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Catalina really screwed up my machine, and that of other Mac users in my wee company. So I'm telling staff not to install it yet.
It borked Bluetooth quite badly, as well as a ton of essential programs (Webex being the worst affected, for a long time).
It did however add some fab functionality - sidecar being my favourite.
Anyone installed safely so far?
Best new features?
Cheers!
I can't install it as Line6 have said their software is incompatible. I don't know what it will affect in the main programmes I use for publishing and I'm tied of being an unpaid bug finder.
So that's a no from me. I switch between Catalina and Yosemite depending on what I'm doing at any time.
The upgrade from Yosemite to Catalina cost us getting on for £1000/machine in terms of programmes which stopped working (That’s without the lost hours needed to sort it out and the wait for some of the companies to produce upgrades or patches to resolve the issues), so I was about to ask the same question.
Catalina was a disappointment. I’ve been playing with the Big Sur beta and found it fairly robust in most builds. Most pleasing thing is that most builds did not break SMB connectivity to my NAS. Unlike most recent versions of MacOS.
installed the formal release yesterday on my production machine. I like it. Though disappointed that the very handy network utility has been deprecated.
worthwhile upgrade unless you’re dependent on incompatible software.
Yes, last upgrade seemed to bugger sharing between all our Macs at home - can't get it working again properly....
My poor old MBA is finally outdated. It's a mid 2012 and won't take the update.
Everything else is working just fine. Well, not the battery, that last a couple of hours at best now. I considered getting a new MBA, but it hardly seems worth it from what I've seen of Big Sur so far. Am I missing much?
Nope still on Yosemite on my work Mac 😀 Will have a look to see if there’s any killer features I’m missing out on, but if it ain’t broke...
The upgrade from Yosemite to Catalina cost us getting on for £1000/machine in terms of programmes which stopped working (That’s without the lost hours needed to sort it out and the wait for some of the companies to produce upgrades or patches to resolve the issues), so I was about to ask the same question.
Your company just blindly upgraded without testing the update first? Have you not got a business continuity process in your company? No way should you be installing any update or piece of software without thoroughly testing it beforehand.
Tried to install it last night but the server was down so it's doing it right now behind me on the sofa. Will have a look at lunchtime. Fairly basic user so haven't had any issues with former updates though.
Glad it's not just me having issues with Catalina. All sorts of stability problems, and a fair few Black Screens of Death.
Just installing it now, fans are getting a workout
Yep we've been told not to install until IT have tested against all the important 3rd party s/w we use.
Your company just blindly upgraded without testing the update first? Have you not got a business continuity process in your company? No way should you be installing any update or piece of software without thoroughly testing it beforehand.
At the company was only four of us so yes, it was also before we turned auto update off (We were sensible enough to try it on one computer first however in small companies there is little slack in the system so down time for anyone is a problem). We’ve been with Apple since the days when it just worked but those are long gone. If we didn’t rely on two particular pieces of software we would most likely switch.
To be fair to us it was the first that the software house knew that there would be an issue to so there was no warning from either Apple or them. You live and learn.
To be fair to us it was the first that the software house knew that there would be an issue
if they are a very small software place that might fly as an excuse. There’s usually 2 years lead on all OS changes. I would worry more that Mac support is not high on their list of priorities.
When has Apple ever just worked!!?
I've been with them since IIfx days and I get a lot less issues now than back then. There was always some extension or SCSI chain issue.
Watching extensions load on start up to try and figure which was causing a problem was a regular thing.
Nope. None of my photography apps supports it officially yet, and the wife's Air I keep a version behind anyway as she needs her music production stuff to work reliably. Mine will get it first, but only when they've released a few bug fixes.
if third-party software stops working after a big software upgrade, it's probably down to that developer not Apple! Apple sets out the rules... it's up to them to comply & make sure it's compatible, not the other way around. If they were unaware of a potential issue, have they even tested it with the beta/dev versions of Catalina? If not, what are they playing at?! And why wouldn't you ask them before upgrading if it was ok or not?We’ve been with Apple since the days when it just worked but those are long gone. If we didn’t rely on two particular pieces of software we would most likely switch.
if third-party software stops working after a big software upgrade, it’s probably down to that developer not Apple! Apple sets out the rules… it’s up to them to comply & make sure it’s compatible, not the other way around.
