I’ve upgraded my mid-2015 15-inch MacBook Pro to Mac OS Catalina. The operating system has not been officially released (though there were some rumors it would be released on the 4th), but the Gold Master is available on the beta channel and that’s good enough for me.
I took this opportunity to turn FileVault back on. FileVault encrypts the contents of my hard drive. If this computer was ever stolen, no one could easily read the contents of my hard drive. Since I’ve experienced having my computer stolen before, I tend to err on the paranoid side when it comes to data security. I’m a big fan of encryption.
I’d share screen shots of Catalina but I’m typing this entry on my iPad Pro because the encryption of my hard drive has gone on for several hours with several hours still remaining in the process.
I haven’t noticed any jarring changes in the interface to throw typical users off their game. There are some major changes going on under the hood, for example, Mac OS Catalina will not run 32-bit applications. The only 32-bit application I had remaining on my hard drive was a Quicktime Plug-in for Final Cut Pro X, and I don’t really use that plug-in so I went ahead and did the upgrade.
I had read concerns from beta testers around the number of security prompts thrown out by Catalina, but I haven’t experience anything like that yet, but as mentioned, I haven’t really dug deep into the new OS.
One thing I have noticed is my battery drains pretty quickly. I need to give the OS about a week before I determine as to whether that’s something going on with the OS itself or it’s the fallout of Mac OS doing a bunch of cleanup related to the upgrade in the background.
Like its predecessors, Mac OS Catalina looks gorgeous, even on my 4 1/2 year old machine. I look forward to sharing further findings from my exploration adventures with the new OS.
Once my hard drive finishes encrypting.
