I don't think any .0 release is stable (both Mac and iOS). I wait until .1 on personal devices and .2 on work devices. The engineers work on an extremely tight schedule since most of the year is just to make .1 and .2 and .3 updates and not on next years big upgrade. It makes a lot of sense that everything is buggy at launch.
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Do you think Catalina will be stable, snappy and smooth at launch?
- Thread starter Populus
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Beta 8 seems to be much better than the previous betas.
The latest public beta seems to have fixed a lot of issues for me. I’m finding it quite smooth and stable on my MacBook Pro.
Okay thank you both. I've decided to install the beta 8... on an external SSD.
I will test it, and if it works well, I'll install the SSD as the main drive when Catalina gets released.
If I find many issues, I will stick with Mojave.
I will test it, and if it works well, I'll install the SSD as the main drive when Catalina gets released.
If I find many issues, I will stick with Mojave.
Well well... After trying Catalina public beta 8 on an external SSD, I've come to the conclusion that Catalina will be ready for the release whenever it comes. For me, it works almost flawlessly, although there are still minor bugs like changing to light mode at 4AM (lol) when set to automatic.
But other than that, everything works fine, and I'm ready to jump to Catalina installing that SSD on my 2014 Mac mini. It works fast and smooth, although I'm not sure it is because it's an SSD and through USB 3 it reaches 416MB/s of read/write speeds.
But other than that, everything works fine, and I'm ready to jump to Catalina installing that SSD on my 2014 Mac mini. It works fast and smooth, although I'm not sure it is because it's an SSD and through USB 3 it reaches 416MB/s of read/write speeds.
Thanks for the update, Populus. I'm ready to just install the PB as Mojave is frustrating me big time when it comes to Messages & Notifications. Messages doesn't really sync (or at all) that well. It was one of the reasons why I bought a Macbook and frustrated that its not working. Was expecting to get new messages that my phone would get, but nothing. Followed the instructions on the web (iCloud, etc) and still nothing.
Should I just install the PB as my main now or just reinstall Mojave or Windows 10 (give up on macOS).?
Well, I haven't tried it thoroughly, and for me Mojave worked fine (Messages and such). But maybe you'll have some issues with your iCloud services, I cannot say it for sure for now.
What I'm feeling is that Catalina is using even more RAM than Mojave. With just 10 tabs on Safari my 8GB of RAM it starts compressing it (yellow level of compression) and swapping memory.
So kind of mixed feelings right now. But it is smoother for me on the UI animations and such.
I'll try to keep you updated.
If Mojave is trash, then Catalina is not gonna save your day. It is just some minor tweaks, some more Pro emojis and Pro ”wallpapers”.
I thought Mojave was ok, as is Catalina; although there are still some minor but irritating bugs in their stock apps in Catalina. If you genuinely think Mojave is trash, you'll also think Catalina is trash.
I do not think he's calling it trash, I "think" he is saying he is moving it to the Trash (can). Anyway, there is some distinct differences between Mojave and Catalina.
Catalina has:
- No 32-bit programs
- Project Catalyst: iPad apps that have been brought over to the Mac
- No iTunes, instead we have Music, Podcasts, and Apple TV app
- Arcade
- Screen Time for Mac
- Sidecar, for using an iPad as an external display
- The ability to restore macOS from a snapshot
- Enhanced support for international languages
- All the minor tweaks.
- Improvements to Photos
- Enhancements to Notes
- 3 new features in Mail: mute a thread, block a sender, and unsubscribe
- A new Find My app that combines the features of Find My iPhone and Find My Friends
- Better tools for managing your Apple account
- QuickTime Player has improved Picture-in-Picture, Movie Inspector, and more
- iCloud Drive folder sharing
- Safari updates
- A redesigned Reminders app
- etc...
- And under the hood improvements to MacOS that we do not see.
The biggest stumbling block for Catalina is can you go without 32-bit apps? I only came back recently to MacOS, so I only had a few 32bit apps (Steam games is the biggie for me - but I bought an Xbox for gaming) and well, Epson printer & scanner, which they have already been upgrading their software to full 64-bit, so migration to Catalina will be some what minimal to me.
I just got the Epson Scan 2 software etc. Would have been nice if they said this is the 64 bit replacement for the old scan software and / or removed the old software. I think the only 32 bit I have left is some stuff with Apple as the author - software I've never heard of so I guess I won't care if it doesn't work
Bloat of Photos, Notes, Reminders and such are changes to silly apps (how many actually use this crap?), not to the OS. There are virtually no OS specific novelties in Catalina, not even fixes of long-standing bugs like wake from sleep and poor memory handling (my Windowserver currently occupying 13.0 GB cached stuff that can't be purged).
