 

[mixel]

I'm up to 7 hours and 2 reboots and no further progress, might be a 1-2 day endeavor here as well! I believe mine is a late 2017, it's all maxed out specs, so not a old / or slow / or low ram / or low hdd issue...

My MBP and iMac are both 2013 models. The MBP took ~10 hours..

The iMac took <1hr

The interesting thing is though the iMac didn’t install it to it’s drive - I used the previously slow MBP to install to the iMac too.. (my iMac boots from an external SSD, it’s internal is broken) so the age/power of the hardware seems irrelevant, it must be related to the amount/type of storage used, or something?

Both were updating from the most recent DPs..

 

[ColoPaul]

So, What options are left when the Recovery mode doesn’t load?

My only option at that point was to take it into an Apple store. They couldn't help so shipped it off for repair. I got it back and apparently the logic board and entire top case with Touch Bar was replaced. Thank goodness it's under warranty - $795 is the quoted out of warranty charge.

 

[chatin]

In my Beta experience the Apple TV app is simply iTunes renamed. I get the same dumb "you have exceeded your 5 activations, please wait until Nov 22 to deactivate all."

 

[ErikGrim]

In my Beta experience the Apple TV app is simply iTunes renamed. I get the same dumb "you have exceeded your 5 activations, please wait until Nov 22 to deactivate all."

Well, yes. This is fairly common knowledge.

 

[Rique]

My MBP and iMac are both 2013 models. The MBP took ~10 hours..

The iMac took <1hr

The interesting thing is though the iMac didn’t install it to it’s drive - I used the previously slow MBP to install to the iMac too.. (my iMac boots from an external SSD, it’s internal is broken) so the age/power of the hardware seems irrelevant, it must be related to the amount/type of storage used, or something?

Both were updating from the most recent DPs..

Which 2013 MBP were you installing to? 15" or 13"? What is its model identifier (for example, mine is 11,3)? Also what type drive, how much storage, how much available space? I'm considering jumping into the deep end with my late 2013 MBP and it would be useful info. Thanks in advance.

 

[mixel]

Which 2013 MBP were you installing to? 15" or 13"? What is its model identifier (for example, mine is 11,3)? Also what type drive, how much storage, how much available space? I'm considering jumping into the deep end with my late 2013 MBP and it would be useful info. Thanks in advance.

Its an Early 2013 Retina 15" (10,1) 16GB 500GB ssd MBP - with 100GB free

I genuinely think the speed is not tied to the hardware, but to some weird thing regarding what's been installed, how much of time machine and iCloud stuff it needs to catalogue or something? It makes no sense for my MBP to install so much faster to the iMac's drive when the iMac's drive runs less than half the speed and only had 30GB storage remaining on it. All logic implies the MBP should have powered through on it's own drive, so something else is definitely going on.

Id say install it whatever your hardware but only if it's not a primary machine you need to work in the next day or two because it could literally take that long to update for mystery reasons.

 

[Mike Haas]

I'm happy to update my previous report regarding Home Sharing on the Apple TV from Catalina. I'm on the 2nd public release of the Apple TV beta and with Dev B3 running, Home Sharing reported the error "cannot connect to home library." After installing Dev B4 (2017 13" MBP) which went without a hitch, I got the same error initially. However, after restarting the ATV, which I did several times during the course of testing the previous Catalina betas, it finally connected to my home share. It takes an inordinate amount of time to load the content and on a few tries I got the "this content cannot be played" but after trying again, my own TV shows and movies played fine and the Director's Cut of the Martian, my own rip from the Blu-Ray, played from beginning to end without error.

Curiously, my music share played under the Apple TV app but not through "Computers (Home Sharing)." My music library now also shows up under "Computers."

Again, my sincerest apologies to all of you experiencing such horrible issues installing this particular beta release. It's running very, very well here and my only complaints are what I wrote about previously, slow Time Machine backups and the loss of pinch and zoom in the Photos app.

If you're curious as to why I've devoted so many posts to Home Sharing since B1, it is because the Apple TV makes an *excellent* home theater - perhaps the best I've ever used since I built my first home theater computer back in 2005. Apple TV was always fast and reliable and I'm pleased to see it will continue that legacy.

As far as the separation of music and film/tv content splitting iTunes - meh. I still get the familar beach ball running either. Of course, that's to be expected running a beta OS. We'll see...

 

[Rique]

[snip]

If you're curious as to why I've devoted so many posts to Home Sharing since B1, it is because the Apple TV makes an *excellent* home theater - perhaps the best I've ever used since I built my first home theater computer back in 2005. Apple TV was always fast and reliable and I'm pleased to see it will continue that legacy.

