[turtle]

I finally got the supplemental update by using the normal method last night. I just worked that time.

As for failed updates, Server 2016 is way more stable about it than 2012 R2. I only work with Windows 10 for PC desktop systems and I generally don't have a problem there though a few. At this point, I have to say my macOS systems are just as buggy about updates as Windows 10/2016 (and 2019 for that matter).

[pscates2.0]

So what's the real-life, on-the-street word/assessment on Catalina? The machine I'm on currently (early-2013 13" Retina* MacBook Pro) supports Catalina, but Mojave is running really well on this and I'm just not looking to throw a wrench into things. Am I better just holding what I got and waiting until after the holidays (and a few point updates, to shake out anything needing shaking out)?

I'm current (13.2.3) on my iPhone, and it and this Mojave-based MBP are talking together just fine. Maybe I just answered my own question...don't rock the boat, Paul

I've checked the 64-bit stuff and the only two things that show up as "no" when I look at Applications in my System Report/Information are InkServer (v10.9) and quicklookd32 (v5.0), both showing "obtained from" Apple. There is nothing listed in the Legacy field. As it stands now, the only third-party application on this is MacTracker, which I always keep around for quick, handy reference. Everything else on this machine is Apple-based, and all of it - except for the two things above - is 64-bit. Any day now, I'll have Affinity Designer (and maybe Photo) installed, but I know they're Catalina-compatible.

Are there just any super-good reasons to - or NOT to - upgrade to MacOS Catalina, here at the tail-end of November 2019? Who here is on Catalina, and what are your thoughts? Who here isn't, and why? I was always a first-day adopter on OS X and iOS releases, but I haven't been that way for a few years now. And I've fallen behind in recent years on OS X/MacOS releases (my old, recently-departed iMac could only go to El Capitan, so I missed out completely on Sierra and High Sierra) and only have about 6-7 days on Mojave.

My gut says to just sit tight, stay with what's working...I've gone this long not being on the latest, current MacOS, so what's the hurry? Eight days ago, I was on El Capitan...

[kscherer]

Don't do it, yet. There are a lot of issues still floating about, 32-bit death being just one of them. I've been running it at home and am having trouble with Safari extensions, notifications, some mail issues, and a variety of minor problems. I just don't think it's finished baking, and recommend to all of my customers to wait until at least the 10.15.3 update, which will likely be in January.

Catalina will be excellent, but I think I've had more trouble with this upgrade than any in the past.

If Mojave is running fine, leave it be for now.

[pscates2.0]

Just what I wanted to hear. Thanks! Mojave is still all new to me (the desktop turns dark as the day goes on ), so I'm fine with waiting as long as needed. I seem to be reading about more issues/trouble with Catalina than some other recent major updates, so I didn't want to go charging into it "just because" without checking. Seemed like an unnecessary roll of the dice...I just wanted to hear it from someone else.

[turtle]

Yeah, I'm with Ken on waiting it out. I have it on my MBP but still use Mohave daily. I'm shocked at how many apps died with 10.15 but maybe I shouldn't.

Generally speaking it isn't bad, but it does not feel polished yet. More smooth than launch, but not polished.

[Bryson]

Two Catalina bugs that keep recurring for me:

1: Every now and again, it decides that I'm no longer allowed to write files to the desktop. I have to restart to be allowed again.
2: My exchange account in Mail sometimes pops up an error claiming that the mail I'm writing has an "Invalid Base64 string for MIME type" and it can't move the message to the mailbox. Then moves it anyway.

I wouldn't mind but it seems that as well as being more frequent, the error messages are getting increasingly cryptic in their phrasing.

[chucker]

Mail crashes for me out of the blue once or twice a day. It happened before Catalina, though; since about 10.14.3, I wanna say. So might be something broken in the database?

Also, my machine now likes to spontaneously shut off. Just like that. No kernel panic, just gone.

[Bryson]

My desktop issue is recurring more and more frequently and I'm starting to worry a little that it might mean something more serious.

I'm now getting the inability to open anything from the desktop - getting "the file xxx cannot be opened" errors. Restart seems to cure it for about 24 hours.

[kscherer]

Make sure you have a solid, reliable backup. That's step one!

[turtle]

I was just about to post the exact same thing. Assume all your data is about to be erased off of that machine in ten minutes. That is the sense of urgency you should be under to have good backups.

[pscates2.0]

Sadly, it often takes a heartbreaking, soul-crushing loss for many people to take that seriously. I know people who, despite all my advice and reminding over the years, who've never backed up their Macs or their iPhones. It's the easiest thing in the world to buy a $69 1TB USB WD or Seagate USB drive and turn on Time Machine. And if you're not backing up your iPhone via iCloud or the old-school way of iTunes/Photos, then you're just rolling that dice as well. I know someone who has hundreds - maybe thousands? - of photos on her iPhone (yeah, 80% of them are pouting selfies and her latest manicure or shoe purchase, but there are family, holidays, friends, vacation, etc. pics too).

She's never backed up and I've told her numerous times "if your phone gets lost or stolen, or falls in the river on one of your singles/booze cruise outings, you're going to be inconsolable...there won't be anything I can do at that point."

She just acts like it's never going to happen... *shrug* I'm expecting that hysterical, panicked call from her at some point...and it'll kill me to have to tell her there's nothing I can do. That I've tried for years, on the front end, to get her to take this seriously.

You can lead a horse to water...

I don't understand that thinking; she's going to lose YEARS of memories. And it's less of an "if" than a "when".

But she'll take it seriously then...after she's lost years' worth of pics. That's often what it takes for some folks...one of life's "eye-opener" moments.

[kscherer]

Years back we had a customer come in in a panic. She was a college student working on her doctoral thesis to get that elusive PhD. Her computer wasn't booting up and her months-in-the-making thesis existed only inside the squealing mess that used to be her hard drive.

