Now available for free download by anyone with a compatible Apple PC, the release of macOS Catalina adds efficiency, security, elegance, and seamlessly integrated improvements to the already superior Mojave version released last year. Catalina is the fifteenth release Apple once called OS X and, like the previous release, is based on a solid and secure Unix base. Catalina runs smoothly and reliably and adds some cool new features.
Catalina, the latest version of MacOS, offers enhanced security, robust performance, the ability to use the iPad as a secondary display, and numerous accessories. It also runs out of support for 32-bit programs, checking your programs before updating them.
Cool features include Sidecar, which allows you to use the new iPad as a second display. It replaces the classic iTunes app – with a tight and intricate interface – with a new stylish app for music, podcasts and TV.
Overview
As always, you can find major and minor changes overall, but the most important changes happen behind the scenes. All support for older 32-bit software is gone, adding efficiency and speed to the operating system, but it still presents potential problems for anyone using older software. On the other hand, in Catalina, security has been greatly enhanced.
It’s worth remembering that Catalina is removing compatibility with older games and apps that exist only in the 32-bit version, including classics like Apple’s Aperture photo editor. Catalina doesn’t run 32-bit software at all, so you’ll have to find a replacement for your 32-bit game or application. Some are still available, but only if you are willing to do a complex workaround. For a guide on how to do this, see How to run 32-bit apps on macOS Catalina.
Say goodbye to iTunes, Long Live Music, TV, and Podcasts
Catalina most obvious change is the end of iTunes and the arrival of three new apps to replace it. Over the years, Apple has been overloading iTunes with features that make it difficult to find with each new version. Three new apps make it easy for you to add new features. Music app is a music app for iOS in macOS format. It’s wider and more colorful than iTunes and has buttons to display lyrics.
It’s also available on iOS, but only if you subscribe to Apple Music, it displays text as a whole rather than line by line. When I played a song I purchased before subscribing to Apple Music on my system, the app displayed a message saying there were no lyrics for that song. But when I searched for the same song in the music store, the lyrics came out.
Similarly, the new Podcast app is the big brother of the Apple Podcast app for iOS, and the new TV app looks like a miniature version of the Apple TV interface combined with the iTunes-style sidebar on the left. With the powerful speech recognition capabilities of Apple’s servers, the Podcast app’s search function can now find words in the podcast’s voice content as well as the title and description.
Prior to Catalina, it was also the app iTunes used to create a full backup or restore an iPhone or iPad. Catalina now has this feature built into the Finder. Simply connect your iOS device with a cable and the same iPhone or iPad backup menu you used in iTunes now appears in the macOS Finder. By the way, the Windows version of iTunes doesn’t go anywhere and at least for now it won’t turn into a separate application.
Plus, Catalina makes it easy to manage your Apple ID account by putting all your iCloud and Apple ID controls in one item in System Preferences.
Riding the Sidecar
If you wanted to use your tablet as your Mac’s second screen before Catalina, the only solution was a third-party app like Duet Display, AirDisplay, or iDisplay. If your tablet isn’t an Apple model from Wacom or another vendor, you’ll still need one of these, but Catalina adds advanced native support for the iPad as a second screen on your Mac.
Just place your iPad next to your Mac or connect it with a cable, click the AirPlay icon, and then use your iPad as an extension or mirror for your Mac screen and start displaying the same content on your iPad. vein. When you select the mirroring option, you can use Apple Pencil to draw on your iPad and see the results on your iPad and Mac.
With Sidecar, two toolbars appear on the iPad screen. One is the sidebar where you can connect your Mac dock to iPad and add the Cmd, Shift and Option keys to the iPad touch keyboard. Other features are similar to the Touch Bar on recent MacBook Pros, and Touch Bar-style controls appear on iPad when using Apple or third-party apps that support the Touch Bar. This feature works regardless of whether the Mac itself has a touchpad or not.
Sidecar only works on Mac models released after 2016 or iMacs from late 2015. It works on all iPad models that support Apple Pencil (any version). This means all iPad Pros, full-size iPad models in 2018, or iPad Air and Mini models in 2019.
It took me a while to realize that macOS treats an iPad connected to Sidecar like any other display and needs to be controlled from the Sidecar panel as well as the Display panel in System Preferences. By default, the iPad connected to Sidecar is located on the right side of the home screen, but you can use the display panel to position it to the left or elsewhere so the cursor can move smoothly between your Mac and iPad screen.
More curation and automation
Other embedded applications receive various levels of updates. Photos have even more automation built in. Apple calls it this curation, which determines which photos are best and displays the day, month, and year more prominently in a new layout that displays photos from that period.
The app’s preview screen allows the app to automatically select the most important part of each photo, but when you open the photo itself, the entire photo is displayed. If you want to sit back and watch the app make decisions, you’ll love these features. Luckily, if you’re someone who wants to curate photos on their own, instead of letting the app use an incomprehensible algorithm, you can use View All Photos to display thumbnails of all photos and select the ones you want.
The Reminders app uses a completely new and new format for storing your data, so to access the same reminders from anywhere you need to update all iOS devices to iOS 13 and all Macs to Catalina. The app now reads the text you entered and suggests the date and place. The new smart list feature works like a smart Mail inbox.
You can display reminders for today only, reminders that you marked important, or other fine-tuning options. The Notes application, already updated in previous versions, offers improvements such as the ability to share not only individual notes, but entire folders, and the ability to easily reorder the list of notes automatically or manually.
Safari only shows minor changes, such as Siri suggestions on the start page that suggest you open pages associated with received messages in your browsing history or elsewhere. Perhaps these suggestions will be more useful to you than to me, but once or twice they reminded me of a page that I wanted to see and see again in the past, but never looked again.
New options and new games
The Screen Time feature built into newer versions of iOS is now available on Mac through a well-designed System Preferences panel with a wealth of options. However, parents will have to wait until a future release of Catalina to take advantage of a new powerful and flexible feature that can limit their child’s communication, which allows their children to only exchange messages, phone calls and video calls with specific people, or at specific times. Or you can communicate on a specific deadline A feature called communication restrictions is still in beta.
Speaking of the features available on the Mac App Store, the choice could be huge, as Apple just announced that starting March 2020, developers will be able to cross-list apps on the iPhone, iPadOS, and macOS app stores. You no longer have to buy the same app or game twice for your iPhone and Mac. However, app developers can still charge separately for each platform.
Security lockdown
A major security innovation in Catalina is something you won’t see unless you open macOS Disk Utility and look at the disk layout. Instead of a single volume partition that contains both the OS and data as in previous versions, Catalina installs itself on a separate Apple File System File System (APFS) volume.
One has a read-only copy of the OS itself, while the other has applications and data. If you boot your Catalina-based Mac from an external drive or volume with an older version of macOS, you’ll see two separate drives in Finder. One (default) Macintosh HD and the other Macintosh HD-Data. However, when I start Catalina, these two disk volumes appear to be one volume, just like in the previous version, due to some behind-the-scenes magic
High-tech enhancements.
Previous versions of the Apple Continuity feature allowed you to take pictures from your phone and insert images into documents on your Mac. On a Mac, you can choose where you want to paste your sketches in your document. This will open a blank window where you can create a sketch on your iPad and then paste it into your Mac document. This feature is separate from the sidecar feature and only works on all nearby iOS devices using your Apple ID.
AUTHOR BIO
On my daily job, I am a software engineer, programmer & computer technician. My passion is assembling PC hardware, studying Operating System and all things related to computers technology. I also love to make short films for YouTube as a producer. More at about me…
