Should I dare Catalina?

[jjudson]

Okay, Sidecar has me intrigued. I've been holding off on installing Catalina due to the seemingly consistent number of horror stories. But now we're at 10.15.4, so I'm wondering, can I safely go ahead? What do I need to look out for that would put up red flags? I know about the 32/64 bit thing. Any others?

My current configuration:

MacBook Pro 15" 2018
2.2 GHz Intel Core i7
16 GB 2400 Mhz DDR4
Radeon Pro 555X 4 GB
141GB available of 250GB HD

4TB RAID Drive attached through USB - no on computer software to support, attached as a storage device-only

I use OneDrive to access files online, as well as save files to the OneDrive cloud through the OneDrive folder on my RAID drive.
I do not use iCloud except for basic interactivity between Apple devices.

Installed necessary software:

Firefox ver 74.0.1 w/DuckDuckGo, AdBlocker Ultimate, Cisco Webex Extension, Ghostery, LastPass, NordVPN Addons
Microsoft 365 Apps
Notability
Visual Studio Code
Anaconda
Lightroom
Photoshop
Slack
Skype
Webex
NordVPN
DaVinci Resolve
Nik Collection
Wacom Tablet
BitTorrent
DxO Photolab 2
Google Chrome
LastPass
Microsoft Teams
OneDrive

 

[sw1tcher]

Don't do it. I regret upgrading from Mojave.

 

[The Hammer]

I would wait until 10.15.5.

 

[jjudson]

I didn't get a lot of responses, so I dove in and did it. I checked my apps with Go64 first, and found one that didn't work and I could find an alternative for that. Had a bit of trouble getting Sidecar working, but it finally did. I'm not seeing any errors yet on any of the programs I've tested. I hope this stays smooth.

Now if I could just upgrade this crappy keyboard...

 

[loby]

Surprisingly, this is the first OS that I have had problems with every version up to .4 I had to go back to Mojave while using Final Cut Pro X and Logic Pro X on a 15" Macbook Pro 2018 and a Mac Pro 2013.

Usually at .4 things start to somewhat resolve..but this OS, unless Apple gets to two more versions (.6) before calling it a day and sail away from Catalina (June's event is on the horizon...), I will have to skip all together mac OS Catalina and wait another year of Apple hammering out a new version (10.16) again.... Looks like I will be using macOS Mojave for another year or maybe more.

Probably better for Apple to skip 10.16 and just go another year with 10.15 and make it stable.

I REALLY don't think personally that people at this stage of the game cares if Apple puts out another version (10.16) to make it "seem" like something is new...or give a "cool" (they think) naming convention to the OS like macOS Buffalo or macOS Corona..to make people feel excited for a fresh something (especially when people are stuck in their houses and could use a refreshing).

Don't need many new features, just something that "just works"...better than Windows (and I hate to say, Windows is getting more stable lately). Just put out a new desktop picture, change the OS icon and a few more emoji's and that will be adequate for the kiddies. 😜

Better this time to just get a stable OS...but logic does not work always in marketing.

 

[throAU]

I've run it since release and haven't had any major issues outside of the 32 bit drop, which isn't mission critical for me.

If you want to try sidecar I'd say do it. Sidecar itself still seems a little flaky occasionally though. But it's neat.

 

[jjudson]

I REALLY don't think personally that people at this stage of the game cares if Apple puts out another version (10.16) to make it "seem" like something is new...

This is how we ended up with the 2020 iPad Pro joke...

I've run it since release and haven't had any major issues outside of the 32 bit drop, which isn't mission critical for me.

If you want to try sidecar I'd say do it. Sidecar itself still seems a little flaky occasionally though. But it's neat.

Sidecar is a little flaky. I'm finding that out. I'm wondering if it was worth it at this point. Something's just off about it. Seems sluggish and the display takes precedence in strange ways.

As to the operating system, the only glitch I've found thus far is a FUSE incompatibility. Upgrading FUSE worked to fix it.

Keeping my fingers crossed as I go through my day today with work software, conference calls, and Webex's...