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Mac OS Catalina: more trouble than it’s worth (Part 2)

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Re: Mac OS Catalina: more trouble than it’s worth (Part 2)

#171

Post by markandrewj »

ble52 wrote: post #11

Am I the only person that doesn't have any significant issues with Catalina? I'll admit, some of the permissions-related pop-ups are a bit annoying, but overall it's been a rather stable macOS version for me (developer, working mostly in Xcode and JetBrains IDEs).

This has been my experience as well, there were a few things I had to clean up post-upgrade, but the issues were not difficult to resolve. For the most part I just needed to update xcode, brew, and recompile some packages. I also waited a few weeks before upgrading though, to try and give package maintainers a chance to push any last minute updates that they did get in during the beta.

Re: Mac OS Catalina: more trouble than it’s worth (Part 2)

#172

Post by newscracker »

joelrunyon wrote: post #30

Still holding off on this. Is the consensus to just keep waiting for the next one to drop?

Unless the next release announced in WWDC 2020 is one that clearly says it’s about stability and is low on new features, I’ll be holding off on any upgrades. Mojave will have security updates for another year or so.

Re: Mac OS Catalina: more trouble than it’s worth (Part 2)

#173

Post by zer0zzz »

Catalina has been mostly fine for me. My 2015 15” mbp has been a little unresponsive at times under dark mode but all my other laptops are doing great on it. Other than that, my work computer has all this stuff like Cisco and chef installed on it and it generally needs a reboot every other day. But generally my personal machines are fine.

Re: Mac OS Catalina: more trouble than it’s worth (Part 2)

#174

Post by chungus_khan »

kstenerud wrote: post #150
xkemp wrote: post #115

How can there still be people writing these yearly "I'm so disappointed" articles. It's the same for every single MacOS release . I bet if I look through the archives here, the last halfway usable OS release from Apple was Mac OS 8. You'd figure the people writing these articles wold leave for other platforms, and those that remain should be less likely to do hot-take duty next year, considering they didn't feel the…

Leopard was an utter crap release with tons of complaints. I remember the many issues just trying to get Finder to work without crashing, or syncing a phone. Snow Leopard was "better" in that it wasn't so terribly broken, and they eventually got it working decently. From then on, the only complaints were about how locked down each new version was, what was no longer supported, and how many new annoying dialogs they'd…

Leopard also got rid of Classic, which meant I just couldn't use it if I had wanted to at the time. At that point there had been a long-time legacy of backwards compatibility for the Macintosh, and I was in a position where I frequently needed to retrieve data in oddball formats from older Mac software. Tiger for Intel already didn't have it, and from that point forward Apple's attitude to backwards compatibility has seemed to be to operate at the minimum acceptable level.

Re: Mac OS Catalina: more trouble than it’s worth (Part 2)

#175

Post by tannhaeuser »

newscracker wrote: post #167
tannhaeuser wrote: post #68

Even if I wanted to upgrade my old Mini (by having a new OS on an external HD), Mojave and Catalina won't let me because required APFS support for EFI comes only as part of the 6GB Mojave (or Catalina) download/install, rather than as separately downloadable BIOS upgrade. Even bought a flash drive and ordered to have Mojave installer copied to it at an Apple retailer only to find out that it doesn't work like that an…

Someone somewhere must have faced the same issue as you. I’d suggest searching on Reddit and the Macrumors forums. Worst case, you can install Linux and continue using it (though the experience may not be the same in many ways).

Re installing Linux: I did that many years ago already ;) I used to enjoy an alternative Unix laptop provider and hate to see Apple fade away as an option. Regarding searching reddit and co, I briefly did, but then thought if I have to go to forums etc., I can just as well run Linux on a well-supported notebook in the first place.

Re: Mac OS Catalina: more trouble than it’s worth (Part 2)

#176

Post by xkemp »

speeder wrote: post #130

I never been an Apple fan. When iPhone launched I was skeptical, and didn't wanted one, and so on... I often argued with apple fans, and one thing that was clear to me, is that people that tried apple products around 2008 or so often would just love it, and many would become apple fans too. I used my first Mac around that time, and although I found some stuff just silly (mouse with only one button...) I overall liked…

Your relationship with both your sister and Apple users seems to mainly consist of condescension. For your sister, there's some added dependency: of course she's eventually gonna fold if she wants you to do tech support and you more or less make it a requirement that you get to make her decisions forthwith.

