macOS Catalina's Biggest Changes: What to Check Out After Upgrading

[robinp]

It’s an incredibly underwhelming update. Sidecar is neat but basically what Luna has been doing for a while but without the dongle. Luna still allows for higher resolutions which actually makes my small-ish ipad much more useful than via sidecar.

Everything else? I’d happily do without to be honest. Many of the security features seem more annoying than helpful. Rarely used iTunes so not really bothered by what they’ve done in terms of splitting it up.

 

[FlyingDutch]

My opinion of using Catalina for a couple of hours, compared to Lion, Mavericks and – the newest one I run – High Sierra: it is as beautiful as useless. Finder syncing UI sucks big time: I don't see anything what's on my iPhone unlike I was able to in the "bloated" iTunes. Could go on and on but I stop here. It's not an upgrade, it's a downgrade, so I upgraded by returning to High Sierra and sticking to triple boot with the other two OSes that I still use and that give me more usage benefits than this abomination of software. Real shame on Apple.
I don't give a dime about sidecars, screentime, catalyst crappy apps, Apple Watch link. This is not productivity.

who exactly decide what is productivity and what is not ?
For me sidecars and catalyst for instance are big productivity tools.

 

[FightTheFuture]

The Apple Watch password authentication is super inconsistent. For example, it doesn’t work for Safari auto-fill. You’d expect it to work in every instance where TouchID works but it doesn’t. A bit disappointing.

Isn’t that what keychain is for?

 

[WalterNeff]

My mouse arrow disappears when using the new Apple TV on the Mac. Have to escape out to have it return to the screen. So, that's a thing

 

[The Phazer]

You know you're struggling when the list of 7 things to check out includes "lots of your old apps don't work any more." A thrilling improvement.

Also interesting that UHD support for the Apple TV app isn't included - nobody in the forums seems to be able to get it to work. Does this mean the Macrumors staff can't either? Can anyone?

 

[hrpuffnstuff]

I am at the point I will keep my early 2015 MBP on Mojave and do my OS upgrade at the same time I buy a 2020 MBP 16" once they fix the keyboard. I used to be the first guy to update my devices and while Apple hasn't burned me I would rather not get to smell my own burning update flesh

 

[klagermkii]

I've actually been super happy with it. I have a 2012 rMBP that was on High Sierra, and for a while I had been finding Cmd-Tabbing between applications to be very sluggish (as well as some other UI operations). Installing Catalina cured that.

It may just have been some misbehaving 32-bit app that I had installed that Catalina disabled, but whatever the reason the results are great.

 

[aka777]

Desktop OS are stable and mature now, that’s what matters.

Be it Apple or Microsoft or linux, stability and simplicity and security has always been the core goal of every OS update.

 

[btrach144]

The fact that Carrot Weather wants $15 for their porter iPad app is hysterical.

 

[ilikewhey]

i use my widget on a daily basis, not gonna upgrade here.

 

[57004]

Catalyst apps are not necessarily dumbed-down iPad apps. It all depends on the implementation obviously, but it can save a lot of app developers from having to maintain two code bases and only keeping around a lackluster mac app. For example, the GoodNotes 5 beta on the mac instantly gained all of the features of the iPad app instead of having the developer incrementally add features over months and maybe years to reach feature parity. It’s still a little rough around the edges but I feel that catalyst has a lot of potential.

I know it can be used for that, but I don't expect it to... I fully expect it to be a "let's just dump the iPad app over and be done with it" thing. Even Apple's own new apps are way too iPad-like.

For the same reasons that developers embrace Electron as much as they do. The apps it provides are way too resource hungry and a UI mess (not fitting into the platform at all) but it allows them to "fire and forget" on each platform. Way too often the Mac version is just a tick in a box rather than a well executed effort that actually integrates well into the platform. Again, Electron produced a few gems (Visual Studio Code as one of the examples) and a whole load of trash (Skype for Business, MS Teams from the same publisher, which definitely has the know-how AND the money to do things right)

The absence of such porting technologies forces developers to go back to the drawing board and in the process to determine how best to make an app fit inside each platform. This has over the years generated many exceptional Mac apps. While we all balk at the crappy generic Java ports (enterprise software in particular) that have been released for the platform over the years.

