Windows is just better.

[motulist]

OS X has gotten much worse, and Windows has gotten much better, but OS X is still relatively better.

Of course I'm still using 10.14 High Sierra, and the last time I seriously used Windows was a year ago, so maybe the winner has finally switched. But I'd need to be convinced of that. Does Windows still have two separate settings sections, each of which has different options available?

 

[cheddar-caveman]

Oh well, guess this thread answered my question which was going to be "is it safe to update to Catalina yet".
I guess the answer is, "it's pot luck whether it'll work on your computer or not". As it's my only computer and I use it for all my photo processing I'll stay with Mojave for a bit longer ??

 

[maflynn]

is it safe to update to Catalina yet

From the threads I see here and elsewhere, Catalina is causing some significant issues and headaches for quite a number of users. Unless there's a specific feature that you absolutely need, I'd avoid it

 

[nebojsak]

A little ontopic

Using Macs since OS X Jaguar, along with Win PCs, in heavy duty workloads. I have owned some G4s and Mac Pros, now it's MBA 11" and Hackintosh (both with Mojave). Because of Apple's insane politics, brand new Mac Pro is no go for me since 2013. I have considered buying a newer MBP but I'm too scared to spend loads of money for potentially faulty hardware, so Hackintosh it is, with Mojave and Win10 (just for security purposes) on two Samsung M2 drives. So far it's working like a charm with no issues at all, and MBA is here for portability and some on-the-go light audio work in Logic, if needed.

MacOS and iPhone are the only things that keep me within an Apple ecosystem for now, although I'm not overly optimistic about future. I had Catalina up to 10.15.3 on my MBA, and reverted to Mojave. Catalina seems like a big permanent beta, and I suppose things will not getting better in the future with Apple's obsession with services and gadgets for upper mid class kids and housewives, so now I'm prepared to complete switch to Win after Mojave becomes obsolete. The OS itself is pretty mature now and is only getting better with time. I still prefer MacOS over it, but what the heck.

 

[Taz Mangus]

Oh well, guess this thread answered my question which was going to be "is it safe to update to Catalina yet".
I guess the answer is, "it's pot luck whether it'll work on your computer or not". As it's my only computer and I use it for all my photo processing I'll stay with Mojave for a bit longer ??

I always suggest to those who are unsure to upgrade, create a new partition and clean install to the new partition. Yes, there have been reported problems but there are people who have not had issues like myself. Catalina has been very stable in my experience. Every use case is different.

 

[cheddar-caveman]

Do you run/use Photos with Catalina? That is where I've heard there have been major issues and as that is my primary photo editor I am hesitant.
Anyway, Mojave works just fine so why fix something that aint broke

 

[fisherking]

Do you run/use Photos with Catalina? That is where I've heard there have been major issues and as that is my primary photo editor I am hesitant.
Anyway, Mojave works just fine so why fix something that aint broke

where did you hear this? photos is fine here, and has been in catalina, all along. also, how did you get to mojave? that "why fix something that aint broke" thinking makes no sense; if it did, we'd all be on the OS that came with our macs. at some point, we upgrade. and life moves forward....

 

[icanhazmac]

I don’t understand why some people claim macOS Catalina works flawlessly well for them, it’s not true, otherwise at least one of the Apple devices at home should work as they describe on macOS Catalina, but they don’t. Please stop lying to others.

Wow, the troll instinct is strong with you! Sorry that your experience has not been good but did it ever occur to you that your hardware might have an issue? I have been a windows user since the early days and have only recently "come over to the dark side" and my only issues since getting a 2017 mbp15 has been the crappy keyboard. None of my MacOS updates have been problematic. Luckily for me I have not had a single kernel panic or external monitor issue with mine, which is used for work 8+ hours a day with 2 external monitors, mostly clamshell, sometimes with the mbp open.

Now my Windows system, that I mostly use for gaming, has been nothing but trouble since Windows 10, several of the "feature" updates, which are truly forced on you, have gone bad and I had to revert back to the previous version. Ironically what broke for me was multiple monitor support. When the updates are fixed windows does "just work" but damn those first tries at an update are painful.

Catalina has been flawless for ME, I understand for others it has not, YMMV, I don't appreciate being called la liar. I also get that I'm not dealing with a 16" but that just furthers my hardware theory.