FWIW the stereotype of Apple targeting "beginners" who are after "fashion items" is ridiculous. There are millions of "professionals" using Macs. It's a fully functional Unix with a GUI that gets out of way.

Pick any project you consider excellent, and you'll find someone working on it that uses a Mac, even the Linux Kernel. Now, try to argue against that person's reasons, not some figment of your imagination rendered into a sack of stereotypes.

Re: Mac OS Catalina: more trouble than it’s worth (Part 2)

#177

Post by w0utert »

jtbayly wrote: post #158
ble52 wrote: post #11

Am I the only person that doesn't have any significant issues with Catalina? I'll admit, some of the permissions-related pop-ups are a bit annoying, but overall it's been a rather stable macOS version for me (developer, working mostly in Xcode and JetBrains IDEs).

I installed it on one computer, and no problems (other than the freeze during install that so many people had). However, that’s ignoring this question: > I didn’t even have to debate too much whether I should upgrade or not. The answer is no. The reasoning behind it is quite simple, actually, and it boils down to this: what Catalina takes away from me is more than what it gives me. And that seems to be the case for m…

That pretty much sums up my experience.

Let's hope it was all worth it and Catalina is indeed a transitional release that serves no other purpose than laying some under-the-hood groundwork for the next release.

I wouldn't say "wish I didn't upgrade" because both my 2018 Mini and 2015 MBP are working fine, but I agree with the general sentiment that from an end user perspective there really isn't any reason to upgrade, and apparently many cases not to considering the issues reported by others.

Now that I'm typing this one thing that Catalina improved comes to mind: I have less issues driving my 5K LG screen through my BlackMagic eGPU. With Mojave, rebooting or losing the GPU connection would regularly result in black screen, and only a complete shutdown and cold restart would fix it. Don't have this problem anymore...

Re: Mac OS Catalina: more trouble than it’s worth (Part 2)

#179

Post by jxdxbx »

ble52 wrote: post #11

Am I the only person that doesn't have any significant issues with Catalina? I'll admit, some of the permissions-related pop-ups are a bit annoying, but overall it's been a rather stable macOS version for me (developer, working mostly in Xcode and JetBrains IDEs).

I've had no real bugs over the 3 Macs I regularly use. Some security-related inconveniences, but I think those are overall worth it.

Re: Mac OS Catalina: more trouble than it’s worth (Part 2)

#180

Post by avilesj »

speeder wrote: post #130

I never been an Apple fan. When iPhone launched I was skeptical, and didn't wanted one, and so on... I often argued with apple fans, and one thing that was clear to me, is that people that tried apple products around 2008 or so often would just love it, and many would become apple fans too. I used my first Mac around that time, and although I found some stuff just silly (mouse with only one button...) I overall liked…

I am on a similar boat.

While I was never an Apple fan, I started to respect their products after my android-linux-hacking phase (Couldn't find better words for that period of my life).

Up to the point of considering getting an iPhone since I don't fool around with my android phone anymore, but what I wanted the most was to have a MacBook.

They've always looked so sleek and overall good looking, including the nice looking OS which seemed to have a functional GUI over a Unix core. And then I got one.

Last year my current job assigned me one to contribute to our mobile codebase. It's a MBP 2019, 15 inch.

From a hardware perspective: + Excellent screen

+ Good looking design

+ Nice speakers

+ Touchpad is nice

- The touchbar exists

- Low key travel (bad keyboard experience overall)

- Lack of non type-c ports (dongle land)

As for the software, my first MacOS experience was Catalina and the only issues I've had I'm not sure if I should blame Catalina or the software per se.

I use Emacs for my text editing needs (and more) and it has been nothing but pain (Some outright freezes, buffers have chopped display sometimes).

Docker experience is just bad. Since It's not natively implemented it has to run up its own vm to work and having any small container running will turn up the overall heat on the machine which, thanks to the bad keyboard, I can feel at my fingertips.

Homebrew is painfully slow.

The GUI is fine, but with the recent advancements on the other DEs (specially KDE) I really don't see any advantages.

Overall if Linux had better support on Apple hardware, I'd have a partition with it and only boot on OS X for mobile dev.

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