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macOS Catalina 10.15.5

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Re: macOS Catalina 10.15.5

#131

Post by psychometry »

reaperducer wrote: post #84
gonehome wrote: post #7

The group FaceTime UI is very strange, why have several overlapping boxes rather than just dividing the screen equally and using all of it? I know it's like this in iOS, but I'm not sure what group video looks like in macOS (though it sounds like it's the same based on the update text here). It's weird because the easier thing also seems like the obvious thing, and it's clearly better.

why have several overlapping boxes rather than just dividing the screen equally and using all of it It's good for smaller screens. I was on a Zoom video conference last week, and all I could think about was how so many people who weren't allowed to/going to speak were taking up valuable screen real estate.

There's a setting to toggle gallery view...

Re: macOS Catalina 10.15.5

#132

Post by AshamedCaptain »

Anybody knows what has happened that multiple manufacturers (at least Dell, HP, Lenovo, ASUS, and now Apple) have released _all within this year_ updates to "enhance battery health management"?

Even on devices which were otherwise out of support already.

I ponder what has happened. I didn't hear any recent stories of battery explosions, huge battery recalls, or new regulations, yet all manufacturers are reacting to something.

Re: macOS Catalina 10.15.5

#133

Post by matwood »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #108
MperorM wrote: post #93

Since Catalina I have been getting daily freezes, where the entire operating system locks up. I can still move the cursor around and audio keeps playing as well, but everything else is completely frozen. Once in a while the freeze lasts so long the computer crashes resulting in a crash report: Termination Reason: WATCHDOG, [0x1] monitoring timed out for service Termination Details: WATCHDOG, checkin with service: Win…

Why do you guys put up with this? Do you like pain? Edit: I'm not trying to troll, I genuinely want to know why people put up with this. I bounce between Linux and Windows and have no loyalty to either of them. I've settled on Windows with WSL2 on my desktop but I'm tempted again to install the new Fedora on my Thinkpad. Is it the lock in? With my hardware I can run anything I want except for macOS. Once you buy Appl…

I haven't had any problems with Catalina. I'm sure other people do, but is the common experience mine or the people who complain?

Re: macOS Catalina 10.15.5

#134

Post by specialist »

tomxor wrote: post #101
TheChaplain wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Binary patching hasn't been a thing for years unfortunately. Even bigger wreck on consoles these days, where an update can be 50+ gigabytes...

> Binary patching hasn't been a thing for years unfortunately. True, and it's fair to say binary diffs aren't worth the complexities they introduce anymore, yet the concept of only pulling updates for individual packages has been a thing for over two decades in the *nix world. It seems like a poor choice for Apple to not bother making updates more discerning while also removing binary diffs... certainly a shitty move…

> binary diffs aren't worth the complexities they introduce anymore

Noob question: Why are binary diffs impractical?

Is it because the (compiled) object code layout dances around too much? If true, isn't that fixable? Meaning: make the order more stable, to minimize the size of the diffs?

I recall a recent story/post about boosting runtime performance by optimizing object code layout. Sorry, I can't refind that article.

If true, couldn't the internals of released code be "sorted" to better enable binary diffings? Maybe the layout optimizer step would minimize the variability enough without requiring a resort.

A fun experiment would be to take a series of releases, run that layout optimizer, and then try the binary diffing again.

--

Didn't Google publish some research, maybe 10 years back, about better binary diffing for publishing updates? Apologies, but I sorta assumed it had become the norm.

Re: macOS Catalina 10.15.5

#135

Post by api »

Looking forward to seeing whether this contains a microcode or OS patch to fix what appears to be an Ice Lake CPU bug:

https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/JBR-2310

Read the whole thing. It really appears as if there is a virtualization-escaping CPU-crashing bug in Ice Lake (10th generation) Intel chips that was discovered because it exclusively crashes when used with Jetbrains IDEs.

Sounds unlikely, yes, but seriously read the whole thing.