 

[eoblaed]

I don’t understand why some people claim macOS Catalina works flawlessly well for them, it’s not true, otherwise at least one of the Apple devices at home should work as they describe on macOS Catalina, but they don’t. Please stop lying to others.

Don't call people liars.

No one is calling you a liar for saying you have an unstable system(s). Perhaps there's something about the software stack you use that's common to your machines, or some specific usage pattern, or something, but just because you have problems doesn't mean others do.

In my household we have four MacBook Pros, two iMacs, and a Mac Mini, all running Catalina, all running without issue. I'm sorry you're having problems with your setup. But that doesn't change the fact that none of us here are. I am not lying. Do not insinuate such.

 

[Ethosik]

Don't call people liars.

No one is calling you a liar for saying you have an unstable system(s). Perhaps there's something about the software stack you use that's common to your machines, or some specific usage pattern, or something, but just because you have problems doesn't mean others do.

In my household we have four MacBook Pros, two iMacs, and a Mac Mini, all running Catalina, all running without issue. I'm sorry you're having problems with your setup. But that doesn't change the fact that none of us here are. I am not lying. Do not insinuate such.

We are going in circles everyone. Its been established that this is a known problem for Catalina from Apple themselves. If you are using Catalina without any issues, great! But it is definitely an issue and Apple knows about it, as in Catalina actually does have problems.

 

[icanhazmac]

We are going in circles everyone. Its been established that this is a known problem for Catalina from Apple themselves.

Couldn't agree more, I have been lucky and had no issues but what I will say on the topic is that if the OP hadn't titled the thread in such a trolly way this thread would contain a much more constructive conversation.

Catalina's issues on Apple hardware, specifically the 16", have nothing to do with Windows. My original post was simply letting the OP know that there is another side of the coin and he had it coming for posting such a lame thread title.

 

[Taz Mangus]

Couldn't agree more, I have been lucky and had no issues but what I will say on the topic is that if the OP hadn't titled the thread in such a trolly way this thread would contain a much more constructive conversation.

Catalina's issues on Apple hardware, specifically the 16", have nothing to do with Windows. My original post was simply letting the OP know that there is another side of the coin and he had it coming for posting such a lame thread title.

The issue comes in play when posters are frustrated and go off creating a thread to just vent and rant. That is exactly what the OP did. I sympathize with how frustrating it can get at times where there seems to be no solution to a problem one is having. I have been there and completely understand. The only thing this thread does is polarize the types of posts. And when you throw in posts where someone is calling people Apple apologists and liars, it accomplishes nothing nor lends to having a constructive conversation. I like to help people solve problems and learn about solutions to issues, that is why I come to this site.

 

[hdrummon]

Well, our cover is broken now....they have figured out we're paid very well by Apple. I even get a little bonus check on the side from Tim Cook (that I donate to charity of course).....

I have had no issues with my MacBookPro 16". Fabulous laptop and Catalina is working fine on it. My work laptop is a 2015 MacBookPro and Catalina was just installed a few months ago by my employer. It has issues every now and then that get fixed by IT. They are replacing this with a 2019 16" MacBookPro and I can't wait. The 2015 is well worn out from travel and too much stress with apps running at the same time. It needs to retire! I have Catalina on my 2018 iMacPro, 2016 mini, 2018 MacBook 13", and an older 2012 mini, all working wonderfully. I also have a high end Windows Server with 10 Intel i9 cores running Windows 10 Pro fabulously with zero issues the last three years.

As for Windows, I have to use Parallels or VMWare Fusion on my laptop to show my product (which is a popular data visualization software that runs on Windows Server and Linux). So, I need to use Linux, Mac and Windows all the time. I've been in IT and in software technical sales for 40 years now. I've seen lots of problems with every OS so it just comes with the software world. There are bugs in every software product, no doubt. Some of us hit them while others don't. I do know that I prefer macOS as it has been far more stable than Windows. I've never had a virus or malware on macOS but have had several of those beasts on Windows even with virus checkers. I've never had a problem with Linux. I do know that every single one of my relatives has converted from Windows to macOS and would never go back. Lots of friends that have made the switch and some to Linux. My point is that I'm glad that people have a great selection of software these days. I like Apple and Microsoft and Red Hat, too. They are all doing well and providing high value to the world. Where would we be without their inventions and creativity?

I do sympathize with tomi03, I really do. I have been frustrated in life every once and awhile and it sucks. That's life.

