macOS Catalina

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UnknownSouljer

[H]F Junkie
Joined
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Catalina has been out for a little while now. It would be interesting to hear people's user experiences if they've upgraded.

I haven't yet, because I know it's going to break a lot of things just be being 64-bit only. However, Catalina is also one of the biggest jumps in terms of increased feature sets. So, I'm sure some have made the trade-offs and upgraded. Sidecar as an example seems particularly useful. It also has a lot more security features.

Anyway, thoughts?
 
So far so good. I need to find a new VPN app as apparently Cisco hasn't updated theirs yet.. It not as smooth as it could be (2018 15 MBP) but overall no show stopping issues
 
I really like the "sidecar" feature. It is good, but PlaybackPro is broken, Adobe was broken initially..
Tough transition..
 
I installed it the day it came out on my MacBook Pro. Haven't had any issues, but then again I haven't really used the machine since I installed Catalina.
 
DSee said:
I really like the "sidecar" feature. It is good, but PlaybackPro is broken, Adobe was broken initially..
Tough transition..
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What Mac and iPad are you using? Also do you use any creative applications with sidecar? If so, what is your experience with Apple pencil in macOS?
 
UnknownSouljer said:
What Mac and iPad are you using? Also do you use any creative applications with sidecar? If so, what is your experience with Apple pencil in macOS?
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Using a MBP 15" 2018, iPad mini. Haven't used sidecar for that, I use it at work a lot, leave Outlook open on the smaller iPad screen.
 
valve1138 said:
Been fine on my ‘18 MacBook Pro.




I don’t know what people are whining about.
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Mostly because Catalina removes all 32-bit support. If you don't use applications that are 32-bit and/or don't have any 32-bit dependencies, then it's probably no big deal. If you do however then it's likely that it's better to wait.
It also broke a lot of other apps as Apple has depreciated certain types of rendering (mostly OpenGL) and has been pushing Metal to the forefront.
There hasn't been turnover like this in macOS likely since Lion removed Rosetta support. It's the way forward, and I mostly appreciate Apple forcing devs to use newer API's and increase efficiency throughout but it is causing a lot of growing pains even among the biggest software vendors.

I'm personally still waiting as I use my machines for professional work and I can't afford to have issues with programs and playing tech support when I could and should be getting work done. Apple generally has this sort of stuff mostly sorted 3 months in. I guess it will also allow me to finish up a few more of these 32-bit games that I likely will never get a chance to play otherwise.
 
valve1138 said:
I don’t know what people are whining about.
Click to expand...
Are people whining?

For a personal device, with a pretty consumer-centric workload (browser, Office, email, IM, etc.) it's pretty straightforward and little changes from Mojave. A consumer user might run into a balloon about allowing notifications from an app or whatever.

In enterprise environments, where compliance may require some additional installed software (AV, Intellectual Property protection) and just apps specific to that environment, it's a different experience. These apps frequently need more intrusive access all around, and Catalina sure is spammy about it. A relatively small number of enterprise apps can generate a heck of a lot of notifications about allowing things.

The other day I needed to install Zoom, one of the 'de facto' meeting/conference softwares. The process of installing it and allowing *all* of the permissions it needed just to do a screen share was a pure annoying pain in the neck. This is not an IT neckbeard app, this is something any department could use. Every time a remote sales person asks us about Zoom and they are on Catalina, it's a bunch of "allow that, allow that, click the lock, put your password, click this, click that."

It can be easy to believe a "home user" experience should be 100% flawlessly identical to a "work user" experience. It ain't.
 
I have a Macbook Air 2013 (core i5, 8GB, 256GB) with Catalina 10.5.1 installed. Performance is a little laggy compared to High Sierra... Tried resetting SMC / PRAM and clearing cache.. For example, some apps (Chrome, Word) take ~5-7 seconds to open, where High Sierra opening those apps were 1-2 seconds. Odd as there are folks on Reddit and other places claiming their experience is "snappy".. Overall it does not run bad, but when you are used to near instantaneous, those few extra seconds add up.
 
