We’re now past Catalina’s midpoint: with four versions already released, there’s only three more to go before we prepare for the first release of 10.16. That’s a stark fact, that we’re now at the point where the more cautious should consider whether they’ll run 10.15.
Unusually for macOS, there are many Mac users with Catalina-compatible Macs who are no more able to upgrade now than they were back in October. These include the many who still have to rely on 32-bit apps, and those whose Mac doesn’t start up from an SSD.
There’s still a lot of trepidation about Catalina, even among the Apple faithful in popular podcasts like ATP.
Getting wine64 to run on it with it not officially supported by brew or macports so far is very depressing for people who rely on it.
OpenCL got removed too, but that’s less talked about. It still seems to “work,” but it’s using cpu only. Apple wants gpu compute to use their metal API only, and this plan is likely related to why Apple refuses to sign nvidia drivers.
I haven’t had any problems with Catalina, but I don’t have anything interesting or unusual installed on my Mac.
macOS has been more than difficult of late. During the El Capitan release, I had two fairly standard installations destroy a significant amount of data a few days after the upgrade, related to a fault regarding full disk encryption. Apple’s response to the bug report was to see if it corrupted all of my data again, which I politely declined.
Catalina “beachballs” more than once per day. I have nothing complicated on my system, no kernel extensions or drivers, nor crazy antivirus, just Visual Studio Code and some database tools.
I’m afraid it’s a lost cause for me. Linux on MacBook Pro is tricky owing to hidpi scaling difficulties, poor sleep and random bits of hardware not working (not exactly Linux’s fault), so I’ve resorted to Windows 10 on those machines.
I went straight to Macs after the Amiga platform in the late 90s but I’m afraid this is the end for me. I have no confidence in the future of this platform.
I haven’t upgraded yet. Maybe it’s time, since I don’t run any 32-bit software, but I always have that nagging feeling that I might.
I guess I’m too used to the vastly superior level of backward compatibility that Windows offers…
Not quite as superior as it once was these days, depending on how old the software in question is. But they do still have the 32-bit angle covered.
I am still on “High Sierra” mainly because it is the newest thing my mid 2011 mac mini will run and sense the machine still runs fine (installing a SSD and upgrading to 16 GB or memory helped. I don’t feel a pressing need to buy a new one.
Unusually for macOS, there are many Mac users with Catalina-compatible Macs who are no more able to upgrade now than they were back in October. These include the many who still have to rely on 32-bit apps, and those whose Mac doesn’t start up from an SSD.
Are you saying only a Mac with an SSD can run Catalina? Or a Mac capable of starting from one? Apple is still selling Macs with hard drives and no SSD, such as the bottom of the range iMacs. Apple say that any desktop or laptop Mac introduced since 2012 can run Catalina (MacBooks since 2015).