iPad IOS Great, Catalina Bad!

iPad IOS Great, Catalina Bad!

And so it has happened:

I beta test for Apple, and I have seen all the updates for both iPad IOS and MacOS 10.15, and it has been a bumpy ride. With iPad IOS it has been a dream, and there’s very little that has gone wrong. The new features are great, especially now that I can run with a mouse.

For the SideCar feature — using your iPad as an additional screen — I used it a few times, but gave up, as I don’t see any use. For me, I want to draw on Keynote from my iPad, and for this to appear in my presentation from my Mac. But, iPad IOS looks great and has great functionality. It is the best, by far, in the industry, and I wouldn’t use anything else for working with the Pencil and in general daily things.

But for Catalina, it has been a difficult time over the Summer, and really me and it has not got on well. Apart from the continual (almost daily updates) for beta fixes, I have found it a challenge, and I think I will leave the beta programme soon, as it has cost me so much time. For a beta, really many of the releases were more of a pre-alpha, and were it was obviously not fully tested. First I lost Fireworks, which I should have known about (as it is only available as a 32-bit program), but worse was to come.

For iCloud, my head spins. I have no idea about what Apple does with this. I have lost so many documents from bugs in the sync function. Luckily Apple’s best program — Time Machine — archives my files, so I was able to recover my precious Keynote files that Catalina managed to lose (on a continual basis). Generally, I give iCloud a mark of zero out of 10, and is one of the most confusing programs I have come across. I can see what it is doing, and I love the security underneath, but Apple has work to do, in order for the user to actually see what is happening. For Keynote, too, something went wrong, and I had to continually recover my previous versions, as many of my current ones seemed to get corrupted in someway.

The greatest challenge is the improvement in security that Catalina brings, as Apple is making sure that all of the apps behave themselves, and don’t request permissions that they don’t need (or that the user doesn’t want). Well done to Apple for this, and Microsoft’s clunky implementation of this is a long way short of Apple’s security panel:

In Windows, your head spins in setting up things, but in Apple IOS, you just find your System Preferences, and you’ll quickly find what you need. But the betas were released with little thought of users which applications such as VMWare, and which require deep integration into the operating system. As a heavy VMWare user for Kali, Windows, Ubuntu, and many other OSs, I was often faced with a black screen upon bootup, and where I could do nothing. This was not good for my productivity, and I had to dive into Reddit to find lots of other people having the same problem. Sometimes they fixed it, other times not. To me, these were sloppy alpha releases and not beta ones. I appreciate I should not have been installing beta OS releases on my production machine, but I really wanted to test the Sidecar feature for my presentations, so there was no going back.

And to, there were almost daily updates — a sign that Apple developers have spotted a major problem that could break things — I would then sit and wait for “35 minutes to go” … and which often stuck for ages for a while, and where you think you have completely trashed your machine. I must say for Apple, they are good at updates, and your machine will get there in the end — and which is not something I can say for Windows updates.

So, iPad IOS, is great. Catalina, well can I have a time machine (a proper one, and not the Apple one)? And while I am at it. Please Apple, fix your keyboards (my space bar likes a double space so much!). I have a whole supply of compressed air, and often have to hold the computer up and blow air into the keys (and which boots the computer back up). Also, add the ports back (esp HDMI), and the magnetic power supply.

Your computers were great, but not as great as they were. For iPad, it’s perfect, and Steve would be proud of the product. For the Macbook Pro, you need to get yourself back into gear. Thank you to Redit, too, for helping me see that it was not just me who was having problems. My advice for Apple, work with VMWare a bit closer next time, and make sure you alpha test.

This was one of the most nieve beta programme releases I have ever seen for Catalina, and one of the best for iPad IOS.