Is Catalina as bad as it looks on this board?

[patearrings]

There is just a page of people posting issues with new replies every few minutes. Is catalina as bad as it looks form this forum?

I was going to install it but now i am not so sure at all.

Thanks!

 

[ShizumiAoki]

I've been having no issues with it so far (only been using it for a day)

 

[bbfc]

Been using it through the development betas and it's improved so much. It works perfectly fine on Late 2013 MBP.

 

[macdos]

My mom always said MacOS was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get.

That said, for every disatisfied (l)user going on a rant, there are thousands who are just fine and don't have the need to tell the world about it.

 

[IowaLynn]

It moves partitions around. Always fun. rearrange the deck chairs too. Easiest method is clone and boot from another drive, then erase and direct the installer that you saved and tell it to install on that newly reformatted drive.

Was Apple iCloud and servers hammered so hard they had trouble ? Download was fast, then slowed down a bit 3/4 of the way. If you can, use a wired connection to your router maybe.

 

[adrianlondon]

Take a complete backup. Take another backup somewhere else (e.g. dropbox) of all your documents/files.

Upgrade.

If you don't like it after a couple of days, restore everything back. It's not that bad. All your 32-bit apps won't work. iTunes has gone and you'll need to love/ignore Music. Dashboard has gone.

Only recommendation is, if you have any devices that will not be on iOS 13 or MacOS Catalina then ensure you do NOT click on the option to upgrade reminders when you run it. If you do, it's a one-way ticket and they'll ever sync with iOS 12 or Mojave (or under) again.

 

[kissmo]

It's OK.
Nothing special honestly.

Besides 2 or 3 small issues: external display flicker 2 times when it connects, iCoud sign out and then back in and the fact that it consumes a bit more battery than Mojave (at least my experience for 1 day)... it's overall fine.

 

[Claudia P]

So far so good, the install was pretty seamless and pretty quick. Like you I was hesitant but them I remembered that I have seen all of the same horror stories with each new OSX release and never had any problems myself, so I went ahead. I'm not making light of the problems some are having, every machine is different. If you have updated to a new OSX in the past and not had problems I would say go for it, if you have and have had problems you might want to wait a little while.

 

[adamda30]

its been fine for me.....

 

[chris4565]

For me it was the buggiest day 1 macOS release so far. A quick list of issues/annoyances I had:

- The red badge being stuck on Settings
- Catalina completely scrambled my ordered Apps in Launchpad --> reordered all Apps --> Catalina (partially) scrambled them again
- Photos app syncing issue (could't upload all files at first (it re-uploaded all files because I re-logged into iCloud to get rid of the badge issue))
- My account under "My Card" in the Contacts app got duplicated
- And the "Newly assigned objects" are also a bit annoying because I don't know where some folders come from

In the meantime I pretty much solved all bugs and fingers crossed it will run fine now ?

 

[JerrySr]

Install Catalina this morning. So far I have not had any problems. Did a lot of preinstall prep like backing up and reading all I could about Catalina.

 

[petvas]

It is certainly not as bad as some people want us to believe. Of course nothing is perfect and I also had issues with it (still having some):

• On my iMac after the first reboot the installation got stuck on configuring your Mac..A reboot helped. I have to say that this is not how it should be and Apple should make a better job with the installer
• After installation the iCloud Account must be updated. Why? It doesn't make any sense
• Screentime doesn't work correctly. It publishes the screen time of my iPhone and MacBook Pro, but not of my iMac. Logging off and back on didn't solve anything..
• The many security warnings are irritating, especially on the first reboot after installation. Why would I have allow notifications for my apps again? Catalina should respect my settings and not bother me with so many questions. The good thing though is that after setting up everything the security warnings are not an issue anymore..
• HP Easy Scan doesn't work and that is a shame. At least there is a workaround by using Image Capture...

The positive things:

• Scrolling feels much smoother and better on my MacBook Pro
• The new Podcasts, TV and Music Apps are good and I like them
• iCloud allows removing a download from the local cache.

I thing though that Apple should have waited a couple of weeks before releasing Catalina to the public. Anyway, at least the OS is very stable and fast. I guess that the first update will solve most of the current issues..

 

[donawalt]

• HP Easy Scan doesn't work and that is a shame. At least there is a workaround by using Image Capture...

@petvas I have HP Easy Scan, I have been able to get it to work partially - if I use the document feeder it works perfectly. If I put something on the glass, it complains that nothing is in the feeder and won't scan. So I scan from the feeder for now, luckily I Haven't had anything yet that won't fit in the feeder (like a book).

 

[mkelly]

I installed it on my test machine yesterday (after making and testing a bootable backup!) So far I've noticed the following:

1) I'm warned that I need to sign into iCloud to resolve a problem, and certain iCloud functionality will not work until I log out of macOS and back in again. No matter how many times I re-enter my iCloud credentials and log out/back into macOS, I get the same warning. This has been a bug since the early betas and there's a known one-line terminal fix, will try that later today.

2) My Time Machine backups to my external Synology NAS no longer function. First I got a warning that I had to remove the backup because I was using an empty encryption passphrase (not true). When I removed and re-added the backup, Time Machine threw an error and the Time Machine systems preference panel crashed. Time Machine backups to external drives work fine.

3) Surprisingly, many of the tools I use for my dev/sysadmin work (including Homebrew) appear to work just fine. Same goes for the VPN client I use to connect to work. These are usually the first things to break.

Overall, it seems to work fairly well with the exceptions listed above. I'm not going to rush to put it on my main laptop though - at least not for another couple weeks.

 

[Lvivske]

Apple Music is bad, it's a beta that should have never been released

All my Adobe stuff got destroyed in the upgrade, though I guess I half expected that...

Havent had issues with the OS itself though

 

[sfwalter]

I think its depends on how much of a power user you are. The more of a power user I think more likely you should wait. For example I use Hazel quite a bit and its having issues with Catalina. I think some developers are waiting for certain fixes from Apple before they release their apps.

 

[vaugha]

I'm a light user, I don't do anything heavy. So for me, it's been fine. I only do youtube, email, word processing, messaging, etc. If you're a power user, you might run into issues.

 

[CTHarrryH]

I've had no real problems after installation which was a very long process. Seems faster and smoother to me

 

[Ethosik]

Yes it is. I have never had an issue with any OS X and macOS upgrades. But my new i9 2019 iMac keeps freezing up when I take short breaks.

While I love the replacement for iTunes, I can’t deal with the constant freezes.

 

[Martyimac]

No issues here but I am a consumer vice using my mac for production/business.

 

[KoolAid-Drink]

Meh. It’s been kind of rough, but not the doomsday scenario so many are painting Catalina to be. I’m salty because QEMU is broken, though, and that’s an application I depend on a lot for virtualization. Relieved that Parallels 12 is still kicking along, though, so far.

Had the same post-install crash on prep as the others, and there were some odd glitches here and there, but nothing atypical of an .0 release.

Gotta say, Mojave 10.14.0 was better. Much more rock solid and buttery smooth, was probably one of the best .0 releases in a long time.

 

[IowaLynn]

Emotional toll as the install does weird things ?

 

[iOS Geek]

It's working very well for me. The biggest issue I have has been a battery drop (to the tune of ~20% drop in battery percentage overnight). But I had that same issue after Mojave first came around.

 

[TrenttonY]

Its more laggy.

 

[Risco]

Clean install and lost all my purchases from App Store. So yes, pretty bad!