Is macOS Catalina ready for production work?

[Alameda]

Mojave is rock solid, and I'm nervous to leave it. Thoughts?

I think you should stick with Mojave.
I upgraded to Catalina and downgraded back to Mojave. The big change in Catalina is that all apps must be 64-bit. You might think that all of your apps work, but you probably have one that won’t.
I suggest you give the industry more time to update the apps, let Apple get a few updates out, etc.

I’m happy that I rolled back to Mojave and I can’t think of anything that was special about Catalina, except for the beautiful photo of Catalina, which, I promise you, was not “shot on iPhone.”

 

[chrono1081]

Hi all. I haven't kept on the forums, other than knowing that Catalina came with some issues. I depend on my Mac daily for research - I am usually emulating several environments via VMWare, running extensive workflows in Excel, Adobe suite, and upwards of 10 Word docs at a time. I use iCloud Drive for personal and OneDrive extensively for work. Mojave is rock solid, and I'm nervous to leave it. Thoughts?

Catalina is fine. I use it for work and personal. Some of the things I run on it:

Xcode
Unity
Houdini
Modo
Mari
Zbrush
Affinity Suite
Logic
Final Cut

and a slew of others. The "issues" in this forum are vastly overstated as usual.

 

[Smoothie]

I’m happy that I rolled back to Mojave and I can’t think of anything that was special about Catalina, except for the beautiful photo of Catalina, which, I promise you, was not “shot on iPhone.”

I'm still running Mojave, but I'm using the Catalina desktop photo so I've got the best of both. I'll probably move to Catalina after the next point release. I've checked my apps, and I no longer have any that are 32-bit. A buddy of mine who has identical hardware moved to Catalina as soon as it was released, and he hasn't reported any issues. (He apparently has the "warrior gene" that makes him more willing to take risks.)

 

[IowaLynn]

There use to be sites with app compatibility checklist and which version is needed. MacIntouch for one.

 

[K4LK]

Hi all. I haven't kept on the forums, other than knowing that Catalina came with some issues. I depend on my Mac daily for research - I am usually emulating several environments via VMWare, running extensive workflows in Excel, Adobe suite, and upwards of 10 Word docs at a time. I use iCloud Drive for personal and OneDrive extensively for work. Mojave is rock solid, and I'm nervous to leave it. Thoughts?

I would stay away from Catalina. I am on 10.15.2 beta 3 and still can't access directories at the root iCloud Drive that I can access using Mojave, iOS 13.3 beta 3 and iPadOS 13.3 beta 3. Messages are not syncing completely nor is Mail. This 2019 rMBP was setup as new. I installed all apps and transferred mail and messages using iCloud on Mojave.

 

[topcat001]

Have been using it for work and play and zero issues so far, but YMMV I guess.

 

[darthaddie]

I upgraded. And boy do I regret.... I know... I know...

Advise you to wait. My iMac runs FCP X, Lightroom and photoshop (Ver. 2020) almost 10 hours everyday. They all will randomly crash, FCP will freeze, crash and maybe once 2-3 days freeze Mac OS. FCP under load is unstable. Lightroom CC will have random bugs popping up.

All apps are updated to the latest version. The OS (if not doing production work) works fine.

I can't blame Apple for Adobe apps and I understand they might take time to catch up. But FCP X? seriously???

I don't have time to role back to Mojave, so I will simply work towards the next update.

Mine is an iMac 2019/i9/Vega48/64GB/512GB if that means anything.

 

[cardfan]

Nope. Never update right away.

 

[Alameda]

I'm still running Mojave, but I'm using the Catalina desktop photo

You should publish that on Engadget as “Insane Secret Powerful Mac Catalina Hack!”

 

[hojoon0724]

No. Many things are sporadically broken. Too much risk

 

[FocusAndEarnIt]

Well, I upgraded to a 16” MacBook Pro today so I’m forced to use Catalina. Thankfully 10.15.2 came out today as well.

 

[i4k20c]

Well, I upgraded to a 16” MacBook Pro today so I’m forced to use Catalina. Thankfully 10.15.2 came out today as well.

how is it going? is it fairly stable?

