Show notes
So, in today’s show, I wanted to give you my first impressions of macOS Catalina.
I’ll cover the main changes that Apple is bringing to the Mac with the next release of macOS and have split the episode in 2 parts:
- What’s new or improved
- What’s gone or deprecated
Introduction
- iMac 27-inch Retina 5K Late 2014 on a dedicated partition
- Cannot install it on my 2011 MacBook Air (need to be at least from 2012)
- Public beta track since mid-July 2019 and did not test while on holidays (first 2 weeks of August)
- Currently on public beta 6 of macOS Catalina
- Relatively stable:
- Office 365 apps work, even Microsoft Edge Beta browser based on Chromium
- Slack, Todoist and Toggl desktop work fine
- Still 1 bug not fixed: shared home accessories (private Apple ID = guest of my professional Apple ID for HomeKit stuff)
- Listen to episode 39 to decide whether or not it’s a good idea to beta test iOS and/or iPadOS
- Listen to episode 40 to learn how to do it safely
Part 1: New or improved
- ScreenTime now available on the Mac and can sync across devices via iCloud
- Automatic switch between light mode and dark mode (needed third-party solution before)
- Hover mouse over the green bubble of app windows => 3 choices: full screen, left half or right half
- System Preferences completely changed
- Somewhat mimicking iOS with Apple ID & Family sharing at the top
- Only 2 sections below
- New icons
- Improved security & privacy
- System related files now stored on read-only partition
- Can be bypassed by deactivating System Integrity Protection (SIP) from recovery partition
- Apps need to request more permissions: notifications, screen recording, microphone, even to access the Downloads folder
- Outside of the Mac App Store, apps need to be notarised to run
- On top of being signed with a valid developer ID, apps are scanned by Apple to detect malware
- Not notarised => blocked by Gatekeeper with message saying that Apple cannot verify if it contains malicious content
- Can be manually bypassed by right-clicking on the app icon, then open twice
- A new feature that I was not able to test is SideCar
- Sidecar = Ability to use iPad running at least iPadOS 13 as secondary monitor, wirelessly or via USB cable
- Not compatible with all Mac models:
- iMac, MacBook, MacBook Air & MacBook Pro from 2015 only
- Mac mini from 2014
- Mac Pro from 2013
- Third-party solutions for incompatible Macs:
- Duet ($10 on the iOS App Store + free desktop apps): iOS 9+ (iPad & iPhone), macOS Mavericks 10.9+, Windows 7+ (Cable only)
- Luna Display ($50 dongle + free apps): iOS 9.1+ & macOS El Capitan 10.11+ but not Windows (cable & Wi-Fi)
Part 2: Gone or deprecated
- iTunes is gone
- replaced by Music, Podcast & TV apps => better aligned with iOS
- iPhone/iPad still show up in Music & TV app but to see local content only
- To sync, backup & restore => use Finder instead
- 32-bit apps like Office 2011 not working anymore => need to find alternative or run a virtual machine
- Changes for people using Terminal a lot
- Bash has been replaced by zsh as the default login & interactive shell for new user accounts only, not changed when upgrading from Mojave or earlier
- For clean install, it can be manually modified via System Preferences > Users & Groups or Terminal preferences
- Perl, python 2.7 and ruby are being deprecated: still there for now but warning message that it won’t be supported in future versions of macOS
Conclusion
- Welcome new features & security improvement
- First time Mac users who already use an iPhone/iPad will be more at ease
- Long time Mac users will need to adapt to the new environment (System Preferences, iPhone/iPad backup & sync)
- Need to find alternatives for 32-bit apps or run macOS Mojave or earlier in a virtual machine (for instance VirtualBox – free)
- Even though it’s pretty stable, I still recommend Macpreneurs to stay one version behind the last one, at the very least on their main production machine
- Ref. Episode 18: There will be more bugs and security researchers will look at it more closely when it’ll be out