The thesis existed nowhere else on this Earth!

We checked it in, but nothing we tried would do the trick. We even freezer-packed the drive to try and keep it cool, but to no avail. The platter bearings were a distant memory and that poor little hard drive just kept dragging its nails down the chalk board much to the chagrin of the service staff. It was dead!

But, wait! It's a bird, it's a plane. It's … it's Drive Savers to the rescue! Yay! Data saved and the world got another pompous PhD.

And to think it only cost her $3,000!

Yep, back up your crap, folks!

[Bryson]

Yeah, I'm on it. I have Backblaze but I'm running off a copy of the important stuff to external HDs right now just in case.
Luckily, all the stuff that earns money is on a Sharepoint server anyway.

[PB PM]

I never trust just one backup. Everything I have is backed up in three local layers, and then, last of all only the mission critical stuff is in the cloud, since cloud storage is way to high per TB.

[turtle]

Funny how this OS thread shifted to backups. I just reconfigured the Time Machine backups in my house. Thing is I only have one external HDD that is the target for all my machines. I finally moved it from the aging Extreme that it was plugged into and now run it through my Synology NAS.

As for redundancy, I think it really depends on what it is. My family photos are all covered by iCloud. This means that if they go down I'll lose almost all of them. Sure some are saved locally, but most are "optimized". Many of my "critical" things are in the NAS that is a RAID with a single disk failure tolerance. If more than one disk dies, I lose what's on there. Mostly it is stuff I don't care about but plenty I want to maintain. I guess you can say I'm rolling the dice.

My professional files are all managed by OneDrive and my O365 account. I don't even make a local copy of those at all. My boss can deal with it if their services dies.

[kscherer]

Originally Posted by turtle Funny how this OS thread shifted to backups.

Hey, with Catalina backups are important.

So really one goes with the other.

[kscherer]

I honored Bryson's request and shoved the issue he was having over into the Genius Bar. If you would like to follow that discussion, it can be found here.

Now, on with the busted Catalina discussion!

[Bryson]

Hey guess what?

Now Mail crashes about once or twice a day. For no apparent reason....

[pscates2.0]

I don't think I'm ever going to install this. I'll just be on Mojave until I die. Works for me. *shrugs*

[kscherer]

Seems to be problem-free on fresh installs. Upgrades are hanging, though.

Things we have found:

- With data migrations, make sure the old computer is as up to date as can be. Then make sure the new computer has a temp user set up, run all possible updates, and then run Migration Assistant. Do *not* migrate from the setup Migration.

- With upgrades (anything 10.14 or earlier) much of the trouble seems to be with older 32-bit apps leaving crap laying about

- With new installations, things seem to be going pretty smooth

—

*NOTE* Restart your computer after any of the following diagnostic steps:

Check both the System/Library and User/Library folders in their respective Launch Agents and Launch Daemons folders. Nuke anything older than a year or so, or everything if you're feeling daring/desperate. There is almost always some old-ass crap laying around in there, and if there are 32-bit launchers they may be screwing with your system.

In those same folders, have a look at any PreferencePanes that might be installed. Nuke those, too. (Flash and others leave crap lying around in there, and may be old 32-bit things).

Next, run Disk Utility and run the Disk Repair option. Might have some permissions issues that predate the Catalina upgrade, but are especially magnified with Catalina's new finder organization-y-thing.

Remove anything and everything from Launch Items in your User's System Preferences.

Download and run Malwarebytes. You never know …

Scan through your Applications folder and delete anything with a Ø symbol or ? over the icon. These are incompatible apps. Take note of them, and then hunt through the System/Library folder for Application Support and nuke any supporting files related to that app. Hell, I just found an iDVD folder in there, and that thing has been gone since, like, 2012! Not causing trouble, but …



Unfortunately, Apple is leaving lots of things laying around that the Catalina installer should just toss in the trash. That stupid little "Relocated Items" folder keeps showing up on the desktop every few days as the system sorts out junk and stuffs it in there, but there are "a great many things" littered around the Finder that are no longer compatible (including 32-bit trash) that Catalina should just isolate. Alas, it does not.

[chucker]

Originally Posted by Bryson Hey guess what? Now Mail crashes about once or twice a day. For no apparent reason....

I've had that before Catalina. About half a year into Mojave, I wanna say. I hope someone sees those crash logs…

[turtle]

Using my MBP as my daily computer know I realized how bad the Night Shift function sucks with external monitors. It would really be nice to be able to disable Night Shift when docked and enable it when going portable.

For now I've just disabled it.

[chucker]

Originally Posted by turtle Using my MBP as my daily computer know I realized how bad the Night Shift function sucks with external monitors. It would really be nice to be able to disable Night Shift when docked and enable it when going portable. For now I've just disabled it.

See if https://github.com/thompsonate/Shifty/issues does and if not, file them a feature request.

[turtle]

I submitted an issue for Shifty to see how that goes. I'm not going to install it until it can actually do what I want it to. I'm not worried about most of the other functions available. It would just be really nice for it to act the way I want.

[turtle]

What happened to the star ratings in Music? I actually used them all the time and I can't find how to rank a song now. I can like or dislike and that seems to be it. Does it have to be that binary?

[chucker]

Music → Preferences → General → Show: Star ratings

[turtle]

My hero!

[kscherer]

It's the little things.

[turtle]

I really is. I mean, sure I could argue change is good and all. Thing is I use smart groups that filter by 3 stars and up. Some that are 4-5 star only, etc.

Heck, I even have some that only play unmarked ones so I can discover from my own collection of music that I haven't bothered to rate yet.

[Maciej]

What a dumpster fire.