Is Catalina as bad as it looks on this board?

[fisherking]

Just because your Boeing 737 Max didn't crash, doesn't mean the design itself isn't faultless. I have been using Mac OS X since 10.7 and Catalina is the release with the most complaints about it by far, coincidentally Apple removed 32-bit app support in this release.

I mean, just the initial release was already faulty, the OS couldn't be installed on some computers so Apple had to release updates, before 10.15.1 got out. Remember that? And now i read a lot of kernel panics, sluggish interfaces and missing music libraries. Not things i read when High Sierra or Mojave was released.

what OS has been faultess? and yes, the abandoning of 32-bit apps has consequences (u missed the fun moving from scsi to usb, or power pc chips to intel). people post on forums about the problems they're having (to hopefully get help, altho, here, often to just whine), not to go on about the problems they're not having.

and i'll say this again; with every new version of mac os, the forum fills up with whining, ranting... end of the world posts. but stick around; you can see this all happen with 10.16 shows up, and people are now swearing they'll never abandon... catalina.

anyway, let's not make this our personal space for argument; so make any other point you need to, and i promise to not respond... there's work to do, going well, on both my macs, on catalina.

 

[DinkThifferent]

anyway, let's not make this our personal space for argument; so make any other point you need to, and i promise to not respond... there's work to do, going well, on both my macs, on catalina.

Sure, Apple will figure it out and probably 10.15.4/.5 will be just as stable as Mojave is.

Let's both smile at the 1990's Apple joke people made about the very unstable OS they shipped back then:

"MACINTOSH stands for: Most Applications Crash, If Not, The Operating System Hangs"

 

[H. Flower]

what OS has been faultess? and yes, the abandoning of 32-bit apps has consequences (u missed the fun moving from scsi to usb, or power pc chips to intel). people post on forums about the problems they're having (to hopefully get help, altho, here, often to just whine), not to go on about the problems they're not having.

Except the reports of major bugs and complaints extend well beyond this forum, all the way from major tech publications, to well-known devs on twitter, in an unprecedented manner.

You must not follow these things, which would explain why you’re so out of the loop in this thread.

 

[Schismz]

Does anyone remember when Apple used to cater to those who loved to learn and tinker? the Apple II was intended for geeks and way ahead of its time. Steve himself used to make it look 'perfect' inside to amaze anyone who wanted to take their II or IIgs apart. What happened to that Apple? What happened to being able to upgrade your RAM or replace the battery in that MacBook? Why are they all glued together now?

Because there was no mainstream back then. I too remember the Apple ][ with shift-key mod and massive 16K card, CP/M card, NMI switch, and... eventually AppleCat modem + 212 card + firmware. Good times from another epoch ... I feel ya, but the world has moved on.

If you want the Apple ][ of 2020, it's called a Mac Pro; costs about the same in 2020 $'s as the ][ did back in the late 1970's, and it does a whole lot more for the money ;-) If you're also from that era, the price tag should not produce sticker shock.

As for why does Apple do anything? To MAKE MONEY FOR THE SHAREHOLDERS which is the fiduciary responsibility of any public corp. As a shareholder I'm quite happy with Apple. As a customer, I've been quite happy since hell froze over and they released another Cheesegrater after taking a decade long pause. -- Why is everything magical & revolutionary superglue? Because it makes Apple more profit.

If nobody has noticed this from the consumer-facing side, all that Apple has done lately is increase the prices of all its products almost universally to increase their margins and generate more profit. The stock has done extraordinarily well (except lately, since markets are crashed due to COV 19) and people keep paying for Apple, because it has essentially pivoted into a "luxury" and design brand.

To pivot back to Catalina: I don't ever update betas or revision levels of OS, until it hits around .3 or so and I figure most of the major bugs have been worked out. I need to use the computer as a tool and don't have time to tinker with it, or deal with whatever initial issues exist because NeXTStep 2019, pardon me, I meant to say: macOS, needs to get kicked out the door every year as per new release schedule.

Mac Pro shipped with 10.15.2 and everything has mostly worked as expected. Apple keeps adding walls and fences to save people from themselves; if you don't need to be saved from yourself, it's generally pretty easy to jump the fences and walk through the walls ;-)

Having said all that, there is an insanely large towering mountain of crap layered upon the original foundations of NeXTStep/Mach. Entropy is eating the universe and things are falling apart. It's been mentioned: https://macperformanceguide.com/autoTopic.html?dglyKW=Apple+Core+Rot

On the flipside, I've personally experienced 0 issues and had no problems... go figure. I also lack the option of downgrading Mac Pro to anything except Catalina install it shipped with (or locating someone with access to the Mojave betas they got it running with internally, but it's not like they're going to be More Stable). Plus, also, OMFG it now includes Sidecar and Even morE Catalyst apps from iOS!!!@!!1!!!!

