Anyone have an update on whether there may continue to be security upgrades for Catalina now that Ventura is out, or if it’s just headed to the dustbin? So far I’ve held off on upgrading my 2012 vintage pre-Retina MBP from Mojave to Catalina to see whether or not I’d actually get any more time out of the latter. For now, I’m relying on Firefox’s continued basic support for older MacOS versions and avoiding most other web-dependent apps (beside Mail).
Catalina probably has dropped off the end of the earth.
Apple is notoriously closed-lipped about their software lifecycle policy. But Apple has historically fully supported the current major macOS release and provides security updates for the prior 2 major releases. Catalina is now the n-3 release.
Case in point: Apple just released security updates for Big Sur and Monterey at the same time as they released Ventura. No such update for Catalina.
1 Like
It has been clear for months now that Catalina updates, except XProtect, XProtect Remediator and other background updates stopped with Security Update 2022-005 In July.
Good to know. Last time I asked people here seemed unsure what would happen, or were speculating based on past practices. Thanks, Al.
If you decide to upgrade to Catalina, you could always run newer Mac OS versions in a virtual machine using VMWare Fusion 12. It is a free license for personal use. It works fairly well and if you’re worried about accessing some sites with an older OS, that could be one option until you get a newer computer. I use it with Monterey on a 2012 Mac Mini i7 2.3 GHz Quad Core with 16GB RAM for some tasks but still use Catalina for the most part although that might change now that security updates are not forthcoming.
https://customerconnect.vmware.com/evalcenter?p=fusion-player-personal
If you have an external drive or just extra space on your Mac, you could clone your Mojave volume and then upgrade to Catalina from that volume, then try out VMWare Fusion if you wanted to while keeping your original Mojave volume intact. Just another possible option.
1 Like
I’d like to know given that I only recently upgraded to Catalina from Mojave (Catalina is an improvement, by the way).
1 Like
I’m not sure what you’re asking about but Catalina is an improvement speed-wise. However, Mojave can still run 32 bit apps so that is why I mentioned keeping that volume just in case you need it.
It’s an improvement in speed yes and some of the new features are nice. I have a copy of Mojave on the internal drive; I’ve been running from a much faster external SSD for the past year or two.
1 Like