As far as the separation of music and film/tv content splitting iTunes - meh. I still get the familiar beach ball running either. Of course, that's to be expected running a beta OS. We'll see...

I also devoted Home Sharing to home theater usage practically from the beginning, as I moved from ATV 2 to ATV 4 (the HD ATV, not the 4k ATV). Once I got to ATV 4 (HD), I switched over to Plex, which I much prefer. The current Plex supports photos, music, playlists, TV, movies, home videos, online content - it's kind of perfect for my uses.

There are two downsides - 1) If a lot of your content is DRM protected, Plex can't handle it (understandably). And 2) Plex requires a server (I use a Mac Mini, which is ideal for me, although there are many other options available).

YMMV, natch.

 

[darrens]

I've given up on Catalina at this point.
First attempt was an upgrade from Beta 3 to Beta 4 on my 2014 MB Air 11" ended up with a reboot to the "Prohibited" sign.
I thought maybe there's something hanging around from my old install that Beta 4 didn't like so I completely erased my SSD, re-installed the latest Mojave then re-enrolled and re-installed Catalina.
Prohibited sign again...
Back to Mojave for me.

 

[macintoshmac]

I've given up on Catalina at this point.
First attempt was an upgrade from Beta 3 to Beta 4 on my 2014 MB Air 11" ended up with a reboot to the "Prohibited" sign.
I thought maybe there's something hanging around from my old install that Beta 4 didn't like so I completely erased my SSD, re-installed the latest Mojave then re-enrolled and re-installed Catalina.
Prohibited sign again...
Back to Mojave for me.

Wait for the final release then.

 

[justperry]

This is because when you delete files, the space they occupy is marked as purgeable, but doesn't really delete the files. I guess this helps avoid unnecessary disk writes and improve longevity, and the space will only be rewritten when something else is actually written to that area on the disk. Now, for some stupid reason, the Apple installers don't see this space as free and that's why you get the error. The solution is to make a huge file with dd and then delete it:

You can use 'dd' to create the file in your directory.

dd if=/dev/random of=~/hugefile bs=15m

If it erros out due to lack of disk space, you can run it again using another file name (hugefile1, hugefile2, etc) to make sure it's purging the disk. Or you can Ctrl-C once the file reaches 10 GB and then duplicate it as much as you can. Either of these will force the disk to purge the space, and when you delete the files this time it will actually free the space and Apple installers should have no disk space problems.

Here's the Stack Exchange post where I learned about this: https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/304017

Just today I found out what the problem was.

Several months ago I installed a program called Disk Drill, can't recall why I installed it, I deleted it shortly afterwards, so I thought, the problem is it was making a backup of all the files I deleted.
Reason I got suspicious is that I saw a Folder called ".cleverfiles" on my SSD root level, I then searched for this name.

This program is totally crap, first, it's too much Windows like, the Icon should already ring a bell but I ignored it, when I did install my intuition became reality.
Those bastards don't even tell you, they for instance said you can manage the available space it needs in the program, couldn't find it, they also say to just move the App to the trash but don't tell you there's a backup Folder, they do tell you there's a folder in ~/Library/Diskdrill but that's just it.
The Folder is huge, almost 70 GB, wasn't the only one so I found out, others had similar lost space.

Warning: Avoid this crap App (Disk Drill) as the plaque.

 

[NecRosex]

Woke up in the morning and it worked! Wooo!

So the answer is to leave the stuck progress bar even if it seems like its never going to move, because it IS going to move. Even if it takes 5+ hours. Just leave it.

Do you have the same problem with Beta 5 guys?
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Mine is still stuck this morning. Going on 15 hours now. Yay.

Let me know if you get stuck with Beta 5 as well, Because I did .

 

[darrens]

Wait for the final release then.

No choice really - doesn't boot for me even after a lot of effort to get it to work.

 

[mixel]

Do you have the same problem with Beta 5 guys?
[doublepost=1564606624][/doublepost]
Let me know if you get stuck with Beta 5 as well, Because I did .

Oh god, haha I’d forgotten all about last time..

Do you have the same problem with Beta 5 guys?
[doublepost=1564606624][/doublepost]
Let me know if you get stuck with Beta 5 as well, Because I did .

It waited a long time at 1 quarter full and calculating time remaining, but it was much faster this time. 3 hours? Just got to leave it to it. This is the MBP that took ~10 Hrs last time, so its a big improvement at least.

 

[macintoshmac]

No choice really - doesn't boot for me even after a lot of effort to get it to work.

When it doesn't even boot, you can't even send any meaningful feedback to Apple to help resolve.

 

[Ledurpabbi]

I'm going nuts here. After beta 4 I thought that this couldn't he worse.

I'm still waiting after 24 hours.

9 minutes remaining
35 minutes remaining
1 minute remaining

Incredible