In conclusion: not all is lost, Dark Mode is back since Mojave and it's been gone so long that it's trendy again. Mmmmm soothing. Sadly, no longer includes radiation burns from CRT.

 

[fisherking]

Except the reports of major bugs and complaints extend well beyond this forum, all the way from major tech publications, to well-known devs on twitter, in an unprecedented manner.

You must not follow these things, which would explain why you’re so out of the loop in this thread.

define 'unprecedented'. and what's the point overall? that some people are having problems in catalina? true with every mac OS. more than previously? perhaps, but still... lots of people running it without issue.

those issues need to be resolved... as always. so not sure what your point is. meanwhile, am happy that my macs are happy, and hopeful that everyone will be happy too, sooner than later.

 

[jk73]

You tell 'em, Elon:

Elon Musk uses iPhone email bug to illustrate the importance of software innovation | AppleInsider

Elon Musk claimed that one of Apple's recent iPhone updates had broken his email system during an on-stage interview at Satellite 2020, and has used it to demonstrate how properly functioning software is crucial to everyday life.

appleinsider.com

 

[LumbermanSVO]

How many itunes files is a lot of iTunes files? I have like 50 GB/4000 songs. Would that be a huge issue? I have a brand new 2019 iMac running on Mojave and I transferred my files from my old to my new iMac through restoring the last time machine back up. So it’s not an older Mac that has gone through 5 OS versions, it’s new running the first OS it was shipped with.

I have about 300GB of music and 4.1TB of video in my library, I regret going to Catalina. I've now spent DAYS fixing media library problems, and I haven't even touched my Books library yet. If i watch a TV episode on my AppleTV it may or may not mark that episode as watched. On one particular series it keeps resetting the watched episodes all the way back to S1E6, even though I'm halfway through season 7. On others seasons it resets the volume adjustment back to 0 even though I keep setting it to -5. There are TONS of these stupid errors. There seems to be no way to tell it to make a snapshot of the library in it's current stater. In Mojave I'd just have iTunes quite once a day to save the library, then repoen.

Also, when I remote into the Catalina machine, it REFUSES to recognize typed capitol letters. Becaue of this, the only way to type passwords is to make a text file, transfer the text file to the Catalina machine, then open the file and copy/paste. This absurd bug is there after TWO fresh installs.

I hate that I had to update to Catalina just because I bought a new phone and wanted to sync my music library to the phone.

 

[DinkThifferent]

I hate that I had to update to Catalina just because I bought a new phone and wanted to sync my music library to the phone.

Wait, why do you have to upgrade to Catalina to sync music to your phone? There's no smoke coming out of my Mojave running iMac when iConnect my iPhone to it

 

[Glenny2lappies]

Sure, Apple will figure it out and probably 10.15.4/.5 will be just as stable as Mojave is.

Let's both smile at the 1990's Apple joke people made about the very unstable OS they shipped back then:

"MACINTOSH stands for: Most Applications Crash, If Not, The Operating System Hangs"

Which is why Apple ditched the previous OSs (v9 and lower) to switch to UNIX - OS 10.

Much as MS moved from "Windows" to NT

 

[Chevysales]

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!

NO!!!

 

[LumbermanSVO]

Wait, why do you have to upgrade to Catalina to sync music to your phone? There's no smoke coming out of my Mojave running iMac when iConnect my iPhone to it

You are right, I only read the first line in the system requirements on the website. I think I'll roll back and restore my backups this weekend.

Syncing to a Mac or PC requires:

• macOS Catalina 10.15 using the Finder
• macOS El Capitan 10.11.6 through macOS Mojave 10.14.6 using iTunes 12.8 or later
• Windows 7 or later using iTunes 12.10 or later (free download from itunes.com/download)

 

[jk73]

How’s it looking after today’s update? Thanks.

 

[xnsys]

How’s it looking after today’s update? Thanks.

Accessing servers from the finder side-bar still produces errors that they cannot be found - so that's not fixed...

 

[jk73]

Anyone else? Thanks.