The point is: If you're really committed to doing things right, you will usually go for the full SDK option rather than what's basically a porting layer. iOS and macOS can already have a lot of code in common so two completely separate codebases haven't been necessary since the inception of iOS. For the UI layer yes, but those are different for a reason.

I'm sure this will drive Mac app abundance but I'm sure it'll be very few gems and a lot of half-hearted iPad ports.

Anyway it's here now... Let's hope I'm wrong and you're right!

 

[macsimcon]

The Apple Watch password authentication is not well-implemented, as it encourages users to use an admin account as their daily user account.

As is good security practice, my user account is a standard account, so every time I want to unlock a preference pane or add something to Applications, I’ll get a cryptic error if I double press on the watch to authenticate because I’m not an admin.

Apple should have thought this through better.

 

[Sedulous]

The replacements for iTunes currently do lack some features of iTunes had. Decided to roll back to Mojave until things get finished in Catalina.

 

[femike]

That list are hardly upgrades, they are just sideway moves and some are even downgrades.
Apple still hasn't supplied their own NTFS read/write access yet.
It seems Apples full time macOS development team has been gutted compared to past years.

 

[maverick28]

who exactly decide what is productivity and what is not ?
For me, sidecars and catalyst for instance are big productivity tools.

For me, it's not. So who's deciding? I don't own an iPad and Sidecars is not a native macOS feature that I'm sure the majority of people will do without just fine. It's like judging the merits of the desktop OS from the POV of the iPhone user. Catalyst is still in its infancy and has to go a long way before people will want to use these apps en masse.

 

[StellarVixen]

I did the same actually... I never liked the new look introduced in Yosemite on standard-res (non-"retina") screens. UI text was too thin, borders too flat. So I stayed on Mavericks as long as it was supported.

Only when I got a 4K display it started being decently readable again. Still think it looks too bland though.

Its San Francisco. Font that looks OK on iOS, but looks almost horrible on Mac OS.

leaving any nostalgia feelings aside, Lucida Grande was just better in every way.

 

[Joniz]

You've long been able to unlock a Mac with an Apple Watch

Though not consistently since Sierra, which is why I gave up on it.

Sometimes working sucks more than never working.

 

[macmyworld]

Anyone had any problems with the mail app? It is a cluster-bleep on iOS 13.

Overall this release does nothing for me. I have a 32 bit game I love and wish they would have kept that support. I have no use for iPad apps on MacOS. That is why I have an iPad Pro.

The million dollar question is if we are seeing the beginning of a merge of the iPad and Mac. Is the 64 bit requirement in preperation for ARM? Time will tell.

 

[ZebraDude]

The one catalyst app I have on my Catalina Mac mini is Carrot weather and it is excellent! The developer put a lot of work into it and it shows.

 

[MoreRumors?]

Based on the age of my MBP and not so positive feedback, I think I will skip. If anything, the new OS for me will come in the form of a new MBP in the future.

 

[canadianreader]

There are a lot of bugs in the core apps, some system freezing never had these issues with Mojave. Music app is ok but I hate that I can't remove the apple music section since I use Spotify for streaming. Been using osx for years and always quite happy but this time it feels different it’s like they shipped a product with a very modest attention to quality control. It looks polished but it feels unfinished (a beta version). I have a 2018 i7 Mac mini with 32gb of ram and an external GPU.

 

[The Mercurian]

Not touching this with a 10 foot pole for now. New features don't appeal and you lose stuff.

 

[BornAgainMac]

Meh. FLAC is supported on the iPhone but I still can't add FLAC to iTunes/Music. I'm bummed that I still have to keep two copies of all my lossless, FLAC & ALAC.

iPhone

Designed for Apple Intelligence. Discover the iPhone 16e along with iPhone 16 Pro, iPhone 16, and iPhone 15.

www.apple.com

I remember that feature was asked for with early versions of iTunes. This is where the Music app can go in that direction with more music focused features going forward. I want improvements in presenting my music art, more organizational tools, more export options, more formats.

 

[BWhaler]

Feeling great about my decision to star far, far away from Catalina for 3-6 months. What’s a mess.

 

[maverick28]

Music app is ok but I hate that I can't remove the apple music section since I use Spotify for streaming.

Actually, you can turn off Apple Music for good: luckily, the Music preferences are similar to those in iTunes, so launch them, go to the pane "Parental Control" or "Restrictions" and make sure the option "Apple Music" is selected. A screenshot for reference below.