If you don't do that, or if you upgrade anyway, the macOS Catalina installer will still check for you and give you a list of apps that you can't take with you. If any of the 64-bit (Intel) fields say no, it means that app isn't going to survive the upgrade. You can see if you're still running any 32-bit laggards prior to updating by clicking on the Apple icon in the menu bar, clicking on About this Mac, hitting System Report, Applications, and then going through the list of apps. 32-bit apps, dragged along this past decade, will now launch no more.īut, killing the past is what Apple does to better embrace the future and, more than a decade of writing-on-the-wall later, 32-bit apps deserve to die.
Now, with macOS Catalina, the transition is complete. The Mac has been shipping with 64-bit processors since before the Intel transition of 2005 and 64-bit was a headline feature of macOS going all the way back to Leopard in 2007.
How to download and install macOS Catalina macOS Catalina review: The End of 32-Bit Apps Otherwise, you'll stay on the beta and can keep testing for as long as you like.
Not how it works, which is chock full of really smart, really cool technology, but how well it works for the humans at the other end of the machine.ĭo that, and your next update will be the next release version. What I want to do here, now, is talk about the implementation and the experience. You can find 11,000 words and a full hour of video on that linked below. I've already done the deep technical dive. Throw in some new apps and updates, ports, and new user-facing features that continue to leverage the full Apple ecosystem by letting iPads serve as secondary displays and iPhones work as a massively distributed Find My network for Mac…, and awesome new accessibility features like Voice Control, and we have macOS Catalina.Īn update that shows Apple is getting better and better at leveraging everything that's come before while continuing to push forward, but still struggling with just how many landings they can really stick, year over year. Many will love the new sleekness but some may well miss the old monolith.
So, it's now been broken up into its constituent parts. Services new and established, from Arcade to Music, TV+ to News, are launching and venerable old iTunes simply can't keep up. Others, we're just beginning.Īt the same time, Apple's scope is growing. We're in the midst of multiple massive paradigm shifts, each of which will take several versions to play out. And, while they try to find that balance, casual users might be annoyed by increased privacy disclosures and power users, increased root-level restrictions. So, Apple is being forced to go back and try to balance the traditional openness of the Mac while retro-fitting the defense-in-depth that was built into iOS from the beginning. The threat levels have changed, as have the threats themselves. Gone are the days when the ubiquity of Windows provided the best virus protection imaginable for the Mac. And many developers won't be able to make full use of this version's new technologies like Catalyst, never mind SwiftUI, just because Catalina has shipped. Not every volume was migrated to APFS immediately. Not every app moved to 64-bit or was re-written in Swift year one.