 

[tommiy]

Lots of opinions here but I think the overall problems are probably the lack of acknowledgement from Apple on issues and slow response of correcting these is eventually creating a backlog that reappears every release as every one hopes Apple will correct whats been reported. The need to wait 12 months for basic items to be corrected is problematic on many levels. My conclusion is that Catalina is just the next OS that is aggregating all previus issues and as a result of the degree of corrections at the expense of adding new capabilities the noise is getting louder. I suspect this will continue into the future until Apple gets the message. Question will be will the message be heard before its too late. Yes some people have no problems and some people do but waiting 12+ months for cofnirmed Apple bugs is not impressive.

 

[xnsys]

The graphics card bug where the graphics go all choppy is still there as well, just had to do my post sleep reboot for the 5th time in the past 24 hours.

This is just so bad it's beyond belief.
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And this is a fresh out the box build, on different hardware as well...so it's not install or hardware related.

 

[murtiuso]

For a few days I have removed Catalina and returned to Mojave.

Catalina gave me a lot of problems, it seemed that I was using Windows XP, it was already maddening.

Below I show a series of problems I have had with Catalina arranged by category, although they are not all, only the most annoying. Apple is aware of its errors, but does not rectify.

My main machine is a Mac mini 2012 with 2 SSDs and to which I connect an external graphic that I can use thanks to a hack called "Purge Wrangler", not thanks to Apple, but I also have a MacBook pro from 2017 and the same thing happens with Catalina on this machine.


32 bit

There's Windows 10 running 64-bit or 32-bit code without question, couldn't Apple have created something to run 32-bit that only runs if you need a 32-bit application? Something like what happened to Snow Leopard running PPC code. If you don't want it, don't install it or remove it and everyone in peace.

I can not watch TV because eyeTV 4 (which is 64 bit) is paid, I have version 3 for years, which does not work well virtualizing Mojave or other Mac OS, because Apple does not open the graphical functionality for virtual machines .

I cannot play a series of Steam games; I have over a dozen games that I can't play because it's 32 bit. Steam is 64 bit, but it installs 32 bit games without you knowing that they are 32 bit, so you know when you are going to play that game.


Bluetooth

Catalina does not connect with a Bluetooth headset that I have, while if I reboot in Mojave, this does connect perfectly with it.


Backups

Before, with Carbon Copy Cloner backups, you could easily see everything that had changed, looking at the CCC folder at the root of the disk where you made the copies, organized by date. Now I have to spend all day pulling commands and mounting routes, without actually being able to see what occupies the most in the mounted Time Machine copies.

Also, with the amount of space that Time Machine sanpshots take up, I never know when the system is telling me the truth with the amount of gigabytes I have free. I have to be wasting time to see what has been copied, to recover something concrete and for the space.


iCloud

Sometimes it asks many times to log in.


iPhone

I have the iPhone completely turned off, because the battery has run out and I have not yet charged it, and the Finder continues to show me the mounted iPhone even though I have already ejected it several times.


Finder

In both Catalina and Mojave, when I select a series of files, and move them, the number of files is displayed just below the cursor, so you don't see how many files are selected. I have to activate the status bar. Does it cost so much to put the red circle a little closer, instead of just where the cursor is?.


The free space that the finder tells me, which is already very deceptive, is different if I start from the Mojave partition.
It tell me that a disk is being used by the Finder, when there is no task with that disk.
I lost some labels that I had to recover by entering the disk where I have Mojave installed.
I am simply copying things from one disk to another and the Finder turns itself off.
The iPhone is continually mounting to the Finder even though I have it set to not sync over Wi-Fi and I don't even have the Music open.

Finder does not obey: click on a window and it is set to change the name, click on a window and it is not selected, I have to click for the 2nd time, click on a window and soon the focus is on it, click on a folder and then click on search and write, and it changes the name of the folder, I do it again and the same thing happens, I am looking for something, I hit the x to clear the search and it won't go away, something has just been copied and the icon is still copying.


Mail

There have been those who have had problems with Mail.

I did not find emails searching, which after manually selecting them and searching again, still did not show them to me in the search.

I continually get the window that I should approve plugins, when such plugins are already approved.


Music

Before, with iTunes double click on a list and it started to play; not now.

I open Music and it does not appear, tab + cmd and it does not open although it is seen here, click on the icon in the dock and now it does appear.

Not being able to use iTunes playlists in DJ’s and other programs that use iTunes playlists.

Music is a mess, when before in a list that was randomly played it would go to the next song and then you wanted to go back to the previous one, or to the previous one of the previous one, etc., there was no problem; Now depending on the day, when I go back, a random song comes out, not the one I just heard. Before, random play was only forward.

Also with Music, I'm looking for a song and the appropriate results don't come; yesterday I looked for "heroes del silencio“, and that came to me and "deekline", with songs that had neither "heroes" nor “silencio” and I lost myself among a lot of songs.

