macOS Catalina Q & A

[Slydude]

Several of our members are testing the public beta of macOS Catalina so I though this might be a good place to post any questions, answers and solutions so other members can have a rough idea what to expect in the final release.

Here are some observations thus far for what they're worth"

1. Don't install the beta unless you are comfortable troubleshooting issues with your Mac. This applies to any beta not just Catalina.

2. Make sure you have a backup before going forward.

For those already running the beta here's something to test:

Catalina splits what used to be iTunes into several programs: Music, TV, and Podcasts. These programs seem to read your existing iTunes library fine. If one has to return to Mojave, permanently or temporarily, can previous versions of iTunes still read the library?

 

[chscag]

One caveat regarding your iTunes library... Right now the current beta can only open one library so make sure you know and designate which library you want to use. If you have secondary libraries, they will not be recognized according to Apple.

 

[Rod]

One caveat regarding your iTunes library... Right now the current beta can only open one library so make sure you know and designate which library you want to use. If you have secondary libraries, they will not be recognized according to Apple.

Very valuable hint that Charlie


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[Slydude]

Nice find Charlie. Just the kind of information I wanted to get. Guess that's why you get paid the Admin bucks.

What do you guys think of the following idea:

I have a few more 32-bit apps left than I thought though most of them I haven't used in some time. I could boot to Mojave as needed but that seems like overkill for the few times I would use something like Bejeweled. I was thinking of putting Mojave in a VM and stripping things down to just the few apps I'd miss. Performance shouldn't really be an issue because even the games aren't CPU/GPU intensive.

 

[chscag]

I think I would rather put Mojave in a separate partition and just boot to it when needed to run any 32 bit apps. Of course that involves a lot of booting and rebooting. A VM would be faster and VirtualBox is still free.

 

[Slydude]

That's why I was thinking of using a VM. Although I have several programs most haven't been opened in quite a while. In most cases I have a 64 bit alternative. Of the ones that are left none are really important enough to spend a lot of time rebooting the machine just to run those things.

I was thinking the results might be interesting to others considering the update but still having a program or two they need to run.

 

[Slydude]

You're quite right Charlie.

Something else occurred to me as well. the purpose of a public beta is to test performance and compatibility of the OS on a large scale. Adding a VM into the equation is one more thing to troubleshoot when something goes wrong. In other words, is the problem due to the beta or to the VM having trouble passing information to the host OS?

 

[Slydude]

The Catalina beta seems to break some Automator-based applications / Applescripts, Those written by professional programmers might fare better but things written by folks like me are likely to break. I reached that conclusion based on the following:

Some time ago I built an Automator-based application that, when run, launched iTunes and started playing a specific playlist. In a few minutes I created several of these mini apps that simply launched iTunes and played a different playlist. Under Catalina those mini apps break because each one uses two different Automator actions that reference iTunes by name. I suspect there are other actions that will break for similar reasons.

There might be an equivalent action in the new Automator but I haven't checked that out yet.

 

[dtravis7]

I own Tuxtra NTFS. Today I had to do R/W on a drive that is NTFS so tried to install Tuxtra. Got an error. Went to their site and got the latest version and it's now installed and working In Catalina.

 

[dtravis7]

For anyone beta testing Catalina, a new beta came down last night. I did not even have to do a thing to be notified, it just popped up and I told it to install.

The First beta on my late 2012 iMac seemed to take a bit more RAM just doing my normal surfing and chat, but this beta seems to have cut Ram usage down a bit for me here.

 

[chscag]

I downloaded and installed the new public beta. (Public beta # 2) Several apps remain broken: Logos Bible Software and Path Finder, two of my more useful apps. Both should have updates when Catalina goes gold.

One other thing I noticed and that was with an off brand BT mouse. Catalina would not recognize it and complained that I needed to install a BT mouse or trackpad. I have both Apple branded ones but the off brand mouse works better. I wound up attaching a USB mouse that I keep handy so I could work with the beta.

 

[dtravis7]

I will have to try installing a few apps I use all the time and see if I have any issues.

 

[krs]

A general question for those testing the Catalina public beta or any Apple public beta before that.

Does Apple provide you with some means to reports both bugs and feature deficiencies?
And more important - do they acknowledge the input and do something about it, if valid?

 

[chscag]

Does Apple provide you with some means to reports both bugs and feature deficiencies?
And more important - do they acknowledge the input and do something about it, if valid?

Yes, the public beta comes with an application that can be used to report problems with the OS and apps. Now, whether or not Apple does something about what is reported is not known to me and maybe to most other public testers. I'm sure that developers have more information about that.

 

[Slydude]

In the High Sierra and I think Mojave betas I reported a few bugs /issues. I don't think I ever got a response but with the exception of one thing I think all pf the issues were addressed in subsequent betas.

The one thing I reported that seems to have remained unchanged is QuickTime Player. It seems to me that QT Player was partially in sark mode even if the system settings called for your system to be in light mode. That seems to have been addressed in Catalina.

 

[dtravis7]

As Charlie said above, there is a reporting application. I have reported many things especially in Mojave like external DVD drive not able to drop files for burning and they did fix the issue.

 

[Rod]

Me too, the things I have reported have mostly been fixed in subsequent releases which may just be due to the volume of responses on the same issue but either way they were addressed. I have been sending suggestions that Apple Watch have the native Notes app but I’m not holding my breath on that one despite the fact that I know I’m far from alone. It just seems silly that there is a brand new iOS/ iPad OS version but no version for the watch. It’s not so much about taking notes, it’s about accessing existing iOS, iPadOS and macOS notes on the watch.


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[Slydude]

I think I have found a minor bug in the Catalina edition of Safari. It has probably been there from the beginning but I just noticed this was happening a few minutes ago. In the past Safari has had the following keyboard equivalents

Command + N opens a new Window
Command + T opens a new tab in the same window

Current Catalina Beta
Command + Option + N opens a new Window
Command + N now opens a new tab (Command + T still works BTW)

 

[Slydude]

Can someone else running the Catalina beta confirm either of the following scenarios:

Scenario One
1. Open a Finder window while running Catalina and enter a search term in the Finder window. Search for something that is probably there.
2. Once a search result is returned shift the focus of the search to the entire Mac by clicking the On This Mac option. Does the Finder hang and have to be relaunched?

Scenario Two
1. Right-click a file and choose "Open With"
2. Are you presented with an option that doesn't work? For example, if I try to open Audible files by right clicking to open in iTunes one of the options presented is QuickTime Player which cannot open the files. Note: I'm not talking about the dialog box where you choose the app and can select from those not recommended. I'm talking about in the contextual menu short list.