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swetmore said:
I have a Macbook Air 2013 (core i5, 8GB, 256GB) with Catalina 10.5.1 installed. Performance is a little laggy compared to High Sierra... Tried resetting SMC / PRAM and clearing cache.. For example, some apps (Chrome, Word) take ~5-7 seconds to open, where High Sierra opening those apps were 1-2 seconds. Odd as there are folks on Reddit and other places claiming their experience is "snappy".. Overall it does not run bad, but when you are used to near instantaneous, those few extra seconds add up.
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Interesting. Do you think it's an optimization issue? I'm curious about how important Metal performance is in Catalina as Metal now renders everything, including the desktop. So on a much older computer that has a slow GPU and supports just Metal 1 and not 2, I wonder if that is giving you problems.

To be clear, it's just conjecture that that could be your problem, but it's also something that can be optimized down the line for older hardware.
 
UnknownSouljer said:
Catalina has been out for a little while now. It would be interesting to hear people's user experiences if they've upgraded.

I haven't yet, because I know it's going to break a lot of things just be being 64-bit only. However, Catalina is also one of the biggest jumps in terms of increased feature sets. So, I'm sure some have made the trade-offs and upgraded. Sidecar as an example seems particularly useful. It also has a lot more security features.

Anyway, thoughts?
Click to expand...

If you use voice dictation at all stay the hell away from Catalina. It is Totally busted right now.
 
UnknownSouljer said:
Interesting. Do you think it's an optimization issue? I'm curious about how important Metal performance is in Catalina as Metal now renders everything, including the desktop. So on a much older computer that has a slow GPU and supports just Metal 1 and not 2, I wonder if that is giving you problems.

To be clear, it's just conjecture that that could be your problem, but it's also something that can be optimized down the line for older hardware.
Click to expand...

No idea... did not look into, I just know the macbook airs use intel integrated graphics... This is actually my daughters machine, and she is not complaining, so we are just letting it be.
 
Hey community, nice to be around :)

So... I've upgraded my 2013 MacBook Air 13,3" to Catalina from Mojave and... boy.. it's sluggish at best. Next time I have some hours of free time, I'll put Mojave back on as it ran a lot smoother. Maybe I'll try Catalina when the .4 release is public. Unfortunately I still have not had the chance to try it on my cMP 5,1 because it's my production machine and there's no room for experiments right now.
 
WMDK said:
Hey community, nice to be around :)

So... I've upgraded my 2013 MacBook Air 13,3" to Catalina from Mojave and... boy.. it's sluggish at best. Next time I have some hours of free time, I'll put Mojave back on as it ran a lot smoother. Maybe I'll try Catalina when the .4 release is public. Unfortunately I still have not had the chance to try it on my cMP 5,1 because it's my production machine and there's no room for experiments right now.
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welcome to [H] and yeah thats what ive been told too. the 2012s and 13s are sluggish on cat., mojave is just fine.
 
I upgraded my old Mac Book Air ('13/14). Everything seems to be working fine - not sluggish for me - but it's just primarily a writing / email box (all my heavy lifting is on PC) so it doesn't lead a hard life to begin with.
 
so far the devices that seem to have the most issue are 2014 and earlier macbook airs, 2013 earlier pro's. and any unit with less than 8gb ram. If it still has 4gb ram i would use high sierra or mojave instead just for performance reasons. i've upgraded 100's since release and i wish they would have added an app compatibility check wizard in the first steps of the installer to warn customers of app incompatibilities the average user doesn't understand 32/64 bit and what that means to them. The biggest ones that get hit are people not on office 365/2019 as all previous versions won't work, and adobe apps pre creative cloud. there are lots more but those are the big ones. And i still dont get why hp hasn't updated their easy start for catalina yet. can still get older hp aio's to work, just have to use the built in scan utility or image cap.
 
I've had some serious issues with TimeMachine constantly failing and not recognizing my WD MyCloud NAS, so I switched to Acronis and issues resolved.
 