Where is the truly useful interface to permanently shut down spelling, Siri and all other absolutely useless demons that just cost a lot of resources?
It should be named Mojave 10.14.7, it doesn't merit the rank of a new release.
Where is the truly useful interface to permanently shut down spelling, Siri and all other absolutely useless demons that just cost a lot of resources?
It should be named Mojave 10.14.7, it doesn't merit the rank of a new release.
This is not correct. The new APFS partitioning disk structure with the read-only system partition and "firmlinking" unionfs technique is a big deal for security and system integrity at the OS level. Similarly, the "TCC" Privacy Preferences Policy Control framework is a signfiicant enhancement allowing fine-grained access controls protecting user data on the machine.
I think the new DriverKit style device driver scheme is a big deal upgrade. Phasing out KEXTs is a big change.
Whatever you think about Catalyst support for macOS/iOS cross-execution, it certainly qualifies as an "OS novelty" don't you think?
You may choose to avoid those features but millions of people find them useful. Just because you don't want to make use of them doesn't mean that they are "useless." If OS spellcheck qualifies as "a lot of resources" to you, maybe you're due for an upgrade. I can't imagine spellcheck or siri have a measurable impact on system performance on any Mac hardware built in the last 10 years.
That may be, but Mojave loses subpixel rendering which means that, to have sharp text, you need a full-retina (220 ppi) monitor. Text on my 27" 4K external monitor (163 ppi) is noticeably less crisp on Mojave than High Sierra. Thus to use Mojave (or Catalina) comfortably I'd need to upgrade to a 5K 27" screen, but My 2014 MBP can't drive that, so I'd need a new computer as well.
Assuming you have the space and time, you could partition your drive and clean install both. Then play with both and see which you like best. You might find that you need to stay with Mojave for now, but then are able to switch to Catalina down the road, at which point you could delete the Mojave partition.
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There's been extensive and interesting discussion of that Terminal command. The ultimate conclusion was that it only worked in the very earliest versions of Mojave. Consistent with this, when I tried it several months ago it didn't fix the problem.
Other users on MacRumors have mentioned that this command improves, but doesn't fix, things: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/the-subpixel-aa-debacle-and-font-rendering.2184484/
[E.g., from user NastyNatex: "Tried both Mojave and Catalina and the font issue I just couldn't take it anymore, So I downgraded back to High Sierra. The commands help but it just wasn't enough."]
So while the command may do something, it doesn't actually restore the rendering done by High Sierra.
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So how will that work if you're testing out Catalina by creating, within High Sierra, a partition on which to install Catalina? Clearly it can't apply its partitioning structure to the disk as a whole, since part of the disk is in High Sierra. And what if you decide you like Catalina and thus decide to delete High Sierra? Do you need to start from scratch with Catalina, or can you just delete the High Sierra partition?
You wouldn't partition the drive, you would create a new volume in the same container. Yes, you could just delete either container:
How to Add a Volume to APFS Container in Mac OS
For Macs using the APFS file system, you can add a new volume to an existing APFS container by using Disk Utility in MacOS. APFS is somewhat unique in that it allocates disk space on demand, meanin…
osxdaily.com
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You wouldn't partition the drive, you would create a new volume in your High Sierra container. Yes you could just delete either container:
How to Add a Volume to APFS Container in Mac OS
For Macs using the APFS file system, you can add a new volume to an existing APFS container by using Disk Utility in MacOS. APFS is somewhat unique in that it allocates disk space on demand, meanin…
This really is an awesome feature of APFS, I love how easy containers are.
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In what way is Mojave trash? It's been the best mOS release since El Cap.
I think I was confused by Nugget's phrasing, which said that Catalina would have a different "partitioning disk structure", and thus seemed to indicate that Catalina's partitions created a different underlying structure on the disk from High Sierra. But I now think he was just referring to the fact that, in Catalina, the OS is put on a separate partition, not that partitions are structured differently. From https://bombich.com/kb/ccc5/working-apfs-volume-groups : "In macOS Catalina, Apple introduced another new concept to the APFS filesystem: volume groups. This is more of a conceptual grouping of volumes within an APFS container, not a new sub-structure."You wouldn't partition the drive, you would create a new volume in the same container. Yes, you could just delete either container:
How to Add a Volume to APFS Container in Mac OS
For Macs using the APFS file system, you can add a new volume to an existing APFS container by using Disk Utility in MacOS. APFS is somewhat unique in that it allocates disk space on demand, meanin…
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The .0 release will be riddled with bugs but the bad ones will be fixed. Generally the less bad ones that didn't make the cut will be fixed in .1. The .0 release is all about hitting the release date whereas .1 is not as tortuous if the date slips.