I only updated after had sorted the last of my 32-bit apps. Catalina was long out before I jumped.
There comes a point where the bootable clone backup with the older OS outlives its usefulness. Like most of you I have my data on various cloud services or external drives but that doesn’t protect you against the many application updates, new installs etc. My mac is dynamic, always in flux, like my work. There’s too much change to revert to a five month old clone.
Especially when my issues with Catalina have been progressively worsening and difficult to replicate or pin down as Adam notes. Give me a boring steady OS any day. Tiger for example, that was dull but steady as a rock. There’s been stretches when it was broadly fine, but lately I’ve been through the wringer. On an iMac that cost just shy of 5k EU.
The ‘watchdog’ crash seems related to peripherals and I’ve tried unchecking ‘Put HDs to sleep’ and various other options from the Apple fora including deleting Google’s backup and sync app which cleared things up for a week. I thought I had it fixed but it returned over last weekend.
Off to get a Mojave installer and to see how to install that via Recovery or more likely a bootable installer.
I have only noticed a few issues. Time. A nine to network volumes is intermittently working at best and won’t work at all to my iMac even though both it and the mini Which is the other destination have identical macOS versions and the shares are set up identically…the ones on the iMac allow selection for TM…but then give either a password bad error or an improper destination error. Regular shares from the iMac sometimes mount…and about half the time if I have the ‘data’ share mounted the ‘archive’ one says no access despite the connected account having full r/w access on both shares…usually a log out and in cycle on the laptop fixes this though.
Wake from sleep on my 15 rMBP sometimes just doesn’t work until the 2nd or third try.
The green charge light on the MBP MagSafe connector sometimes doesn’t illuminate even while charging… it this might predate Catalina.
IMO…macOS is now mature enough that we do t need a new version every year…just call it macOS and put out the ‘service pack’ sort of updates that MS does now… it do better QC on them…the Fall release schedule means things get pulled out at the last minute and releases have gotten buggier over the last few years…and for what? Few of the new ‘features’ are really worth the instability…and while I do wait a bit before installing now as opposed to 3-4 years back…one really cant stay too far behind or you lose out on security fixes.
Not saying these are the same issues, but I observe both of those with my 2013 13" MBP on Mojave too.
The MagSafe light sometimes simply does not come on even though the Mac says it’s charging just fine. This is an older adapter (with the L-shaped plug, from a previous MBP, and using the MagSafe 1-2 adapter) so I’ve just assumed it’s getting flaky.
With my TB2 dock at work I usually work in clamshell mode. Every once in a while the MBP will simply not wake from sleep when I come back to the office and hook it up to the dock. I’ve never been able to figure out what the cause is. The Mac’s powered, but for some reason it will refuse to wake from sleep. Usually I have to open the lid, hit built-in keyboard keys, hit the power button, connect/disconnect the DP cable attached to the dock, connect/disconnect USB keyboard, or several iterations of that before it wakes. No idea WTH that is. It would be obvious to assume it’s related to TB, but I remember that even back in the day before TB I would sometimes encounter problems with waking from sleep in clamshell mode. Still a mystery to me.
Unfortunately, these seem to be persistent problems from Apple.
Mail has never once worked reliably for me. All the way back in Mac OS X 10.1, I found that Mail would frequently crash on me. No system update every fixed it. I eventually just gave up. Today, I generally use web-mail interfaces. I use Mozilla Thunderbird for those rare occasions where I need to use an actual app.
As for external hard drives dismounting in sleep, that’s another thing I’ve seen for many years. It seems to happen most often with USB drives (switching to Firewire interfaces helped enormously here), but I’ve seen it happen on all kinds of drives.
Similar problems with some kinds of USB devices (e.g. third-party keyboards) either preventing the computer from going to sleep or waking it up immediately after sleep.
I think Apple has had chronic problems with USB (especially with third-party peripherals) going all the way back to day-one and the Bondi Blue power Mac.
Sorry to be a happy camper – I’ve had all released versions of Catalina on an 11" Mid '12 MacBook Air, & a 13" 2017 MacBook Air – and never a crash or issue I could report.
I’m running 7 external HD’s – WD’s & Toshibas – a Cannon scanner, and Brother WiFi laser printer – my display is an ancient Samsung 21" connected via Thunderbolt on to a DVI. I’m just not seeing problems, I’m glad to say.
Even with Mail, nothing’s gone astray… Don’t use Time Machine, can’t report on that, nor iCloud. Installs have gone better than with Mojave or High Sierra…
I will echo Brian’s post here: in Energy Saver I never permit display or HD sleep, and prevent the Mac sleeping when display is off – which it often is…
It’s nice to be an exception – and no, I’m not feeling smug about it!
Glad to hear it’s been working out for you, @billstanford9. You give me hope that when my new 13" MBP arrives I’ll find a way to get along with Catalina unlike some others here (not trying to imply there problems aren’t real of course!).
Good to hear Bill. I think within Catalina Apple shifted a lot around apps, security, peripherals, external services. I suspect there’s something in my particular cocktail that’s not agreeing with it. Yesterday I removed all my startup items and it still happened. Which narrows it down to whatever apps I was running and the OS and peripherals.
Phil, never thought of that. I guess restore the system folder. I wonder if it is still there. I did at one point start Time Machine afresh. Both that and Mojave were quite some time ago.
Reverting the system is a lot more complicated that just restoring the System Folder. There are all kinds of Apps and Unix files that have to match up and a few databases that were converted and will no longer work with older systems.
Could you describe in detail how this works? It sounds like TM has built-in support for using this to roll back the OS. I’ve never heard of that or thought of it.
I can imagine there’s all kinds of pitfalls there as @alvarnell points out, but if Apple has specifically built such functionality into TM I would also imagine they’ve given these potential issues some thought. Any added detail would be much appreciated.
Yes, Al, I tend to agree. I’ve held off. I think I’ll be cloning, reformatting, installing Mojave and then restoring by hand each app as needed and my documents from the clone and various cloud services.
I haven’t used my MacBookPro very often as it was purchased for travel and meetings. Now with Zoom meetings during quarantine, and my kids wanting to do Skype visits, I use the laptop more often. Yesterday it again pestered me to upgrade to Catalina, but I’m putting it off until I hear way better news.
Thanks, @danaeugene. I’m familiar with that procedure. I guess I just didn’t get that that’s what @shastaphil was pointing out. I read his post as describing some method to roll back OS version from within the TM interface. Obviously I should drink more coffee before I read posts here.
Today, there’s one last step Apple Support want me to try before sending it in to them. I think I’ll be downgrading to Mojave instead of that shipping it off however.
I’ve had many if not all of these problems when I was wrestling with a failing hard drive on an older iMac. Actually it was a fusion drive, and it was a mess, causing me huge problems and trips to the Apple store with reinstalls, start from scratch, rebuilds etc.
I’m not saying it’s not Catalina, but I have a fairly complex setup and run Catalina on my iMac with no known problems. Not on my laptop because of a few apps there I need the older system for.
