should I upgrade to Catalina, or wait for Big Sur?

[Bazza1]

Hmmm, interesting, but I don’t follow the logic here. Big Sur is a new operating system that will supplant, not supplement, its predecessors regardless of what they may be. It is not a set of bolt-on new features added to a Catalina base, it is an entire rewrite of macOS. It will do what it does and it will not do what it doesn’t. I don’t understand how it will depend upon what an earlier OS changed. What am I missing?

I'm not convinced that Big Sur is an entirely new OS. While High Sierra changed the file system (possibly the closest to a 'new' OS), Big Sur is meant to be capable of running on current and Silicon Macs. Sure there may be an element of BS (an unfortunate acronym) that will 'translate' older software and hardware to work with it - and in that way not being unlike Classic 9 to OSX years ago - it appears to remain the core Unix system that was X, but primarily its lipstick on a pig. Making what is there look different to the user, without actually making any significant changes. I expect the same OS software to have the same issues, because they are still fixated on the form over function as per Jony Ive.

Bu hey, I could be surprised.

 

[annatheg]

I'm not convinced that Big Sur is an entirely new OS. While High Sierra changed the file system (possibly the closest to a 'new' OS), Big Sur is meant to be capable of running on current and Silicon Macs. Sure there may be an element of BS (an unfortunate acronym) that will 'translate' older software and hardware to work with it - and in that way not being unlike Classic 9 to OSX years ago - it appears to remain the core Unix system that was X, but primarily its lipstick on a pig. Making what is there look different to the user, without actually making any significant changes. I expect the same OS software to have the same issues, because they are still fixated on the form over function as per Jony Ive.

Bu hey, I could be surprised.

Sorry that this is irrelevant, (and if I sound creepy) could you help me? I posted a forum about my late 2008 mac. I was just wondering if you know anything.

 

[culb0743]

Using roughly the same model of MBP (2018, 15") as OP. I avoided the upgrade to Catalina until August 2020. I was forced into an upgrade working with AppleCare to resolve an EFI issue I was having after creating a Catalina "test drive" container on the startup volume. I have to say, that in my experience, Catalina in its current state appears to be quite stable. There is free app called Go64 (optional donation) by St. Clair Software that will give you a basic idea of app compatibility in making the jump from Mojave (or older) to Catalina; I was surprised I only lost a handful of apps with the upgrade. This is probably the safest point to upgrade to Catalina if you're worried about its reputation for instability and show-stopping bugs. Just my personal experience, there a plenty of others who've not had such luck. After moving from Mavericks to Yosemite in 2014, I always count on waiting at least six months to install the yearly MacOs upgrade. Probably excessive caution on my part.

 

[loby]

Using roughly the same model of MBP (2018, 15") as OP. I avoided the upgrade to Catalina until August 2020. I was forced into an upgrade working with AppleCare to resolve an EFI issue I was having after creating a Catalina "test drive" container on the startup volume. I have to say, that in my experience, Catalina in its current state appears to be quite stable. There is free app called Go64 (optional donation) by St. Clair Software that will give you a basic idea of app compatibility in making the jump from Mojave (or older) to Catalina; I was surprised I only lost a handful of apps with the upgrade. This is probably the safest point to upgrade to Catalina if you're worried about its reputation for instability and show-stopping bugs. Just my personal experience, there a plenty of others who've not had such luck. After moving from Mavericks to Yosemite in 2014, I always count on waiting at least six months to install the yearly MacOs upgrade. Probably excessive caution on my part.

I too have the MacBook Pro 2018 15" i9 32GB RAM and 1 TB SSD.

It is overall stable...but.. if you use macOS Catalina for FCPX and rendering, it throttles the CPU way down and does not use the GPU fully. Maybe to cut down on the fans going on.

macOS Mojave is better if you are doing production work with FCPX, especially for rendering video. I tried with every update of Catalina, but had to go back to Mojave every time. Mojave is faster in processing with FCPX, especially rendering. This is my experience and tried to use Catalina with every version when it came out, including the last with security updates.

macOS Catalina is stable for general use, but production wise, Mojave takes the cake (including using my Mac Pro 2013 12-Core). This is my experience and desired all year to update from Mojave, but will try Big Sur and hope.

 

[SalisburySam]

Using roughly the same model of MBP (2018, 15") as OP. I avoided the upgrade to Catalina until August 2020. I was forced into an upgrade working with AppleCare to resolve an EFI issue I was having after creating a Catalina "test drive" container on the startup volume. I have to say, that in my experience, Catalina in its current state appears to be quite stable. There is free app called Go64 (optional donation) by St. Clair Software that will give you a basic idea of app compatibility in making the jump from Mojave (or older) to Catalina; I was surprised I only lost a handful of apps with the upgrade. This is probably the safest point to upgrade to Catalina if you're worried about its reputation for instability and show-stopping bugs. Just my personal experience, there a plenty of others who've not had such luck. After moving from Mavericks to Yosemite in 2014, I always count on waiting at least six months to install the yearly MacOs upgrade. Probably excessive caution on my part.

