To whom it may concern: if you're thinking of upgrading to Catalina, heed my list of minor gripes. I'm a decades-long Mac user and a developer, but I've never dared touch a beta of Catalina, and I've already weathered the expected changes, such as planning to lose my 32-bit apps and wading through a number of permission dialogues. Here's what I didn't expect:
System Preferences > Apple ID prompted me with an indicator to "sign in again" before all services would be made available. Signing in had no effect on dismissing the indicator; I could repeat the process indefinitely. I think I finally resolved it by signing out entirely and then back in (which signed all the media apps into my main iCloud account – leaving me the task of individually signing out and back in to each of those manually).
Notes from the Mac failed to sync using iCloud for several hours. After the first successful sync, the latest version from my iOS devices superseded the changes made on my Mac, resulting in some lost data.
A small number of my folders are displayed with a generic document icon (a blank page with a folded corner) rather than a folder icon, though they behave properly.
I use a projector as a second monitor, adjusted for brightness and colour using macOS' built-in Projector Calibrator utility. It's been constantly remembering the colour setting and constantly forgetting the brightness setting.
When saving a 30-megabyte MP3 to iCloud Drive from my Mac, the Finder refuses, claims iCloud Drive is full, and also displays over a gigabyte of space available. Since then, I haven't been able to upload anything new to iCloud from any device. That's no good. I've contacted support.
My manually-added audiobooks from iTunes were moved to Books. Since I was already using iCloud Drive for Books, it was unclear whether iCloud Drive was attempting to upload this large collection to iCloud. Thus far I haven't gained any insight.
After updating more than one app from the App Store, Launchpad displays two identical icons for them: the existing and the new one. Eventually it works it out, but that was a first for me.
Apparently you can download the Siri male and female voices to the "Speech" preference pane (and hear them say their "names!"), but can't necessarily use them to speak selected text in apps – for me, an older male voice replaced my selection when trying that.
At one point, input seemed to randomly switch from US English to Katakana. When I finally waded through System Preferences and set my system input language to US English, all other options I'd previously selected, including Katakana, were removed from my favourites list.
May your journey be smoother.
System Preferences > Apple ID prompted me with an indicator to "sign in again" before all services would be made available. Signing in had no effect on dismissing the indicator; I could repeat the process indefinitely. I think I finally resolved it by signing out entirely and then back in (which signed all the media apps into my main iCloud account – leaving me the task of individually signing out and back in to each of those manually).
Notes from the Mac failed to sync using iCloud for several hours. After the first successful sync, the latest version from my iOS devices superseded the changes made on my Mac, resulting in some lost data.
A small number of my folders are displayed with a generic document icon (a blank page with a folded corner) rather than a folder icon, though they behave properly.
I use a projector as a second monitor, adjusted for brightness and colour using macOS' built-in Projector Calibrator utility. It's been constantly remembering the colour setting and constantly forgetting the brightness setting.
When saving a 30-megabyte MP3 to iCloud Drive from my Mac, the Finder refuses, claims iCloud Drive is full, and also displays over a gigabyte of space available. Since then, I haven't been able to upload anything new to iCloud from any device. That's no good. I've contacted support.
My manually-added audiobooks from iTunes were moved to Books. Since I was already using iCloud Drive for Books, it was unclear whether iCloud Drive was attempting to upload this large collection to iCloud. Thus far I haven't gained any insight.
After updating more than one app from the App Store, Launchpad displays two identical icons for them: the existing and the new one. Eventually it works it out, but that was a first for me.
Apparently you can download the Siri male and female voices to the "Speech" preference pane (and hear them say their "names!"), but can't necessarily use them to speak selected text in apps – for me, an older male voice replaced my selection when trying that.
At one point, input seemed to randomly switch from US English to Katakana. When I finally waded through System Preferences and set my system input language to US English, all other options I'd previously selected, including Katakana, were removed from my favourites list.
May your journey be smoother.