 

[eoblaed]

We are going in circles everyone. Its been established that this is a known problem for Catalina from Apple themselves. If you are using Catalina without any issues, great! But it is definitely an issue and Apple knows about it, as in Catalina actually does have problems.

All OSes have problems.

The only reason I posted what I posted was because the OP preemptively called people like me liars. I wanted to point out that, while the OP might be having problems, that doesn't mean the majority of us that aren't, are liars.

 

[mkelly]

My MacBook Pro 16” with macOS Catalina is just meh; it’s buggy, kernel panics when I simple connect two monitors, it’s unstable with Logic Pro X and some plugins, etc. It sucks, I can even reproduce a kernel panic with the AirPods Pro.

Meanwhile my other laptop, a Lenovo thinkpad with windows 10 “just works”, it takes 11 seconds to boot and browse on chrome, it never fails, I can connect whatever I want without any issues, it is reliable at everything and it has an i5.

I don’t understand why some people claim macOS Catalina works flawlessly well for them, it’s not true, otherwise at least one of the Apple devices at home should work as they describe on macOS Catalina, but they don’t.

I've got a 16" MacBook Pro with Catalina. This was bought to replace a Thinkpad X1 Carbon (7th gen) (which was bought to replace a Surface Book 2). My MBP has been running very reliably under Catalina. Sure the permissions dialogs were annoying at the start, but I've encountered no major problems with the OS or the hardware.

On the other hand, my Thinkpad arrived with a warped lid. When I closed the laptop, the right side of the display curved up and did not close completely. This turned out to be a semi-common problem (others in /r/thinkpad on Reddit also reported similar issues). Then I noticed that the keyboard transposed certain characters - if I typed "space ", I would often end up getting "spac e" instead. A little more research showed that this too was an ongoing issue with Thinkpard firmware, as far back as the early '30 models (eg: T430, X230, etc), and possibly earlier. https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkP...re-firmware-problem-AFFECTS-MOST/td-p/4248285

*Then* I discovered there was a Thunderbolt firmware bug that would permanently kill your Thunderbolt port if you didn't update the firmware in time: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Think...t-s-happening-and-how-to-fix-it.451207.0.html

We're not even talking the joys of Windows 10 yet. Remember that Surface Book 2 I mentioned? Well I spent 2 weeks trying to diagnose why it was randomly blue-screening on nearly every boot. After reinstalling Windows twice, I was going to chalk it up to a hardware problem when I discovered this: Microsoft Admits Normal Windows 10 Users Are 'Testing' Unstable Updates. Turns out back in late 2018/early 2019, if you clicked "Check for updates", MS would tag you as an "Advanced user" and occasionally send you test versions of drivers and other updates ... and one of those was responsible for my blue-screen issues.

Oh and about those updates - Catalina has had its issues for sure, but so far it hasn't eaten any of my files, nor removed my home directory. It's 2020 and Microsoft seems to be having yet another round of Windows Update problems.

What's that you say? You haven't run into any of these problems and your Thinkpad has been ultra-stable? Well to paraphrase your own post:

"I don’t understand why some people claim macOS Catalina Windows 10 works flawlessly well for them, it’s not true, otherwise at least one of the Apple Windows devices at home should work as they describe on macOS Catalina Windows 10, but they don’t. Please stop lying to others. "

There are only two possible explanations for the discrepancy between your original statement and the one above:

1. Either you are lying about your Windows experience being as flawless as you claim, or
2. It's possible that some Windows 10 users and some Mac users have very good experiences with their machines. Your experience with Apple is unfortunate, but not reflective of everyone’s experience on the platform. Calling people “liars” because they haven’t had the issues you have is wrong.

I know #2 is certainly true. Only you know if #1 is true as well.

EDIT: Updated point #2 to clarify that while both platforms have issues, many people don’t encounter them at all. That doesn’t make them “liars”.

 

[Ethosik]

Your experience with Apple is unfortunate, but not reflective of the platform as a whole.

I know what you are saying and I agree with you for the most part. But this part here. Apple has confirmed there is a widespread issue. So yes it is basically a problem with the platform as a whole. Just some users are not experiencing it.