With the same program I hit the play symbol in a song and it doesn't play, I hit it again and now it does; at another time I hit the play symbol on the same list and now it does play the first time I hit play ... a real mess.

Separating music from video and podcast on Catalina was supposed to improve performance, but iTunes on Mojave does better than Music on Catalina.


Partitions

Always mounted the normal and the read-only partition, confusing at all times, in many programs. The read-only partition should have been completely transparent to users, in all programs, booted from the booting operating system, not to be confused for backup programs or whatever. That only the system takes it into account and does not disturb anyone.


Safari

Synchronization with iCloud is slower and sometimes freezes telling me often that “bookmarks that can't be changed right now” or something like this.

For the 1st time safari is going slower than Chrome.

It starts horribly slow.


Spotlight

I tell spotlight not to index a partition where I have Mojave, because I have repeated programs on both partitions and they come out repeated in spotlight searches, and when I start in Mojave, it tells me that you can't use spotlight because I have it blocked. What right does Catalina have to ban search in Mojave?

Spotlight is not looking for things for me correctly. I am looking for an application with Spotlight, which I see with the Launchpad, and in Spotlight it does not appear.


More things

Before installing Catalina, the system does not warn you of everything that is 32 bit and I think that the list of 32 bit applications in the system information does not say all the 32 bit applications either.

Catalina is horribly slow for a lot of things.

Applications that do not enter full screen as an activity monitor.

I have an LG screen that has a program for Mac called "on Screen control", which loads very slowly in Catalina, while in Mojave it is normal.

The system installations are very slow.

Before, you could put a stack of recent programs and documents in the Dock (thanks to Onyx), not now. The only thing left is 3 recently opened programs. A trash.

I hit command and tab and it freezes.

There are many more problems. Right now I am looking at cross-platform alternatives for mail, notes, reminders, calendars, etc. I am already using Chrome as the main browser and I am happier than with Safari (I have always used Safari as the main browser and Chrome as a secondary one). The Linux Mint is fine, for games, Linux is getting better, also with Vulkan (which Apple does not want, Apple will know why). Apple is tiring us already. As this continues in a short time ... I'm leaving and goodbye to Apple. Apple gives you good things but it also makes you have a bad time. With Apple a user is never just satisfied, if it is not for the price of a machine, it is because they discreetly "force" you to buy a new machine.

I do not want to think who has spent a huge amount of money on the new Mac's Pro and can not use Mojave, how bad it must be going in that regard and more if they do not know enough English.

All this gives a wonderful disastrous user experience.


Conclusions

Catalina is awful, but it's not the 1st time that Apple has released a buggy operating system, something Apple isn't supposed to do.

As I say, this is many, but not all the errors that I have had with Catalina. Everyone will know the mistakes they have suffered and on the way the ugly things that Apple has done to them. How badly Apple has done to Catalina is not the only thing that Apple has knowingly done wrong:

Why Apple cut with eGPU support since the latest High Sierra releases on Mac mini 2012 ?: to force you to buy a new Mac.

Why does Apple not accept Vulkan?

Why did Apple cut Sierra and High Sierra support on Mac Book Pro 2008 when these systems can run perfectly on that machine ?: to force you to buy a new Mac.

Why is Apple not letting Logic Pro 2008 run on a virtualized Snow Leopard ?: to force you to buy a new Mac. I can't use my Logic Studio on a current machine because Apple doesn't want to, because Apple wants more money.

Does it cost you so much to enable the graphical functionalities when virtualizing Mac Os?

Why also have not released the new Mac's Pro with AMD processor and PCI express 4, and thus have it cheaper ?. Why is the basic model of Mac Pro worth $ 6000 and only comes with an RX 580 X and a 256 GB hard drive? I find it a real abuse https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/mac-pro/tower#

Why do they update the Mac mini 2018 and only give a little more hard disk for the same price? Are they laughing at us or what?

Why don't they put facilities for the eGPUs to work properly in BootCamp?

I bought a MacBook Pro in 2017. It started having keyboard problems; some keys were pressed multiple times when only pressed once. I went to change it, they put a faulty screen on me, and I had to change it again I don't remember now why. In the end everything seemed fine, but over time I saw that when I connected a mini jack for the sound, it was heard only from one side, or with a lot of noise going up and down ... I did not change it because I had to deliver jobs and the warranty was passed . And there I am, with a Macbook Pro that cost a lot of money, with sound defects, because I was tired of so much time for it to be repaired and on top of that it came with more defects, because Apple really does not have a decent technical service, but a fudge, but very pretty fudge huh. It is clear that I am not the only one who has had a bad time with Apple. What you do comes back to you.

