macOS (10.15) - the little things

[Mr Todhunter]

On this, could someone please let me know if font smoothing is enabled or disabled by default, on a clean install of Catalina on a machine with a retina display?

Yes it is.

 

[FNH15]

Are some of the legacy apps like Chess and Grapher still included? News that Dashboard was removed makes me wonder about these ones.

They are!

 

[anentropic]

Is the Music app just like the 'music' parts of iTunes? Anything missing?

Does it still have a store to buy downloads from?

 

[ifrit05]

Is the Music app just like the 'music' parts of iTunes? Anything missing?

Does it still have a store to buy downloads from?

It's literally just iTunes gutted and renamed for now.

 

[Brad9893]

zsh is generally quite praised for being highly configurable and flexible. But frankly I think I'll stick to Bash. I'm just so used to it.



I think Chess at least will stick around basically forever. Apple uses an Open Source chess engine and only does the front-end and integration with Apple things like Game Center. But it's an open source app, so it's a quite hand form of interactive documentation for integrating with the Mac in a way.
As previously noted, Grapher is also still present. I haven't really noticed any apps missing, but I'll check anything if you ask specifics. - There are new cool dev tools though. Reality Composer for AR stuff, and a tool for training machine learning models without a single line of code - Create ML.



Honestly, the new System Preferences is a lot easier to navigate if you ask me. It feels better laid out. And inside the pref panes navigation is better too, especially for iCloud related stuff.
Plus you still have a search for prefs powered by Spotlight.

Is Grapher really still there? I've read a couple of posts that say it has been removed.

 

[StellarVixen]

Little but important things changed/removed:
- bash is now replaced by zsh as default shell (bash is still present, but like in earlier macOS releases, it's very old).
- perl, ruby or python (deprecated)
- 32-bit apps don't work anymore (as advertised)

You can update bash with Homebrew. They can change whatever they want, I will keep using bash.


Do you mean they removed Python, Perl and Ruby completely?

 

[Abraxa]

Can't wait to get the Login with Apple, so all the tracking clowns will be set off, i'll charge up owners to shut down my accounts definitely (the break that fb is giving it, is a rather bad joke) and get me new sign ins then. Dunno American laws but European's have become quite sharpened for site-holder's responsibility on their pages' content.
[doublepost=1559765569][/doublepost]

It's literally just iTunes gutted and renamed for now.

I d'be glad if it is so ... iTunes has been tinkered down enough.

 

[casperes1996]

Is Grapher really still there? I've read a couple of posts that say it has been removed.

Yes. Grapher is still there. What you've read elsewhere is wrong.

This wound up becoming a bit of an inception post.

 

[Brad9893]

Yes. Grapher is still there. What you've read elsewhere is wrong. View attachment 841086

This wound up becoming a bit of an inception post.

Oh, that's great to hear! Thanks for the screenshots.

 

[casperes1996]

Oh, that's great to hear! Thanks for the screenshots.

You're welcome, matey

 

[johnalan]

You can unlock system prefs with touchID now rather than password only, even with FileVault on.

Ruby, Python and Perl still there. Also don't use macOS versions of those items, just use Homebrew to get the latest.

I literally never use the python bin that ships with macOS, its 2.7 - pointless.

 

[zorinlynx]

In the Photos app, I'm unable to get the "Moments" style view of my library. Is this feature removed or is it just broken? I still see references to it in other parts of the app, like a greyed out "Select Moment" in the Edit menu, but can't make it do anything.

I'd hate to lose this feature as it's a great way to see groups of photos taken around the same time at a certain location.

EDIT: I sent in feedback. I reeeeeally hope this just hasn't been implemented in the new UI yet. I'm going to miss this SEVERELY if it's gone forever.

 

[vaugha]

It's literally just iTunes gutted and renamed for now.

Can you hide the sidebars in music, podcast and tv apps? I was able to do that in itunes.

 

[Peepo]

Right click a file or folder in iCloud Drive and you can now remove download to free up local space. Can also select download, which is probably good if you need access to iCloud Drive files when offline (eg. on an airplane).