 

[fisherking]

We are going in circles everyone. Its been established that this is a known problem for Catalina from Apple themselves. If you are using Catalina without any issues, great! But it is definitely an issue and Apple knows about it, as in Catalina actually does have problems.

sure, you've made it simple. but so many people believe that what they experience is all there is(and to be fair, that includes me, and everyone who's also ok in catalina); some people have issues, some don

I know what you are saying and I agree with you for the most part. But this part here. Apple has confirmed there is a widespread issue. So yes it is basically a problem with the platform as a whole. Just some users are not experiencing it.

apple confirmed this where? (just curious). but yes, it's a problem for those having the problem; just some users are experiencing it.

 

[quatermass]

So, we're all lying then. Is that your accusation?

Well, you got us rumbled. We're all paid $1,000,000 a year to post only good things about Apple. Dang it, you found us out.... /s

Where can I sign up to this program?

 

[XNorth]

There have been surveys year after year confirming that Macs are more reliable and overall better quality than Windows PC:

Most IT pros prefer macOS over Windows.
Most users felt Macs are more reliable and more productive.
Consumer Reports consistently rates Macs better quality than PCs.

These are facts. Everyone is entitled to their opinions (and rants) but opinions do not trump facts. Case closed. ?

 

[russell_314]

Oh well, guess this thread answered my question which was going to be "is it safe to update to Catalina yet".
I guess the answer is, "it's pot luck whether it'll work on your computer or not". As it's my only computer and I use it for all my photo processing I'll stay with Mojave for a bit longer ??

As many people said if you don't have a specific need to do it then why do it? The biggest thing you're going to run into is outdated 32 bit apps. If you have 32 bit apps that have been abandoned by the developer then you'll have to find a 64 bit alternative. When you start the upgrade look at what you're clicking next on. It has a pop up that lists what apps you have that won't work with the upgrade. At that point you can change your mind and not do the upgrade. Some people get impatient and click next, next, next, without reading it then end up posting on here because they have apps that won't work.

My personal experience is I had one app that needed updating so it was just a matter of downloading the new version. As to is it better than Mojave? I say it's the same. They changed some of the stock Apple apps but other than that it's an OS to launch apps. I don't care about the OS in the sense that if it's secure, doesn't crash and stays out of my way then I'm happy.
[automerge]1588313379[/automerge]

There have been surveys year after year confirming that Macs are more reliable and overall better quality than Windows PC:

Most IT pros prefer macOS over Windows.
Most users felt Macs are more reliable and more productive.
Consumer Reports consistently rates Macs better quality than PCs.

These are facts. Everyone is entitled to their opinions (and rants) but opinions do not trump facts. Case closed. ?

I'm surprised this thread is still a thing. This is the equivalent of going to a Ford forum and posting "Chevy is just better". I guess it makes entertaining discussion ?

 

[throAU]

One of my employees at work went through three Windows based laptops since mid 2018 and one of them required a reinstall of Windows after an update went bad.

Another is still on the same MacBook from 2017 with zero issues.

This of course proves nothing more than 'Computers will be computers'. Some will be brilliant, some lousy.

None of it is proof of "my OS is better than your OS".

Since I owned my MacBook Pro 2015 I went through 2 work provided Surface Pro 4s (until I ended up on a HP desktop running Linux as a VM host).

Constant display driver crashes due to intel/windows driver bug, dock charging bugs (come in to office Monday, find device on 5% battery due to randomly not charging because the dock crashed) and eventual total device failure. Average life for both was between 9-12 months in my usage.

Both software and hardware issues.

You might be having a good run with windows at the moment, but as a long term windows user (since 1992 with 3.1), it's generally a fracking dumpster fire.

The MacBook Pro did not get an OS reinstall (only upgrades) until I wiped it to give to the GF 2 weeks ago (was/is still running fine, I just upgraded).

The Mac hasn't been perfect, I've had a couple of unexpected OS crashes (literally like 2) in the past 12 months and I needed to do an SMC reset on my new air the other day to get one of my USB ports back, but I've spent a LOT less time playing system administrator fixing my machine than I did with the Microsoft equivalents.

 

[steve1960]

The Mac hasn't been perfect, I've had a couple of unexpected OS crashes (literally like 2) in the past 12 months and I needed to do an SMC reset on my new air the other day to get one of my USB ports back, but I've spent a LOT less time playing system administrator fixing my machine than I did with the Microsoft equivalents.

This but more so. When my wife and I separated I was spending a lot of time visiting to fix software issues on my daughters Windows laptop. It was really not comfortable for anyone as divorce proceedings were not going smoothly. Bought my daughter a Mac and visits for fixing software dropped significantly.............to zero. I never had to fix a single software issue, now my daughter wasn't a power user but then she wasn't a power user in Windows either.