 

[MikhailT]

10.15.2 is better for MBP 16 where we don't have a choice to use Catalina. Wi-Fi seems to be better, no issue unlocking with Apple Watch anymore, smoother scrolling in all apps but not perfect.

For those on Mojave, wait or skip Catalina for next OS. Catalina is making me regret the laptop purchase, I still have a week to decide. 10.15.2 made it difficult but before, I was leaning on returning it.

 

[i4k20c]

10.15.2 is better for MBP 16 where we don't have a choice to use Catalina. Wi-Fi seems to be better, no issue unlocking with Apple Watch anymore, smoother scrolling in all apps but not perfect.

For those on Mojave, wait or skip Catalina for next OS. Catalina is making me regret the laptop purchase, I still have a week to decide. 10.15.2 made it difficult but before, I was leaning on returning it.

what is so bad about it that you recommend skipping this OS all together?

 

[Glenny2lappies]

what is so bad about it that you recommend skipping this OS all together?

It's buggy and has a host of really annoying traits. Not least killing off all your old 32 bit applications.

My MBP 16 experience has been the worst I've known from Apple. Loads of irritating bugs and things not working. I've even had to reboot it a few times -- my previous 15" mid 2015 machine ran for weeks or months without rebooting.

Still haven't managed to import my 350Gb of music files which was fine on the old MBP on Mojave (which was migrated from the 2012 17", which was migrated from a 2009 17", which was migrated from the previous 2006 machine...), but just cannot manage to import it into the (awful, IMHO) Music (cr)app

If it weren't for the 64Gb of RAM (which makes it run much faster) and 4Tb of SSD (giving me lots more disc space) I'd seriously consider sending it back and reverting to the 2015 MBP.

If I could break the fundamental laws of physics and travel back in time I'd tell myself to wait a few months.

If only I could upgrade the MacBook Pro 16" from Cortana ^H^H^H Catalina up to Mojave...

Actually, the worst insult I could hurl at Catalina is it seems as if Microsoft was involved with the design and QA.

 

[IowaLynn]

Apple has a long history of only fixing all the problems until the last update. I think even .2 releases should be the minimum. But it's gotten worse. The testing, code base, experience using a compiler, maybe even the code generated. MS seems to feel they replied too much on artificial tools and not enough kicking the tires.

Panther, Jaquar, Tiger, Lion etc were all flawed out the gate.

I think it's been taking six months at least to iron out.

 

[kemo]

I upgraded. And boy do I regret.... I know... I know...

Advise you to wait. My iMac runs FCP X, Lightroom and photoshop (Ver. 2020) almost 10 hours everyday. They all will randomly crash, FCP will freeze, crash and maybe once 2-3 days freeze Mac OS. FCP under load is unstable. Lightroom CC will have random bugs popping up.

All apps are updated to the latest version. The OS (if not doing production work) works fine.

I can't blame Apple for Adobe apps and I understand they might take time to catch up. But FCP X? seriously???

I don't have time to role back to Mojave, so I will simply work towards the next update.

Mine is an iMac 2019/i9/Vega48/64GB/512GB if that means anything.

Planning to get MBP 16" specifically to start working in FCP X and I guess I will wait with the purchase. I have going through such problems, that's why I'm still on Mojave on my current MBP. Thanks for posting.

 

[jwolf6589]

I'm more wondering about stability. I know the apps I need to run work. Technically, Mojave does everything I want. I'd like the new apps that replaced iTunes, but I can live without if it means a more stable system. I remember Mojave being rock solid for me out of the gates. This was largely other people's experience too, though. I don't have a good feel on how Catalina has been, hence me making the thread.

Then there is no reason to upgrade then, especially if you need 32-bit support.
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I’m not getting any kernel panics but icloud files syncing is completely broken along with printing to my Samsung printers. I can live with both issues but wouldn’t recommend any one moving to Catalina.

Kernel Panics are most likely hardware failures not software problems.

 

[FocusAndEarnIt]

how is it going? is it fairly stable?