 

[gklka]

PDF rendering on non-retina displays seems to be sharp again, not like the washed **** that was since the last few years.

Xcode font rendering also seems much improved. Probably the font was adjusted to non-retina displays.

For me Grapher is missing.

I think nobody yet mentioned here, but System Preferences has the user profile on the top now, like on iOS.
[doublepost=1559815191][/doublepost]About Sidecar: Works excellent, its super fast, much faster even on WiFi than Luna and Duet. I couldn't see any compression artifacts even when large parts of the screen were changing very fast.

You can activate it from the AirPlay menu or from the green window button. The option is available automatically when your device supports it, like last year's insert photo from iPhone/iPad. It uses the iPad's native resolution (no scaling involved) and appears to be a real external display, like AirPlay. It has a Preference Pane in which you can adjust a toolbar and showing the TouchBar (!) on the iPad. They can be toggled from the AirPlay menu item too.

On the iPad it runs as a normal app, so you can switch apps and use multitasking too, it won't disconnect you. Fingers cannot be used for input, only Apple Pencil. Apple Pencil works like a mouse, except that the pointer can be visible only when it touches the iPad's screen, it is hidden otherwise.

They will probably even add some form of file sharing between the iPad and Mac, because dragging files onto the Sidecar view crashes it totally.

 

[casperes1996]

For me Grapher is missing.

Interesting. I installed macOS Catalina as a brand new OS. Split my Macintosh HD into two volumes and installed Catalina on the new and fresh volume, and it installed Grapher with the OS. And just to clarify, I have two Grapher.apps on my hard drive, one from Mojave's install and one from Catalina's.

 

[dogslobber]

I wish they would include Maximized Window as one of the options. This new Green button behavior will probably kill Moom. Moom allowed you to set the Green button to work like Windows or Linux. Saved me a lot of problems with relatives.

Click green button, press option, select zoom.

 

[ErikGrim]

zsh is generally quite praised for being highly configurable and flexible. But frankly I think I'll stick to Bash. I'm just so used to it.

I've been a long time Bash user and configured my own Bash profile. Changed to Zsh and Oh My Zsh this year and I love it. Showing you your current git branch for example is invaluable.

 

[dogslobber]

Has anyone tried Catalina on a no-retina display?

Is smooth font rendering still disabled or gone as it was on Mojave, making the font look crappy on 1080p monitors?

Thank you.

There is a Font Smoothing option on my MBA 2017.

 

[poiihy]

Someone needs to go through all the replies on this thread and summarize all the little things on the original post. The OP was made a wiki post but nobody else has edited it yet.

 

[dogslobber]

zsh is generally quite praised for being highly configurable and flexible. But frankly I think I'll stick to Bash. I'm just so used to it.

I stopped using zsh back in 1995.

 

[poiihy]

- Screen Recording permission in Security (I think this is new):

yeah, this includes the `screencapture` command for taking screenshots; whatever program tries to spawn a `screencapture` process will require permission

 

[ErikGrim]

Someone needs to go through all the replies on this thread and summarize all the little things on the original post. The OP was made a wiki post but nobody else has edited it yet.

You're welcome

 

[poiihy]

You're welcome

Woah, I was editing it at the same time, but you did it better, as I was spending time linking each thing. Oh well, here's what I had

Post screenshots, etc., of the little things that has changed in macOS 10.15 here.

• zsh is now the default command line shell.
• Apps now need permission to capture the screen.
• Auto switch between dark and light mode (#5)
• Trash in now 'Bin' in British English (#5)
  
• 'Switch to Tab' in Safari (#5)
  
• "Now QT7 is unsupported, some features have (finally!!) made their way to QTX, including things like creating image sequences" (#5)
• New menu appears when hovering over the green button. (#9)
  • Hold alt for different options (#17)
• "Auto Hotspot" feature in Network preferences (#15)

 

[ErikGrim]

Feel free to add those links to the post