Info 32-bit apps will not work on macOS Catalina.

[WST16]

Check this MacRumors article if you are using a Mac.

 

[fredbert]

Yeah that’s been on the cards for a couple of years. I forgot it was this year and was being cautious last year prepping for Mojave.

Best thing to do is click About this Mac and then run a system report. When this opens select Applications and then order the list by 32-bit/64-bit. You can then see which apps will stop working and you need to either update it or find an alternative.

I’ve got an external SSD with bootable Mojave so I can access a couple of apps that might not get updated. Will then see if I can live without them once I upgrade.

Will have to consign my MS Office 2008 to history and stump up for O365. I could use LibreOffice or some such but someone else isn’t keen.

 

[WST16]

For home use, on our iMac, I’ve managed to stay away from MS apps. However, when I was working at my previous job, my corporate MacBook Air had the MS suite and I hated every minute of whenever I was forced to use it.

I remember the look on the IT guy on my first week when they were showing me the internal online IT catalog and I asked for the Mac.
“Are you sure?!”
“Yes”
“Sure? You want a Mac?!”
“Yes, sure!”
“Ok, you can try it. I’ll have the Thinkpad ready for you a week after. You’ll come back.”

I had a privilege on that MacBook that allowed me to install apps. Which was surprising! I installed a few, but it got to a point where the local IT said they’re not going to support me anymore. They were scared, it was mostly a “Windows” company. I was OK with that and became the unofficial resident Mac consultant to the IT. I survived for 4 years without their Thinkpad

 

[fredbert]

Got MS Office 2008 on the HUP from work, otherwise wouldn't have it at normal prices. It's been limping along for years.

 

[Rusty]

Tested all my needed apps on Catalina beta, so I'm good.

 

[fredbert]

The first thing re-Catalina is to ensure that your backup strategy is still appropriate. The new OS uses two APFS containers: one is a read-only system container; second is the data container. You can't see the two containers as separate disks in Finder but you can in Disk Utility.

So before checking your main work/hobby apps are OK you should first check your backup app has been updated for the new scheme. CCC has according to their blog and says it should also migrate HFS+ backup destinations to APFS.

Best take a last backup of Mojave (or whatever you're on) and put it on a shelf for a while.


Oh, and if anyone is going to miss iTunes for their iDevice I see that AppleWorldToday have an offer of iMazing (2 Macs/PCs) for $20. Otherwise it's macOS's new Music app, I think. I'm using iMazing since @WST16 mentioned it a while ago and have been enjoying reliable daily backups, unlike iTunes that never worked for me, and even had to restore two family devices.

Looks to be to the same online store, but I've used them a few times and has been ok.

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[WST16]

The new OS uses two APFS containers: one is a read-only system container; second is the data container. You can't see the two containers as separate disks in Finder but you can in Disk Utility.

Didn’t know that! I’ll set aside some time during the weekend to do a full Time Machine backup. Just in case this Catalina blows up with its two containers
Thanks.

 

[fredbert]

I wasn't exactly jumping into Catalina but found that of my few 32-bit hold-outs there was an update for Logitech myHarmony ... but it was a new app and only downloadable on 10.15.

Did an install on an external Samsung T5 SSD to test the updated app (it worked) and then saw two containers for my new Catalina install when rebooted the MacBook Air back to Mojave. Booting back to Cat. and they disappear in Finder but are there in Disk Utility. There's linking within Cat. to make this appear similar to the structure of previous Mac OS X.

It always struck me as odd that the only folder within System was Library (two with recent iOSSupport), well now there are five folders including Volumes which links to the data container. So now there're the standard Mac applications (Mail, etc etc) in the System's Application folder and any you add will be in the Applications folder of the data container. Within Finder these get merge into a single view.

I've seen nothing mentioned, haven't looked either, but could be a reasonable way to do away with or augment the Recovery partition by making use of the read-only container since it would be a known starting point (unless hacked: SIP switched off or mounted externally using Firewire or Thunderbird disk mode).

 

[WST16]

I wasn't exactly jumping into Catalina

I can understand that. I don’t see anything that excites me to the point of upgrading now.
I think I’ll stay on Mojave and see.

 

[fredbert]

If you want to try out Catalina and have enough RAM and SSD space ... I've just upgraded a Mojave VM in VirtualBox to Catalina.

The VB Guest Additions aren't supported (so no assigning host devices to the guest) but to allows you to play with the basic install and pass data back and forth using SMB/AFP file sharing with the host Mac. Annoyance of keyboard shortcuts not working or being intercepted by the VB app itself, but interesting to see what's new.

For a Mac host with Mac guest setup, I used these instructions to get the two image files from the official Mojave installer InstallerApp2ISO - VirtualBox Utility - Download The app is built by a contributor on the VB forums.


I was trying to figure a way to keep access to a couple of 32-bit apps without rebooting. Managed to get it working but one app was EyeTV and not really usable in a VM on my Mac. I cloned the Mojave VM and then rebuilt with El Capitan (Guest Additions are supported) which worked but wasn't any better. After that I decided to play and cloned Mojave VM again and used the normal software updater to download the latest updates and upgraded itself to Cat. The only change I made was bumping the RAM to 4GB for this VM.


And half a day later there's a public beta of EyeTV 64-bit available. I should've got more sleep last night.


Now the only thing left is Office 2008. 'We' are going to give LibreOffice and O365 web apps another try since the main use is for voluntary work. The rest is non-shared home use so Open format should be enough. LO seem a bit resource heavy but should be ok for the sporadic use.

I did try getting LO to export a XLSX I created which had arrays in some functions. It didn't like them but made a usable ODS file. I then tried to get Synology Office to open it from within Drive and it refused to open it for some error. Which is a pity as I hoped to use LO on the desk and Syno Office remotely.

 

[jphermans]

Even wine is not working anymore with Catalina.
Hopefully there will soon be a workaround.

 

[Rusty]

VMware Fusion problem (but there is a fix) if anyone has the same problem with black screen. Update to 11.5 fixed it for me.

 

[fredbert]

I've had this page open in a tab for the last few days Catalina Apps Working/Not working and there's always Application compatibility & feature support for macOS, iOS & Windows — RoaringApps

I used Parallels from versions 1 to 10 but haven't had need for Windows in VM ever since my work laptop got an encrypted disk in Win7. Home use of Windows diminished well before that once developers started to support Mac apps.

VMware Fusion

I'm surprised you haven't got a Docker solution for everything

 

[Rusty]

I'm surprised you haven't got a Docker solution for everything

Well, they are hosted under VMM on the NAS as well, but for high-performance needs, I use a RAID0 external enclosure with SSDs under Fusion.

 

[WST16]

Complaints about Apple Mail now.