So to recap, you’ve lost some apps and Catalina is stable for you. So your migration rationale was to resolve an EFI issue. You didn’t mention, but I’m assuming that was solved. My read is that Catalina remains an unnecessary migration unless, like you, it resolves an otherwise unresolvable issue. Did I get this right?

 

[SalisburySam]

“should I upgrade to Catalina, or wait for Big Sur?”

Maybe the better question is: “should I upgrade to either Catalina or Big Sur at all?”

 

[cheddar-caveman]

Oh well, reading through this thread has answered my question, whether to stay with Mojave on my 2018 15" MBP or go to Catalina that Apple are pestering me to do!
I have read very few plusses for Catalina, almost every post is negative but then if a thing works people don't complain.
Any way, at 82 I can do without hassle, Mojave works beautifully, does everything I need from my Mac so I'll be staying with it for the foreseeable future.

 

[culb0743]

So to recap, you’ve lost some apps and Catalina is stable for you. So your migration rationale was to resolve an EFI issue. You didn’t mention, but I’m assuming that was solved. My read is that Catalina remains an unnecessary migration unless, like you, it resolves an otherwise unresolvable issue. Did I get this right?

Yeah, it did resolve the EFI issue. I was perfectly happy with Mojave and would have likely stayed there through the release of Big Sir. Catalina had/has probably the worst reputation I've seen of a OS X/macOS version since Yosemite; I was just pleasantly surprised and relieved that other than the 32 bit app thing my personal experience with a Catalina upgrade was uneventful. Granted, I made the jump at 10.15.6. I agree that Cataliina is certainly an unnecessary upgrade in most cases, especially considering that Mojave is still receiving system security updates.

 

[SalisburySam]

Yeah, it did resolve the EFI issue. I was perfectly happy with Mojave and would have likely stayed there through the release of Big Sir. Catalina had/has probably the worst reputation I've seen of a OS X/macOS version since Yosemite; I was just pleasantly surprised and relieved that other than the 32 bit app thing my personal experience with a Catalina upgrade was uneventful. Granted, I made the jump at 10.15.6. I agree that Cataliina is certainly an unnecessary upgrade in most cases, especially considering that Mojave is still receiving system security updates.

The more I read the less I believe Catalina is a solution. Supposedly, EFI was ”solved” with Sierra and EFI code has been updated and included with the OS since. That would include Mojave. I wonder if a total clean install of Mojave would have eliminated EFI issues. Too late now, maybe.

 

[culb0743]

AppleCare support is always "Are you running the current OS version? Call us back once you've done the upgrade." I could have pushed the issue if I really wanted to, but knew I was looking at likely reinstallation of Mojave in the end. After testing Catalina on my hardware, performance and stability seemed to be comparable with Mojave. My thinking was I'll upgrade to Catalina and if the experience over time turns out to be a hardship, well then I'll do the clean reinstallation of Mojave I had been expecting. I had an unadulterated Time Machine back up of Mojave waiting (my Mojave clone had been corrupted by the mismatched EFI or possibly bridgeOS issue). Its been several months and in my personal, admittedly pedestrian, day to day use and I still have not observed any remarkable difference in system stability and performance. A nuke, pave, and restore of Mojave would have almost certainly resolved the issue, but in my experience, the benefit of such an undertaking did not outweigh the necessary time and effort.

 

[annatheg]

I don't recommend updating to big sur when it comes out because there will be many bugs since it's so new. I suggest you just update to catalina.

 

[BostonQuad]

I too am still on Mojave. Early upgraders to Catalina reported losing email. Does anyone know if this is still an issue?
Does anyone know if this is a risk when upgrading from Mojave straight to to Big Sur?

 

[JohnM20]

Is big sur good now? I have macbook pro (second one here) and still use catalina

 

[SalisburySam]

Well, here I am still on Mojave and it is still working very well. Just finished 2020 taxes and found my first reason to upgrade within the next year: TurboTax will not run on Mojave next year, or so they say today. That means an upgrade to Big Sur or its successor in the fall. Not looking forward to this on my iMac 18,3 (late 2017) but hey, finally a meaningful driver for me to change.

 

[saudor]

Well, here I am still on Mojave and it is still working very well. Just finished 2020 taxes and found my first reason to upgrade within the next year: TurboTax will not run on Mojave next year, or so they say today. That means an upgrade to Big Sur or its successor in the fall. Not looking forward to this on my iMac 18,3 (late 2017) but hey, finally a meaningful driver for me to change.

if it's problematic, you could always install BS on another partition, do the taxes and zap it

 

[throAU]

if it's problematic, you could always install BS on another partition, do the taxes and zap it

Or inside a VM. Or run from external drive...