I ended up painting one wall of my bedroom blue as I missed the Microsoft blue screen of death so much...............

 

[TheGeneralist]

Interesting to see how experiences differ and what people make of it.

Some people do have serious problems with Catalina, some don't. Nothing about what each individual experiences changes anything about what others do. Trying to put things together and attempting a look at it from outside, it just looks like there are indeed a lot more complaints about 10.15.X than on many previous versions of macOS.

I switched to an iMac from a Windows/Linux driven machine in 2014. Best decision ever at that time - troubleshooting activities and time spent on care and maintenance dropped to almost nothing all of a sudden. Don't get me wrong, it was never perfect or completely bug-free, as no complex system ever is. But to me after Windows it just felt like paradise and I was quite happy having spent a decent sum on that iMac, as it felt worth every single cent.

Well, paradise went on until the introduction of the currently highly praised 10.14 Mojave, which caused a serious Problem with my Fusion Drive during installation due to APFS conversion. This problem was not resolvable even by re-partitioning and re-creation of the Fusion drive on the command line (diskutil). The Apple Admins had a tough time on that one, but finally managed to help me and resolve it by hard-overwriting the MBR and partition tables.

Next accident in paradise was iOS 13 - I wanted to wait until at least 13.2, but was forced to upgrade to 13.1.2 as I had hardware problems with my Apple Watch S3, and Apple would only support me if on current software. This update irreversibly destroyed some very personal notes and sketches I had on my iPad / iCloud in Apple Notes.


Currently iOS 13.4.1 has obviously improved things and runs quite acceptable on my devices. The iMac is still on 10.14.6 (which also has its share of annoying and disturbing bugs, but at least allows us as a family to perform our daily work and leisure tasks in a reliable manner). Due to the things others experience, I would wait until 10.15.5 and Apple Store Support reopened in my country as the earliest opportunity to upgrade to Catalina.

From my point of view, the Apple ecosystem had and still has a lot of invaluable advantages above other infrastructures. But this all depends heavily and mainly on exactly five points:

• stability
• reliability
• flawlessness
• operational readiness
• performance

New Features are nice (for me at about 5-10% importance), but always have to stand back way behind those central pillars of the Apple experience (for me about 90-95% importance). This is why I understand everyone claiming problems like those many currently have with Catalina as absolutely inacceptable.


Maybe Apple will find a way to put way more emphasis on stability again with the 2020 OS Generation. I hope so and will be happy to invest in an iPad Pro and a MacBook Pro in that case. If not, I’m already looking for suitable alternatives like Surface etc. - well, Microsoft is not paradise, but they currently get a lot of their homework done by improving their 365 product.
As we say in Germany: Other fathers have pretty daughters, too…

 

[throAU]

Trying to put things together and attempting a look at it from outside, it just looks like there are indeed a lot more complaints about 10.15.X than on many previous versions of macOS.

I'd say that's fair and to be expected given the scale of this release. But it's not the worst release IMHO by far. Lion was a huge debacle as well when it was released.

Catalina is a MAJOR release and does a lot of stuff, the big one being total removal of 32 bit support. I'd even suggest that if you're happy on Mojave and need a lot of specialist apps for work, then don't upgrade until the successor to Catalina comes out later this year and/or your apps have been certified. Mojave is still supported if you have it on existing hardware!

I see Catalina as the equivalent of Lion or Vista in Microsoft land. A lot of short term pain to make significant long term progress. If you're someone who has a lot of third party stuff that may break - hold off til later.

 

[russell_314]

I see Catalina as the equivalent of Lion or Vista in Microsoft land.

You need glasses if you see that. I don't know about Lion because I never had a Mac with that OS but I've had several Vista PCs and knew lots of people with Vista. At first I was one of those people who said Vista isn't bad but your computer is just weak. Then I realized how much faster my PC was on XP and also crashed less. Vista was terrible plain and simple. I have Catalina on my Mac mini and have had no issues with it. It's seems no better or no worse than Mojave.

As to the 32 bit app issue that was developers who already had an app and didn't want to spend time fixing it since they were still making money for doing nothing. Apple notified users and developers years ago that 32 bit apps were going to stop working. This isn't something that just came as a surprise with Catalina. If an app in 2020 isn't 64 bit it's because the developer either abandoned it or is one of these people who does everything last minute.