Yeah but Apple are def worse than they used to be. Just had a (Catalina) Safari update come in...
'An error occurred while downloading the selected updates. Please check your internet connection and try again.'
I think the shift to M1 will be painful. The big app suites, like Adobe CC will have code bases dating back decades.
And why wouldn’t you ask them before upgrading if it was ok or not?
If you mean checking for known issues with the upgrade we did that, although that was through the after seller. Given the issue was an instability issue which was triggered by a specific operation you are probably right that their testing was either insufficient or assumed that assumed that it would be used in a particular way which didn’t trigger the issue.
if third-party software stops working after a big software upgrade, it’s probably down to that developer not Apple!
Can't you just right click on the app and set it to run in compatibility mode for an earlier version? Or is it only Microsoft that have figured out how to do that?
Can’t you just right click on the app and set it to run in compatibility mode for an earlier version? Or is it only Microsoft that have figured out how to do that?
Do you mean on M1? Most don't recommend it. Adobe for example.
'Caution:
Running Adobe apps under Rosetta 2 emulation mode on Apple devices with Apple Silicon M1 processors is not officially supported.'
On Intel, stuff just crashes. When I try and use my discreet graphics/hardware acceleration for example.
The specific problem with Catalina as I understand it is that it's 64-bit only therefore any apps that require 32-bit code just won't work. It was a massive shift with equally massive performance benefits, but it's up to the app developers to keep up. Windows 10 still has a 32-bit component I believe.Can’t you just right click on the app and set it to run in compatibility mode for an earlier version? Or is it only Microsoft that have figured out how to do that?
This whole 32bit->64bit is just nonsense, companies have only had 17 years to prepare their software for the coming change.
Always wait... always delay.
if third-party software stops working after a big software upgrade, it’s probably down to that developer not Apple! Apple sets out the rules… it’s up to them to comply & make sure it’s compatible, not the other way around.
It's more complicated than that. Being forced to shift to new libraries etc means re-coding which means defects, poor documentation, ambiguity and issues on both sides. It's not enough just to say 'well the app developers are crap'. I mean, poor quality apps do happen, but there are a large chunk of software issues where neither side is at fault, or both sides are.
It was a massive shift with equally massive performance benefits
Massive performance benefits by going to 64 bit? Really?
@molgrips yes, 32-bit apps can only utilise 4Gb of memory and cannot utilise 64-bit APIs such as Metal
My poor old MBA is finally outdated. It’s a mid 2012 and won’t take the update.
Mine too. For the first time in years I'm considering an upgrade - Mac Silicon!!
I might try breaking Mrs. Slow's later MacBook just to take a peek.
Seems fine on my MacBook but annoyed that support for my Late 2012 iMac has been dropped, as it seems very arbitrary. What I'm reading says I can hack it to run unsupported but will wait and see if I think it's worth the hassle after trying it on the Macbook for a bit.
Early 2015 Macbook = 1.3 GHz Dual Core Core M / 8 Gb RAM / Integrated graphics = fine
Late 2012 iMac = 3.4 GHz Quad Core i7 / 24 Gb RAM / Some whopping Metal compatible graphics card = NO YOU!
it was also before we turned auto update off
Pfft, no chance it auto installed a major release.
Installed today - couldn’t get it to install on Thu.
New visual style is going to take a bit of getting used to, I think.
APFS Time Machine is a good thing - apparently does partial backups and picks up where it left off - hurrah!
Still no way to mark multiple Podcast episodes as played though, which is just irritating, and I’m not sure if command line software updates still work.
Installed yesterday and so far so good on my 2018 MBP. I really like the new look - it feels in keeping with iOS14 which removed a lot of the skeuomorphic features I never cared for. Other than the visuals I haven't noticed many changes. Everything seems to (just!) work.