Should I upgrade from Mojave to Catalina? Not now, apparently...

[Jodeo]

I have two Macs...
Work: MB Pro 2017 — 2.9 i7, 16GB RAM, 500 GB SSD)
Personal: iMac 2017 — 3.8 i5, 40GB RAM, 2TB FHD)

Both are running Mojave, 10.14.6 (said by some to be the "Snow Leopard of our era").

First, I have no pressing need to update to Catalina: No app dependencies, etc - yet. I know Apple is updating their apps, like Logic and FCP with regularity so I suspect the day will come soon when 10.15.x is needed.

Second, I've read quite a bit here and elsewhere that Catalina is a buzzkill...
* Slower, due in part to notarization,
* Various unpopular changes to the OS UI and core apps,
* Addition of new apps has been underwhelming,
* ...and more.

My desire is to hold off on updating as long as possible.
- Maybe 10.16 will fix or optimize the issues from Catalina.
- Maybe Apple will introduce optimizations sooner.
- Maybe not. Who knows...

So.
Does that make sense? Or am I overthinking the issues with Catalina?
If you're not on Catalina yet, when do you expect to upgrade?
If you ARE on Catalina, are you cool or having second thoughts?

Thanks!

 

[MacPeasant123]

Given your reasons for and against upgrading to Catalina that you've listed, I think this should be a no-brainer for you:

reasons against upgrading to Catalina:
-you have no pressing need to update to Catalina
-Catalina is a buzzkill (you listed several details)
-you want to hold off for as long as possible (maybe Apple will fix Catalina or 10.16 will be good)

reasons to upgrade to Catalina:
-at some point 10.15.x is needed for Apple's apps like Logic and FCPX

So the way I see it, you're in no rush to update to Catalina, which you don't seem to trust. And the need to update is in the future, but not now. So why not keep waiting and see if Catalina gets fixed or 10.16 is better?

 

[Erehy Dobon]

Should I upgrade from Mojave to Catalina?

You are the best person to answer your own question.

A wise person would clone his/her Mojave boot drive (using Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper) to an external SSD and then upgrade the latter to Catalina. That person would review how Catalina behaves for his/her work environment (i.e., the apps and services he/she relies on) and then decide whether or not it made sense to upgrade his/her regular internal boot drive to Catalina.

I do not know if you are one of these people. In any case, it is always sensible to have a bootable clone of your current system drive, regardless of the operating system version.

Me? I periodically test out the latest Cupertino dogchow on an external SSD and have found no compelling reason to upgrade so my two Macs remain at macOS Mojave 10.14.6.

The past couple of years, I have stayed at the final release of the previous version of the operating system. At this point in my life, I value OS stability and reliability more than new features.

The same with my iDevices. I am running iOS 12.4.x on three devices.

If I ever upgrade to Catalina, it will likely be September of this year, right before macOS 10.16 is released.

 

[||\||]

First, I have no pressing need to update to Catalina

If you can't find any reason to update, don't.

 

[ewu]

don't update to Catalina

Here is my testing for Catalina, it is disappointing me.

mac OS Catalina using much more ram comparing to High Sierra and Mojave

iMac runs mac os High Sierra 10.13.6 MBP 16inch runs mac os Catalina 10.15.4 both iMac and MBP 16inch have 64GB ram. I open same projects in vscode, same java projects in same version of eclipse and run an ubuntu vmware configured to take 4GB ram, a simple docker container. High Sierra takes...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[Macsonic]

If Mojave works fine on your Mac, best to stick to Mojave. I’ve no plans on moving to Catalina. I’m still using 32-bit apps I need for my work. I’ve also read other reviews on the downside of Catalina

macOS Catalina: Loads of Crapware Chewing up Memory and Sometimes CPU

macperformanceguide.com

 

[tranceking26]

I haven't "upgraded" so I can't speak for it myself, but just take a look at the amount of threads, some really long ones, of issues on this forum. Some issues seem to have been around since it was released too.

 

[t1328]

I upgraded and initially had no issues, but since have had a lot of issues. After upgrading to 10.15.5 Monday in the hopes it would fix some bugs, it essentially forced me to reinstall from scratch.

In hindsight, I would stay away from Catalina for a while.

 

[loby]

I found 10.15.5 finally somewhat stable for my use.

macOS Catalina is the first OS since I began on the OS X platform with OS X Snow Leopard that each (and I mean each) update that came out for the year, I had to go back to the previous year's OS (Mojave) shortly after for some issue...and my meter for stability are Apple current software...

macOS Catalina now 'seems' ok and hope .6 will come out and will be finalized before the circus begins again with another OS in September.

Apple...why not just sit on the island of Catalina this year and make it super stable before sailing off on some new adventure!?!?

If you want the illusion of "new", do us all a favor and just change the name of the OS to macOS Big Sir or Death Valley or something, add a few wallpapers of cool surf scenes or whatever...and finally add a few emojis for the kiddies and call it a day...then...focus on stabilizing and creating a better offering then Windows (hate to say is becoming more stable overall lately for Windows).

Why not?

 

[maihan]

Catalina bricked my i5 Mac mini 2018 twice !!
Repair costs :around 350$ in Japan.

 

[madrich]

Just because Apple releases a new OSX does not mean you have to have it. Look how long people stayed on Windows XP (Some people still run it today.). I would just stay with a System, that works for you.