Re: macOS Catalina 10.15.5

#136

Post by PascLeRasc »

AlexandrB wrote: post #120
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you guys put up with this? Do you like pain? Edit: I'm not trying to troll, I genuinely want to know why people put up with this. I bounce between Linux and Windows and have no loyalty to either of them. I've settled on Windows with WSL2 on my desktop but I'm tempted again to install the new Fedora on my Thinkpad. Is it the lock in? With my hardware I can run anything I want except for macOS. Once you buy Appl…

Personally I'm staying the hell away from Catalina, but it's not like Windows is the land of milk & honey. I've lost overnight testing data multiple times thanks to Windows' hostile "we're rebooting right now, whether you want to or not" upgrade strategy, and their mandatory telemetry bullshit is well-known at this point. Basically: Catalina sucks, but there's nowhere to go that's unequivocally better.

Mojave will be good for a long, long time to come. I run El Capitan on one machine and it still gets security updates. Homebrew sometimes gets confused trying to find an El-Cap specific formula but that's usually fixable.

Re: macOS Catalina 10.15.5

#137

Post by ascom »

rayiner wrote: post #127
sixothree wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

XPS 15

I'm seriously considering the new XPS 15. It hits much of the same great balance as the 16" MBP, and like the Macbook Pro, it has a 16:10 display. I'm gun shy, because of potential coil whine: https://xps-15.fandom.com/wiki/Coil_Whine > As Coil Whining is a big problem on this model we will try to find out witch parts are causing this noises. First we need to disassemble this notebook and identify the noisy parts. ht…

The new XPS 15 allegedly has a battery rated for only 300 cycles: https://www.notebookcheck.net/The-new-Dell-XPS-15-s-battery-...

For comparison, MacBooks' batteries are rated for 1000 cycles.

Re: macOS Catalina 10.15.5

#138

Post by Wowfunhappy »

rayiner wrote: post #122
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you guys put up with this? Do you like pain? Edit: I'm not trying to troll, I genuinely want to know why people put up with this. I bounce between Linux and Windows and have no loyalty to either of them. I've settled on Windows with WSL2 on my desktop but I'm tempted again to install the new Fedora on my Thinkpad. Is it the lock in? With my hardware I can run anything I want except for macOS. Once you buy Appl…

I've got a brand-new 2019 16" and am dealing with the widespread crashes on wake from sleep. Honestly, it's a harder decision to send it back than you might think, for several reasons: 1) The hardware quality of other OEMs is bad too. Lenovo has really gone downhill. I sold my maxed-out X1 Carbon 7th Gen, which in less than a year: a) came with an LTE card that never worked for more than an hour at a time; b) had the…

Have you considered keeping the Macbook and running Bootcamp full time?

(Or Linux, but I know Linux was in a bad state on new Macbooks as of fairly recently, don’t know if it has gotten better.)

Re: macOS Catalina 10.15.5

#139

Post by teknologist »

tomxor wrote: post #101
TheChaplain wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Binary patching hasn't been a thing for years unfortunately. Even bigger wreck on consoles these days, where an update can be 50+ gigabytes...

> Binary patching hasn't been a thing for years unfortunately. True, and it's fair to say binary diffs aren't worth the complexities they introduce anymore, yet the concept of only pulling updates for individual packages has been a thing for over two decades in the *nix world. It seems like a poor choice for Apple to not bother making updates more discerning while also removing binary diffs... certainly a shitty move…

JetBrains still do updates with binary patching for many (all?) of their products, and the experience is really nice.

Re: macOS Catalina 10.15.5

#140

Post by Wowfunhappy »

PascLeRasc wrote: post #136
AlexandrB wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I'm staying the hell away from Catalina, but it's not like Windows is the land of milk & honey. I've lost overnight testing data multiple times thanks to Windows' hostile "we're rebooting right now, whether you want to or not" upgrade strategy, and their mandatory telemetry bullshit is well-known at this point. Basically: Catalina sucks, but there's nowhere to go that's unequivocally better.

Mojave will be good for a long, long time to come. I run El Capitan on one machine and it still gets security updates. Homebrew sometimes gets confused trying to find an El-Cap specific formula but that's usually fixable.

> I run El Capitan on one machine and it still gets security updates.

No, it doesn’t.

That caveat aside, if you can switch package managers, MacPorts explicitly supports older OS X releases (back to Tiger!) and thus may give you less problems.

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