If they tell me that within the operating system there is something to make older machines not work well, even if they are officially supported, and with that discreetly "force" you to buy a new machine, I believe it.

They do not force you directly to buy, but if you already have to do some work on Mac, it is really discreetly forcing yourself to consume more of their product, they do not allow you to continue with what you already had. Once they have you trapped they won't let you go.

I'm sick of Apple just thinking about making more money and they don't care about their customers.

They are very greedy, they are never able to significantly lower the price of their machines, they always want more money, and more money, and more money.

There are many alternatives to Mac, every day more. It may be time to take these alternatives seriously and abandon Apple, given that Apple users really do not care.

This I say the vast majority thinks, and much more, but for the moment they are silent and obedient. Perhaps it is time to stop and make Apple see that it must improve many things.

In case you do not believe me here a video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbP-QhXpMYw) that shows that a number of things are better in Mojave than in Catalina, or that you go through a number of forums where each one exposes the problems they are having with Catalina. Thank you for your attention. Health and happiness to everyone.

 

[Taz Mangus]

I waited until 10.15.4 to upgrade from Mojave 10.14.6. I did a clean install and data migration. So far, been pretty stable for me. No crashes or lockups so far on either of my 2 2015 MacBook Pro computers.
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Anyone else? Thanks.

What year and model Mac are you running Catalina?

 

[nebojsak]

I've been v.0 early adopter since OS X Jaguar (secondary machines though, and with exception to Yosemite - for a good reason), and I can say it worked for me, despite occasional minor glitches and bugs. Only this time I updated my Air from Mojave to 10.15.2, then to 10.15.3, and then reverted back to Mojave. There were no major issues except sudden heavy battery draining, overall sluggish experience and some other minor stuff like joke of the new Music app and so. But I've never seen so many major problems (be it via forums or from people I know) with v.4, until Catalina release.

Funny thing is, Apple is going steadily towards totally closed system (security and privacy, hell yeah), and at the same time their hardware and software gets buggier than ever. And it is so obvious that they don't really care about Macs now, they turned into a sort of McDonald's company.

 

[SkiHound2]

Catalina brought major changes and killed any 32bit programs. I never upgrade immediately after a new OS is released because there are almost always bugs. And this time they broke up iTunes, etc. I knew I didn't have any critical 32bit programs and recently upgraded. It's been completely stable on my 2019 iMac. Most of the folks who have had no issues are not posting on here. That said, I've no doubt many have experienced "growing pains."

 

[MacUser2525]

Catalina brought major changes and killed any 32bit programs. I never upgrade immediately after a new OS is released because there are almost always bugs.

I always stay one full version behind some of the time two until the security support ends. Then I will upgrade who knows if I completely skip this one like I have in the past and wait until .16 to upgrade to it, we will see how it goes once they are done with this one and I upgrade to see how it goes.

 

[throAU]

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!

I've been running it since release and have no major complaints.

It doesn't run 32 bit apps any more (mainly some old games from GOG that impact me), but other than that I haven't had any issues to speak of.

I've used it both on a 2015 MacBook Pro 13" that I upgraded every release and my new 2020 MBA.


edit:
as above, depends mostly on how many non-apple applications you run. I don't run much outside of MS Office and the included Apple or App Store applications on mine. I have other machines for other stuff.

 

[nickdalzell1]

So...my auto dark mode just started working normally all of a sudden the last few days. Does anyone know why it's so inconsistent? works for a few days then get stuck on light 24/7. Does it phone home to some server somewhere that goes down often or something? Night shift works fine even with auto dark/light not working so don't tell me "it's part of Night Shift' again.

 

[cheddar-caveman]

Catalina brought major changes and killed any 32bit programs. I never upgrade immediately after a new OS is released because there are almost always bugs. And this time they broke up iTunes, etc. I knew I didn't have any critical 32bit programs and recently upgraded. It's been completely stable on my 2019 iMac. Most of the folks who have had no issues are not posting on here. That said, I've no doubt many have experienced "growing pains."

Do you use Photos photo editing? If so, any issues there please??

 

[nickdalzell1]

Auto dark mode broke again today. It was working since last week. Has to depend on a server-side switch somewhere. I've done nothing but browse the web. Noticed the dynamic wallpaper remains stuck on 'dusk' style until I switch to light and back to auto then it shows the dark sky like it should.