Honestly, it's going really well. First thing I did on my 16" MBP was update to 10.15.2. So far, the Mac has been very stable and I've had no issues. I've tried to put it through its paces and did succeed somewhat at doing that with my workflow, but only managed to really grab 75% RAM usage / 90% graphics / 70% CPU, as monitored by iStat menus in realtime. I personally really love the ability to tell iCloud not to download something, which given I have 800gb of data backed up there on an iCloud family share plan, is really helpful. I have had one issue which was due to a Remote Desktop program (VMware Horizon connecting me to a work environment) not behaving as it should (crashing intermittently), but thankfully this was fixed within 2 days of me owning the Mac with an update.

So honestly, no issues with stability so far, which I'm really pleased by.

 

[FocusAndEarnIt]

Well, I opened my 16" MacBook Pro this morning to a completely unresponsive system - not even the trackpad would make it's haptic feedback upon press.

Upon restart, this is what the "your computer had an issue, report to apple" dialogue box said under details:

BAD MAGIC! (flag set in iBoot panic header), no macOS panic log available

I've been running on the Mac since System 7, all the way through every iteration of Mac OS X and macOS, though I skipped High Sierra. This is a first.

Other than that, rock solid. ? Would probably still be on Mojave if Apple let my 16" MBP run it.

 

[J.Gallardo]

(I'm staying in Mojave).
Let's face it: everyone of us (Mac OS users) find some problem, some day. Mojave is quite solid for me, but still something fails; small and infrequent errors, perhaps a file corruption, a frozen app... most radical fix for me being a restart or some Onyx work.
The real problem with Catalina, IMHO, is that OS structure is new, problems are new, fixes (if they exist) are new, repair tools are new, unexpected interactions resulting to a crash or KP are new...
So, If everything works nicely for you in Mojave or Catalina, you'll be a happy user. BUT, when something goes wrong, if you are in Mojave you'll find a solution quicker and easier, not so in Catalina.
Of course all these threads about problems in OS's don't give a real picture of the situation, as happy users don't need help.
What really worries me is that Mojave threads usually give a lot of explanations, fixes, similar experiences, and so on... ending in known solutions.
Catalina problems threads are full of ignorance, surprise, weird explanations and usually end with everybody praying for next upgrade.
Well, it's not the same.

 

[KoolAid-Drink]

I've been saying this for years, but it always seems like the odd-numbered release versions of Mac OS X/macOS get bungled somehow. I remember how horrific 10.9 and 10.13 were out of the gate, and actually, neither improved, even with updates. 10.9 was so bad that I had to return to 10.8.

On the other hand, even-numbered release versions has always been sturdy and good right outside the gate. 10.8, 10.10, and 10.14 were especially decent and worked great right at .0, while 10.12 was a bit buggy, but nothing like 10.13.

10.15 was pretty bad at .0, but so far, at .2, seems to be plugging along okay. Hopefully.

 

[tommiy]

10.14.5 was the last version that i would say was close. Every since then its a hit and miss on functionality not working and unreliability especially in a business environment.

 

[jwolf6589]

I've been saying this for years, but it always seems like the odd-numbered release versions of Mac OS X/macOS get bungled somehow. I remember how horrific 10.9 and 10.13 were out of the gate, and actually, neither improved, even with updates. 10.9 was so bad that I had to return to 10.8.

On the other hand, even-numbered release versions has always been sturdy and good right outside the gate. 10.8, 10.10, and 10.14 were especially decent and worked great right at .0, while 10.12 was a bit buggy, but nothing like 10.13.

10.15 was pretty bad at .0, but so far, at .2, seems to be plugging along okay. Hopefully.

Strange I have never had much issue with OSX. However in the Mac OS 7-9 days I had tons of crashes and bombs.

 

[rehkram]

To the OP, if I were you I'd run out and buy a new mac mini and install it on that first. Give it a good shake down, migrate apps and licenses (if you can afford a big enough mini) when happy. That way you can prove it will work before making the change.

That's what I did. All my issues are now resolved or, in one case, 'worked around' (I'm talking the hdmi->hdmi bug, the workaround being usb-c -> displayport in my case). Both my machines are now on 10.15.2 and everything's working great.

I'm running the mini alongside my old faithful rMBP 2012 on my desk. The rMBP has way more storage than the mini so I'm using it as a local NAS kind of thing. I also have a synology NAS on the local network for backups.

This is a great setup which could only be improved by getting yet another NAS and situating it in another building (we have a few) for full system backups of... everything. That is my goal.