Upgrading to macOS Catalina, 10.15.4, has been a nightmarish experience on my 2018 MacBook Pro.
My wife’s iMac upgraded without serious problems. Everything seems to be okay.
We knew there were issues with 32-bit applications, kernel extensions, and other quirky situations. I delayed upgrading my MBP because I use some older applications and have been migrating from system to system since 2002. (Yes, I have files on the Mac even older than that, which I keep on moving from system to system.)
It is 12:30 a.m. on Wednesday, and I began this adventure Saturday. I have had to reinstall the operating system. I had to manually remove and edit various files within the library folders. Updates to other applications — including Apple’s Xcode — stalled out or ended up in a loop, downloading repeatedly and installing three or more times. The “Apple Menu” still informs me there’s a update available for something, but there isn’t (the supposed fix is to delve into various plist files, and hope for the best).
Here’s a list of what went awry, in order of frustration:
Multiple External Displays
For the first time ever, the MBP cannot remember my screen arrangements. I have two external monitors, mounted on a side-by-side stand. These monitors worked well for the last two years. Now, sometimes they randomly swap “locations” and “order” after the system goes to sleep. The left monitor should be my primary screen, a beautiful LG 4K HDR display. Yet, it sometimes wakes slowly now and that makes the Asus 100% sRGB monitor primary. There’s no easy fix, it seems. I get the screen back in order (left on left, right on right) and that lasts through one or two breaks away from the work area.
The LG is the best display I’ve ever used. It was great. Now? It’s horrible to look at. I would never, never want my user interface to default to HDR mode, with neon colors. I unchecked “HDR” in the System Preferences, checked it, unchecked it… strange things happen. The screen will go into a washed-out, dull, bluish appearance. Click again. Back to HDR, but in “vibrant” mode, not the default or cinema modes I might use for editing video or photos. Click. A quarter of the screen goes black. The resolution changes. The ratio changes.
I’m not alone. See: “Bright HDR after Catalina 10.15.4” or “Catalina’s HDR Bug” for hundreds of complaints, most shared by owners of LG screens. The “solution” offered by others is to use HDMI instead of DisplayPort 1.4 connections. The result? Lower resolution and muddy colors. Come on, Apple. The screen looked great until this update, so it’s clearly not a problem with the monitors.
And, now when my computer is asleep, the monitors both wake randomly (to blank screens) and then go back to sleep after a few minutes. Clearly, something from the MacBook Pro is saying “Wake up, screens!” Yes, I could shut off the monitors every time I stop working for 10 minutes or more, but then they get all out of order and other setting change.
Time Machine Leftovers
The local snapshots for Time Machine are supposed to be “hidden” from users. You don’t want to see these bundles. But, after my first upgrade attempt, there was a collection of com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshot folders. These directories are important (they are the 24-hour local snapshots for emergencies), but they should never be seen by users.
Time Machine no longer restores individual email messages. Nice work, Apple. That was a problem months ago and it’s still a problem. Why would I need that? Because we have had flaky IMAP and POP servers that lost email, so Time Machine came to the rescue. Now? The only hope is to import messages for an archived mailbox. Not nearly as easy. I have no idea how an average user would manage to recover lost or deleted email.
Time Machine is slow. Painfully slow. It never felt like my system slowed down during backups, but it does now. Update Adobe or Microsoft suites and expect to be backing up 2GB or more to Time Machine. For 10 or 20 minutes, I feel like I’m using a old, dying computer instead of a newish MacBook Pro. I would rather trade a trickle-style backup for improved performance; do not prioritize the backup over my current work, please.
Apple Mail Needs Columns
No, Mail is not better without its column view. I want the classic, multi-column view that allowed me to resize, sort, and reorder columns based on my needs and preferences. The “sort” feature rests where column headings once existed. Who thought it was better to remove functionality from Mail? I have to read and sort through 100 to 500 emails daily. Yes, daily. I don’t appreciate changing how I managed that overload of email.
I have email accounts for several universities. I have Gmail, Apple iCloud, MS Office, Yahoo, Spectrum, and our domain emails. I have aliases for blogging and other creative projects. I use rules and automation to sort the mail, but I also used the columns in Mail to quickly locate subjects, authors, and dates. Resizing columns helped a lot, especially with longer subject lines.
Music Lost my Lyrics…
Okay, maybe it isn’t important to anyone else but the move from iTunes to Music seems to have broken lyrics and album artwork. I found an easy enough fix (LyricsFinder) but now I have to re-import lyrics. Sure, that’s a silly thing to care about, but where did they go and why? Lyrics should have been within the metadata of the file, at least in the MP3 and MP4 standards. The same is true of album covers and track artwork.
Suddenly, Henry Mancini’s Greatest Hits had the cover art from the Eurythmics’ Greatest Hits. I’m sure that’s because E came before H and somehow Music tried to fix the “Greatest Hits” album it located — but they were two different albums! I’m just relieved that not every “Greatest Hits” album ended up with same artwork.
We can argue that Music isn’t part of the operating system, and it isn’t, but Apple makes a big deal about its bundled apps. If you include something with the operating system, make sure it works properly. At least they returned the “column” view in Music, if you view the library by track.
My Audiobooks Moved (Again)
I want my imported audiobooks to reside in Music, not Apple’s Books application. Apple’s logic is that books are books. You buy audiobooks, graphic novels, and traditional books in the Books app, not in Music.
A year or two ago, I spent time re-importing audio, making sure not to classify tracks as “audiobooks” so they would not move. Catalina mucked up my audiobooks again.
Once migrated into Books, the album folders are given meaningless “unique identifier” names. These new folders are stashed deep within a system folder, where you aren’t supposed to be looking for them. The album-book covers? Gone. The artwork is probably still within the audio files, but you only see generic “covers” in the Books app.
Syncing books from my iPad or iPhone? More of a mess. I have two and three copies of some books on one device, no copies on the other. It shouldn’t be so difficult to make sure the same books appear across all devices.
Why I Upgraded, After Waiting
I didn’t want to migrate to Catalina. I use Screenwriter 6.5 and Dramatica Story Expert. I still have files for Print Shop 4 and Print Explosion. And some games will be missed. After my wife’s computer was updated, I knew I didn’t like Mail and found Music a sad replacement for iTunes (which is saying a lot, since iTunes as a mess after years of adding too types of media).
In the end, I use Apple’s tools more than I use Screenwriter or DSE. For my podcasting, I use Logic Pro and GarageBand. For my video work, I use FinalCut Pro and the Adobe suite. Updating became inevitable.
When I started the process, I told myself, “Mail is not the end of the world.”
And then, a single-day project became five days of trying to stabilize my system so I could work. I still cannot use my external displays. Working during a Time Machine back up process is painful. The computer doesn’t always shut down properly.
I’m not pleased, Apple. You need to do much, much better. The next macOS should be focused on fixing Catalina and restoring users’ faith that Apple products still “just work” when you need them.