Instigator said:
I've had some serious issues with TimeMachine constantly failing and not recognizing my WD MyCloud NAS, so I switched to Acronis and issues resolved.
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Interesting. I haven't used TimeMachine in a long time. If my main partition goes down, there is nothing on it that needs to be restored, although in theory it could increase uptime in the event of it crashing out. However I do use ChronoSync on my externals to create duplicate copies of things.

I haven't really had any issues with moving to Catalina, short of the teething issues that I expected would happen. IE: no 32-bit apps. Considering the only 32-bit apps I was really using were games, it wasn't a major sacrifice.
 
10.15.5 Beta has not fixed any of the kernel issues. My new 16inch is still absolutely unusable.
 
Catalina is ok. But you know, it's a Mac. In many ways, you can do the same things on a $100 Chromebook.

(I have no love for Windows either btw)
 
oliveryuan said:
10.15.5 Beta has not fixed any of the kernel issues. My new 16inch is still absolutely unusable.
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With 10.15.1 and increasingly with 10.15.4 I have been getting daily kernel panics. Long macrumors thread about kernel panic issues.

A lot of people point to specific hardware, like the 16 inch, but these panics are on a 2013 iMac in my case.

Just installed 10.15.5, and it was NOT a smooth upgrade process (failed, then tried again, then it wouldn't boot at all for a while, then it finally did, super weird), but hoping now that it seems successfully installed that it somehow helps.
 
There is a TON of bloat with Catalina.. Mojave is semi bloated... High Sierra runs well even on low / older spec macs and is still supported, but only for a few more months..
 
Glad I haven't upgrade my macbook pro to catalina yet after reading all these post. Mojave it is.
 
Its been fine for me on both my MBP16 and my 2018 MBP15. I don't run any crazy software but I do push the computers hard.
 
I haven't had any issues on my 2020 13" MBP, but I've only had it a couple weeks, and really haven't done a lot of stuff on it yet. I haven't setup Time Machine yet, but I'm hoping I don't run into any issues when I do.
 
I haven't had any issues related to the OS itself. I will say that I do have some minor issue, but I'm farily certain those problems are related to Little Snitch, other cookie management, and using a VPN. Sometimes my machine also doesn't unlock with my Apple watch (not sure if this is a wake issue or a connection issue), but I personally feel like that's minor. Just type in my password in that case, no big deal.

Other than that, all the heavy lifting I do has been done without issue. I'm editing in FCPX for hours every week as well as doing Photoshop editing and more than a little browsing and watching videos. Losing access to some 32-bit games kinda sucks, but I more or less feel like it was worth the tradeoffs.
 
I'm down to maybe a kernel panic 1x a week now on 10.15.5, so it has improved at least. They seem to strike at the WORST time though and nothing in common between each crash.
 
I usually refer to PC mag whenever I need a review.
Here is what they have to say about the new macOS:
The Bottom Line. Catalina, the latest version of macOS, offers beefed-up security, solid performance, the ability to use an iPad as a second screen, and many smaller enhancements.
It also ends 32-bit app support, so check your apps before you upgrade.
 
I finally found an issue with Catalina. It's un-installable. I blew away the onboard SSD on my Mac Pro 7,1 and found out when I went to reinstall the OS that it can't be installed right now. Apple's servers are having issues pushing out one of the files (InstallESDDmg.pkg). You can download the first ~6GB of the file, then it fails and gives you an error about the network dropping. Switching from WiFi to ethernet didn't help. Using my work connection didn't help. Heck, I even ran a curl command through a while-true loop to try and get it downloaded. That got me to about 7GB. Still not quite there. I used my work laptop to try and get it through Software Update and App Store, too. No such luck. I ended up reinstalling with a file I found on some guy's Google Drive. Goes to show that you should keep a little USB install key, I guess.

IMG_1434.jpeg


IMG_1435.jpeg


Something else I found out - Even if you have all of the files locally downloaded, you still can't install without an internet connection.

But yeah, it's been a good OS so far.

edit: Let it run overnight. It seems to full-on stop at about 7.2GB. Any further attempts to resume downloading automatically fail. For a file that's supposed to be over 8GB in size, that's not good.
 
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TeeJayHoward said:
I finally found an issue with Catalina. It's un-installable. I blew away the onboard SSD on my Mac Pro 7,1 and found out when I went to reinstall the OS that it can't be installed right now. Apple's servers are having issues pushing out one of the files (InstallESDDmg.pkg). You can download the first ~6GB of the file, then it fails and gives you an error about the network dropping. Switching from WiFi to ethernet didn't help. Using my work connection didn't help. Heck, I even ran a curl command through a while-true loop to try and get it downloaded. That got me to about 7GB. Still not quite there. I used my work laptop to try and get it through Software Update and App Store, too. No such luck. I ended up reinstalling with a file I found on some guy's Google Drive. Goes to show that you should keep a little USB install key, I guess.

View attachment 263486

View attachment 263487

Something else I found out - Even if you have all of the files locally downloaded, you still can't install without an internet connection.

But yeah, it's been a good OS so far.

edit: Let it run overnight. It seems to full-on stop at about 7.2GB. Any further attempts to resume downloading automatically fail. For a file that's supposed to be over 8GB in size, that's not good.
Click to expand...

That's the strangest thing. Apple's OS install/update servers are normally rock-solid. I feel like I dodged a bullet by getting a new Mac and just having to update to the latest version of Catalina.
 
I just got a couple Mac minis a couple days ago, and I have yet to experience any issues like I've heard so much since the Catalina release. I haven't been able to use MacOS since High Sierra (which, honestly I've missed -- the OS in general), and I'm pretty pleased. Was kinda nervous I'd be getting all sorts of issues, especially my wife since this is THE first time she's be using a Mac. She always gets errors with Windows and her photo/scrapbook apps and my hope was she'd experience less with this.

I'm sure as time passes over the next couple weeks and I start diving into xcode and the like, I'll probably hit a few here and there.
 
Aurelius said:
That's the strangest thing. Apple's OS install/update servers are normally rock-solid. I feel like I dodged a bullet by getting a new Mac and just having to update to the latest version of Catalina.
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For what it's worth, as of last night Apple fixed the issue. Also, getting Windows 10 installed on a PCIe drive was surprisingly difficult. I had to:

Boot into MacOS​
Create a Windows installer USB thumbdrive​
Format the PCIe drive for GPT/HFS​
Boot into recovery mode​
Install MacOS on the PCIe drive so it registers as bootable​
Boot into MacOS on the PCIe drive​
Wipe out MacOS on the SSD (Unsure if I needed to or not, but I did it)​
Boot from the USB thumbdrive​
Wipe out the MacOS partition on the PCIe drive without touching the EFI partition during the Windows install process​
Format the now-empty space as NTFS​
Install Windows​
Boot from USB thumbdrive again​
Shift+F10 and tell the Mac to boot into the safe mode select screen next time using bcdedit​
Select the bottom option to "Ignore errors and just fucking boot"​
Watch your computer reboot a number of times until everything finally gets settled​
Install Boot Camp drivers (Note that installing via device manager left some unused devices, gotta use the installer .exe)​
Turn the Mac off​
Unplug the PCIe drive​
Boot the Mac into recovery mode​
Install Catalina​
Reinstall PCIe drive​

And it now works like it would have if I had used Boot Camp. All that mess just to keep Windows on a separate drive. I tried using VMWare Fusion and VirtualBox and neither of those methods worked for me. Boot Camp will only support the onboard SSD, not a PCIe NVMe drive. It wasn't until I got frustrated and decided to treat the Mac Pro 7,1 like a regular old PC that it finally worked. All this fancy mucking around... What a waste of several hours.

Oh, and AMD's official drivers don't work for the W5700X or the 580X. Gotta use Apple's drivers. AMD doesn't even detect the card.
 
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